Luke 13:10-21, Are You Off to a Good Start?

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Luke 13:10-21 Are You Off to a Good Start?

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Luke chapter 13, we'll be starting in verse 10, all the way to verse 21.
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Hear the word of the Lord. Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the
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Sabbath, and there was a woman who had a disabling spirit for 18 years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself.
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When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, woman, you are freed from your disability.
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And he laid his hands on her and immediately she was made straight and she glorified
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God. But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, there are six days in which work ought to be done.
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Come on those days and be healed and not on the Sabbath day. Then the Lord answered him, you hypocrites, does not each of you on the
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Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom
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Satan bound for 18 years, be loose from this bond on the Sabbath day? As he said these things, all his adversaries were put to shame and all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him.
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He said, therefore, what is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it?
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It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden and it grew and became a tree and the birds of the air made nest in his branches.
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And again, he said, to what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until it was all leavened.
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May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. Well, are you off to a good start for the day?
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What do you think? You wake up on time? Wayne did, I guess. So you weren't hurried.
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You had time for breakfast. Do whatever else you want to do, but not so early. You're not sleep deprived either,
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I hope. We'll probably find out in a little bit. You nod off. You've made it to church and hopefully this will be the beginning of a good day.
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Now, they say that getting off to a good start is crucial to just about anything you want to do. If you want to start a business, you need to get off to a good start.
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Maybe like open a restaurant. You know, after all, you only get one chance to make a first impression. And so if you start out too early, before you're really ready, maybe you don't have the sauces yet.
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You don't have the packaging you need, the menus printed yet. And you don't really have it down to make all the food correctly yet.
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You're just impatient to start. Just like as soon as the building, you can get in the building. You could end up then putting off a lot of customers that it will be hard to get back later on when you do have everything in order.
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So you don't want to go too early, do you? You want to get a good start. Of course, you need to know what a good start is.
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I've seen restaurants in Danville that it will take months, it seemed months to get started, to get everything in order.
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But, you know, they'll want to do it. They want to go all out. They'll get a big sign out on Riverside Drive.
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We've got to spend a lot of money for those signs. And then they ended up, after all the time they took to get this grand opening going, they'll end up closing in less time than it took to try to start up.
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They had to have spent a lot of money to launch what they thought would be this grand opening, make a big splash, get a good start.
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But they didn't have the money to pay their bills. They spent it all on everything to start with, on these big signs.
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By the way, have you ever noticed that neither China Dragon nor First Taste and I don't believe either,
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I didn't check, but I don't believe Tina's Great Wall in Ballou Park, that neither of them have a sign, none of them have a sign out on the road.
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You ever notice that? There is a sign on 86 in front of South Wake Plaza indicating that there was a
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Chinese restaurant there by another name. And I guess, I didn't ask them, but I guess
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Mike and Nancy figure that's just good enough to let people know that there's a Chinese restaurant here, even if the name is wrong.
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But, you know, why pay for another sign? Joyce's restaurant, First Taste, doesn't have a sign at all in Riverside.
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Behind Wendy's, you gotta know it's there. You see the big sign that's flashing open.
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I don't believe Tina's has a one on Main Street. Y 'all have a sign on Main Street? I don't think so, no. I would ask them, but I guess the reason for that is that they just figure it's not worth the expense.
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It's not worth paying for that to start up. And it appears they're right because they've been in business for years while many others have put out big signs, paid for these signs, and tried to make a big splash with a grand opening, and soon they went bankrupt.
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Yes, you've got to get off to a good start, but the trick is knowing exactly what that is, what makes for a good start.
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One of the secrets to doing well in distance running, and this is one of the things where you could easily tell going to any of these road races is who the novices are, doing it for the first time or two, and the ones who have experience is the way they start.
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The novices, the first time, they almost always start out like sprinting. They just dash out as fast as they can.
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No, that's not a good start. Don't start out so fast, you know, as though you're going to be done in 100 yards that you don't have anything left for the rest of this race.
