The Violent Advent of God's Kingdom

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Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you for this day, I thank you for this text of scripture that's focused on how your kingdom,
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Lord, comes violently. Lord, I pray that you would just be with me and give me the words to speak. Lord, this is your holy word.
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It's the word that has been passed down through many generations, through the patriarchs, through many different...
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It's come to us in a sea of blood, through the martyrs and the translators, Lord. I pray that you would just press this on our heart, Lord, and help us to press in after you.
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Christ, Amen. I title my message this morning, The Violent Advent of the Kingdom of God.
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Matthew 11, 12, for me, is a theme verse in my life. I know many of you, I've talked with Brother Keith about this before, but frequently this verse...
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I just love this verse. The Puritans did too. Actually, Thomas Watson has a book called, Heaven Taken by Storm, studying holy violence and stuff like that.
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I highly recommend reading that book if you haven't. Today I want to start off talking with...
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How many of you know what a tsunami is? It's probably a less common natural disaster compared to earthquakes or volcanoes.
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A tsunami, if you remember back in 2005, there was a really big tsunami in the Indian Ocean. A tsunami basically occurs when millions of cubic meters of waters are displaced by either an earthquake, a volcano, or some other tectonic activity.
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These waves travel extremely fast, 500 miles an hour, which is the speed of a jet plane. They're capable of great destruction.
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One interesting feature of a tsunami, though, is when they're at sea, it's just a small ripple. Because their water is so deep, the volume of water, there's like a small little ripple at sea.
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But as it comes closer to land, those waves build up and crush everything in its path. Actually, in 2005, when there was a tsunami in Indonesia, a lot of fishermen that were out fishing at sea, they just saw a bare ripple.
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But then as it got closer and closer to shore, it started mounding up higher and higher, until they had 30 or 40 foot waves, and they destroyed and killed a lot of people.
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In many ways, the kingdom of heaven and Jesus' arrival is like a tsunami. The messianic promise is spread throughout the
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Old Testament, but it's a ripple. It's just small little pictures here and there, little glimpses you see in the mirror darkly and the glass dimly.
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But when Jesus started his ministry in 30 AD, his appearance and work were like a tsunami that turned the
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Jewish people and their religious leadership upside down. The kingdom of heaven came violently with Jesus. And the violence wasn't a physical violence.
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It wasn't a violence where we see people fighting or killing. Jesus was not that way at all. But it was a spiritual violence that swept away all the traditions of the
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Jewish people and all the types and shadows, and was the full unveiling of God's final covenant with mankind.
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My first point today I want to talk to you about is John's office vindicated. Matthew Henry says this about John.
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That which advanced John above the Old Testament prophets was that he went immediately before Christ.
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Note the nearer any are to Christ, the more truly honorable they are. This applies to us as well.
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Do you want to be great in this life? Be close to Christ, pray to Christ, read the Bible, love
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Jesus. That's what's important is being close to Christ. Not your position, not your prominence, not what you do.
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The most important thing in life that you can do is be close to Christ. Testifying to unity of scripture,
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Jesus gave a double endorsement to John's ministry. The Bible says in many points that every fact should be established by the mouth of one or two witnesses.
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Deuteronomy 19 .15 says, one witness shall not rise against a man concerning iniquity or a sin that he commits.
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By the mouth of two or three witnesses a matter shall be established. Again, Matthew 18 .16 says, but if he will not hear, take a few, one or two more.
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By the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word may be established. Chronologically, the first witness to John's ministry was the prophecy of the
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Old Testament. Those came chronologically first. Jesus references this in Matthew 11 .9 when I just read it to you.
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Matthew 11 .9 says, I tell you more than a prophet. I'm sorry, Matthew 11 .10 is where he actually lists the prophecy from Isaiah.
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However, it's funny, Jesus inverts the national order and he places his endorsement of John first. He doesn't start with the
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Old Testament, he starts with him. Why does he do this? There's a few different thoughts that come to my mind.
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Is this a reference to the ministry of John and the arrival of Jesus from the religious world upside down? Does Jesus place himself first to show his life as a fulfillment of the
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Old Testament promise? That's one potential answer there. Is this an implicit rebuke to the religious elite who clung to the shadows over the substance, which is
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Christ? That is possible too. If you remember when Jesus was born, the Pharisees knew exactly where Jesus would be born.
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But what did they do? They sat there in Herod's palace and said, oh yeah, he's born in Bethlehem. They didn't care to go down to see him. Or, you know, as religious gatekeepers, the
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Pharisees and Sadducees, they were very quick to cast dispersion or doubt on any prophet or teacher that did not subscribe to the teachings of their sects.
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So if anyone arose that wasn't from the Sadducees or Pharisees, they would say, kick him out. That was their view of John the
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Baptist. How can we entrap him just like Jesus? John engaged in rhetorical battles with the
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Pharisees a few times in the Gospels. While all of the reasons above are partially correct, I think Jesus put his testimony first to demonstrate that his authority trumped the authority of the prophets and writers of the
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Old Testament. He was the final word from God. He is the word made flesh. That's why he comes first, not the prophecies.
