Foxes, holes and the Son of Man

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

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Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, I'm your host Mike Abendroth.

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Why is this thing sinking down? When I was sinking down. This chair, it just never seems to work.

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And by the way, what is this shiny thing on my forehead? Who knows? Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio.

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We are on Facebook Live today as well. If you ever want to watch these shows, I don't know why anybody but Jeremy would watch these shows, but if you ever want to watch, you just have to go to Facebook and you go to No Compromise Radio, I don't know, it's some special Gnostic insider group, and you ask to be a member.

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On the left -hand side of the bottom part of your check, there's this routing number. You just type that in and everything will be fine.

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This is my third show that I've done today here in the studio. And the first show

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I did was not on Facebook Live, it was the Beza Briefing, number one, and then number two.

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But today I want to talk about something else, and it's Matthew chapter eight. Most of you know, Saturdays I come in and try to, it's almost like I rehearse the sermon by talking about it on No Compromise Radio.

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It's not in the sermon cadence, it's not, it doesn't really have that dynamic of preaching, but it does involve you guinea pigs as you listen to me pontificate and laugh by myself.

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Although you know what, if you do Facebook Live, it doesn't seem like I'm really in the room by myself because it seems like we're just together in all this, right?

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Before I get into Matthew chapter eight, the world is crazy, evangelicalism, wild stuff.

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David Platt a while ago wrote the book on, in my opinion, it should have been titled

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How You Can Vote for a Party That Will Dismember Children While Alive and Still Sleep at Night while you're an evangelical.

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And then just two days ago, three days ago, John Piper writes the equivalent of that same article, and it's just a full court press by people.

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I'd like to know how this all started, and I have my ideas about liberal money in a lot of these institutions and people, but it's just total capitulation and corruption of most everything that I can imagine.

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And on one hand, you know, why does anybody listen to No Compromise Radio or should care what I say?

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I know that. But like I care what John Piper says about the election,

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I thought he was retired. And he's just, in my mind, running his mouth about this stuff.

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It just, it is just completely crazy. Maybe they took their cue from Tim Keller.

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I have no idea, but it's just something that I cannot stand. If you don't want to vote for Republicans, fine, don't vote for Republicans.

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But if you're going to try to play this whole thing, like, well, everything kind of balances out.

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And I'm probably going to get in trouble and people will get mad at me if I said, well, you know what? Yeah.

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They had some things, you know, in Russia where at least this particular leader, he could get things done and he had better social programs to feed the poor and everything else.

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I mean, this is crazy. I guess I better stop while I'm ahead, but it is crazy. And here's the moral of my story.

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If you think I'm some big shot or you think I'm a celebrity, or you think what I say has extra validity because I can just put myself up there or have a podcast or write a few books or whatever, don't, don't.

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Celebrity Christianity is a cancer because what happens is you just buy into whatever they say without thinking critically, without understanding things.

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I mean, David Platt doesn't understand the difference between law and gospel. His book Radical is, it's, you ought not to read it.

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It's going to hurt you. And it probably hurt the people that sold everything or sold a lot of stuff and became poor.

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I wonder what they're thinking now. How many of those people have changed their mind? I read one account, if it's true or not,

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I don't know. So I better say if it is true, hundreds of people sold their houses in suburbs of Minnesota and Minneapolis, and then moved to poor neighborhoods because of some whim or fancy of John Piper and how he thinks this is the right thing to do or the godly thing to do.

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If you want to do that on your own, go right ahead. But stop listening to celebrity pastors and stop having them control your life.

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You ought to hear everyone say, if it's outside the Bible, well, if I were you, I'd do such and such.

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This is my opinion. If you ask me my counsel, it should be such and such. It is, it is crazy.

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And I don't think we've seen the end of it at all. Anyway, please think, pray, read the

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Bible. Ask God for wisdom. And don't just default to some kind of superstar evangelical celebrity pastor that, all right,

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I'll say it. I don't think he's as wise theologically, he meaning whoever it is, as you think.

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I think you're buying into things that you ought not to buy into just because, well, he's really good on the five points of Calvinism.

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He's really good on the swans are silent book. Okay. This is enough. Let's stop that.

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Well, now to positive encouraging Caleb stuff. I just finished

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James and I thought, you know what? One of the things that I regularly like to do is to go to Matthew eight and nine because Matthew eight and nine talk about credentials.