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You've got to know how to start so that you can finish well. Just three weeks ago,
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I ran a race in Danville called the Sledge, which started in Angler's Park. If you know where that is, if you know it's this big, like three rugby fields in a row, and there's a lot of grass, and there's also these trails out in the woods there.
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And, of course, I wanted to get off to a good start, but it was cold that morning. And so, you know, I arrive, I have my sweatpants and, you know, sweat shirt on.
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And I didn't want to take them off until the very last moment. I didn't want to get cold, so I warmed up and waiting to near a starting time as I could get to take them off.
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I went to the bathroom and took off my sweats. And just as I came out the door to the bathroom with these kind of sweats in my hand, they sounded the air horn, the race has started.
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And I was like 40 yards behind the starting line. And there goes my race.
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So I threw the sweats down on the ground, took off trying to catch up with the other runners. But reminding myself, you know, don't panic.
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Don't just start sprinting now. Don't burn up all my energy just trying to make up for a bad start. You know, that's technically that's not a good start.
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I don't guess if you start 40, 50 yards behind the starting line. But it didn't hurt me too much since I won the race.
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Know how to start so you can finish well. Here in Luke, we're seeing, we're seeing
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Jesus start something. This is what this is all about in Luke. Jesus is starting something. And that something is what he called the kingdom of God.
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His teaching, his miracles, his activity were all about starting the kingdom of God on Earth.
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And he started it so well so that he could finish it perfectly.
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And we see that here in three parts. First, the content of the kingdom. And then the ascent of the kingdom.
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And finally, the extent of the kingdom. So the content, the ascent, and the extent.
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Well, first, the content, in other words, what does it contain? What's it about? What's its essence? What does it look like?
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What's it made of, of the kingdom? In verses 10 to 17. And we see that in the story of Jesus healing a woman, a disabled woman.
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We see in it five qualities of the kingdom. Now, people today often don't know what the term the kingdom of God means.
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And we saw in Sunday school last year, it means the reign of God. It's where he rules. But now what happens when
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God reigns? What's it look like where he rules? What's his kingdom made of?
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And here in this story, we see five qualities that occur where God rules.
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First, the kingdom of God contains the word of God. Notice it begins,
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Jesus was teaching the word of God. That's essential. That sets everything up.
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That begins everything else here. That's how the kingdom of God is created, by the word of God.
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Psalm 33 says that it's by the word of the Lord that the heavens were created. It means the whole universe by his word.
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Romans 10 says that it is by the word of Christ that God gives us faith and a new life.
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So the kingdom of God doesn't come, like some imagine, you know, by our work, by our social involvement, by our politics, whatever it is, but by us getting the right policies into place.
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I read just this week an account of a Christian who said that she always voted pro -life, that was very important to her.
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And she even went beyond voting to work with a crisis pregnancy center where she helped women who were struggling with unplanned pregnancies.
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And the author said that she learned that just outlawing abortion, which she supported, she still supports, that that wouldn't deal with the heart of the problem, which is the spirit of death, not just in our culture, not just in our politics, not something we just solve by changing the laws, but it's in our hearts.
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And only the word of Christ made alive by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of people can do that. Politics, social involvement, charity, education, money, whatever, won't bring in God's kingdom.
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Only God's word will do that. Well, second, the kingdom of God contains the initiative.
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You know, notice here, God takes the action. He starts the process of his kingdom's growth.
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Jesus told a parable about that. That's the whole point of the parable in Mark chapter four. It's one of the few things that's only in Mark.
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And it's the parable of the growing seed. But we see that same principle lived out here.
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Notice, starting in verse 12, that we aren't told this woman did anything besides just showing up at the synagogue, which she's probably been going to for her whole life.
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But notice here the the emphasis of who takes the action. Jesus says
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Jesus saw her. Jesus called to her. Jesus said to her, you are.
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This is unlike some other miracles. There are some miracles where like the blind man on the side of the road will call out to Jesus, begging son of David, have mercy on me.
