An Introduction to Holy Violence

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The title of my sermon today is Holy Violence in the Christian Life. This is the first sermon. We're going to have a series of sermons on this.
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Some of you may know, I may have mentioned in the past, one of my favorite verses is Matthew 11 -12. We're going to get to that in a second.
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This will be the first part of an introductory series that hopefully will do a few more down the road. Before I start out,
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I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. It's a very popular book. Actually, Pilgrim's Progress has been translated into 200 languages.
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It's second only to the Bible a number of times. It's been published and much has been translated. I highly recommend it.
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It's a great allegory of the Christian life and it shows you the journey of a man named
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Christian from the time his conversion awakes to the time he goes to heaven. I got an excerpt from that book.
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I'm going to read it to you real quickly. In his journey, Christian stops at the house of a man called the Interpreter. I'm going to read this one section from you to start my sermon off.
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At Interpreter's house, Christian saw a beautiful gate with four strong men in armor standing before it. To the side sat a man at a desk with a book in which to write the names of those who entered.
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Above on the wall stood a host robed in white, watching. No one seemed willing to go in until a brave man stepped forward as he said to the scribe, write down my name.
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Having done this, he donned a helmet, he drew his sword, and he rushed forward to fight the men blocking the gate. They fought him with deadly force, but slashing and hacking his way through most fiercely and giving and receiving many wounds, he succeeded in cutting his way into the palace.
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There he was welcomed, clothed in white, and took his place in the city. This is John Bunyan's description of, if you read the
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Interpreter's house, it's sort of a mini -allegory in itself because when Christian goes there, he goes to various rooms and each room has a different allegory of the
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Christian life. This is John Bunyan's particular take on Matthew 11 -12. And this verse, to me, is one of my life verses.
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I've always really been drawn to it. So please turn to Matthew 11. I'm going to read verses 2 -15.
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Sorry, verses 1 -15. Half the chapter. Matthew 11, starting in verse 1.
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When Jesus had finished giving instructions to his 12 disciples, he departed from there to teach and preach in their cities. Now when
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John, while in prison, heard of the works of Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, are you the expected one, or shall we look for someone else?
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Jesus answered and said to them, go and report to John what you hear and see. The blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear.
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The dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who does not take offense at me.
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As these men were going away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John. What did you go out into the wilderness to see?
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A reed shaken by the wind? But what did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing?
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Those who wear soft clothing are in king's palaces. But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, one who is more than a prophet.
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This is the one about whom it is written. Behold, I send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.
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Truly I say to you, among those born of women, there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
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From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent men take it by force.
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For all the prophets in the law prophesied until John, and if you are willing to accept it, John himself is the
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Elijah who was to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
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As I mentioned before, Matthew 11 -12 is the key verse for my sermon series. It's not a particularly well -known verse, although it probably, in my opinion, gives the best one -sentence summary of sanctification in the entire
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Bible. The key word in this verse really is violence. This violence is not really physical, but spiritual.
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In our culture, commonly when you hear the word violence, we think of killing, slaughter, people fighting in UFC cages, all that stuff.
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But really, the violence here connotes zeal, perseverance, and extreme dedication in the quest to become a heavenly saint.
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The Puritans quoted this verse quite often in their writings, and I have a few quotes in here in this sermon, but you'll see it again.
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This is a very popular verse with them. In order to rightfully divide the word of truth, we need to examine this text in the greater context of the 11th chapter of Matthew and the entire
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Gospel of Matthew. The main theme of Matthew 11 is rejection and doubt of Jesus' ministry, both by individuals and by entire groups of people.
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The reasons for this rejection may vary, but they all have one commonality. Jesus did not fulfill people's preconceived notions of the
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Messiah, and his ministry confused and perplexed some, angered many others, and was received with indifference by a large percentage of his contemporaries.
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This is the same today. When people think of Jesus, they don't really think of the Jesus of the Scriptures, they think of a Jesus of their own imagination.
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Apathy and questions predicated on acquiring a mere scholarly knowledge of the Gospel, they have sent as many people to hell as outright hostility and rejection of the
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Gospel. If you think about it, hostility has slain thousands of souls, but apathy and mere intellectual curiosity have slain tens of thousands of souls.
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If you were to receive a summons from an earthly king, would it be an appropriate response to frame that letter and just put it on a wall?
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Or, I think you all agree that that's probably not the appropriate response. When a king sends you a summons, he desires action from you, and not an idle curiosity in his letter.
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In the same way, indifference to the Scripture is a passive disobedience or a lazy rebellion. In our country, open hostility or indifference to our nation's laws results in the exact same sentence.
