His Temple, His Choice (Matthew 21, Jeff Kliewer)

So please be a part of that, nine o 'clock. And then next Sunday, I should let you know as well about this. We're gonna have options for women here with their new ultrasound truck in the parking lot. So you'll get to check that out.

And Chuck Swanson will tell a little bit about options for women. So don't miss next Sunday. Also, a final announcement. We have texting in church. That doesn't mean you should be texting your friends.

That means you can text to this and get information throughout the week. Be part of our Cornerstone loop. Also, if you'll go to info at cornerstonesj .org, you can fill out information for our church directory.

That way we can know how to contact you. You can be a part of that directory. So just email Michael at info at cornerstonesj .org. I think that's all the announcements. So let's pray. Father God, thank you so much for what you're doing here at Cornerstone Church.

You are the cornerstone of this church. We are living stones being built into a spiritual house to praise you. And we pray that you would continue to build us up in this most holy faith. This morning, as we come into your presence, we ask that your Holy Spirit would draw us closer to you and spur us on to go out into the world and be salt and light.

In a lost culture, Lord, we pray for the gospel to go forth this morning. Just like every Sunday morning, Lord, that the name of Jesus would be lifted up and that you would draw sinners to yourself. Sinners like each of us.

We thank you, God, for this Sunday morning. We recognize that it's yours. This is the Lord's day. This is the day that you have made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. In Jesus' name, amen.

Let's stand.

Worship and the Lord’s Day

Worship your holy name. It is the power of Jesus' name that heals. And Lord, we are so grateful that you've redeemed us. Together, let's sing. All hail the power of Jesus' name.

Hail the power of Jesus' name Let angels prostrate fall Bring forth the rodent and crown him white Lord of all Bring forth the royal diadem and crown him white And seed of Israel's race he ransomed from the fall Hail him who saved you by his grace and crown him white Every kindred, every tribe on this terrestrial ball To him all glory is due

Psalm 98, four says, shout to the Lord all the earth and burst into joyful song and sing praises. Sing praises is one of those commands in the Bible that is all over the place. In Psalms, the New Testament, it's a command.

It's not a request. And I appreciate you singing loudly and proclaiming Jesus's name, singing praises to his name. Let's sing to him.

Shout to the Lord all the earth, let us sing. Power and majesty, praise to the King. Mountains bow down and the seas will roar at the sound of your name. I sing for joy at the work of your hands. Forever I'll love you, forever I'll stand.

Nothing compares to the promise I have.

My Jesus, my savior.

Lord, there is none like my day. I want to pray.

Let's sing that again. Shout to the Lord.

Shout to the Lord all the earth, let us sing. Majesty, praise. Mountains bow down and the sea at the sound.

Lord Jesus, thank you that we can shout your name, that we can sing praises to your power and your majesty. We welcome you here this morning. Open up our hearts, open up our eyes. I pray, Lord Jesus, that we will not have blinders on anymore.

But as you fill our hearts with gladness and joy, we can shout to the Lord.

Shout to the Lord all the earth, let us sing. Power and majesty, praise to the King. Mountains bow down and the sea sing for joy at the work of your hands. Forever I'll love you, forever I'll stand. Nothing compares to the promise I have.

Oh, nothing compares to the promise I have. Oh, nothing compares to the promise I have.

Father, your word says that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. That is our prayer this morning, that knowledge of you and your word would go forth from this pulpit, your scripture spoken forth into the world, and that it would find listening hearts, receptive hearts.

Lord, I pray for myself that I could preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm not worthy to do such a thing, but by the merits of your Son, the precious blood of the Lamb covering me, I ask, Lord, that the name of Jesus would be exalted this morning, and that Christ would be known as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Pray for those who have not yet come to saving faith, that they would believe the good news, repenting and turning from their sin. And we pray for all of us that we would stand for the authority of our King, in Jesus' name, amen.

Christ’s Lordship and Authority Over Every Sphere

I'm going to do something very different this morning. It will be kind of an unusual sermon, disclaimer, but I'm going to open this sermon with a political statement, you ready? Jesus is Lord, yes. But the reason that's political is that Lordship entails authority.