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None of that is recounted here. Here, Jesus sees her. Jesus calls to her. Jesus takes the act.
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Jesus says to her, you are freed. Then Jesus lays hands on her. All of it.
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Jesus taking the action. We're not told the woman doing anything until she finally glorifies
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God after she's healed. And Jesus, who is the king of the kingdom of God, takes all the initiative.
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He spearheads the action. Only the sovereign work of God can extend his kingdom.
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Now, today, Christians sometimes think that growing God's kingdom, that is extending his rule on Earth, that it can be done.
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We can kind of we can do it. We have the right strategies. You know, we got to get the altar calls.
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We got to get the seeker services or maybe the old fashioned southern gospel quartets or maybe loud
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Christian rock that'll bring the youth and mass media or special events. Got to get the right personality or whatever.
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We got to vote for the right party to get into power and get political action. Get new government programs will do it.
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It's just something we do. They're always thinking. But here we see that only God can extend his rule because only
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God, only God can take people's hearts that are hard and dead and make them alive and soft.
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So how do you grow the kingdom of God? You can't. We need to know from the start that the growth of the rule of God is completely out of our control.
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And so that realization, once we understand that, that will drive us to pray.
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You know, once you realize that this kingdom, which you're supposed to be seeking first, belongs to the king is utterly outside of our control, then you will, without a doubt, if you're really seeking it first, then you'll pray.
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It's the only thing you can do. You've got to do it, God. You'll pray. You realize there's nothing else you can do if you're seeking first the kingdom and you finally see your powerlessness, you will pray.
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Prayer will come as naturally as breathing to a man gasping for breath. The kingdom of God contains the initiative.
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So you'll pray for him to take it. Well, third, the kingdom of God contains power.
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Notice that Luke makes clear, and this may sometimes seem embarrassing to us modern people, but here Luke just makes clear that the woman's disability didn't have a natural cause.
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You know, it doesn't say she had osteoporosis. All right. She had a deficiency of vitamin D in her diet or whatever it was.
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That's not the cause. That's not what caused it. He says clearly, he makes a point of the fact, and it's important point that it what she had had a satanic cause, right?
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A spirit, he calls it a disabling spirit, or literally it's a spirit of weakness caused it.
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Now, that doesn't mean she was demon possessed, but only that a satanic spirit had somehow caused this crippling. Now, today, perhaps people could treat the symptoms, the crippling being bent over.
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Maybe we could treat it today better than they could then. But still, even today, it would be demonically supernatural its source.
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The point, though, of all that is not to get us. Wow, we get into demonology. Let's talk about demons and spooky is everyone causing every problem we have.
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And no, it's to see here something about the kingdom of God. That it is more powerful than the kingdom of Satan.
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Because here you have something from Satan that he's done something from God. Which overcomes which, which is more powerful?
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We see that clearly here. The Lord Jesus declares in verse 12, woman, you are freed from your disability.
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He declares the power of Satan over her to be broken. So the spirit is gone.
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Now he's broken that power. Now she's still not healed of the crippling. And the crippling that was caused by the spirit of the symptom.
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And so he then lays hands on her and she is immediately straightened. She glorifies God because it's the kingdom of God that has first freed her.
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Of the power, Satan broken that power and then healed her physically. Now, a lot of church people that they think.
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The kingdom of God, their faith. Just about to talk, talk, talk, talk.
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That's all it is. That's why, for those of you who come from. Okay, I'm going to make a rare statement here that I usually make.
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But those of you who come from community. You know, I think I probably could have talked for years.
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If you just talk, talk, talk about how every member should be an attendee and every attendee a member and how you can, you can't be a member of a church you don't attend.
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And I could have talked for that for years without a problem, I think. But it was when we put into practice.
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When we told people that. That if you don't attend, we're not counting you as a member anymore.
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If you act disrespectfully and throw down a membership list storm out because you don't like something. We're not going to let you teach our kids.
