109. The War For The Soul of the World | A Practical Postmillennialism Series

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Christ Church is hardwired for multiplication. He says that some are gonna produce 30 fold, some 60 fold, and some 100 fold.

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Multiplication is what the church does. We don't lose down here, we multiply down here until there's nowhere else to multiply.

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Hello and welcome back to the broadcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 109,

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The War for the Soul of the World. Well, hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the broadcast.

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Now, if you haven't been with us, we've been in a series called A Practical Postmillennialism where we're building the case from the

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Bible on what Postmillennialism is. Now, if this is your first time listening, Postmillennialism is the view of the end times where Jesus wins in the here and now.

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The world that we live in is not going to aggressively get worse and collapse into ruin before Jesus has total victory.

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No, Jesus will progressively, little by little, bring the world into conformity with his vision.

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Introduction. Now, from the most humble beginnings, Jesus launched an unstoppable invasion on Satan's realm that would shake the foundations of this world and it would wrestle back control of this planet from the prince in power, the heir, into the hands of Christ.

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And he did this with the 12 most unlikely men. This peasant rabbi from Nazareth set in motion a spiritual tsunami sweeping over Jerusalem and flooding through Judea and Samaria and eventually inundating the entire

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Roman Empire with the waters of his grace, toppling history's greatest superpower from within.

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Now, what started as a fringe rabble of outcasts and nobodies exploded into a global force that now occupies 2 .5

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billion worshipers with no sign that that's gonna slow down. And this was not an accident of history.

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This is not a story of a band of lovable losers who bumble along in a world getting increasingly rotten until the savior tractor beams all of us out of here and zaps us back to the mothership.

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This was always the creator's intent that his image -bearing people would multiply and fill the world with worshipers who worship him in spirit and in truth and who obey him in all things,

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Genesis 1, 28. Though sin brought devastation and ruin upon the world,

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Jesus, the true and better Adam, is restoring humanity to her original God -given purpose.

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He has forgiven us of our sins on the cross and he's reinvested us with our original

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Adamic authority to advance God's kingdom to all the peoples and places and leading the church to bring

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God's blessings to every family on earth, Genesis 12, one through three. Just like God promised to Jacob or through Jacob to Judah, the nations are one day going to rally under this

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Messiah scepter of righteousness. He's gonna render complete allegiance to God and to the obedience of God.

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That's who Christ is. He's the Shiloh King of Genesis 49, 10. From that tiny little mustard seed, a revolution was unleashed upon the world that's not gonna be stopped until it's brought the entire world under the shade of its branches.

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That is the kind of unstoppable kingdom that Jesus is building. And it goes well beyond the book of Genesis.

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It's in the book of Exodus, in the story of Israel, in the hymns of Israel, in the collapse of the

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Israelite and the Judean empires. We see glimpses of it. In the prophetic promises, it is shouting at us.

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Every line of the Old Testament points to that kind of kingdom. And it's not just the

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Old Testament. The gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the epistles of Paul and Peter and James and John and the history of the church that's reported to us by Luke and Acts all look forward to a kingdom that's gonna take over this world like Georgia Kudzu.

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Now, in today's episode, I wanna show you how this happened.

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I wanna show you how 2000 years ago, the kingdom landed on the shores of this earth like Americans upon the beach of Normandy.

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I wanna show you how Jesus eradicated his fiercest enemy, which is the devil and his demons, along with this unlikely group of loyalists to Jesus said, your father is

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Satan, that's the Judeans. We'll see that in a moment, who align themselves with Satan's unholy vision.

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And after that, in conclusion, I want us to attempt to demonstrate how once the gospel, once that kingdom had put down its first century enemy,

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Satan, sin, and all of that, that it was going to build and grow throughout all the centuries until there was nothing left for it to conquer.

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You and I are in the reign of Christ. You and I are in the kingdom of the conquering one, and you and I can find our place in that kingdom by doing what

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Jesus said, by extending his kingdom in our spheres of influence today. So that's what we're gonna be talking about, how

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Jesus brings the war to the fallen cosmos. Part one, the arrival of the kingdom.

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Now for centuries, the prophets were straining to glimpse through this veil of prophetic imagery that God was giving them, longing for the day when heaven would invade earth, when the forces of God would storm the sin -stained beaches of this embattled world.

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Isaiah foretells of that, when the light breaks into this world of darkness, Isaiah 9 -2, where a son is gonna be given to bear the endless government and the peace upon his shoulders,

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Isaiah 9 -6 -7. Prophet Malachi talks about the day of his coming and who can endure the arrival of it,

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Malachi 3 -1 -2. The Old Testament's looking forward to an invasion. At last, with the coming of this

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Christ, the invasion began. The lordship of Christ had come. The longships of God's kingdom were now sighted upon the horizon, and the enemies of God began to tremble.

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Jesus marched through the dusty paths of Palestine, sounding the trumpet blast that the long -awaited invasion was now here.

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He said, the kingdom of God is at hand, Mark 1 -15. That doesn't mean that the kingdom of God is a long way off.

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That doesn't mean that the kingdom of God is 2 ,000 years off. It means that the kingdom of God is eminently upon the shores of planet earth.

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John the Baptist says something similar when his voice echoed in the wilderness, prepare the way for the kingdom of heaven, for it has come near,

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Matthew 3 -2. There were other places in the gospels where Jesus said that the kingdom is now among you.