And when I say He is Lord, I'm saying He is King, not only King, but He's King of Kings and Lord of Lords, which means all authority in heaven and on earth has been given unto Him by the Father. He has absolute authority over everything, and that includes not just the private affairs of Christians in our homes, not just the private affairs of churches in our buildings, but also the authority of Jesus is over the public square.

Isn't that interesting? He speaks to all areas of life, and some of the things we'll get into this morning will touch not so much on the personal as the public. Now, if you guys have been around here for long at all, you know that we go verse by verse through scripture, and the applications of scripture come right out of the text.

So much of what the scripture says is regarding the private Christian devotion, right? It is very personal between you and God, it's very vertical. But sometimes the scripture addresses public things.

For example, when Jesus says, you are the salt of the earth, that's a preservative to culture. You are the light of the world. That is speaking the truth over all areas in the world. So let me begin with a story, and that comes out of California.

So you can guess what direction this goes. Tori Jensen was formerly the employee of Kaiser Permanente Hospital. Throughout the pandemic, she worked her tail off serving people who were sick with the deadly virus.

She served in a hospital. But recently, just weeks ago, she came to work and was escorted out by her own employer who has now fired her. She was escorted out and given this letter. It has been determined that your request for a religious exemption to the COVID vaccine is not based on a sincerely held belief in a religious doctrine or teaching that prevents you from obtaining any COVID -19 vaccine.

Therefore, your request has been denied. And home she went without the ability to provide for her children.

At home.

Her livelihood taken from her by this claim to authority. I have dubbed the rest of November, no-nonsense November. And the reason for that is we're gonna do something quite unusual. We are going to address some of the nonsense that's happening in the culture, this being a case in point, the story of Tori Jensen.

Today, we'll tackle the issue of vaccine mandates and some other related issues. But really what we're discussing is not that thing per se, but the question of authority, okay? And we're going to do that as we always do from the text of scripture.

If it's here, then it's true. If I'm making stuff up, then you just leave with your own opinion anyway. But if this is God's holy word, it addresses the authority of the king whose name is Jesus. A great deal of scripture points us to individual application.

But today, much of what I'm saying will have a public application. So I want it to go far and wide. Let this be a statement to the world, to governors or those who suppose themselves to be kings regarding issues of the land.

And because the claim that we make to be the temple of the living God under the jurisdiction of a king whose name is Jesus and an authority that's higher than the delegated authority of civic government, this claim is absolute.

It comes from almighty God himself. And so we go to the text in Matthew 21. If you want to turn there, we will see the triumphal entry. Church, you should know that we have given out many dozens exemptions from the COVID mandate.

Did you guys think this was my sermon? That would be a long sermon. No, this is a stack of exemptions. And if you are an employee and your employer is forcing you to get a vaccine that your conscience doesn't dictate for you to take, we have one of these for you that you can give to them.

And the Pacific Justice Institute is standing by to make sure that this works. So these are the mandates exemptions that the church has written. By God's grace, I think we've gotten almost every single one of them.

So many dozens have been granted. Now, if a mandate vaccine exemption is granted, it implicitly says that the government understands that their authority is not absolute. That's why the exemption is given.

And that's given on the basis that, well, you sincerely believe that God is dictating your conscience regarding your own body. And so therefore we recognize because of your sincerely held belief, we should grant you this exemption.

But that implies that if there is in fact a God, and not just a matter of your private belief, but if there is in fact a God in heaven, he has the jurisdictional authority over the temples of the Holy Spirit.

So the very fact that we get these exemptions passed speaks to the fact that it's God who has the authority to grant them. So that one was for free. Moving on. My body, my choice. You heard it? It's true in so far as it goes.

A woman who is intent on taking the life of the child in her womb does not have authority over that body in her. Because the body inside of her has its own DNA and its own heartbeat. And it is a life made according to Psalm 139, fashioned in the very image of God.

And so that life must be protected. But something is true about my body, my choice. And that is every individual, every person who has a body is made in the image of God. And is made a steward of that body before God.