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We're not going to do that. It's when we did it. In practice. That they freaked out.
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You know, I couldn't imagine that in a culture of religious hypocrisy. Words are empty.
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They're cheap. They're plentiful, but they don't mean anything. It's just talk, talk, talk.
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But the kingdom of God, it cut. Sure, it comes by. Words by the word of God, but God's words are not empty.
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Right, so Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 20, that the kingdom of God does not consist in talk.
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But in power. Here in this story, Jesus shows just that. All right, the word of God created the kingdom.
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What does it do? It overpowers the works of Satan. The kingdom of God is more powerful than the power of Satan here.
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He doesn't just show it. He doesn't, I should say, he doesn't just say it. Not just words that he talks about.
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He does it. He shows it. Fourth, the kingdom of God on this earth before every knee has bowed before Christ has put every enemy under his feet.
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Now in your life, it consists in conflict.
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It will contain conflict. The Lord Jesus told us at the end of the last chapter, you remember that he had come to cast fire on the earth, the fire of spiritual warfare, and he's come with a, he said he's come with a sword that will divide people.
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Sometimes it's right through the middle of families here, right through the middle of a synagogue. Can you think of a synagogue?
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There's an assembly of people who all say they believe the word of God, but Jesus acts and what does the act, what does his action do?
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It makes a division and it divides between those there. They all say they believe the word of God, but it makes a division between those who really believe it, who want
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God's rule, who want to live under the, in the kingdom of God and those who don't. It causes conflict.
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The kingdom of God here causes that conflict. It will do the same in churches today. You know, if they're infected with hypocrisy, they may all say they believe in Jesus and the word of God, but if they have people among them who are more interested in their religion and their status and their money and their tradition, then in bowing the knee to the
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Lord, then the kingdom of God will cause conflict. Here, the synagogue ruler gets angry at the healing.
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Now imagine this because, you know, he almost certainly, he's the leader of this congregation.
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He almost certainly knew the woman. He had probably seen her coming to worship the
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Lord for, you know, crippled for 18 years. You think just being a decent, a regular human being, he would have some kind of compassion for this poor woman that he's seen for 18 years with this disability.
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He was the leader there. You'd think he'd have some kind of pastoral heart, caring for his people. He would be hurting when they hurt.
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He would be rejoicing when they rejoice. But here with a woman glorifying God, he gets mad.
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He declares to all the people, you know, you can see probably over here, this woman is going, hallelujah.
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He's straightened up, feeling liberated. Jesus and his disciples are happy and rejoicing and he gets up to the podium.
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There are six days in which work ought to be done, you people, come on those days and be healed and not on the
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Sabbath. You know, as though, and he says that to everyone, as though any of them could have healed her during those 18 long years when she was crippled.
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It's ridiculous. But in a way, he has a point, doesn't he? Why couldn't have
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Jesus waited another day? It's the Sabbath. Luke makes a point to indicate it's the Sabbath.
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Why couldn't he waited another day? Wait till, it'd be Sunday, I guess, Sabbath is Saturday for them and avoided the conflict.
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One more day of being bent over, you know, she's been 18 years, just one more day. It's not going to hurt her too much, is it?
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So why go out of his way? Think about this. Jesus has gone out of his way to upset the synagogue ruler.
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Why did he do it? I believe there are two good reasons he did it. First, he's teaching by example, what he said in his words earlier, that the kingdom of God in this world, if you're in it, you will have trouble.
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We are rebels. If you're part of the kingdom of God, you are rebels against the rebellion, right?
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The world is in rebellion against God and it's trying to secede from God's rule.
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But we've chosen not to go along with the rebellion. We've chosen to submit to God.
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So we're rebelling against the rebellion. We're seceding from the secession.
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And so the rebellious world around us doesn't like that. And it's not going to like us not going along with their rebellion.
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And so they will give us trouble for it. This is part of the content of the kingdom now.