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In the Old Testament, you know, and I mentioned this before, God's kingdom came slowly and steady. The arrival of John the
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Baptist was like lightning. When Jesus began his ministry, his preaching and teaching unleashed an earthquake or tsunami of revelation upon the nation of Israel.
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Jesus has four words he says here. He says, I say to you, or I tell you in some versions. These four simple words lay bare the nature of Jesus' authority.
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When men are referring, when men are teaching or preaching, they typically refer to something or someone greater than themselves, when they desire to make their case.
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You know, frequently, you know, I quote the Bible, which is, of course, the ultimate authority. We quote godly men of the past. You know, we use the reasoning of experts, institutions, elected officials, religious scholars to buttress an argument.
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But Jesus was deity cloaked in flesh. He had no need to appeal to any earthly power. When Jesus says, I say unto you, that's the word of God.
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He doesn't have to say, oh, by the way, here's some other to back it up. As recorded in the
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Gospels, he taught with authority that was lacking in the pedagogy or the instruction of the Pharisees and Sadducees. When he taught, people listened because he spoke on his own accord.
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He didn't have to refer to things. This phrase, I say to you, and I also call, if you think about the word truly, the words truly, truly, that's its rhetorical cousin.
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When Jesus says truly, truly, or I say unto you, he's saying pay attention. These make up the warp and the loop that tie together the fabric of Jesus' message in the
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Gospels. When you're stitching a cloth or a fabric, the warp is the vertical, the loop is the horizontal.
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Those two things stitch it together. So when Jesus says truly, truly, and I say unto you, those are his dual commands.
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This is my authority. I don't need any other person to back me up. I say this. You know, if you look at Hebrews 6 .13,
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what does it say? It says, for when God made a promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself. And that's what
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Jesus does. There's no one greater than Jesus. He swears by himself and he speaks of his own authority. Jesus' endorsement of John as a prophet is very important to the central theme of our passage.
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If John were not a true prophet, then all the baptisms he performed were illegitimate. His teachings were irrelevant and his austere or poor lifestyle was inconsequential since it was basically a backdrop for deception.
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That's why it was so important that John's ministry be validated. Because the Pharisees were like, well, if you discredit John, we can discredit
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Jesus. And Jesus pushed back against that. The zeal in preaching and the passionate spirit for the kingdom of God would be relegated to the backbench as the
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Pharisees and their liturgical services took over. They would go back to this formalistic, dead, ritualistic religion.
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If John was a fraud, then the Messiah that he heralded would be a minimum tainted by association and a worst and outright fraud in the mold of his herald.
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It is possible, and this is some speculation, but it's possible the Pharisees were telling people that John's imprisonment was punishment for the
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Lord for deviating from established rabbinical doctrine. You see the Pharisees frequently throughout the New Testament.
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Oh, this person got his illness. It was from God. They sinned. The righteous frequently get tribulation and difficulties.
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That doesn't mean the Lord's punishing them. And John being in prison was not a punishment for the Lord. It was testing his faith. When the disciples asked the
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Lord in Matthew about whose sin was responsible for a man born with blindness, they were revealing some of the religious milieu or social environment they were brought up in.
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That's what the Pharisees were teaching people. If you're sick, if you're poor, if you're this, it's your fault, and God is punishing you.
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And this is not so different from what the prosperity teachers do today. The prosperity teachers frequently say if something's going wrong in your life, it must be sinning or you must not have enough faith.
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Well, we just know that's not true. We live in a fallen world. There's a lot of sin in this world, and we will suffer as Christians.
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The Bible says all those who seek to live Godly Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. The Pharisees had also forgotten, if you think about it, what about the lesson of Job?
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What about multiple verses in the Psalms? What about all the suffering David went through? These people suffer greatly for the Lord. What about the second half of Hebrews 11?
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The second half of the hall of faith is people that suffer for the Lord. Suffering does not mean you're sinning. Psalm 3419 says many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the
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Lord delivers them out of them all. Psalm 119 .71 says it is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn your statutes.
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In his reply, Jesus authenticated John's ministry as well as he reestablished the doctrine that affliction and suffering are not always punitive or disciplinary.
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In fact, the Lord uses affliction as a chisel to chip away at the worldliness, independence, and slothfulness that remain in our redeemed hearts.
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There's a lot of problems with our hearts. We're wedded to this world. We're tied to this world. We don't want to leave this world.
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We get comfortable in this world. And God uses affliction to say, where is your hope? Is your hope here in the Bible and the book of life, or is your hope in the world?
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The Lord does this. Some of the greatest saints in the
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Old Testament experienced bitter periods of suffering. I mentioned Job and David. Of course, you have Joseph and Jacob, too.