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How could Jesus have this authority? What do you do when someone comes along and says they're the

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Messiah? I mean, what about David Koresh? What about Jim Jones? What about some of the false messiahs back in the

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Bible days? People come along and they say they're Jesus. They say they're Messiah. They say they're the ruler of the world.

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They say they're God incarnate. They say whatever. How do I know if it's true or not? And what you'll see in the

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Bible with Moses, Joshua, Elijah, Elisha, Jesus, and the apostles, those three timeframes in particular, you'll see miracles and wonders and signs and supernatural things done to authenticate both the message, what they say, and the messenger who's saying it.

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Moses is from God. Joshua is from God. He's taken the mantle. Elijah, Elisha, et cetera, Jesus, and the apostles.

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So people run around now and they want all these super sign gifts and everything else when I need nothing authenticated.

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I have the authenticated message from God.

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So what Matthew's trying to do is, it's the first book in the canon in terms of placement and probably first gospel written, although many just default to Mark, but beside the point

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Matthew is having a lot of Old Testament quotes because you think, okay, from our English Bible ends in Malachi or the

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Hebrew Bible in 2 Chronicles, almost said 2 Corinthians. And now we have this

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Jewish Messiah's credentials. And so he, the Jewish Messiah, can be authenticated, especially in chapter eight and chapter nine.

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And there are these seven great miracles, right? And the first miracle is touching the leper, healing the centurion servant, healing

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Peter's mother -in -law and some other sick people. And then we come to this next section about Jesus having authority over, excuse me, people.

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He actually has the authority to command people. Who could do that? Who would do that?

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And we see Jesus doing it. And one of these sections of scripture that's really, really fascinating,

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Jesus has authority over people. And by the way, that means he has authority over you and me, right?

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We are created beings. Jesus is the creator and he has authority over humans.

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Who else does? Well, maybe I have authority because I'm your boss or, you know, something like that.

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But I mean, we're talking about authority, authority. Like do you go to heaven or hell authority?

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That kind of authority. And so it's a very interesting passage and I want to just practice on the one person watching.

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Now, when Jesus saw a crowd around him, Matthew 18, verse 18, rather of chapter eight, he gave orders to go over to the other side.

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So I don't know if you've been to the Sea of Galilee, but it's kind of fun to take a boat out and cruise around.

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By the way, when you do that, they try to sell you all kinds of trinkets and Hebrew music. I wanted to have,

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I wanted a cannonball off the side of the thing last time. And I told the guys I was going to do it when we stopped.

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And I was told that I was going to be in big, big trouble. Like they'd call the law kind of thing if I did a cannonball.

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So I jumped off and did a jackknife. No, but I wanted to.

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There's no way to crawl back in and I guess illegally they can't figure out, you know, this is not some kind of pleasure cruise.

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So what we're going to do is we're going to see a couple of people here and a couple of people here in Matthew chapter eight. Somebody's going to come up to Jesus, hey,

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I'll go anywhere. Let's see how Jesus talks to him. And somebody else is going to come up and go, I don't know if I really want to follow quite yet.

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So it's interesting. Let's watch. And a scribe came up and said to Jesus, teacher, I'll follow you wherever you go.

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Hey, I mean, fishermen, they don't really contribute that much, I guess fish, but probably not too rich, not too influential, a bunch of hay seeds from Nebraska, Galilee.

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And now we've got a scribe. He is not somebody that just writes, you know, it's just not like a calligrapher.

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Although I know a calligrapher, that'd be nice to have a calligrapher who follows. But here the scribe, this is a person who deals with the law and he writes about the law, i .e.

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the law of Moses. Matthew Henry said one scribe might do more credit and service than 12 fishermen.

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Okay, this is going to be a good, to use a fisherman language, a good catch. Let's see if Jesus can catch this guy.

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And he wants to follow, this guy does. And Jesus said to him, oh, come on,

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Jesus. No, watch. Foxes have holes. Okay, that's where they sleep.

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Birds of the air have nests. That's where they sleep. Not a luxury, but at least get you by.

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But the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. I put it bluntly, am homeless.

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You want to follow me? I'm homeless. Scribe, homeless. Foxes, I know it's not much, but they have a home.

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Birds not much. They have a home. You want any kind of security from high class to middle class to blue collar class?

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There's not going to be much security there. Are you sure you're thinking through this properly?