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Conflict. Before the Civil War, the great Charles Spurgeon, one of the greatest preachers,
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I think, in church history in England. Of course, he's in London. He took a great deal of interest in speaking up against American slavery.
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He said, quote, Charles Spurgeon, I do for my inmost soul detest slavery.
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And although I commune at the Lord's table with men of all creeds, in other words, he would take the
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Lord's supper, he would fellowship with Presbyterians and Lutherans and all kinds of people, other
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God people. Yet with a slaveholder, I have no fellowship of any sort or kind.
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Whenever one has called upon me, I have considered it my duty to express my detestation of his wickedness.
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And I would as soon think of receiving a murderer into my church as a man stealer.
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I got upset a lot of Southern visitors to Spurgeon when they heard that from him. Well, the South responded by burning his sermons and books.
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The Confederacy censured his publishing his works. The newspaper, the
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Weekly Raleigh Register, and Raleigh, of course, wrote that anyone selling Spurgeon's sermons there should be arrested and charged with, quote, circulating incendiary publications.
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In Montgomery, Alabama, they threatened that if Spurgeon should, quote, show himself in these parts, we trust that a stout cord may speedily find its way around his eloquent throat.
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Unquote, that's Alabama for you. That's conflict. And today it may come to course over other issues.
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Today, if you dare say what nature, what
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God's natural law or what God's written word says about some sexual sins, you're going to get trouble.
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You'll get banned from some social media. You'll get insulted. You'll get called a bigot. You'll lose friends. That's the way it is.
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And here we see that in this story that being in the kingdom of God brings conflict.
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And Jesus does it to show us that. The second good reason why Jesus didn't wait a day is because loosing people from the bondage of Satan is what the
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Sabbath is for. The Sabbath was begun with creation. You remember that?
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Before even there was sin to celebrate a rest from work to glory in the fact that now after creation, but before sin, everything is very good.
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God looked and saw it was very good. And then rested on seventh day. Now, Jesus can can make on the seventh day at least one thing.
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Very good again. This poor woman. She had she was thinking about her condition.
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She was weighted down. She's laboring under the burden of this disability for 18 years.
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Imagine going all the time, just hunched over. She's been living like that with that burden for 18 years.
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Now on the Sabbath, she can get relieved of the work of her crippling burden.
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And the religious people, they knew this about their animals. It would be a burden to the animals if they had to go every every
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Sabbath without water. They'd be laboring under thirst every Sabbath. And so they gave them the refreshment of drink.
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Now, shouldn't then this woman have the refreshment, the rest of being relieved of her burden on the
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Sabbath? They're hypocrites for denying it because they cared about their animals, which were, you know, the oxen, the donkeys, that was their property, and they wanted them to be healthy.
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But this woman who is a daughter of Abraham, Jesus calls her. Although she's one of God's people.
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They'd care about her. If they cared about God.
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They care about their animals because they're there. So if they cared about God, they would care about this woman. Now, oh, they act like they care about God.
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That's why the whole pretense of speaking up about the Sabbath. Like they care about God's law. That's why they're so zealous, but they don't really care about God.
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That's why they don't they don't care if this woman suffers another day. That's why they don't rejoice when she's healed.
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And hypocrites today will act like they care about God. You know, whatever.
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They'll find some causes that makes it look like they care about God. Maybe they'll say they care about God's house, which is why which they think
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God's house, they think is a building. And so they say, you know, we can't let the ruffians mess up God's house.
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They're going to wreck God's house. If they can't sit quietly and behave, well, we'll have to get rid of them.
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Can't allow them to run loose around here. Of course, God's house isn't a building. It's his people.
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You know, like and like this woman here, she's part of God's house or like the lost sheep around this area that we can use buildings to find.
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The kingdom of God consists in conflict because hypocrites pretend to be part of the kingdom of God when they're really part of the rebellion.
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And if we, the church, if we are the rebellion against the rebellion, then the hypocrites are infiltrators from the rebellion around us, undermining our community of the king.