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They went through a lot as well. However, the Lord never abandoned any of them. And they all experienced the truth of Romans 8 .28,
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even though that verse had not yet been recorded. And that's the important thing to remember. The Old Testament saints were saved in the same economy we were, and the same promises that we have today they had, even if they didn't have them written down.
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You know, Jesus, he chose to eulogize John or to praise him during his imprisonment, which was the lowest point of John's entire life.
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Similarly, God chooses our weakest moments and humiliation to bring the greatest glory to his kingdom. What does
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Paul say in 2 Corinthians? He says, And he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.
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Therefore, most gladly I will boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. God's strength shines most brightly through our weakness and afflictions.
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When people see someone that's happy and doing well, no one wonders about that. When people see someone that's happy in the midst of suffering and agony and losing faith, they wonder, what's different about you?
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And that's when God's saints really shine. In the case of John the Baptist, his removal from public life had a double strengthening effect.
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John's faith was being strengthened as he learned to trust God from a jail cell. Additionally, the faith of the early
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Christians was being strengthened as they transitioned from being disciples of John to becoming devoted followers of Jesus Christ.
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You know, should we be content with a shadow when the object of our hope has arrived?
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Who would prize a reflection in the mirror of the living person that made it? Like, you wouldn't say, oh, I like that reflection over the person.
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You know, do we cherish the mailman more than the missive from the loved one who brings us? No, we want the letter.
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We don't really care about the mailman. I mean, we do care about him. We thank him for bringing it, but we don't say, oh, the mailman. We want the letter that comes from our loved ones.
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Our tribalistic hearts are prone to elevate messengers above the God who creates, sustains, and gifts these men to the church.
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Messengers are not selected for their ability to linger after the message is delivered. Rather, if they do not vacate the stage, people will start investing these messengers with an inherent as opposed to a derived authority.
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Pastors and preachers, their authority is derived from the Holy Scriptures. They have no authority outside of that.
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And the thing is, when we start investing people with inherent authority, we're making an idol. And that's the thing,
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John the Baptist, if he has stuck around, he could be an idol in some people's mind when Jesus had come. As a writer of Hebrews so aptly put it, he said,
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God, who at various times and in various ways spoke to the fathers by the prophets, has in this last day spoken to us by his son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds.
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We have Jesus. We don't need prophets. We don't need priests. We don't have that. The perfect has come. My first application is,
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I want to talk about a pattern for church relationships, especially like how Jesus talked about John the
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Baptist out of this text. As the faultless son of God, Jesus never committed sin or made a mistake his entire life.
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Additionally, his interpersonal skills give us a great pattern to emulate when dealing with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
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The public question that John's disciples brought to Christ had the potential to adversely impact Christ's ministry.
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The Pharisees and Sadducees were laboring tirelessly to implant similar doubts as the authenticity of Christ's ministry in the minds of the people.
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Imagine the smug satisfaction the self -righteous scribes would get from setting the followers of John against the followers of Christ.
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Jesus had all authority, and it was perfectly within his right, he could have exhorted, admonished, or even rebuked
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John's disciples for not believing Jesus' messianic claims. Jesus was no stranger to rebukes. He rebuked
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Nicodemus. He rebuked the Pharisees. Or admonition. He gave Martha admonition. He gave the rich -rung ruler admonition.
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How many of us would lash out strongly or rebuke someone for questioning whether or not we were followers of Christ? By virtue of his deity,
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Jesus is further above us than the galaxies above the earth that we walk on. Now examine the tenderness and kindness of Jesus toward John the
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Baptist and his disciples who had just questioned his person -in -life work. What is the great work that God has given each of us to accomplish, or each
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Christian? Most people would probably reply by saying the Great Commission. That's an excellent answer. The Great Commission is the primary focus of a
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Christian, but it only covers the outward focus of the Christian life. A Christian also has an inward focus.
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Our inward focus is building up the local body of believers so that they can go out and reach a hostile world for Christ.
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Weary saints in a hostile world, they need the rest and encouragement offered by fellow pilgrims to be rejuvenated and strengthened for our lifelong spiritual battle.
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Listen to what Paul says to the Thessalonian church in 1 Thessalonians 5 .11. Therefore, comfort each other just as you are doing, just as you also are doing.
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Therefore, comfort each other and edify each other just as you also are doing. The Greek word for edify in this text literally means to build up or construct.
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All Christians, not just pastors, we're all called to build up the body of Christ. We can do this privately through supplicatory prayer or publicly through praise and encouragement of our fellow believers.
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Rather than focusing on John's weaknesses, Jesus chose to extol John's strengths to the assembled multitudes.
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He focused on what John did well. Reading the words of Jesus, it provides us with a two -part pattern that we can use to build up fellow believers in Christ.
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First, Jesus recognized the service that John had rendered to men. As a prophet,
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John had faithfully delivered God's word and boldly proclaimed the gospel message to his contemporaries. Like the sons of Noah covered up their father's nakedness with a sheet,
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Jesus recounts John's past works so the multitudes remember John's zeal for the Lord and not maybe his confusion or his disciples' confusion about Jesus' kingdom.