And therefore that expression is true, but I'll take it a step farther. Not just my body, my choice, but his temple, his choice. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. And he has absolute sovereign kingly authority over his temple.

That is what we will see in Matthew 21. A familiar story of the triumphal entry of Jesus. Now, another quick caveat. Before I dive into the sermon, I don't want anybody to mishear me. We have to be nuanced in our speech as pastors.

No, it's important that I don't want you to misunderstand what I'm saying. So we go to France. And the yellow coats are back out again. And these are the guys that protest government overreach. In the past, they got a little sidetracked with socialist concerns, but now they're back.

And recently, 100 ,000 yellow vests took to the streets of France, protesting mandates, right? So this is a good thing. But Macron's government answered them this way. He said, let's keep this in perspective.

There were around 100 ,000 people protesting across the country. While there are millions of people who got themselves vaccinated. So France dismisses the 100 ,000 who took to the streets against vaccine mandates, because there are millions who got themselves vaccinated.

This is what you would call a category error. Opposition to a vaccine mandate does not mean that every person who took the vaccine is in any way defiled. It is the left, those who are departing in the name of progress from the standard of God's word that seeks to divide humanity and especially the church.

Listen, there are vaccinated people and unvaccinated people in this building. And I don't care which one you are. Listen, the issue this morning is not whether or not you as a steward of your body before God have taken a vaccine.

That is between you and your maker. The very important verse that we need to turn to now, even before we dive into Matthew 21, real quick, indulge me, is Romans 14, verse 23. Turn there with me. In France, the leadership thought that because people accepted the vaccine, which is really not a vaccine by the old definition of a vaccine, that means that everybody who did that is for the mandates.

That's not the case at all. Two separate, very different issues. In Romans 14, verse 23, we are told about people who either eat vegetables only or the more mature among us who also would take meat. And the issue at hand in Romans 14 is that matters like this.

What you ingest into your body or what you inject into your body is an issue between God and the created being. Make sense? And those outside of that vertical relationship have no business judging another.

So it says in Romans 14, 23, but whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. These are issues of private conscience.

If somebody in the conscience of their own faith by God make a choice to get this vaccine, this therapy, that's between them and God. And to his own maker, he stands or falls. And if others choose not to do that, they stand or fall before their own maker.

We are not to judge over these kinds of disputable matters, right? That's the issue here in Romans 14. And it applies directly, which is the basis on which we make appeal to religious exemption. By my conscience, I don't want anything to do with it.

And therefore, before God, it would be sin for me to take it. I don't say it's sin for anybody else. It's sin for me because my conscience says not to. Do you see the issue? So what the French government says or what others say, seek to divide individuals by pitting people against one another.

That's not what we're doing. We are speaking to a different issue altogether. And that is a question of authority, exousia. Who has the power or the right in different jurisdictions? That's where we go now in Matthew 21.

We cleared that up, right? I think I hammered that point enough, right, Phil? So as we come into Matthew chapter 21, we have a familiar picture of Jesus in the fifth verse. He's making the triumphal entry.

And this is how we picture Jesus. He doesn't come into Jerusalem riding on a white horse,.

Ready to do war.

Instead, he comes how? Gentle, riding on a donkey, even the foal of a donkey. And the point from Zechariah is that he is humble. Verse five, he's gentle. And he comes that way to his people because he's not offering them the boot.

He's offering them the right hand of fellowship. He's coming gently to save them. And they will call Hosanna, save now. He's offering good to them. Gentle Jesus, meek and mild. He rides on a donkey and he's kind.

And all who turn to him in faith are welcomed by this king. He doesn't lord over them, he serves them. He washes them with his own blood. He is a good, loving king. And so Christians often stop there in the picture of Jesus and we fail to see a more well-rounded picture of what he's like.

Read on. Matthew 21. Today, we're looking at his triumphal entry and the subsequent exchange over this question of authority. It says in verses 12 and following, and Jesus entered the temple. This is gentle Jesus, meek and mild, riding on a donkey, now dismounts, it's a tough word.