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Trying to undermine our rebellion against the rebellion. Now, here they want to stop Jesus from loosing a woman from her satanic burden on the
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Sabbath today. You know, maybe they want to stop something else God is doing.
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They want to stop evangelism. Stop church discipline. Stop real service or any way that we actually live as part of the kingdom of God.
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We're still in conflict with such infiltrators today. And I think
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Jesus healed this woman here on the Sabbath to expose them. So the kingdom of God consists of conflict, power, the initiative and the word.
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And finally, and can't think of one word to sum it all up, but three different words, freedom, joy and glory.
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Notice in verse 16, Jesus loosed this woman, daughter of Abraham, one of God's people.
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He did it as an expression of the kingdom of God. She is freed from what crippled her because of God's kingdom.
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That's glory right there. It caused joy to God's people. Now, people today are freed of what cripples them today.
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Still, it could be addictions, could be sins, could be thoughts that are in rebellion against Christ, false doctrines that keep them away from the true
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God. Superstitions, legalisms, thinking that to be one of God's people, you got to not drink this or not eat that, whatever.
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And they are freed from that because the kingdom of God is still advancing. And the result in verse 17, when the kingdom of God advances and they are freed, the result is what these people, these crowds, joy for those who are free.
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Paul says in Romans chapter 14, verse 17, the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking.
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In other words, debates about what you can or can't eat or drink. That's not what God's kingdom is about.
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But of righteousness and peace and joy in the
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Holy Spirit. We have joy in the kingdom of God because it is glorious.
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It does glorious things in verse 17. And here we see the people, they saw a glorious thing that gave them joy.
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They rejoiced. And so if the kingdom of God is in our lives, we too should see glorious things that give us joy.
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Maybe healings like here. More likely, young people who decide to live for the
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Lord rather than squandering their youth, you know, rather than getting off to a bad start by chasing money or chasing thrills or chasing relationships, seeing young people choose to get off to a good start with the
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Lord by seeking his kingdom. That's glorious. And should give us joy.
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Maybe healings. OK, more likely repentance, though people who got off to a bad start, changing their minds about their sins, realizing now that, you know, there is no glory or joy in the sins of the world or the sins of the flesh.
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So they turned around. Now they're seeking God's kingdom. That's glorious.
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And should give us joy. Maybe healing. More likely, people so content that the grace of God is sufficient for them now that they have a faith that gives them joy without healing and that comforts them.
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When the healing is not yet. Faith that leads them through death to a good finish.
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That should give us joy. That's glorious. That's the content of the kingdom.
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Next is the ascent of the kingdom. At first glance, the parables of the mustard seed was coming.
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Parables of mustard seed and leaven, which come next, you would kind of think they're kind of detached from that story of an unrelated story.
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It seems like of a crippled woman being healed. How do they relate? How do they? Why are they just thrown together?
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But here, Luke transitions from one from that story, one being healed to these two parables with notice that the first verse 18 with he said, therefore.
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OK, what's the therefore? Therefore, in other words, he said this, these two parables, he said these parables because of the disabled woman being healed.
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Now that she was healed, therefore, you need to know that the kingdom of God is like this.
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So these parables, this explains what that that healing was about.
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Do you want to get off to a good start? Well, Jesus does and and he's doing it here with the kingdom of God.
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How will the kingdom of God ascend to being big? It's beginning small.
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You know, indeed, it appears so small, it's unlikely something is like a seed, a grain of mustard seed, something so small, it appears unlikely that this could really be it.
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Jesus, a carpenter turned teacher from Galilee, you think about it as 12, mostly on maybe maybe
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Matthew had some education. The rest of them almost certainly had almost none uneducated apostles.
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And sure, some. Yeah, right by now. Sure. You say, OK, he has large crowds, but he has no army.
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He has his little money, no great big splash. There's been no grand opening. He's in a bad location of a horrible location.