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So the kingdom Jesus was bringing, the invasion Jesus was bringing, had come in his lifetime.

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That's not a temporary skirmish, but the beginning of an unstoppable, eternal occupation of this planet.

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As the angels decreed, Christ's kingdom would know no end, unlike the fragile, fading dynasties of mere earthly kingdoms.

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Let me put it to you this way. Rome is gone, Assyria, gone, Babylon, gone.

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All of these ancient empires gone, but the kingdom of Christ stands forever, Luke 1 -33.

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The shouts of the people ironically began to recognize that this kingdom had come when

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Jesus rode into the city of Jerusalem and they said, blessed is the coming kingdom of our father,

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David, Mark 11 -10. They recognized in this humble Galilean rabbi that the conquering

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David had returned and he had come to bring the war upon a rebel planet.

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Jesus was the D -Day that would put away all of the rebellion of old.

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He was the point man of heaven's liberating army who had burst upon the world's beaches to resubjugate a planet who was in rebellion to him.

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His very presence revealed that the ancient prophecies had found their fulfillment.

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The kingdom that Moses looked forward to and the prophets foretold about was no longer just a misdivision in the minds of prophets, but it was a tangible reality that had come before their very eyes,

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Luke 10 -9. This was not a political coup achieved through human strength, but it was an unstoppable insurrection from heaven to earth, bringing the unstained, untainted reality of Jesus's kingdom to a world that was in rebellion,

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John 18 -36. As Christ's feet hit the embattled shores of this world, every ritual, every tradition, every earthly pretension was exposed as a hollow symbol that must now submit before his power.

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He's the true temple that's gonna put away the old temple. He's the sacrifice that's gonna end all sacrifices.

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He's the priest who's gonna end the line of priesthood. He's the feast of heaven's own deliverance who is going to feed us and nourish us forever.

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The old order was obsolete the moment Jesus put his feet upon our shores.

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And that invading sovereign who had came to pitch his tent among us and raise his flag was willingly putting away every part of that old world.

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This spearheaded an advancing occupation, not to timidity, to coexist along the capitals of sin, but to take them over, to displace them, to make his kingdom come on earth as it had in heaven.

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What began as a small little rabble would grow into an ever increasing onslaught until the entire enemy territory was liberated and reclaimed for the dominion of Christ.

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Mark 4, 30 through 32. The mustard seed regiment would become an overwhelming surge.

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It would unfurl its banner on every hill on earth. Satan's little blitzkrieg of deception that he brought was now gonna be met with the infinite reversing tie to the kingdom of God.

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And it would now relentlessly push its way, liberating every sphere of human existence until the entire global theater fell in humble worship before its

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God. This invading kingdom was not going to cease until every enemy, foreign and domestic, were expelled and the earth was filled with the knowledge of Christ the

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King. Phase two, the battle between heaven and hell.

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Now, as Jesus landed upon the shores of this fallen world, being born of a virgin, he was not greeted with cheerleaders and celebratory fanfare.

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In his earliest years, Satan tried to kill him through the mentally depraved puppet king named Herod. And that was just the beginning of a long sequence of assassination attempts from Satan on Christ.

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His demonic forces recognized the dire threat that Jesus posed. They knew that Jesus had not come to affirm their stolen leadership, no, no.

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He had come to dispel the spiritual squatters who had been living in God's world for far too long, ruining

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God's good earth for far too long, which means that Jesus's arrival on earth signaled their demise.

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That is why Satan and the demons come out in a all out military campaign against Jesus all throughout the gospels.

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It's almost like demons are on every page of the gospel because they're making their last stand before they surrender the world back to the hands of Christ.

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Matthew 28, 18 says, all authority in heaven and earth now belong to me because he won.

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At the end of his life, when he resurrected from the dead, the battle with the demons was over.

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But that battle began, like I said, with Herod trying to kill Jesus and it started directly in the wilderness when

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Jesus came into his ministry. And that's actually an interesting point if you think about it.

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It was from the wilderness where the serpent once slithered into the garden and brought deception to the line of men, to Adam.

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Now in Jesus's life, Satan is slithering out to meet him in the wilderness where the serpent is going to face his creator and he's gonna tempt him after his baptism and after 40 days of fasting and being in hunger,

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Jesus was in a profound state of vulnerability and the enemy struck him like the

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Lufafa who were flying over Poland. Now, the enemy didn't have any new weapons to wage so he used his old tricks, did

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God really say? And he did that, tempting Christ. He hurled his fiery darts upon our

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Lord, hoping to corrupt him in the same way that he had corrupted our father, Adam. And yet, as we know,

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Christ deflected every assault and he succeeded where Adam failed and he triumphed over the enemy in the wilderness.

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With every repelled advance, the path was cleared for Jesus to launch an overwhelming counter offensive on the powers of hell which unfolds before our eyes in the gospel.

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He's not armed with swords, but he's armed with the word of God. That's his blade. The Lord engaged these hellish minions all throughout

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Judea and Galilee like surgical drone strikes leveled against strategic targets of the enemy.

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Christ precisely aimed his ministry at the forces of hell to liberate those who were held in captivity by the unclean spirits and he wins.

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In Capernaum synagogue, for instance, a man possessed by a demon shrieked and cried at the sight of Jesus and he sensed his own doom had arrived.