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When fellow Christians become disillusioned or disagree with us, do we write them off as irredeemable or problem people?
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Can we survive if God applied that same standard to us? No, we can't. Rather, what we should do is we should follow our
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Savior's lead and publicly praise their service while privately petition God to further sanctify them. If we truly want to build up the body of Christ, then we need to love our fellow believers as Christ loved us.
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In the Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul states this very succinctly.
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He says, Love bears all things, love believes all things, love hopes all things, and love endures all things.
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Next, Jesus lauds John's work for God as the messianic forerunner. If you think about a bulldozer, what does a bulldozer do?
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It smashes trees. It tears up old roads. It moves piles of dirt. Doing all this, the bulldozer prepares the ground for structures or roads.
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These actions are violent, loud, and they throw clouds of dust and dirt up in the air. Most people would not want to have bulldozers operating near their property for these reasons.
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However, if you don't have bulldozers, our communities would never get new schools, churches, houses, or roads.
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We would never have any of that. We need that bulldozer to go first and clear the ground. Was John refined, winsome, and tactful?
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The answers to that were no, probably not, and highly unlikely. Did John make many enemies among the common people and the religious elite?
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Absolutely. If you call people to repentance and exhort them to be wholly devoted to God's work, you will assuredly have enemies in those secular and the religious quarters.
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However, John's actions as a gospel herald, they were an essential part of the advent of our Messiah. Thomas Watson aptly says this in his classic work,
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Heaven Taken by Storm. I alluded to this earlier in the message. He said, John the Baptist was a burning and shining light.
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He did burn in his doctrine and shine in his light, and therefore, men pressed into heaven. When he preached to press on and to repent and believe, you can look at John's life and say, he didn't do that, because John's life was devoted to that mission.
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How do we apply this to our church life? Can we recognize the value that certain people bring to our church body, even if they don't fit the ideal of what we think is an ideal church member?
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Do we judge people's usefulness to God by how they get along with us and not how they advance God's kingdom?
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People that love God and call others to radical holiness have always been hated and persecuted by those whose consciences are pricked by their teaching or their lifestyle.
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Comfortable Christianity is the sworn enemy of the dogged pursuit of holiness. If you want to be a comfortable Christian, you are not going to be holy.
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All of us are different members of the body of Christ, and we all serve different purposes in the church. Paul writes the following to the
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Corinthian church, and these members of the body, which we think to be less honorable, on these we bestow greater honor and our unpresentable parts have greater modesty, but our presentable parts have no need.
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But God composed the body, having given greater honor to the part which lacks it. Our most presentable features are hair, eyes, and limbs.
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Those are very disposable. You don't need hair, eyes, or limbs to survive. You can live and thrive without those body parts. People do that all the time.
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On the other hand, think about our internal organs. If those are removed, or you lose your eyes or your nose, if you lose those, you can't live, and those are things that people don't see.
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So we're not to judge the fellow believers or fellow church members according to how, you know, do they fit the ideal of the member.
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It's like, are they useful to the body, and are they advancing the kingdom? God's lesson for us is very plain.
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God evaluates people according to their usefulness to the church, and not according to their popularity in the church body. How are you useful for God?
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That's what God evaluates you on. So for my second point,
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I'm going to talk about Old Testament prophecy fulfilled. Verse 10 says, For this is he of whom is written, Behold, I send a messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.
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Picking up in verse 10 of Matthew, we find that Jesus quotes from Malachi 3 .1. Malachi 3 .1
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says, Behold, I send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come into his temple, even the messenger of the covenant whom you delight.
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Behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. I would like to focus on two words from this Old Testament text.
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First, the verb prepare or clear, as it's rendered in the CSB and the NASB translations. The Hebrew word here is upina, and Malachi 3 .1
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is the only time this word is used in the entire Old Testament. While this does prevent us from comparing the usage of this word in other
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Bible verses, it does furnish us another sign of the uniqueness of John's ministry. You know, ancient heralds, they might often carry the ring of their sovereign with them to prove that, like, this is my sovereign's ring, what
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I say is his word. As the Messiah's messenger, John was giving something a little less tangible, but still no less significant.
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He had his own word in Malachi that basically said, you know, prepare and clear the way.
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That's specific to John. The Greek word for prepare or clear, and this is for, the
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New Testament was written primarily in Greek. The Greek word for that is actually found three times. Now, the
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Greek word for it is actually found in other places in the New Testament, but it's found three times referring to John the Baptist in Matthew 11 .10,
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the parallel text in Luke 7 .27, and Mark 1 .2. These verbs are used in conjunction with a direct object, namely, what's the object they use?
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The way. All the major Bible versions translate this phrase with the exact same words. A direct object receives the action of a transitive verb, so when you have a direct object, the way, it's receiving, it's receiving prepare the way.