He gets off of his donkey and he goes into the temple and he drove out all who sold and bought in the temple. Okay, this is getting a little intense. Not only so, he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.

He said to them, it is written, my house, my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers. And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things, the good things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant.

And they said to him, do you hear what these are saying? And Jesus said to them, yes, have you never read out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies, you have prepared praise? And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there.

Jesus’ Zeal for His Temple and the Authority of His House

First thing to take this morning from Matthew 21 is that Jesus is jealous for his temple. He claims in this passage, my house shall be called a house of prayer, but they had stepped beyond their jurisdiction.

Now notice the Pharisees, the chief scribes and leaders, they had jurisdictional authority over the temple. Trouble is, they had taken that authority beyond what they were given to do, and were now extorting money from the people, selling the animals for sacrifice at marked up prices, and they themselves were out of bounds.

So Jesus comes to his temple and he claims authority. Do you notice the passion with which Jesus takes what rightfully belongs to him? Just because he delegated authority doesn't mean that he himself is under them.

He is the sovereign king that has all authority. And so when he wants to go to his house, he does. And when he wants to clean it up, he does. He takes the authority of the king. Now, if Jesus is this passionate about a building made of stone, how much more passionate do you think he is about temples of flesh and bone?

In John 2, 19 and 21, he talks about his body as a temple. Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. They were indignant. It took us 46 years to build this building, and you say you'll raise it up in three days.

No, they're missing the point. This temple is his own body, and he'll raise himself up from the dead. And likewise, having risen from the dead, he now sends his precious Holy Spirit to live in the blood-bought sons and daughters of God.

And according to 1 Corinthians 3, 16, listen to this. It says, do you not know that you are God's temple? And that God's spirit dwells in you? 1 Peter 2, verse five says, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

That makes you a temple. That makes us a temple. And if Jesus is as passionate as we see in Matthew 21 about the physical temple, how much more passionate is he about this temple? It belongs to him. Natural rights arise not from the US Constitution, but from the Bible.

Genesis 1, 26 to 28 says, we are made in the image of God. And when Jesus comes, he doesn't just die for a nebulous group. He dies for his church made up of people whose names, whose personhood is recorded in the Lamb's book of life from before the foundation of the world.

Jesus deals with individuals. Think of the great white throne judgment where all of this is going. All people individually will stand before the king of kings. And he will judge each one individually.

And this is why individualism is the basis of the US Constitution. We don't gain our rights from the Constitution. We gain them from God. We're image bearers. We have natural rights. And the US Constitution discovered that from the Bible.

It was Blackstone and Locke who were following the train of John Knox and the reformers who got it from John Calvin and the institutes of the Christian religion. This teaching came from scripture and gave birth to the country in which we live.

Natural rights. And the big idea here is that every individual is made by God in his image. And God reserves for himself jurisdictional authority over individuals. There's no collectivizing. There's no society that can come in and supplant God's right.

And each individual must be a steward of that life before God. That's why we stand individually before the throne. We are the temple of God. Now, follow as the story unfolds. Because the subtext here is that gentle Jesus, meek and mild, has a harder edge when dealing with those who overstep authority.

Does it make sense? He overturns tables. These Pharisees had stepped beyond the authority that was given to them. So we left off at verse 17, continue on in verse 18. The story doesn't end there. In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry.

And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, may no fruit ever come from you again. And the fig tree withered at once. True confession, raise your hand if this story has always struck you as strange.

He's walking along and he sees a fig tree. He tries to have breakfast. There's no figs. So he curses the fig tree and it absolutely withers in an instant. That's a strange story. Do you know that there's actually a point that comes from it as the text unfolds?

We're gonna get to it, but here's the big thing for us right now. Verse 20, when the disciples saw it, they would be a lot like us.

They marveled.

Wow.

How did the fig tree wither at once? They were marveling about how amazing that was. A tree just completely withered right before their eyes. That would strike us as marvelous in our sight, right? But go on with what Jesus wants them to understand from it.

And Jesus answered them. Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, be taken up and thrown into the sea, it will happen.