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And then Jesus with a single authoritative command cast the evil spirit from him, silencing him, powerless because he can't disobey because he has no authority over Christ.

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Later in the region of the Gerasenes, Jesus encountered a man who was indwelled by a horde of demons, so many that his name is called

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Legion. And yet these foul entities have no power. They're pleading and begging with Jesus to be driven into a herd of pigs that eventually fall off the edge of a cliff and drown themselves in a

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Galilean lake. Jesus is bringing the war to the devils.

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It says later in Galilee that all who were oppressed by the devil after they saw these things came to him to be liberated by him.

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Like Napalm torching an enemy infested forest, the Lord's commands were incinerating.

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His word, his power, all that he was doing was incinerating the enemy stranglehold and he was bringing those who were in captivity into freedom.

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Even the disciples, the ones who were trained by Jesus to make war with the devil were exercising demons.

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They were bringing God's deliverance to the captives. The disciples even rejoiced and say, Jesus, look, the demons obey us.

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Why? Because Jesus gave his authority to them. The final conquest of the enemy was happening before their very eyes, but the final battle in that conquest was reserved for Jesus alone.

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He took his disciples on three years of mission and ministry, overcoming the powers of hell, but the final death blow to the serpent would be reserved for Jesus alone, where he would deal the final fatal blow to Satan and his operations by binding the strong man through his sacrificial death on the cross.

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And when he rose in triumph over sin and over death's tyranny, he forever stripped the dark powers of their weapons, parading them around as spoils of war in the wake of his conquering kingdom.

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The aftermath of that heaven -sent D -Day left liberated multitudes all in Judea and Samaria into the uttermost parts of the earth, casualties of his divine grace.

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They died to their sin and now they're risen to life in Christ and they're encountering, because of his victory over the devils, a love that is much more potent than any of the chains of oppression that they have ever faced.

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Jesus is raising the dead to life. He's bringing the ones who are in darkness into light. He is defeating the devils in every aspect of his ministry.

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In those days, Jesus launched more than a few pop shots, more than a few guerrilla skirmishes.

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He launched a full -on invasion. He came to the capital of satanic oppression, where the enemy had centralized his power and threw down his strongholds and Jesus crushed them.

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That work began in Galilee. It spread to Judah and hell's gates are still being overthrown today as the church takes the kingdom to new parts of the world and advances as the gates fall down.

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He won then, he's winning today. That's the kind of kingdom Jesus is building.

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Part three, judgment poured out on the wicked. Now, while Jesus was engaged in warfare against the spiritual forces of darkness and the principalities and the powers and all of that, it also became increasingly clear in that first century that the

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Jewish people of that day were not allies of the kingdom of God.

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At every single turn, they were opposing Jesus, which means that they were opposing God. And that sort of rebellion led the

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Savior to expose them publicly, declaring that they were not descendants of Abraham, but rather they were children of Satan who loved the darkness instead of the light,

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John 8, 44 and John 3, 19. As the Lord himself marched through the dusty little towns of Palestine, entering city after city like Joshua conquering

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Canaan, he sounded the trumpet blast that the long prophesied kingdom of God had come.

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The kingdom is at hand. Now, for those willing to repent and to turn to Jesus, that message was glorious.

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They were excited. They were joyful. They had finally met their long awaited king. But for those who remained stubbornly opposed to Christ and to his kingdom, they would be overwhelmed by the fury of his advance.

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This was not, his kingdom was not merely a peaceful endeavor, but it was an outbreak of spiritual war.

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For centuries, Israel had been God's little strategic outpost on earth.

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They were the covenant people. They were the one place on earth where the rule of Satan was supposed to be off limits.

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And we see in the Old Testament that they fail time and time again, allowing the serpent back in, allowing idolatry back in.

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But due to their repeated disobedience, now the punishment had come. Now the punishment had come.

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By the New Testament era, the spiritual forces had become welcome in Judah, which is astonishing if you think about it.

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Again, Judah was the place where the reign of God was supposed to be most central. That's where the temple was.

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That's where the priesthood was. That's where all of the sacrifices happened. And yet, because you see all of the demonic activity happening, you have to understand that the

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Jewish leadership had failed. They had allowed demons to come into the nation.

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They had welcomed demonic powers. And they had unwittingly, over centuries and centuries and centuries of covenant betrayal to God, they had welcomed the covenant curses to come back on top of their own heads.

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In their blindness, the Jewish people obstructed and rejected their only hope of rescue.

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They had continually, over the course of time, worked to subvert Jesus's mission at every turn.

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And as his invasion advanced in Judah, Jesus encountered the fiercest resistance from his own people.

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He came to his own, John says, and his own knew him not. The religious leaders were the ones who arose as hostile insurgents against him.

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They were a militia that was bought and paid for by hell. And instead of loving their

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Messiah, they opposed him. They were like the Nazis of World War II seeking to exterminate

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God's purposes in the 20th century. These hardened Jewish sects of the first century became entrenched little pockets of opposition dedicated to destroying the very deliverer that they should have been embracing.

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Despite witnessing Jesus's miraculous power and his supernatural wisdom, they stubbornly rejected his rightful authority to rule on the throne of David.