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In this case, the preparing or clearing is being done to the way of the Messiah. What is the meaning of this, what is the meaning of this sentence?
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Like, what does that mean to prepare the way? Was John preparing Israel's expectations for the Messiah? Many Jews were looking for their conquering hero in the form of a
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Davidic king. They were certainly not expecting a humble carpenter or a suffering servant as their Messiah. Was John preparing the people for their covenantal transition from Old Testament believers to New Testament Christians?
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John had a lot of, you know, for those days, novel views. His insistence on repentance before baptism, his decision to preach outside the normal worship centers, he didn't preach in the temple or synagogue that we know about, and his practical sermons in the common tongue all represented a departure from the
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Jewish liturgy of his day. He was very different from the scribes and Pharisees. These are both, these are all solid answers, but I think the best explanation is that John was preparing the hearts of the
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Jewish people to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ. However, in the spirit of the
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Berean believers, I don't want you to just take my word for it. Providentially, God recorded
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John's mission in the final verses of the final book of the Old Testament. The 400 years of intertestamental silence was bookended by the promise to send
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John the Baptist and his arrival on the scene in the early years of our Lord. Please turn with me to Malachi 4 verses 5 and 6.
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I'm going to read that together. Malachi writes, Behold, I will send you
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Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, and he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.
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In this chapter, once again, John is typified as Elijah. Like Elijah, he is pictured as being the only person standing between Israel and God's wrath.
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If you think about Elijah, it's like, you know, when people listen to Elijah, God relented. When they didn't,
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God sent destruction on them. So Elijah was the only person holding back the wrath of God. Most verses in the gospel relate to the healing of the vertical relationship between God and man.
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This verse actually examines the horizontal relationship between the people of the earth. Jesus came to bring peace between God and redeem mankind.
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That's the first thing he came to do, peace between us and God. Additionally, though, through the salvation of his elect, he gave
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Christians a foretaste of the communion that the universal church will experience in heaven. Unity in the gospel is a glorious thing.
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While we live on this earth, indwelling sin prevents us from perfect relationships with fellow believers. It always will.
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Satan's dominance in our relationship has forever been broken by the gospel of Christ, but we still have remaining sin in us.
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Often we are tempted to think that God does not care about our relationships with others as long as we are on good terms with him. Nothing could be further from the truth.
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The verses from Malachi show that God's punishment for broken relationships will involve striking the earth with a curse. So God cares about the vertical and the horizontal relationship.
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The second word that's important in this passage is the word suddenly. This word is an adverb that modifies the action of Jesus coming to his temple.
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In this case, scholars and commentators, I believe as well, it refers to him coming to earth. Jesus' life on this earth was very brief.
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33 years. I'm 33 years old, so he died at my age. His period of active ministry was even shorter.
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His active ministry was probably three years, maybe a little less than that. When these period of time are compared to the entire history of mankind, 67 ,000 years, they seem quite short.
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However, the perfect son of God, he didn't require millennia to overturn the curse of sin for the world that he created.
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The Lord bends time to fit his will. It's like a leashed and a muzzled dog under his power. He doesn't need, we think, oh, we need 6 ,000 years.
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Jesus is like, nope, I need three. He doesn't work on our timeline. The next thing is
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Jesus' ministry. It was characterized by an intense urgency. He had little time for leisure or recreation.
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Jesus was not recorded to have been enjoying vacations, going shopping, making art, idly conversing with friends on matters other than the gospel.
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There's nothing wrong with those things. Those are fine pastimes. But Jesus displayed a determination that fits his solemn task of atoning for mankind's sin.
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His work, he was focused on what the Lord gave him to do. If he wasn't witnessing, if he wasn't preaching, he was praying.
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If he wasn't praying, he was fasting. He was always, always, he was always devoted to the Lord and doing the work the
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Lord had sent him, God had sent him to do. And in doing this, he provided us the ultimate example of how we should redeem the time.
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Jesus redeemed every second he had. We should do the same. The most apparent rendering of the word suddenly,
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I think, refers to how Jesus burst into the scene in ancient Israel. If you think about the Jews at the time, they were preoccupied with the
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Roman occupation, religious intrigue, Sadducees versus Pharisees, Pharisees versus Essenes, Herodians versus everyone.
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They were really focused on sectarian strife. The Jews hated the Samaritans, the Samaritans hated the
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Jews, so there was a lot of that going on. And they were wholly unprepared for the birth of the Messiah. They were focusing on current events.
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Instead of focusing on earthly affairs, they should have followed Simeon and Anna's lead. What were Simeon and Anna doing?
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They were praying daily in the temple. You don't find Simeon and Anna getting involved in religious squabbles, talking about the
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Roman occupation, hating on the Samaritans. They were waiting for the coming of the Lord. If following current affairs of any flavor is our main obsession, it's going to be very hard to adjust our heart into a proper spirit of communion with God.