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If you break a law, it doesn't matter whether you hate the law or just don't care about it, you get the same sentence. How much greater will the punishment be against those who have disregarded the word of the sovereign
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God and spurned the free offer of the Gospel? You know, Jesus is in heaven, the King of Kings. Our nation is really ruled by the rulers of our nation.
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I have a quote from John Bunyan here. John Bunyan once said, he said, no sin against God can be little because it is a great
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God. Because it is against the great God. In a like manner, the writer of Hebrews warns all Christians when he says, see that you do not refuse him who is speaking.
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For if they did not escape who refused him when he warned them on earth, how much less will we escape him if we reject him who warns him from heaven?
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In context for Hebrews 12 .25, this refers to the, you have the inauguration of the Covenant of Works in Mount Sinai versus the
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Covenant of Grace that modern believers are now under. And this verse is speaking of actually of God the
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Father. However, since we serve a triune God, I believe these same words can be correctly applied to Jesus' first coming and his second coming as well.
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2 Timothy 3 .7 describes false teachers in this way. It says they're always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.
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False teachers can never truly receive the truth because the only way you can receive it is through the help of the Holy Spirit. And false teachers lack the
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Holy Spirit. Therefore, they spend their entire life keeping up knowledge for themselves that profits them nothing and ultimately increases their condemnation on the
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Day of Judgment. You also see this if you look at the Book of Acts in the same exact manner. The Greeks in Athens were asking many questions of Paul.
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But novel theology was their idol. They had little or no interest in hearing they were accountable to their creator. There was a few of them that said we'll hear more about this.
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Most of them would just tell us something new. They weren't really interested in hearing God's laws. I'm going to read that section real quickly.
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Acts 17, starting in verse 19. And they brought him to the Arapagus saying,
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May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know, therefore, what these things mean.
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Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their whole time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.
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You know, as I said before, the Greeks, they weren't interested in discovering the truth. Rather, they prized novelty above accuracy and they preferred scholasticism to true faith.
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Their example was included in the Bible to be a warning to us lest we are tempted to substitute theology for a real relationship with the living
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God. 1 Corinthians 10 .11 says, now these things happen to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come.
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I believe Reformed theology best encapsulates the doctrines of scriptures, but we always need to remember people are not saved by believing
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Reformed theology. People are saved by faith in Jesus Christ. We must hold fast to these tenets so we do not become factional about secondary or tertiary doctrines and forsake fellowship with God's children.
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God has his children in every Orthodox Christian denomination. The devil is more than happy to help us slide to hell with the correct doctrine if he can get us a substitute doctrine for a true relationship with Jesus Christ.
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Looking at this chapter in Matthew, I believe you can roughly divide it into four sections. So if you look at Matthew 11 starting in verses 1 -15, you kind of see
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John the Baptist doubting. That's kind of the main theme there. If you look at John 11, 16 -19, that's rejection by Jesus' generation.
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If you look at 20 -24, you see the rejection of the city's
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Jesus time. And then finally you see that Jesus gives the free offer of the gospel from 25 -29. Those are the four sections.
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Your Bible probably has it divided up roughly in that order as well because it's kind of a natural division. In my sermon today,
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I'm going to give you an overview of the first two points, the first two sections there, and then we'll pick up on the second two points in a future sermon.
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John the Baptist was the last of the Old Testament prophets. He had a very unique ministry that combined asceticism or poorness, he was very humble, didn't have possessions, with powerful oratory and calls to repentance for the people of Israel.
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Although John willingly passed over the reins to Jesus, when Jesus came on the scene, he said, here he is, listen to him, he's the
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Messiah. God in his perfect providence ensured the focus was shifted over to Jesus by allowing
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Herod Antipas to imprison John. So this was kind of, if you think about John, he was a very telegenic, very great orator, people were drawn to him.
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Even though he said, that's Jesus, listen to him, a lot of people may say, well, I'm going to still stick with you. Well, God ensured that couldn't happen because Herod put him in jail.
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So it's kind of hard to follow someone who's in jail. John's life was marked by holiness and passionate sermons to his peers to repent and be baptized for the remissions of sins.
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This goes really along well with our Sunday school that we've been going with Burke Parsons and the Great Commission, but John, he didn't wait for opportunities to share the gospel.
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He actively created them through his ministry. He didn't sit back and wait for people to come. He told people, they just came out of idle curiosity, he said, repent.
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This was a man that truly took the kingdom of heaven by force. And I think that's what kind of surprised the Jews and kind of scared the Pharisees about him, is he wasn't under their authority, and he was very forceful, very direct, and that scared them.