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They rejected him. That rejection metastasized into a cancerous plot to murder the

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Prince of Peace himself at the end of Jesus's life. They arrogantly clinging to their own narrow ethnic prejudices because they believed that they were better than all the other peoples on earth.

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Their pride said that the Gentiles were scum, that the Samaritans were even worse, and that we are the chosen people of God and we hold the credentials and we hold the gospel and we don't share it with anyone.

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That sort of ethnocentrism that plagued the first century church, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and all the sectarians exposed their unfaithfulness and showed that they had a hard heart that was not after the things of God.

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That comprehensive rejection of God and his purposes, his love, his mercy, and his grace, and his goal, which is littered all throughout the

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Old Testament, he is going to win the nations unto himself. That hatred of the nations, that hatred of all things that were righteous, that hatred of even

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God when he came in the flesh is the reason why the covenant curses that Moses warned them about in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 would be poured out on their heads in the first century.

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The temple that they love would be reduced to rubble, allowing the nations finally to come in and worship

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Christ. Do you remember in the temple when Jesus cleansed it and he cast the money changers out? The reason he had to do that is because that was the court of the

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Gentiles and the Jews hated the Gentiles so much they would not let them in to worship.

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Jesus says, my house is to be a house of prayer for all the nations. So now that Jesus is going to destroy their temple, the nations can finally come to know

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God through the true temple, Jesus Christ. The priesthood was gonna be abrogated as a new eternal priesthood from the line of Melchizedek was gonna be installed in Christ.

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The feasts were gonna become obsolete as Jesus is our true supper and the one who feeds us and he's our

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Sabbath rest. All of the trappings of that old covenant world were gonna be replaced by Jesus who refused to allow them to keep standing in competition with the new covenant kingdom he was bringing.

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He refused to allow the temple to stand in competition with him. He refused to allow the priesthood to stand in competition with him.

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He refused to allow the festivals and the feast and the new moons and the Sabbaths and all of those things to stand in competition to what he was bringing.

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He would not allow the types and shadows to compete with the reality.

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And the ones who opposed him and the ones who white knuckled their covenant forms to the bitter end would be put under his feet.

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This war and Jesus's battle plan became astonishingly clear as his ministry neared its final week.

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We just talked about how Jesus went to war against the demons and that's all throughout his early years of ministry. But in the later years of his ministry, his war, his wrath, his battle turns decisively against Judah.

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As he approached the city on the back of a humble beast and as the doomed city ironically called out to him, blessed is the coming of the kingdom of our father

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David. Jesus came into a city that was supposed to be bearing him the fruit of God and yet that city offered him only leaves.

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Matthew 21, eight. Confronted by the fruitless city, Jesus wasted no time then by going to the fruitless temple.

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The one that was supposed to be doing the works of God and they weren't and he cleansed it because they were doing the deeds of evil.

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And he actually healed people there because that was the purpose that the temple was built for all along and yet they weren't doing it.

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So he went and he cleansed the temple. One last time before it was gonna be destroyed 40 years later.

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And then what does he do? The following day in a very symbolic act, he destroys, he curses a barren fig tree.

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Do you see the point? He had come into the fruitless city that offered him nothing but leaves.

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He had come into the fruitless temple that offered him nothing but leaves. And now he deals with a tree that offers him no fruit, only leaves and he rips it out of the ground.

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He calls it where he calls a curse upon it where it will be ripped out of the ground and thrown into the flames. That is exactly what

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Jesus is prophesying is going to happen to Jerusalem. Matthew 21, 18 through 22.

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It was Jerusalem was gonna be chopped down by the Romans. It was gonna be set on fire and it was gonna undergo the curse of Yahweh in 40 years.

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And that's not all. Jesus goes immediately from that fig tree and he goes into the city. He arrived in the city that morning and the

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Jewish leaders were ready. They were threatening Jesus. They were encircled around him like a bunch of vultures threatened by his own authority.

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And they came out to meet him in a sort of spiritual firefight, demanding to know the source of his authority and power.

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Now, in response to their challenge of authority, the Lord lobbed a trio of three grenade like parables, exposing their treachery and their fate and promising that the little kingdom that they had been made stewards over was gonna be taken away from them and given to a better king.

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Kind of like in the Lord of the Rings when Denethor is clinging to his own life and he sets himself on fire to make way for Aragorn, the return of the true king.

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This is exactly what's happening in Judah at this time. Now, in the first parable that Jesus tells them, he likens them to a son who had disobeyed their father.

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He had promised obedience to his father, but he failed to deliver, Matthew 21, 28 through 32. Jesus says they're gonna be punished for that.

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And then next, Jesus depicts the Jewish leaders as wicked tenants that the father had entrusted with his own vineyard,

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Matthew 21, 33 through 46. And at the end of that parable, that they kill his own son.

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They viciously attacked the prophets and the messengers that the king is sending to them. They kill his own son and appalled by that story, the

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Pharisees that were standing in front of Jesus said that those wretches should come to a wretched end.

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They unwittingly condemned themselves. And then when they said that, as soon as the words exited their lips,

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Jesus revealed that the story was about them. He was performing the Nathan role to David, saying, you are the man.

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Except for then he was saying, you are the ones. The tenants in that story were the

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Jews. The ones who had been sent the prophets, but killed them. The ones who had been sent the messengers of God, but killed them.