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He's not you know, we spend a lot of time in churches talking about Israel. But from a world history point of view, Israel is between Egypt is important.
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Greece is important. Rome's important. Israel is nothing. It's just where you go through. A bad location, not a riverside drive.
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It's not on Main Street. It's out in some backwoods nowhere. Is this really how something like the kingdom of God begins?
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Well, that's the question asked by a fictional Judas in the skeptical play, Jesus Christ Superstar, where to Jesus, the fictional
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Judas says you'd have managed better if you had it planned. Now, why did you choose such a backward time and such a strange land?
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If you'd come today, you could have reached the whole nation. Israel in four BC had no mass communication.
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But Zechariah 410 tells us don't despise the day of small beginnings. In the parable of the mustard seed here, the kingdom of God is compared to a grain.
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A mustard seed is something small. It can be just on the tip of your finger. That's how it begins. It's on purpose.
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It was planned that way, contrary to the fictional Judas. It doesn't begin with the grand opening in Rome, the crossroads of the world, the center of the empire there.
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It begins on purpose in a backward time in a strange land. Well, the seed, the kingdom here in the parable is planted in the garden.
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And even though it's very small, again, you can just be a little speck on the tip of your finger. It grew and becoming became a tree large enough that birds would build their nest in it.
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The parable is about the ascent of the kingdom from tiny to large.
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We tend to admire the big, you know, the grand opening when it's fully formed, what gets enormous ratings, spectacular sales, amazing crowds, impressive buildings with extravagant budgets.
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And so businesses go out on a limb to start big. You can they're going to be a success because we're looking like a success from the very start.
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They think big sign on Riverside. Some people like megachurches, I think, for the feeling this must be success.
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Look at this big building and these lights and the sound and the band and everything all going on. This is it.
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But following Christ is often about starting small, not appearing impressive. It's about willing to come and make snacks and give lessons to rowdy poor kids who can't give you anything impressive back.
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It's about driving a bus for years so those kids can hear the gospel. It's about sitting in a gym for church because we're so small we can't afford a gym and a sanctuary and we can use the gym to evangelize.
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It's about caring for people who can't do anything back for you. Handicapped people, poor people.
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It's about doing that year after year, even when there aren't when you aren't rewarded with tangible signs of success.
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William Carey went to India as a missionary in the late 1700s, costing the life getting coming to India cost the life of his son and the sanity of his wife.
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For the first seven years, he had no converts, nothing to show for his work and sacrifice.
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He looked like he was nothing. He would turn out to be nothing. Talk about small beginnings. Eventually, he saw fruit.
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And today he is called the father of modern missions. That's the ascent from the very small, no grand opening to the large worldwide.
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So we see here not only the content of the kingdom and the ascent of the kingdom, but finally, that last parable, the extent of the kingdom.
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Jesus has the kingdom of God is like a woman leavening a huge batch of dough. In verse 20, three measures of flour, they may not mean anything to us, but three measures of flour is about 50 pounds of dough is enough to make bread for about 150 people.
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So this is it. You know, just a housewife making bread for her family in the kitchen at home. This is mass bakery production of bread.
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And so, like in the previous parable, the leavening begins very small. Notice the term
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Jesus used. She hides the leaven in the dough. In other words, there's so much dough you can't find a little bit of leaven in that big, enormous lump.
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That's how the kingdom of God begins in the world. But here the emphasis is on the extent of the kingdom, how it eventually spreads.
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It infiltrates, it permeates, it penetrates, it ferments, it fills, it influences all of the dough.
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She doesn't notice in verse 21 until it was all that whole 50 pounds worth leavened.
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That is, until the yeast had influenced every part of the dough. The world that the kingdom of God came into was brutal and ugly.
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And life was barbaric and usually short. If a baby was born, a baby was born appearing weak.
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They just throw it out on the trash heap. They would watch men for entertainment. They would watch men fight to the death.
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Large numbers of people were enslaved. Governments were arbitrary. Kings could kill anyone they wanted and there's nothing you could do about it.