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They weren't used to that. They were used to tying people up in legalese and doctrine and all that other stuff. At this point in Matthew's gospel, according to various commentators,
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John's been in prison for about one to two years, approximately. So being in prison wrongfully is a severe trial for any man, but it's especially tough for someone like John.
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If you think about him, he was a free -spirited man. He had an itinerant, meaning wandering around outdoor ministry.
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We don't know if his imprisonment was due to the direct work of the devil. Think of something like Job, where the devil actually said,
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I'm going to persecute Job. Or it's just, we live in a fallen world, you oppose the powers, you go to jail.
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If you tell them the truth, they don't want to hear it. Or whether the world system was responsible for it.
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But either way, God providentially allowed this to test and strengthen the faith of John.
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John's ministry can roughly, in my opinion, be divided into two halves. The first half was a very visible public ministry, and the second half was a private lesson of suffering and waiting on the
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Lord. Both phases of his ministry are equally praiseworthy in the eyes of the Lord. If you look at the
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Hall of Faith, Hebrews is probably one of my favorite books in the whole Bible. But if you read the Hall of Faith, you'll see a juxtaposition of the people that did great things to the
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Lord and the people that suffered great things to the Lord. And if you notice prosperity teachers, they'll never talk about the suffering part. They'll just talk about the people that did great things.
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Let's look at Hebrews 11, 32 -38. The Bible says,
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And what more shall I say? For a time would it fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouth of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight.
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Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release. Some, they might rise again to a better life.
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Others suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned. They were sawn in two.
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They were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering about in deserts and mountains and in dens and caves of the earth.
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If you think about it, the refining fire of suffering, it's foolishness to the world. And it's an inconvenient truth for false teachers.
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Neither of them want to hear about that. However, as real Christians, we know that suffering is transforming us from a sinful, fallen creature of this world into a citizen of heaven.
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Additionally, suffering unites us with Jesus so we can share with him his power of his resurrected life forever. If you think of Philippians 3 .10,
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if we're united with him in the fellowship of his sufferings, we'll also be united with him in his resurrection. It's a key here.
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The 11th chapter of Matthew opens up with John's question to the Lord by the way of John's disciples. Now, when
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John heard in prison about the deeds of Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, are you the one to come or shall we look for another?
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Commentators are split on why John sent his disciples to Christ to ask this question. Some believe
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John was sending disciples so they could keep their faith strengthened or officially pass them off to Jesus since John was now in prison.
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Others believe that John himself had doubts about Jesus' ministry and wanted to hear confirmation from Jesus that things were proceeding according to Jesus' plan.
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It is very important to note that these verses don't necessarily say that John had unbelief. Unbelief is a sin.
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I think you almost have to stretch the text to say John didn't doubt. I think there was definitely some doubt on John's part here.
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I think that's a plain reading of the text kind of brings that out. John did have, it looks like he had doubts or confusion about either the timing and the ultimate purpose of Jesus' ministry.
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If you think about John's, you know, John was both physically separated and doctrinally separated from the
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Pharisees. Physically, he had a very, you know, he lived outdoors. He had a very interesting diet. He wore, you know, camel hair, cloaks.
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And his doctrinal separation, he was an itinerant preacher. He was outside. He baptized people in the Jordan River. Those were very separated from the
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Pharisees. But we need to remember, he wasn't immune to imbibing or taking in the prevailing view of the
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Messiah that was held by many in ancient Israel. You know, his dad was a priest, Zechariah, and obviously he probably heard a lot of things about what the
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Messiah was like. So even though he was very separate from the Pharisees, it's not unlikely that he did have some vision, and I think the scriptures do bear this out, of Jesus as a conquering he had a second coming vision of Jesus, not a first coming.
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That's what he was thinking about. We also see some confusion from the disciples after Jesus' resurrection on this in Acts 1.
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I thought I'd throw this quote in here, Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. It's a very excellent work.
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It gives you a whole sketch. I believe I've talked with Zach about this a few times. Basically, the history, the background, the details around that day.
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He wrote this, he put, The ideas of the disciples of John concerning the messianic kingdom as one of resistless outward victory and assertion of power were altogether wrong.
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The bridegroom would be violently taken from them, and then it would be the time for mourning and fasting. That's a direct quote from his book,
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The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. There was violence, but it wasn't Jesus meting out the violence, it was
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Jesus receiving the violence on our behalf. In Acts 1 verse 7, the disciples said to Jesus, so when they had come together, they said,
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Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel? You can see again here, they kind of had this misconception of, oh, now you're going to kick the
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Romans out, we're going to have a utopia, it's going to go back to the times of the Davidic and Solomonic kingdoms, but that was just not the case.
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John, you know, he had a great stature in his ministry. There was no one like John in the New Testament.