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The ones who had sent the father's son. And the father said, surely they will respect my own son. And they killed him and threw his body outside of the vineyard, which is what they did to Jesus in AD or in his death.

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Jesus explicitly tells them that they're going to do this. And he tells them that as a result of them doing this, the father is going to take away the vineyard, which is the kingdom of God.

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And he was going to give it to a nation that would produce its fruit, Matthew 21, 43.

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So Jesus comes to the fruitless city. He goes to the fruitless temple. He curses the fruitless tree.

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And now he's saying to the fruitless people, I'm going to take away your kingdom and I'm going to give it to a people who will bear its fruit.

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He's bringing them under a curse. Jesus also tells them that they're going to be crushed and scattered like dust,

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Matthew 21, 44, which is a reality that has existed for the Jews now for 20 centuries and counting.

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Now, in the final parable, the third in this series, a king is preparing a wedding feast for his son.

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His son's going to get married and he's inviting the guest. And then yet the guest of his kingdom, the ones who should have been excited for this, the ones who should have shown up with bells on are refusing to come,

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Matthew 22, one through 14. Enraged by that insult, the king sent his troops to burn the defiant city, foreshadowing the coming destruction of Jerusalem by the

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Roman armies as judgment for rejecting the wedding of God, the wedding of Christ and his bride.

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Of all the people on earth, the Jews should have been most excited about this, that the temple was going to be put away, the priesthood was going to be finished, that God was going to marry a bride and he was going to bring his covenant people, both

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Jew and Gentile into one nation, into one people, they should have showed up for that.

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They should have showed up to that wedding. And because they said no, and because they refused, and because they hated the king for taking away their place and their status instead of realizing that he was giving them so much more in the reign of his son, the king sent his armies and set that city on fire 40 years after this parable was given.

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Now, some, especially those who like to think that Jesus is an overly emotive man -girl might object to the severity that I'm talking about in these parables.

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They say that it's out of character for Christ or it's altogether unjust that Jesus doesn't do that sort of thing.

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He's came to be an effeminate, emotive, sort of loves everyone, meek and mild.

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Jesus would never promise to pour out his wrath on people and burn a city to the ground and leave its ashes smoldering in the

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Judean desert. Jesus would never say that. But you have to remember, Jesus came to bring a sword.

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Jesus came and overturned the money changers. Jesus actually braided a whip before he went and overturned the money changers and he whipped the people with a whip that he made.

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That's boss. And we also need to remember, not just that, but that he's also the one who is repeating promises and oracles of doom that were given way before he came along.

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All Jesus is doing is repeating the prophecies of the prophets that were centuries before.

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And in the face of the covenant God coming in the flesh to meet his people and when they respond to him in such anger and violence, well, you can see that their covenantal chickens are coming home to roost.

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The nation is forfeiting its calling by continually breaking

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God's covenant despite his patience. And the irony of the whole thing is because, or is we see in Psalm 110.

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One of the most central aspects of Jesus's ministry is that he is going to put his enemies under his feet.

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He is going to do that to the nation that rejected his rule on earth. And that first enemy that he put under his feet was the first century nation of Judah.

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The escalating conflict between Jesus and the unbelieving Jewish leaders, it reached its boiling point as he finished that third parable.

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The religious elite there in the city were openly mocking him. They were challenging his authority. They were doing all sorts of things to try to undermine him and Jesus mercilessly embarrassed them.

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He embarrassed them with every answer. And then he also embarrassed them with a viscerating, stinging set of condemnations in Matthew 23.

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In the blistering storm of his judgment, he assumed the mantle of Hebrew prophet and he evoked seven curses upon the impenitent

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Jewish nation. Echoing the warnings that we see before for Moses in Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26.

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I encourage you, please go read those because Jesus is saying that those things had come now on that generation.

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One by one, he pronounced woe after woe after woe upon the scribes, the

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Pharisees and the entire city that was gonna kill him. They'd already killed the prophets and now they're going to kill him.

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And Jesus recited this horrific covenant malediction awaiting those who broke covenant with the living

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God by killing his one and only son. And he says that things like abject poverty, famine.

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Famine is so severe that women are gonna turn into cannibals eating their own children. That's what it says in Leviticus 26.

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That's what it says in Deuteronomy 28. When Jesus calls down these covenant curses upon that city, that is what the city devolved into.

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When Rome came and surrounded the city, Josephus tells us, Josephus tells us that the women were eating their children because they were so hungry.

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And he says that there were even worse things happening, which I can't even imagine what that means. The covenant maledictions that Jesus spoke came to appalling reality within a single generation of him saying it.

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With finality in Matthew 23, the Lord proclaimed, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, your house is gonna be left to you desolate,

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Matthew 23, 37 through 38. He says that all of the wrath and the judgment that God had been storing up since the very first murder of Abel was now gonna be poured out on that generation,

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Matthew 23, 35. He says in Matthew 24, not one stone is gonna be left upon another within 40 years.

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He's talking about the temple. And as the conflict with those unbelieving Jewish leaders reached its boiling point, reached its pinnacle, its pinnacle,

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Jesus pulled no punches in detailing the cataclysmic judgment that was awaiting those who defied his reign.

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He left the city in Matthew 24, and he provided terrifying blow -by -blow prophetic clarity to what was getting ready to happen to the city.

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A holy spiritual warfare had been unleashed, and the very king that the Jews had scorned would meticulously execute his battle plans like a field commander briefing his troops.