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There's nothing wrong with reading the news, listening to politics, looking into religious back -and -forth squabbles, but if that's your main focus, you're not going to have time for Christ.
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You just won't. And although the first and second comings of Jesus are radically different, they do have one thing in common.
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His first advent was rapid and caught the vast majority of Israel by surprise. His second advent is also going to be sudden.
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The Bible says it's going to shock the world and people aren't going to be ready for that either. As we see later, and we'll talk about this more in my next message where I'll focus solely on Matthew 11 -12, the term violence in Matthew 11 -12 does not refer to physical violence.
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It refers to swift, unyielding determination that sweeps everything and everyone out of its path in the establishment of God's kingdom.
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So when we hear the word violence in our culture, violence has come to mean physical violence and killing and maybe boxing and stuff.
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But violence here is not that at all. It's determination. It's pressing in. It's endurance. That's what this violence means.
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For my second application, I want to talk about how all Christians are heralds for God. We're all God's heralds.
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Prophecy is generally accepted as the ability to foresee the future. Additionally, the word prophet is often associated with the ability to perform signs or wonders.
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You see this a lot in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, God gave these powers to his prophets to vindicate their authority as messengers of God.
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They'd say, the Lord says, and then Elijah closes up the heavens. They'd say, the Lord says, and a famine comes to the land.
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That was to vindicate their message. However, this word has another dimension that often goes overlooked.
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Foretelling or revealing the future and foretelling or delivering God's message to mankind are both defined in this one word.
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There is no record in the New Testament of John ever performing a miracle or predicting the future. He didn't do that. That was not his ministry.
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He was not there to perform miracles. He was not there to foretell the future. His ministry consisted of preaching the gospel and baptism, which many people today would consider boring or mundane.
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That's kind of commonplace. Leonard Ravenhill had the following to say about John. He said, John the
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Baptist never performed any miracles, yet the Lord Jesus Christ said he was greater than any of the Old Testament prophets.
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John was the last and greatest of the Old Testament prophets. His ministry represented an inflection point in God's covenantal plan for his people.
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An inflection point is when a line goes up, hits a certain point, turns back down, goes a different way. God's true servants are pastors whose role is to foretell the commands of God and not foretell or perform miracles.
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If pastors are primarily focused on foretelling or performing miracles, they're looking at the Old Testament. John is the last of the
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Old Testament prophets and his ministry was what modern pastors should emulate. We have the complete revelation of God in the
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Holy Scriptures and we have the testimony of his Son Jesus Christ who is our final prophet and our great high priest.
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Now that the perfect has come, we have no more need of signs or shadows to confirm the veracity of God's word.
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We don't need any more signs or shadows. We have this. This is a sign enough for us. God's given us the ultimate sign and revelation in the perfect life and atoning death of Christ.
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If Jesus coming into this world, living a perfect life, dying on the cross, being raised on the third day is not enough for you, no sign of miracle will be if that's not enough to convince you of Jesus.
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Jesus' inauguration of the new government also inaugurated a change in the scope of the gospel message. Before Jesus' advent, salvation was primarily limited to who?
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The Jews. Israel, God's chosen people and those who were willing to separate themselves from the nations and join themselves to national
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Israel. If you think of Ruth and Rahab, both part of Jesus' line, they separated from their nations and became
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Israelites. So to become a Christian back then meant becoming an Israelite, part of that ethnic Israel.
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In his final words, Jesus charged the church to bring the gospel to all peoples that dwell in all nations on the earth.
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Matthew writes this in Matthew 28. And Jesus came and spoke to them saying, all authority has been given me in heaven and earth.
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Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. Baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the
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Holy Spirit. Teach them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
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These words were spoken directly to the apostles, but their scope includes every true child of God. It's not just meant for the apostles.
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This command applies equally whether you're a CEO or a janitor, a single woman, a mother of seven, a teenager, an aged man, a college professor or a student.
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This applies to everyone. The financial stress, relationship issues, worries and cares of this life will long be forgotten when everyone in this room passes into attorney in the next 100 years.
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If you look at, let's fast forward to 100 years from now, 21, 24, it's very unlikely that anyone in here will be alive.
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Maybe one of the kids might be. None of those things in this life will matter. Your relationship issues won't matter.
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Your money won't matter. You know, what people thought of you won't matter. What will matter is was your name written in the book of life and did you do the work that Jesus gave you to do?
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That's it. That's the only thing that will matter. And John, in paving the way, and that's one of the reasons
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Jesus said, he said, Assuredly I say to you, among those born of women there is not risen one greater than John the
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Baptist, but he who is leased in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. For my third point, I want to talk about the revelatory riches we have as New Testament believers.
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John the Baptist was the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, but then Jesus has this verse where he says, if you're leased in the kingdom of heaven, you're greater than John the
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Baptist. You know, in his previous verses, John had extolled
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John the Baptist as being the greatest of the Old Testament prophets. We see that in verse 9. And he praised him for being a messianic herald.