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I don't want you to just kind of go in emotions, right? This emotional high where I think I'm going to follow you, right?

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Maybe this guy saw what Jesus did with the leper and with the centurion servant or heard about them,

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Peter's mother -in -law, and now he wants to follow. Well, you think, yeah,

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Jesus does what? It's almost like he's not wanting them to follow.

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Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. Okay, you want to follow me,

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Jesus said, and you think you're going to be better off than me? I just want you to know what's going to happen here.

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You're the scribe, you're the upper class, and now I don't have a home. I don't have a place to lay my head.

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It's not even necessarily five star, three star, one star. It's no star because there's no place I have.

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I don't have a home. And then Jesus uses his favorite designation of himself.

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What's the text say? The son of man. This is right from Daniel chapter seven. And I saw the night visions and behold, with the clouds of heaven, there came one like the son of man and he came to the ancient of days and was presented before him.

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Here's this exalted Messiah, son of man, the son of man that is going to come in judgment.

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When you think son of man, lots of things should come through your mind or should go through your mind.

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I'm changing pages at the same time, power, authority, ultimately suffering, crucifixion, but maybe ultimately a return in spectacular glory.

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That's what should go through your mind if you're thinking about the old Testament, this great judge who's going to come with glory unspeakable.

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And this son of man, he doesn't have a home. People travel around.

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Jesus tells the scribe, here's what's going to happen. You counting the cost.

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Do you understand what this means? Okay. Well, this guy wanted to follow. Jesus seems to put the roadblock.

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And now there's another one that, well, you know what? Maybe the first guy was too quick, too fast to follow.

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This guy's going to be too slow to follow. Verse 21, another disciple said to him, Lord, let me first go and bury my father.

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Follow me, Jesus said, and leave the dead to bury their own dead. Who talks that way?

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Well, obviously Jesus does. That's crazy. Now, you've got two options.

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And most of you that know this, um, won't hurt to remind you.

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Option one, his dad's dead. But you know what? There's some funeral planning to do.

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And maybe he's the oldest son and he's got to do all this. And you know, you've got the obituary, a modern day language, and you've got to go to the mortuary and you have to do all these things.

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You know what? He gets an out on that. Funeral arrangements need to be done. Well, the other option is he's not dead, the guy's dad, but he's older and he could be dying anytime soon.

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And so I have to kind of be there to take care of my dad in his declining years as he's going to die.

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Well, what does Jesus say? Okay. Jesus is the one who heals the leper, who heals a centurion servant, who heals

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Peter's mother -in -law. He has authority, right? He speaks with authority, right? I, you've heard it said, but I say to you, and now this

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God of the universe who has authority over every single person who's ever been born. He says, you know what?

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I have authority over you and I have a claim upon you. And it is an absolute claim.

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And by the way, if you're listening today and you're not a Christian, an absolute claim God has on you because he made you and he expects you to perfectly obey him summarized in love

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God and love your neighbor. And if you don't do that, and I know you don't do that because no one could outside the

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Lord Jesus, you're going to need a savior or you're going to have to pay for those sins because God takes sinning against him very personally.

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And that old slogan that says, you know, every religion leads to God. There is some truth to that and it leads to God's judgment.

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You will be led to God on that day when you die or the son returns and it will be a judgment like no other.

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Think of words like ferocity. Think of words like wrath. Think about words like fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living

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God. And so you're going to need a savior. He has claim over you because he made you. Thankfully, this is all on the way to the cross where he not only has a claim on people, but he loves people, right?

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And here Jesus in love is telling the people the truth, follow me and leave the dead to bury their own dead.

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You're going to have to believe in me. You're going to have to trust in me. You're going to have to rest in who

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I am and my claims as a Messiah. I don't care what your social obligations are.

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And you can be thinking even these days about people who say, I can't follow Jesus because it's going to cost me my relationship with my mom or my dad.

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And you can think of Muslims or you can think of other things, very, very difficult.

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What are your priorities, right? So if it's have no other gods before me, don't act like your dad's a

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God, right? Obviously God has given us familial affections and responsibilities that we have.

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But if it's, you know what, it's dad first and then God, that is not going to fly.

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And so here we have in Matthew, God, the son's absolute authority, not just over leprosy, not just over servants who are sick and going to die.

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We'll see later with Lazarus over death, even Jesus's own death. He has authority over that to lay down his life and pick it up again, but he has authority over people.