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In Matthew 24, we see Jesus talking to his disciples about what's getting ready to happen, what's gonna happen within a single generation,

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Matthew 24, 34. Do not be fooled by the dispensationals who say that all of these things are gonna happen sometime in the future.

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They're not. Jesus goes into a fruitless city, a fruitless temple, curses a fruitless fig tree, curses a fruitless people, calls down seven covenantal woes upon them, and then in Matthew 24 says, now this is what's going to happen.

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He's not talking about long into the future. He's talking about what happened then. He says not one stone of that rebellious, beautiful architectural glory called the temple was gonna be left upon another,

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Matthew 24, two. He says that false prophets and deceivers claiming to speak for God were gonna rise up and proliferate in that first century, and Acts chapter 5, 35 through 37 confirms it.

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It was happening. Luke tells us that there were two false prophets that were mentioned there,

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Thutis and Judas. You can look it for yourself. But false prophets were happening early in the church.

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Here's another one. This was an era of peace that was known as the

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Pax Romana. Maybe you've heard of it. Now, this is an era that's really unique in human history. Jesus told his disciples that this peace was going to break, that wars and rumors of wars were going to come in just before Jerusalem's downfall,

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Matthew 24, six. And you might be thinking, well, that's really not that special because there's been wars and rumors of wars in all history.

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You're right. You're right. I've heard wars and rumors of wars my entire life.

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My grandparents, my great -grandparents, go all the way back to the time of the first century.

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There's been wars and rumors of wars. This is not a special sign of any time other than one.

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You see, for about 100 years, Rome had actually accomplished what no other empire had.

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They had brought peace on the Roman world so that Jesus' disciples had never heard of war.

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They had never heard of a country going to war with another country. Now, they had heard about it in the scriptures.

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They had heard about it in the battles of Judah or Israel and the Philistines.

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They had heard about it in the conquest of Canaan. They hadn't heard about it in their life. So when

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Jesus says that you're going to hear about wars and rumors of wars in your lifetime, that would have been astonishing to them because they didn't know what that was like.

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They hadn't heard about wars their entire life like we have. So that symbol, that sign was meaningful to them.

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And right before the Jerusalem invasion, it came true.

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At that time period, you had the Roman Empire plunged into civil wars. There was this era of three emperors that rose and fell really quickly.

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They were all assassinated. Otto, Vitellius, and Galba, three emperors who came one right after the next.

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The empire was plunged into civil war. The line of the Judean -Claudian dynasty, which was

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Julius Caesar, Octavius, all that, that line ended in the first, in like the 60s

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AD. Nero had killed himself. The empire was plunged into chaos. Civil wars abounded.

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And the Jews all throughout the Roman Empire were looking with great rapt attention saying, what is going on?

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Even the Roman historians, Tacitus and Suetonius are saying that they thought that the

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Roman Empire was done when Nero killed himself and plunged the empire into absolute chaos.

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And war after war after war was happening inside the city of Rome. Tacitus says that he thought that the empire was done.

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He thought that it would not recover. That is what precipitated the war on Jerusalem.

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And a fun fact of history, the guy who was leading the war in Jerusalem in 68 when

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Nero killed himself, and you have Otto, Vitellius, and Galba, and all that, that guy, Vespasian, who was the general in charge of the

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Jewish conquest, is the guy who goes to Rome to become its new emperor and create a new dynasty, the

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Flavian -Vespasian dynasty. That's not inconsequential. Jesus predicted all of this 40 years before it happened.

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Again, none of this was typical for that period of time, but it came true by Jesus's prophecy.

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It was fulfilled in their lifetime. Now, there are other tremendous signs and terrors that Jesus promised were going to unfold, like famines that were so great that they would extend over the entire

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Roman empire. The book of Acts tells us about an empire -wide famine that people thought that it was going to absolutely crush the empire.

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It was astonishing that something like that, so great, had happened. The prophet Agabus actually predicts that those things will happen.

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And then you have the famine that happened to the city of Jerusalem that was so severe that the women were cannibalizing their own children.

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You had earthquakes. Jesus says earthquakes were going to happen as well, violently shaking the cosmic order, which happened during the crucifixion, which happened during the resurrection, which happened when

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Paul and Silas were freed from the Philippian jail, the Acts 11 -28, Acts 16 -26,

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Matthew 27 -51, Matthew 28 -2. All of these things were happening in that first century, and they happened according to Jesus's prophecy.

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The fledgling church, Jesus said, would not be spared from the tribulation of those days, but they would face violent hatred and persecution throughout the empire just because they loved

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Jesus, Matthew 24 -9. Yet before the time of Jacob's trouble had reached its ugly crescendo, the gospel of the kingdom would be preached as a witness of that kingdom in the entire

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Roman world, and it would penetrate every single synagogue in the Roman world through all the

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Diaspora Jews before the great tribulation would be poured out on Jerusalem, Matthew 24 -14,

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Acts 24 -25. Now, you think about it. This gospel proclamation of the message of Jesus, especially to the

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Diaspora Jews, revealed God's mercy and his grace and his love to his people before he destroyed the city of Jerusalem, which he could have based off of them killing his one and only son.

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Before he did that, he ensured that every living Jew in the Roman empire had heard the gospel through men like Paul, Silas, Barnabas, Timothy, Epaphroditus, all of them.