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In verse 10. Building on that, in verse 11, Jesus says, John was greater than all the men that were ever born of women.
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In this case, born of women refers to natural conception. Obviously, this statement will cover every human that was born in the future except for, there's only three people that weren't born of women.
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Adam, Eve, and Christ. That's it. Everyone else came to this world through a woman. The parallel here is not accidental.
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I think Christ is also revealing he's our second Adam. And only in him can the curse of the fall be undone.
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So, when he says greater among those born of women, Jesus is the second Adam there. The slow boil of revelation that simmered through 4 ,000 years and 39 books of the
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Old Testament had suddenly exploded into sight in the first chapters of Matthew's gospel. There is no anticlimactic beginning here.
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Rather, the kingdom of heaven would violently turn first Judaism and then the empire of the devil upside down.
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Before we can proceed, we need to define some key terms in our verse. What is meant by the kingdom of heaven?
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Who is meant by when he says who is the least in it? Commentators are mainly in agreement that kingdom of heaven means the advent of Messiah and the full unveiling of the covenant of grace.
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So, that's when you say kingdom of heaven, you're talking about Jesus coming into this world and the covenant of grace being revealed.
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It's important to remember that all the intermediate Old Testament covenants, there's a few of them, there's the Noahic, the
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Abrahamic, the Davidic, they're but stepping stones to lead us to the Messiah and the new covenant. Also, it's important to know the
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Old Testament saints were saved in the same way we were. They weren't saved by working their way to heaven. A lot of times when people look at the
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Old Testament and see the rules and regulations in the systems, they think, oh, they were saved by obeying those. No, they weren't saved by obeying them.
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They were saved by grace just like we were. The difference was God revealed himself in rules and regulations and now he reveals himself in the person of Jesus Christ.
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No one can be saved by works. The Bible is very clear about that. So, the Old Testament saints were not saved that way. However, the
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Old Testament, the greatest Old Testament saint, if you think about it, had less gospel light than the least saint of the past 2 ,000 years.
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Like, Abraham would love to know what you know. Elijah? Elijah would be very happy.
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Adam would be ecstatic. This revelation here, they had just very small glimpses, little peeks into the future.
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They didn't have the full revelation of God's word like we did. Some theologians believe that the least in this verse refers to pastors and teachers, but others will say that it refers to any believer after the advent of Jesus Christ.
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In the absence of clear evidence in the text pointing to pastors and teachers, I believe it's everyone. We're all more blessed than John because we have more light than him.
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I mean, even John, for all of his greatness, John didn't have the complete picture. Like, John didn't understand his work as a suffering servant.
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John thought there was some sort of national revival of Israel that was coming and that wasn't the case. For my third application, because we have all these revelatory riches, we are to study to show ourselves approved.
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We have a wealth of revelation in our hands, and as I mentioned before, the Old Testament saints could only dream, the
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Old Testament prophets, priests, and laymen could only dream about. We have this whole, 66 books in the
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Bible. Charles Spurgeon said that scripture is a never -failing treasury filled with boundless stories of grace.
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He also said if heavenly gold is not worth digging for, then you are not likely to discover it. Do we really see this book as heavenly gold, and do we think it's a treasury?
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Because if we don't, if we just think it's a book, we're, you know, if we just think it's a book, we're treating the word of God with contempt.
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This is the very living word of God. The 27 New Testament books that we have, we have a variety of different, we have gospels, we have history, we have epistles.
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Most of the epistles, as the pastor has mentioned before, they're apostolic commentary on the gospels. And we have end -time literature,
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Revelation. John the Baptist was greater than those who went before him by virtue of his closeness to Christ.
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We can be greater than him by diligently examining and storing up in our hearts the complete revelation of this Bible. That's how we can be greater in the kingdom of heaven, is by reading this
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Bible. Our greatness is not positional, it's associational, right? We need to show ourselves approved and be ready to share the light of this
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Bible with those around us in this dying world. Peter writes, but sanctify the
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Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you the reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.
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That's our goal. We sanctify God in our hearts by reading the Bible, by praying, by meditating, and we're ready to give a defense when someone asks you or if someone doesn't ask you.
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There were times, you know, if you see the Samaritan with the well didn't really ask Jesus about her soul, but Jesus brought it up. You know,
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Nicodemus did, but there were times in the gospels where, you know, people didn't ask Jesus about their soul and he still brought their soul up to them.
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So, we're to be aggressively looking for opportunities to share the gospel.
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I like what Dan Bills said the last time he was here. He said, giving out tracts is great and that's not a bad thing, but sometimes giving out tracts is a cop -out.
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If you have time to talk with a person with the Lord and they are willing to talk with the Lord and you just hand them a tract, that's a cop -out.
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We say, if the Lord gives me time and I have time and this person seems interested, then share the gospel with them directly because nothing, the
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Lord can use a tract, the Lord can use anything, but nothing is like by person -to -person communication, sharing the gospel with someone.