And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive if you have faith. As the story unfolds by the end of this chapter, we will see that the fig tree represents the Pharisees, those who were made to represent God.

And yet never bore fruit.

And there came a point because they overstepped their jurisdictional authority where God will step in and curse them. He will come down hard on them. And with a word, he will speak an end to their lives.

They will stand before the judgment seat. But here we're being told that because Jesus has the authority to do that, we have authority in him. And whatever we ask for in prayer will be given to us. There's a mountain, there's a fig tree.

There are things that need to be moved in order for the kingdom of God to advance. In the early centuries of the church, it was persecutions. Christians being mistreated and thrown to the lions. The Diocletian persecution in the early 300s,.

Killing Christians.

In the time of the Reformation, there were Spanish Inquisitions and Wycliffe and Tyndale and Huss,.

The martyrs of the faith.

All throughout church history, mountains have stood in the way of the church. And fig trees who claim authority that does not belong to them, overstepping their bounds. What we are being taught here is that the church is able to be salt and light in the world and by prayer and by preaching can move mountains.

That Diocletian persecution was put down and conquered in the name of Jesus. The Inquisitions came to an end in the name of Jesus. The Christians who sought freedom and longed for freedom by the word of God and by the spirit of God, sailed across oceans and made it to shores, conquering that for the name of Christ.

Freedom was birthed in their heart by these very kinds of words. They moved mountains. We, church, have an authority in Jesus and by prayer to move mountains. So let's look how this unfolds. In verse 23 and following, we get to the heart of the matter.

This is a clash of authority. Who has the authority to do what? And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching and said, by what authority, exousia, are you doing these things?

And who gave you this exousia? If I were to cast a demon out of somebody, I would go to them and in the authority, in the name of Jesus, I would exorcise that demon because it doesn't have the authority to be there.

And so exousia means authority and that's where we get this idea of exorcising. Authority is the question here in verse 23. Jesus answered them, I also will ask you one question and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things.

The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man? And they discussed it among themselves saying, if we say from heaven, he will say to us, why then did you not believe him? But if we say from man, well, we're afraid of the crowd for they hold that John was a prophet.

So they came up with a brilliant answer, we do not know. And he said to them, neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. You see, this is a clash of authority. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus.

And here is where the church has gone wrong. The church in America, by and large, misstepped over the last 18 months. Because, turn with me to Romans 13 one, we read from Paul that we must be subject to the governing exousia, right?

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. And reading those words, when a governor said, church, you need to stop gathering for fear of a virus. Churches were closed for 18 months, thinking that they were obeying this verse.

And pastors forced temples, those made in the image of God to cover their faces in order to worship their God, regardless of the dictates of the individual conscience. And businesses were absolutely shut down and closed, forcing people to no longer be able to feed their families.

Meanwhile, many Christians and even pastors, sadly, simply said, well, Romans 13 one, therefore, we do whatever we're told. But understanding Romans 13 one, in the larger context of the Bible, and then in the context that follows, we know that Matthew 28, verses 18 to 20 says, all authority in heaven and on earth is given to who?

Jesus. And every authority under that is delegated. It's derivative of that ultimate, absolute free authority of the king. He is the sovereign over the universe. Now catch this, he does delegate authority on earth.

For example, there is a sphere of authority called the family, it comes from God. And fathers have authority in their home to rule. Father rule in the home, according to the scriptures. With the help me, who's not under his heel, but under his arm.

Whenever I do a wedding, I always give the illustration of Adam and Eve in the garden. And it wasn't the case that God took from Adam's skull, a bone, and made Eve, nor did he take from Adam's heel to make Eve.

No, he took from under his arm, a rib, in order to show that she would be under his protection and provision, and she would be a support to him, equal to him, and near to his heart. So that he would love his wife, and she would respect her husband.

And in that complementarity of that relationship, there is the governance of the home.

That's God's design.

Genesis, chapter two. That's one sphere of authority that God has given, and no man has the right to interpose over that, and dictate to a father that he must vaccinate his child. If that comes to this country, which there's rumblings that it would, at five to 11-year-olds, mandated to be vaccinated, let every father in America stand up and say, no, this is my authority, my child, not yours.