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They were taking the gospel to the Jewish synagogues so that the Jews would have the opportunity to either receive it or reject it before Paul or before Jesus would bring

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Jerusalem to a bloody end. That's why Paul can rightly say that the gospel went to the

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Jew first before extending to the Gentile, Romans 1 -16. Luke tells us that this actually happened.

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He says that the message that was being preached by Paul and the others was upsetting the Jewish communities all in the

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Roman empire as early as the mid 50s and as late as the 60s AD, that's

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Acts 17 -6. Romans 10 -18 says that that gospel was preached all throughout the Roman world. Colossians 1 -23 says that it was preached to every creature under heaven.

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So the gospel going forth into all the nations that Jesus prophesied, Paul says it was complete.

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The book of Acts says it was complete. It was only after this witness reached the ends of the

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Roman world, which Paul says that it did, and only after the full number of elect Jews from all the volatile parts of the

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Roman empire had come in that the prophesied abomination of desolation would appear, desecrating the temple in the mid to late 60s.

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It was that final blasphemy, whatever it was in Matthew 24 -15, that was the ultimate sacrilege that showed the

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Christians who were still living in the city that they needed to get out. They needed to urgently flee to the surrounding hills as the unstoppable

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Roman armies would soon be coming and encircling them and tightening their noose around their neck,

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Matthew 24 -16, Luke 21 -20 -24. The first century historian,

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Flavius Josephus provides eyewitness confirmation that this mass Christian exodus actually occurred before the

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Roman siege. He tells us about that in the Jewish Wars, book two, chapter 19, paragraph seven.

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Now, apparently the Christians took Jesus' words in Luke 21 absolutely seriously. They didn't say, oh, well, that must be to a generation who are living 2 ,000 years from now or 2 ,100 years from now.

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That's clearly not gonna happen to us. No. When they heard Jesus say, you must flee, they thought that he meant that they were going to face tribulations and the sign that it was time for them to leave

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Jerusalem, to stop telling the Jews the gospel, to stop trying to convert them.

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Many of them had already sold their houses, Acts 2, and they were using the money and the resources that they had to tell their

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Jewish neighbors, their Jewish friends, their Jewish family to repent for the kingdom of God has come. It's come in Christ.

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Leave your sin and come and know Jesus. And Jesus told them, you can do that.

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Continue to do that. Do that. But when you see the abomination that causes desolation, flee, get out.

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Don't go to your rooftop to get your coat. Don't go get something else that you needed.

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Run, because the time of the great tribulation, the period of great tribulation had come, and it would be unlike any other period in human history where God would so viscerally destroy a people as much as he did in that AD 70 attack by Rome.

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I encourage every Christian to read Josephus' Jewish War. I encourage you to read it, to wrestle with what

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Josephus is saying. He's an eyewitness testimony to the kinds of horrors that were happening in the city.

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And if you made it into a movie, it would be so graphic that no one could actually watch it. Whatever rating

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NC 17 is, it would be higher than that. It is astounding and awful what happened to the city because they betrayed their covenant

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Lord. Deuteronomy 28, Leviticus 26 was being poured out on them.

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God's wrath was exploding upon them for not only killing his Messiah, but for killing his people, for terrorizing his bride,

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Matthew 24, 21. The way that the Lord likened this city and described this city at the end of Matthew 24 tells the entire story.

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He says that this city is gonna be filled with rotting corpses. The city is gonna be circled by rapacious vultures who were waiting just to feast upon their flesh that was baking in the

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Judean sun. Famine and rampant bloodshed had left a pile of decomposing bodies strung throughout the streets and the city squares.

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And the stench of death was wafting its way up towards heaven so that these carrion birds came and feasted upon their grisly remains.

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Matthew 24, 28, Luke 21, 28. That sort of visceral historical detail that I'm giving you shows you that Jesus's prophecy came true.

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It's the greatest prophecy of any prophecy that's ever been given. And it came true with astonishing clarity.

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And at the end of it, this is where many people get confused where Jesus says the sun's gonna go dark, the moon's not gonna give its light, the stars are gonna fall out of the sky.

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Jesus is just quoting from the Old Testament there. He's not saying that you need to listen to Tim LaHaye and whatever that Hege preacher's name is who always talks about blood moons, that one day there's gonna be a blood moon and there's gonna be this and the stars are gonna come out of the sky.

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That's not what Jesus is talking about. He's using apocalyptic imagery from the Old Testament to depict the fall of Judah.

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He's speaking about cosmic disturbances in the heavens that are demonstrating the downfall that's happening here on earth.

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If you remember in the book of Genesis, I have to say this quickly, because we need to keep moving. In the book of Genesis, God installs the heavens, the sun, the moon and the stars to be rulers over the sky.

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He installs man to be a ruler upon the ground. Whenever the rulers in the sky refuse to give their light to the rulers that are on the ground, something bad is getting ready to happen.

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The powers of God are upheaving nations. And that's exactly what Jesus is saying.

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He's quoting from Joel chapter two. He's not inventing new material.

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He's quoting something old in Matthew 24, 29 through 31. That's the exact same language that God uses all throughout the

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Old Testament to describe the downfall of Egypt. He says, the sun's gonna go dark, the moon's not gonna give us light, the stars are gonna fall out of the sky.