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Jesus even said, in the whole Bible, Jesus kind of put him up there. But even though he was a great man, John fought the same passions we all battle in our spiritual walk.
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Disillusionment, depression, misunderstanding, and impatience, they were all assaulting him while he sat confined in Herod's jail cell.
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If you think about John's imprisonment, this was a real test of his faith, because it pitted his love of the outdoors and a free lifestyle against his love for God, because he was a man who was used to going places when he wanted to, doing what he wanted to, eating what he wanted to.
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He had no restrictions, no family, nothing to tie him down. Now he was sitting in a prison, could do nothing without people's permission, only got fed on their schedule.
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It was a real test for him. Nothing is more irksome to a man of action than periods of forced inactivity.
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That's a fact. If you're a man of action, being forced to be inactive is a real trial. That can be due to external factors like imprisonment or internal sickness.
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You can see, you know, when Paul talks about the thorn in the flesh in the New Testament, a lot of commentators think that was blindness.
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It could have been a sickness, an ailment, but when you're a man of action, having something restrain you, that's a real trial for you, and it was especially a trial for John.
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Now that Jesus had started his ministry, I believe God was teaching John how to have patience and trust the
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Lord during his confinement. That was his lesson for John. Holy violence is necessary not only for public ministry, but for privately enduring suffering for our faith.
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You know, it's not just people think, well, this is a public thing. I need the violence. No, you need the violence when you're suffering, whether it can be from cancer, or whether you're suffering because of the loss of a daughter or son, or because you have an unbelieving spouse or unbelieving children.
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That's just as necessary. You need perseverance either way. It reminds me, you know, in this,
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John and us were united with Jesus, and I put, if you look at Hebrews 5 .8, it says, although Jesus was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.
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Jesus suffered, and we're going to suffer as well. Since John was in jail, John received second -hand news of Jesus' ministry.
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This isn't a revelation. He's not getting it. He's not able to see stuff for himself. The information that he did receive probably came late, so it was probably a couple weeks late, and it was in fragments.
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We don't know how often Herod allowed people to visit John. It could have been every month. It could have been more frequently, but clearly he wasn't there to see everything.
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So it's very unlikely that John knew the full scope of Jesus' activities. So that's one thing. There's like an information deficit here.
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John doesn't know everything that's going on. In his previous role as a messianic herald, John was the one imparting knowledge about the
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Messiah to the people who flocked around him. Now he was sort of relegated to the bench. He was no longer just giving direct revelation to people.
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He was waiting, and he's like, well, what am I going to hear about Jesus' ministry? Is this what's going to happen? I paved the way for him.
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When is the kingdom going to come? Now his news of the
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Messiah came in little dribbles. A little dribble here, a little dribble there. It wasn't just like he had the tip of the spear.
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Now he's kind of like the tail end of the train. Once he taught his disciples in the open air of Galilee, now he was totally dependent on his disciples for any news or communication with Jesus or his family or his friends, any of them.
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Jesus' reply to John conveyed the truth in a very gracious manner. Although we don't know
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John's direct intentions in sending this message, Jesus' reply was meant to strengthen the faith of both John and John's disciples.
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Let's pick up in Matthew 11, starting in verse 4. Jesus answered and said,
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Go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the good news preached to them, and blessed is the one who is not offended by me.
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If we break down this reply, we see that verses 4 and 5 are just more informational. They list basically the miracles that Jesus performed to validate his messianic claims.
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The language, if you think about the language Jesus uses here, it's very similar to the Beatitudes. He says blessed, right?
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That was given, of course, in the Sermon on the Mount. I know Pastor says a lot, the greatest sermon ever preached, and I concur with that. The Beatitudes are merely just descriptive of the lives of altruist
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Christians. When people read through the Beatitudes and say, oh, this is something to aspire to, every true Christian will have, it might be a sliver of daylight, but that is your life.
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You will be meek, you will love the Lord, you will hunger and thirst for righteousness, all that. Although Christians, we may have times in our life where we're ashamed to confess
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Christ, these patterns won't last if you're a true Christian. You ultimately will return, and in your arena, not everyone's arena of making
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Christ known is the same, but you will return to making the Lord known if you're a true Christian. I think verse 6, to me, is an admonition to John, and by extension all believers, that we should not be ashamed of our
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Savior or our Gospel. Romans 116 says, for I'm not ashamed of the Gospel, for it's the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, the
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Jew first and also the Greek. And right there we see the Gospel, it's laser -focused, we don't preach a different Gospel to the
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Jew, we don't preach a different Gospel to the Greek, we don't tailor our Gospel to different groups, the Gospel's the same, everyone's a sinner and everyone must repent.