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If the Romans wanted to frighten the people into disobedience, they'd just come into a town, pick some men at random and crucify them just to make a point.
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That was the world that Jesus was born into. That was the status quo.
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That's the way life was. It's what people expected life to be, never to change. And at first, it didn't look like look like what
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Jesus brought would make much of a difference. But gradually, as people accepted the gospel, their lives were transformed.
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His word was taught. One thing after another was changed. Christians opposed the gladiatorial games.
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You know, you don't pay money, watch people kill each other. And those were bad. They rescued the babies that were left out to die and adopted them as their own.
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Christians founded the first hospitals. They kept learning alive during the so -called dark ages as barbarians brought down the
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Roman Empire. They saved the books and the learning. Almost everything that we know today about the philosophers, the writing and the culture and the history of the
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Romans and the Greeks was because Christians salvaged it. Eventually, they founded schools and universities, encouraged learning and scientific progress.
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They mitigated war during the Middle Ages. They called for peace. They called for protecting innocent people.
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They called for holding kings to account. Even if you don't care if you're the church, we don't care if you're a king.
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You still have to obey God's law. They taught the ideas of human rights. Eventually, they experimented with medicines.
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The first inoculations were done by a Puritan pastor in Boston, Massachusetts. Every good thing that we take for granted today was made possible by Christians influencing the world by believers in Jesus who have been transformed by him, then transforming the world around them.
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And hopefully, we will continue as we seek to influence our culture to extend the fermentation of the word of God through all of life.
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Now, that doesn't mean that everyone will be converted as though it'll just keep spreading. Eventually, everyone will be
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Christian. We'll see that next week. Or it doesn't mean that the world will eventually be made perfect before Christ returns.
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But it does mean that the kingdom of God will continue to grow, continue to spread throughout the world.
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Maybe now it's spreading fastest in China and Africa and South America, transforming those cultures to be more under Christ's rule.
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Maybe we fear now that it's retreating here in our country, in our culture.
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But eventually, eventually, Jesus shall reign wherever the sun does his successive journeys run.
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His kingdom will stretch from shore to shore till moon shall wax and wane no more.
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So are you off to a good start to your day?
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To your life? Maybe you didn't get such a good start to your life. Maybe you squandered much of your youth on sin and foolishness.
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Maybe even yet you still haven't seen that peace and joy come from seeking first the kingdom rather than seeking cash or boy or girlfriends or gadgets or things, cars, good times at wild parties.
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We have some here, some older people here who did, in fact, get off to a bad start in their youth, kind of like me getting off to a bad start in that race.
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But when the word of God came, the king took the initiative and they were freed from the power of satanic bondage and lies.
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And they became God's people and got it. They finally got off to a start or it may have it may have caused conflict, sure, for the time being, especially with hypocrites.
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But it brought freedom and joy and glory. Or maybe for some here, maybe you didn't squander your youth at all.
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You know, maybe your parents raised you too well. Maybe maybe you've grown up always with the word of God in your ears and the glory and glorifying
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God in your mouths. And that's that's great. We hope for that for all our children here.
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You got off to a good start, but don't think somehow you did it because maybe you were lucky or or you're just such a moral, noble character that you knew better.
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You know, you knew better than that silly guy who waited too late to take off his sweats in the bathroom. Or you knew better than those other fools who spent their lives chasing dollars or skirts or beers or laughs.
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It's not luck. If you've got off to a good start, it's not even ultimately because your parents kept you on the straight and narrow.
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It's the grace of God. It's the Lord deciding from the very start from before the start that you're going to be part of his kingdom.
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That his growth from minuscule to huge will include you.
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Its influence will permeate your life so that you can have the freedom and joy and glory that it brings.
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He took the initiative and saved you by his power. So whether you've got off to a good start, maybe a bad one, you can be sure of one thing.
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No matter how your start was. He who began a good work in you, if he's really begun it.