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The kingdom of heaven is coming violently. Its progress will not be slowed by the hatred of this world or the indifference of mankind.
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Whether you hate the gospel, whether you're indifferent to it, you know, it's not going to matter. If you are in this room and you're not saved,
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I plead with you to be reconciled with God through the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That is the most important thing you can do is get right with the
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Lord. You can ignore the kingdom of heaven on this earth, but you can't ignore it forever. You know, your time, it's a ticking time bomb.
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You may ignore it for 50, 60, 70, 80, whatever the Lord gives you, but guess what? The inexorable conclusion, we're going to sort you into one of two families.
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You're going to be the family of the God or you're going to be the family of the devil. And when you're in those families, you're fixed for all eternity.
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There's nothing you can do to change that. You cannot divide Jesus Christ and take him as your
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Savior and not your Lord. He will be both or he will be nothing to you. You know, you can't, there's a lot in our culture today, it's very common, especially in the church, the more megachurch and non -denominational large churches out there.
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They say, well that person walked the aisle, they said they were a Christian, but they don't follow Jesus at all, but they're still saved. That's not how it works.
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1 John is very clear. If you love the Lord, you're going to love his word, you're going to love his people, you're going to love praying, you're going to love reading the
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Bible. Imperfectly, we're imperfect Christians, but there's going to be a desire for that. If none of those things are true of your life, then you're not a
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Christian. That's just, that's the answer. Jesus Christ will be both your
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Savior and Lord or he'll be nothing to you. You can't, you're not going to tell Jesus, oh I'll take this half and not this half. He's going to be all or nothing.
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True freedom comes from serving our beloved Savior and doing the work that he's appointed for us to do. If you're wondering what true freedom is, that's what it is.
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If you do not seek the kingdom of heaven, then you will realize the truth of what the writer of Ecclesiastes said.
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The, it's funny, the Hebrew name for Ecclesiastes is actually Koheleth, which translates roughly to collector of sayings or assembler of students, which both of them are kind of interesting because it's like on one hand, he's collecting sayings, on the other hand, he's assembling students to teach them.
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But Ecclesiastes is a great book. And what does he say in Ecclesiastes 2, 10 through 11? He says,
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I denied myself nothing my eyes desires, I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my labor and there was reward for all my toil.
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Yet when I had surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless.
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Chasing after the wind, nothing was gained under the sun. That's your life without Christ. If you don't have
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Christ, your life is going to be listed as this. If you love the Lord and you focus on Him and He's the center of your life, you won't be this.
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You will focus on Him and you'll realize that what you do in this life, it does echo into eternity. There was,
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I don't remember if I read this in a book or saw it in a movie, but I think it was some of the Roman Empire and the guy with the centurion was talking to a soldier.
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He said, what you do in this life echoes into eternity. And he didn't mean that in a biblical sense, but I will take it in a biblical sense.
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It's true. What you do in this life echoes into eternity because when you will look back one day, you'll either look back with shame and regret or you'll look back with joy and gladness on what you did in this life.
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So my plea with you today is the kingdom of heaven is coming violently. It came violently in the
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New Testament. It's still coming along quickly today. You know, press into the kingdom of heaven and use violence, endurance, perseverance to grab a hold of it and say,
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Lord, if I'm not saved, I'm not going to stop asking you until I know I'm saved.
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You know, you know there's a great example of this in the Old Testament? Jacob. What did Jacob do with the angel? He wrestled with him.
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He would not let the angel of the Lord go. And in this case, it wasn't just an angel. That was a theophany. That was an appearance of Christ in the
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Old Testament. But he said, I'm not going to let you go until you bless me. And it wasn't physical blessings.
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It was spiritual blessings. He wanted to be spiritually blessed. What do we see with Esau? The exact opposite. Esau took his blessing and sold it for a pot of stew.
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And that is the type of short -term thinking that this world has. They're focused on the immediate short -term gratification and they're not focused on the long -term effects and where they'll be one day.
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So my exhortation to you is this. Follow the path of Jacob and Jesus. Don't be an Esau. Let us pray.
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Heavenly Father, I thank you for this day, Lord. I thank you for your word, Lord, which is true, everlasting.
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Lord, you say, heavens and earth will pass away, but my word will endure forever. Lord, I pray that you would press these words to our hearts.
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Lord, help us to live them out, teach them to our children, think about them when we go to sleep, when we lay down, when we rise up in the day.
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Lord, that our life would be a consistent symphony of music and praise to you. Lord, I pray that you just be with us as we enter a new year and Lord, help us to make this year,
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Lord, the one that we say, Lord, I'm going to devote myself even more to reading the word, to praying, to meditating on your law.
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I pray for everyone in this room that they would do that and if those are not saved, Lord, you would tell them that today is a day of salvation.
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Tomorrow would be too late. We're not guaranteed tomorrow. At any moment, we could die and be thrust into eternity,
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Lord, and we will regret forever if we haven't made things right with you. I pray for this in your name,