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When I see the fact that Jesus delivers a gentle admonition here, it leads me to believe that John's purpose was to assuage or rest his own doubts.
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I don't think Jesus would have given him admonition if he had fully trusted him. I think God's trying to tell him gently, don't be ashamed of me.
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You weren't ashamed of me before, don't be ashamed of me now. We don't know what John thought.
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He could have thought that Jesus' ministry was not as zealous as his own. Maybe he thought I was more zealous, Jesus seems more low -key.
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He could have thought the pace of change was too slow. It seems like things are moving along very slowly here. When are things going to accelerate and get moving?
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If you think about it, Jesus' reply is perfect. What's more earth -shattering than healing the blind and crippled, raising the dead, and preaching the
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Gospel to the penniless poor? That's things John could never do, and those are great signs. Nature itself was no match for the one by whom and for whom all things were made.
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If you think about nature, there's an inevitable process of decay. When all of us are born, we start aging from the minute we're born, and we continue aging until we die.
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If you think about how particles are formed in atomic structure, there's something called entropy.
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Particles never go to a more complete state. They always go to a looser and more relaxed state, because it takes energy to build something up, but it's just natural for things to decay.
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That's just normal. You know, the miracles of Jesus, those were primarily given to authenticate his ministry, but the power of unbelief can only be broken by the
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Holy Spirit. I think the Gospels, if you read the Gospels, many times you see the unbelief can only be broken when the
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Holy Spirit convicts. Jesus moves on from John the Baptist's doubts, and then he starts detailing the rejection that he received from some of the small communities in which he performed miracles.
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I'm going to pick up in verse, end of verse 20. Jesus says, Then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent.
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Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
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But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you,
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Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.
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But I tell you, it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you. The main charge that Jesus brings against these cities is, even though they saw his mighty works and listened to his teaching, they still refused to repent.
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They would not do it. Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, these are all relatively small cities. They're not very big.
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I believe we only know where two of them are today. I think they don't know exactly where Chorazin is. That shows you how small it was.
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When you consider the cities of Tyre and Sidon, those were on the Mediterranean seacoast. That's where Jezebel came from.
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She was a Phoenician. Those were bustling, massively big trade ports. There was a lot of wealth, a lot of richness.
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You definitely see a big difference here between a small little village where Jesus lived and these massive seaports that were wicked, but they had a lot more importance in these small towns.
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These cities also didn't have the fertile plains or prestige of ancient Sodom either. Sodom was a lot bigger.
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It had a lot of well -watered plains, and it was a well -known city. So these were very tiny hamlets. These cities had the great privilege to witness both the unparalleled miracles and the authoritative teaching of the
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Messiah. How did they respond? Familiarity and apathy. They didn't really care. They just said, well, that's not our
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Messiah. We see his miracle, but that's not important to me. Sodom was the site of deviant homosexual perversion, and Tyre and Sidon were well -known for their horrifying rituals of infant sacrifice.
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A lot of the stuff about sacrificing infants, Tyre and Sidon were known for that. They were very, very wicked people. Yet Jesus pronounced a more severe judgment on all three of the cities that he witnessed in for their indifference to him.
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And that shows the worst wickedness is religious wickedness to God. The sin of those three cities is much worse than the sin of the pagan nations that were destroyed.
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If the indifference of unbelievers draws such a harsh condemnation, how much worse is it when Christians lapse into indifference in their spiritual walk?
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As the Bible says, judgment begins with the household of God. Peter writes in his first epistle, for it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God.
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If it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God? That's 1 Peter 4 .17.
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If you note, Jesus does not say that Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom will escape on the day of judgment. There's no escaping for them.
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Rather, he mentions that it will be more bearable for them. Not as bad. Matthew Henry brings this out in his commentary on Matthew.
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I believe the word bearable has three main facets or sides in this verse. First, the
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Gentile cities that Jesus mentioned will have less regret because they just rejected God's laws. Everyone across the world rejects
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God's laws if they don't trust in Jesus. These three cities rejected the Incarnate God.
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How many cities have Jesus walking down and performing miracles and they just rejected him? There's a pretty big difference between rejecting a herald and rejecting the king himself.
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Imagine how uncomfortable it would be for those people in that town. When they step up to be judged by the
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Lord, they're going to see the Lord that walked down their streets and performed miracles. That's going to be a very uncomfortable day for them. Less so for people that don't know
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Jesus personally. But a lot of these citizens of these towns probably knew Jesus. Oh yeah, he's the miracle worker. The very person they ignored and didn't pay any attention to is going to be the very person that judges them.