Amen.

And there is a jurisdiction called the church, and this is belonging to the head of the church, who is Christ. And the head of the church says, gather in the name of the Son of God. We are to gather in the name of Christ.

He tells us in Hebrews 10, 25, do not neglect to assemble. And so we obey our head, and we gather. And if any governor comes in and says, you must not gather, we tell him to go take a walk. Because we listen to our head, he is our king.

But listen, there is a sphere of authority called civic government. And the Christian is not a rebel. We're not revolutionaries. We pay our taxes. We are happy to submit to the government. But there comes a time where a governor oversteps his jurisdiction, a la Matthew 21.

And that is when we must resist. So look at verse 1 of Romans 13. We don't stop with be subject, but we take the rationale and the context for that. For there is no authority except from God. It is a derivative authority that the governor has.

And those that exist have been instituted by God. Then it says, therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed. And those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad.

Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval. For he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain.

For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. The concept here is a government instituted by God, functioning in the jurisdiction given. That means policing the streets, not bearing the sword in vain.

That means protecting the citizenry with a strong army, which is a great deterrent to foreign invasion. It means not leaving America's possessions behind on the battlefield in Afghanistan. It means fighting and devoting resources where they're meant to be given and to be devoted.

See, this authority is not absolute, but it has a certain sphere. It is to punish the wrongdoer, reward the good. Government nowadays has overstepped that jurisdiction. And especially beginning in Lyndon Johnson's great society in the 1960s, but even going earlier than that, after the Great Depression, government took it upon itself to redistribute the wealth of the people.

The taxes now would be confiscatory, taking from one to give to another, like Robin Hood. And that's not the jurisdiction of government. So there are things that we oppose, not because we're rebels to authority, but because we understand the jurisdiction given.

And that is why we oppose mandates and dictates to the consciences of the blood-bought sons and daughters of God. So how do you think this ends in Matthew 21? You wanna go there? This interaction with the Pharisees who overstepped jurisdiction, it doesn't go well for them, but it reminds us of how good the king is.

Look what it says in 28 and following. What do you think? A man had two sons, and he went to the first and said, son, go and work in the vineyard today. And he answered, I will not. But afterward, he changed his mind and went.

Pause there, that's a picture of the repentant. Change of mind, repentance is you change your mind. All of us have been rebels to the king. We have turned our backs and gone our own way. But there are those of us who recognize the error of our way, we change our mind, and we come to the king and say, have mercy on me.

Continue on, it says, and he went to the other son and said the same, and he answered, I will go, sir. But he did not go. This is the picture of the religious pretender who by his mouth professes to be good and godly, but in truth, he's a rebel to the throne.

It goes on, which of the two did the will of his father? They said, the first. Jesus said to them, truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom.

Of God before you.

Now, let that hit you with the same force that the turning of a table hit you. Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, is now strong and forceful and a king. We're told in Isaiah 11, he will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips,.

He will slay the wicked.

We're told in Psalm 2, he bears the rod. What is the rod for? The crushing of the nations. Revelation 2 picks up on that. Imagery.

A king that crushes.

This is another side of Jesus, and he very directly crushes the ambition of one who is overstepping his authority. Do you see that? He's talking about them, and now he points it out directly to their faces.

This is not that underhanded kind of communication. This is direct. He directly says to them, they're going in before you. Now, look at the good news. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him.

But the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him. Gentle Jesus is meek and mild towards tax collectors. Those who had been on the side of Rome, the usury and the oppression of the Israelites, if they change their mind and come to Christ, they find him to be merciful.

The prostitute can turn to him, and he says, I forgive you. He doesn't throw the stone. He wipes her clean and sets her on her feet and says, go sin no more, and now she is a daughter of the king. Do you realize how good our gospel is?

How good is our king? Any who turn from their sin can come to him and find him to be the perfect savior. He gave his own blood for us, and he will wash any who come. No matter what sin you came in here with this morning, the blood of Jesus washes it clean when you repent and believe.