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That's why this is placed in here because the very next section, it says in 8th 23, and when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him.

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Those men knew, it doesn't say the scribe followed him or this guy followed him. The bar is too high for many, many people.

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They simply won't believe. They simply won't trust and rest in who God is.

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And then the fruits of that trust would be repentance. And the fruits of even repentance would be the fruits of fruits of repentance.

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There is a difference between repentance and the fruits of repentance. That's my point.

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All right. But these disciples, they followed. And then now he's going to give them a lesson about what it means to be a disciple.

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It's one thing to go, Oh yeah, Jesus is God. He healed the leper. What about when is Jesus God and you're in a boat and you're going to die?

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How much do you really trust me? And this is that great section where Jesus is great, sovereignly, authoritatively ruling the seas.

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And I don't know if you've been to Israel, but the sea of Galilee, it can get pretty wild, pretty fast.

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I haven't been there when it has, but I've heard the stories. Behold, doesn't

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Matthew love to say that? Behold, there arose a great storm on the sea so that the boat was being swamped by the waves, but he was asleep.

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Now what I really like about this section here is you see the deity of Christ and the humanity of Christ. You need a savior who can represent you as man, and you need a savior who can save you as God, right?

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And have an infinite amount of righteousness and who can overcome death. And that's what we see here with this swamped boat.

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They're drowning, they're fishermen. I wonder if they already knew what to do. If the boat ever capsized or the water's coming over, they probably did, but this is a storm like no other storm.

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I'm sure it's a perfect storm delivered by God himself so that he can understand this.

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You ought not to be thinking, that's just a little lake, it's not that big a deal, no. Think violent, think squall, think earthquake, think everything's shaking, think 9 ,200 feet

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Mount Hermon and the winds come flying down to this sea that I think is 700 feet below sea level.

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How many meters is that? 200?

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I'm faking because I can read 213 meters below sea level. Some vortex, some, how many say vortex in life?

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Some wind tunnel, a great squall, sound familiar?

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I hope you're thinking in the background. The Lord hurled a great wind on the sea and there was a great storm on the sea so the ship was about to break up.

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Jonah 1 .4, hey, Jonah was sleeping in the boat. See anything to the similar?

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Yes, except Jonah is not equal to Jesus because we're going to see Jesus, the God man. He has authority over the sea and the wind because they obey him.

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That's the point. He was asleep. Do you see the humanity of Jesus? That's what you should be seeing.

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The son of man has nowhere to lay his head, Jesus said just earlier. Did you get that? Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have the nest, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head except on a cushion in a boat.

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That's cool, isn't it? See how the writer just connects that so you go, oh,

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I get it. It's just like Jonah. Well, not quite like Jonah.

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And so what happens? They went and woke him saying, hey, by the way, woke is in the Bible right there.

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They went and woke him. Save us,

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Lord, we're perishing. We're dying. We're going to all die.

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Shouldn't they do something? They're the fishermen. They know this better than Jesus does. I mean, what is going on? Why are you afraid?

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Oh, you have little faith. It's all about faith, isn't it? He rose, rebuked.

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He got it. You know, you have to rebuke two things if you want flat. You can't just rebuke the sea because the winds are still going.

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You can't just rebuke the wind because then the sea would still continue after the winds. Get my point? He rebuked the winds and the sea and there was a great calm.

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What you ought to be saying is anybody who could do that has to be God and I ought to be worshiping them.

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I had to be believing in them. So I asked the question to the people who are watching, the one, do you believe?

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And maybe others will watch later. Do you believe? That's the point. If he just said, be calm and nothing happened,

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I don't think I'd believe him. I think he was just another huckster, another false

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Messiah. No, this one, he's got authority over people. He has authority over leprosy.

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Where's the last time somebody got healed from leprosy? Anybody? Oh, yeah. Two people, Miriam, the name of the

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Syrian. So anyway, my name is Mike Ebendroth. That was my little, you're my little, you know, my little practice time for the sermon tomorrow.

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As I think about it, some things I said, I will say again tomorrow. The cushion part. Some things I said,

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I won't say tomorrow. Oh, my neck.

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You can always write me, Mike, at NoCompromiseRadio .com. Don't forget if you order Sexual Fidelity, you get free things that go bump in the church.

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Lots of shows on No Compromise Radio. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.