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The second reason I think that it will be worse for them is many of these Jewish people in these towns they probably cherish the false hope of heaven because they say, look, we're
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Abraham's descendants. You see that from the Pharisees a lot. We're the descendants of Abraham. We don't need Jesus.
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The citizens of the pagan towns, they had their own deities and religious practices. So they were under no when they died and they see
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Jesus, they know the gig is up. But for these people to say, oh, we were sons of Abraham but didn't see the man that they rejected judging them, that's going to be quite a shock.
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Finally, think about it. The Jewish descendants of these towns, they'd spend their eternity in hell knowing the door to heaven was in their hometown and they were too busy to listen to them.
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If you think about all the chances a person is given to hear the gospel, these
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Jewish towns had the opportunity to hear the gospel from the person who died for their sins. They just spurned it. And they're going to look back.
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Well, they are looking back on that now and saying, what a foolish, foolish mistake to not even listen to the Messiah when he was walking in the streets.
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They were too busy. Worldly things, family affairs are more important than their eternal soul.
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The citizens of these pagan towns, their regrets are not going to be the same. They never saw Jesus in his earthly ministry, so how could they be?
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If we were to use the parable of the talents here, I'd say the Gentile cities all had one talent.
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They each had a single talent. But if you look at Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, they received a bank vault filled to the brim with talents.
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Probably even more than that, really, because Jesus was there pouring out his wisdom and they just didn't want to hear it. Jesus expects us to use the light we have been given to generate proportionate light and advance the kingdom of heaven.
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That's what Jesus expects us to do. In closing the sermon, I have three main applications
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I'd like to share with you. The first application is about searching our hearts.
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We need to really search our hearts for any sign of sloth or apathy in our Christian walk. If we find an indifference or a spiritual malaise in our soul, we're just going,
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I don't feel like doing this. We need to cry out to the Lord for his strength and resist it with every fiber of our being.
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This type of attitude is the complete opposite of holy violence, if we're just sort of slothful and indifferent to it.
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The two things this does is it quenches the zeal of other Christians and it delights the forces of darkness. The devil is very happy to see us in spiritual form.
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He doesn't like to see us on fire for the Lord and living for the Lord and praying, but he loves to see us just kind of apathetic about it.
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Nothing about Jesus' ministry on this earth was haphazard or apathetic. If you look at him, he was a man of purpose.
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If you look at, like, just think about his determination to go to the cross. It was so intense that his disciples were not certain how to handle it.
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It says they were amazed and afraid. Mark 10, 32 -34 says this, and they were on the road going to Jerusalem and Jesus was walking ahead of them.
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And they were amazed and those who followed him were afraid. And taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying,
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See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the
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Gentiles. And they will mock him and spit upon him and flog him and kill him.
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And after three days he will rise again. This is an interesting verse because Jesus was telling him all this is going to happen to me, but he's resolutely forging his way to Jerusalem.
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The disciples are kind of shocked. They're like, why is he so boldly you know, if this was me, I'd be like walking the other way or slowing it down, looking at the rocks maybe look at the butterfly.
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But Jesus was like, I'm going, I'm very determined to get to Jerusalem and die for those that I've appointed from time in the past.
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If Jesus had to set his face like a flint to be tortured and killed at the hands of his creatures, if he could do that, then we can certainly endure some hardship and fight through some sleepiness or lethargy to worship a wonderful Savior.
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That's the very minimum we can do. We need to carry on with the same zeal that we had when we first became a child of God, by remembering our first love.
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Often the task of maintaining the zeal, it does become more difficult the longer we're in the faith. Jonathan Edwards knew this as well, and he wrote the following in a letter to a young lady that had written him to ask for spiritual counsel.
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He said, I would advise you to keep up a great as great a strife and earnestness in religion as if you knew yourself to be in a state of nature seeking conversion.
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We advise persons under conviction to be earnest and violent for the kingdom of heaven, but when they have attained conversion, they ought not to be less watchful, laborious, and earnest in the whole work of religion, but the more so, for they are under infinitely greater obligations.
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That book I got it from is called A Sweet Flame. It's a collection of Jonathan Edwards' letters to his daughter, to his wife, to other pastors.
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I'd highly recommend it. It's just very you can see this man is a man just saturated with scripture. He loves the
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Lord and his whole fiber of being is about making the Lord known. It's a fairly inexpensive book. I think it's like eight or nine dollars, but I think if you get it, your soul will be blessed.
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The second application is merely possessing intellectual knowledge of the gospel is a snare and has given many a rude awakening to some that were
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Bible scholars, some that were pastors, faithful husbands or wives, and missionaries upon their entrance into eternity.
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1 Corinthians 13 says even if we possess all knowledge, if we become a martyr, if we give away all our possessions to the poor, but have not love, we are nothing.
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When I was growing up, my parents taught me the simple acrostic K -A -T, which signifies that true salvation always contains three things.
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There's knowledge, there's acceptance, and there's trust in God and his written word. If you have knowledge or knowledge and acceptance, that's not going to cut it.
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Really knowing that God is Lord and knowing and accepting is enough. You must trust in him. And people that only have those two, they're going to find out to their everlasting chagrin they had a foundation built upon sand.
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Going back to our national laws, if you just merely know the laws and assent to them, if I know the laws and I break them, do
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I get penalized? Absolutely. If I know the laws and say I agreed to them, but I'm still going to break them, you still get penalized.
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It's only if you know the laws and assent to them and say, you know what, I'm not going to break them, I'm going to trust that they're the right thing for me, you're free of condemnation.
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It's the same thing here. Just knowing God, it saves no one. Knowing God and accepting that he's God saves no one, too, because the
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Pharisees had a lot of things right, but they didn't trust in God. That was their problem. How much greater is the penalty for those who heard the gospel?
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If you think about it, there are a lot of people out there who've never heard the gospel, and they have one condemnation, but how much greater is it for people who hear the gospel multiple times and refuse it actively?
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They'll say, you know what, that's great that Jesus died for me, but I want to rely on my own strength and my own righteousness for salvation.
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James writes the following about the devil and his servants. We just finished a series on James a year or two back, so I know this verse is familiar.
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Pastor did a very good series on that. James 2 .19 says, you believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder.
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The devils, they know the truth of God backward and forward. They can quote the scripture. They're great theologians. Additionally, the devils, they accept, they know that one day they're going to be consigned to hell forever.
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There's no confusion with them on that. However, they're not able to trust God. That's the big difference between devils and us.
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We can trust God, they cannot. There was no sacrifice or second chance for angels. When angels fell, they fell forever.
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This is the reason, and this is not my own personal interpretation, but I've read this before. When you think about why angels can't understand salvation, they don't understand second chances or trust because they don't have a second chance.
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They fell and they're either there, they didn't fall or they did fall. 1 Peter 2 .12 says, speaking of angels, it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the
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Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. As I said before, there's no path to redemption.
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Even the ones that have stayed loyal to God, they have no experiential knowledge of what it means to be redeemed. As redeemed sinners, we can know
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I once was lost but now I'm found, but angels, they don't really understand that. They're like, well, I've always been with God or I left
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God, but there's no, this whole idea of crossing over from unredeemed to redeemed is foreign to them. Thanks to God, though, that's not true of mankind.
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And because of that, we need to continually examine ourselves, see if we be in the faith. Where do our thoughts wander if we are idle and have nothing to occupy our time?
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That's a very great test right there. Is spending time in God's Word a chore or delight?
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It should be delight. If you read the Psalms, David talks about that very frequently. My delight's in the law of the Lord. I love the law of the
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Lord. I meditate on day and night. I mean, Psalm 119 is a master class in 148 different ways that he loves the law of God.
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Do we love to pray or is it tedious for us? Obviously, I think most Christians struggle with either praying or reading the
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Bible. For me, it's definitely the praying part of it. That's the part, you know, you can pray and say, Lord, help make it easier for me to pray.
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That's not a bad thing at all because you're saying, Lord, I know I don't pray like I should. Help me become better at praying.
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If our affections are not on holy things, we need to pray the Lord will stir our hearts up to have more love for him because that's ultimately, you know, the
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Lord will do that for us. You can also, you know, reading the Psalms, Valley of Vision is a great resource, but reading the prayers of other people, reading the biographies of other people and seeing how the
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Lord infuses every fiber of their being, that's a great way to stir us up, too. The 1
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Corinthians 8 1b says, knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. We want to make sure that we don't just have knowledge, we have true love.
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My third application is being passionate for the Lord also can strengthen and edify the church body by providing them with a holy life to emulate.
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Holy violence is contagious, and we need the best to set our fellow Christians on fire to serve the Lord. You see this a lot.
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You may see this at sports. I don't know how many of you have been in professional sports. I've been to a few. Maybe if you've gone to a concert, various things.
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When people are enthusiastic, it kind of ripples through the crowd. People get more and more enthusiastic. That's just a human nature thing.
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When you look at Christians, the reason today so many people are not passionate about the Lord is because it's hard to find people who are passionate about the
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Lord. I think Keith mentioned in Sunday School this morning, a lot of people say they're Christians and you say, okay, let's talk about the
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Lord, and they have this look on their face. It's like, well, I don't really want to talk about the Lord. Let's talk about the
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Bible. Let's read it. Let's discuss how great the Lord is. It would be super strange for me to say
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I'm a Patriots fan, but I don't want to talk about the Patriots. I don't really watch their games. I don't want to wear their merchandise. I'll just say
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I'm a Patriots fan. If you say you're a Christian, but you want nothing to do with the Lord, you don't want to read his word, you don't want to pray, you don't want to fellowship as believers, the
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Bible says in 1 John, you're not a Christian. Like, Christians love those things. That's how heaven is. If you don't like singing, fellowshipping with the
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Lord, thinking with the Lord, what do you think everyone's been doing in heaven for all of eternity? You're not going to like heaven if you don't like the
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Lord here. And that's what this place is right now. It's our training ground for eternity. Here we train, and in eternity, we're perfect forever.
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Teaching by example, that's a lot of times less confrontational and more effective in persuading fellow
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Christians to show fervency for the Lord. I'm not saying there isn't a time for rebuke, because the Bible does say to rebuke, admonish, and exhort, so I'm not going to go that far.
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But I think there are a lot of times where it's best to say, you know what, I'm going to show a person by my life or do something.
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And they say, you know what, that's an example to emulate. That's more effective. You used to do that a lot. A lot of times he would do stuff and then say, as I have done, you do the same.
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So he would even follow up an example with a command. We can do that as well, but sometimes that's less confrontational and more effective than just telling someone, you should do this, just do it yourself.
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And if they're a Christian and they're around you, they're going to say, oh, he does that. I should copy that. The author of Hebrews alludes to this when he writes
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Hebrews 10, verses 24 -25 He said, let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
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It's no coincidence that the call to stir up one another to love and good works is immediately succeeded by the exhortation to not neglect the fellowship of the saints.
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Physical proximity in the Christian life is important, regardless of modern technologies. A few years back when we had
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COVID, we did some stuff virtually. Obviously, we're trying to protect the health of people. It's very tough.
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Fellowship is tough. Seeing is tough. There is a physical proximity. Physical proximity is important. You can listen to sermons online, and that's a great thing to do, but it's hard to effectively serve the body, be accountable, or disciple people virtually.
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It's just not easy. That's why the Lord has said gather together, basically. When people have this attitude toward worship, they sort of say, well,
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I don't need to actually go to the church, I'm just going to listen to a sermon online and be done. They're sort of placing their ease and comfort above assisting other people in their local body in their
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Christian walk. It's very self -focused, usually. It's usually like, I want to sleep in, and out of the temptation, too. You're tired from Saturday, you're tired from the week, you just want to sleep in on Sunday.
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But it's like, what's more important than to wake up and go celebrate the Lord who gave you the Sunday, who gave you the life, who gave you the breath, who gave you the house you live in, the car, all the blessings come from him.
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If you think there's no need for church because you've obtained enough biblical knowledge, then consider the example of Jesus.
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You know, Jesus was the incarnate God. He had no need to attend worship in the synagogue or the temple.
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Yet you see him consistently doing that throughout his earthly ministry. If I think about, like, in eternity, there's a central location in eternity where heaven is, and of course you have the new earth as well.
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God could have dispersed everyone throughout the galaxies, and they could still communicate. That's not difficult for God.
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But God chose to put all the saints together in one spot in heaven. And if you think about that, because he chose to gather everyone together, that shows that gathering together is important.
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That's the thing not to forget. There's many other things that as I close this sermon, there's many other things that, holy violence is kind of a theme, especially the
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Old Testament and the New, that kind of stretches through. I want to pick back up on the second half of this chapter, you know,
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Lord willing, in a few months, in a month or two, and then kind of go through profiles of holy violence. But the important thing to remember is, are we passionate to the
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Lord? Do we strive after the Lord? And if we don't have that in our lives, say, Lord, make me more like yourself. Because Jesus was very like that.
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He was very passionate. He was a perfect balance of, when you think about Jesus, the word meek comes to mind.
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Because that's, I think the only time Jesus ever described himself in the scriptures is he said, learn from me,
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I am meek and lowly of heart. That's the only time he's ever described himself. And meek is basically power under control. Jesus was the almighty
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God, he had all power, he was perfectly under control. He could have just zapped his enemies, caused them to have heart attacks, he could have just said,
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I don't like that person, blow their ship off course. But no, he controlled his power. A lot of times he used, you know, he talked with people, he reasoned with people, he used what
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God had given him and he kept himself under the control of the Father. And that's what holy violence is. It's having a purpose and a strong effort, but not just going out and lashing out and swinging all around like a boxer who doesn't know what he's doing.
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It's control, purposeful power under control. And that's what the Lord wants from us. So let us close in prayer.