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He says that God's gonna come in the clouds against Egypt. So that's already happened. In the downfall of Tyre, in the downfall of Babylon, in the downfall of Syria, in the downfall of Eden, in the downfall of Judah, all these nations, and there's like seven examples of it in the

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Old Testament. Ezekiel 32, seven through eight, Isaiah 13, nine through 10, Joel 2, 30 through 31.

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I can keep going. Those examples are times when God says, the sun is gonna go dark, the moon's not gonna give its light, the stars are gonna fall from the sky.

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So do we believe that the sun literally stopped giving its light seven different times? That the moon turned to blood seven different times?

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That the stars fall out of the sky seven different times? Or do we see that Jesus is using apocalyptic language?

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He's using the language that his people would have understood. When he said the sun's not gonna shine, the moon's not gonna give its light, that he's gonna come in the clouds of heaven, his people knew what he was talking about.

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He was going to shake the heavens and shake the earth and destroy the people of Judah.

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And he's going to use every kind of language and every kind of genre that he has at his disposal to describe it.

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Which means that he's saying that the interpretation is absolutely going to happen.

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The Jewish nation that was horrifically complicit in killing their king was gonna experience earth shattering, world altering events that would be signaled in the heavens.

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And those events were that Christ was going to eliminate a rival temple so that he could be the only place on earth where people get to know

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God. He was gonna put away the false religion of the Judaizers and bring about true gospel worship.

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He's going to clear the path for the church to be the unrivaled pathway where people would get to know

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God. You no longer have to pilgrimage to Jerusalem to see the smoking pile of rubble. Now you go directly to the

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Rock of Ages through belief in Christ and Christ alone. He defeated his greatest foes when he came.

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Do you see the war that Jesus is bringing? He brought war upon Satan and his demons. He brought war upon the old covenant system that was a rival system that the

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Jews white knuckled and refused to believe in him, refused to come to the wedding party, refused to worship

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Jesus. They were holding onto their pictures and their types and their symbols. Instead of worshiping him, he got rid of that old covenant system.

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He went to war against the people who rejected him, who preferred that old covenant system. And now

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Jesus is gonna empower his disciples throughout all the ages of the church to bring his victory to every nook and cranny left on earth.

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The torch passed from the Old Testament guard to the new apostolic company that would blaze to the glory of God until every square inch of earth was filled with the light of Christ.

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That is what Jesus is doing in his life, in his ministry, and in the war that he was bringing.

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Phase four, blessing the church and spreading his kingdom. Now from the ashes of apostate

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Judah, Christ sent forth his church upon the world, slowly but surely, as a young little church.

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No more temple is competing with them, no more priesthood, no more. They have the truth. They are going to bring the truth slowly but surely to all the nations so that they can welcome all of the nations on earth to be a part of his newly wedded bride,

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Luke 24, 47. Having routed the greatest enemy, Jesus, our risen commander, lavished incomparable blessings upon his apostolic battalion.

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He told his apostles that the very keys of the kingdom of heaven had been given to the church. They're the ones who are gonna bring his authority on earth as it was in heaven.

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Matthew 6, Matthew 16, 19, Matthew 18, 18, Matthew 28, 18 through 20.

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Christ's commands and his blessing would be ours. Jesus was telling them wherever they gather on the

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Lord's day, wherever they gather in worship, his resurrected presence is gonna be in their midst.

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He's going to temple with them. Remember, the temple is where the presence of God is in the old covenant. Now, everywhere the church gathers, a temple has been set up on earth where the nations can come in and they can come in and see the glory of Christ.

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Matthew 18, 20, which makes the church the very temple of God on earth. He gave his authority to his people, to his church.

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He sent them out into all the nations to make war with the devil, to make war with the principalities and powers, to make war with those who refuse to trust

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Christ. And the war that we have is by preaching the gospel of peace. Matthew 28, 19 through 20, 2

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Peter 1, 2 through 4. When the church advances with the indwelling power of the spirit of God, the gates of hell fall down,

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Matthew 16, 18, which means that we've been called to make war with a world that is still apart from Christ.

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The forces of darkness are put to flight when we advance, Mark 16, 17 through 18, which means that this ordinary little gaggle of misfits called the church has received the permanent indwelling of the helper who is going to lead them into all truth and bring them into the world to declare the victory of Jesus Christ, John 14, 16 through 17,

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John 16, 13 through 14. In their lifetime, in the first century, the canon was complete, the scripture was finished, leading them on mission far more extensive than Jesus even demonstrated in his own lifetime.

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Jesus went to Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, and Galilee. Jesus told his disciples that they were gonna do greater things because he intended for them to go and build that same kingdom upon his foundation because he's the cornerstone across every nation, every tribe, every tongue, every nation, so that his reign and his fruit would come to every continent, county, commonwealth, country, and city on planet

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Earth, John 15, 16. He told us that we would be anointed with power from on high,

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Luke 24, 49, that this fearless battalion, not fearless in our own strength, but fearless because we know

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Jesus, i .e., look at Peter and how he denied Jesus before the Holy Spirit came upon him, and then look at the lion -hearted

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Peter preaching the gospel at Pentecost after the Spirit came upon him. The Spirit's gonna come upon us with power,

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Luke 1, 8, and we're going to take the kingdom of Christ to a world that still needs to hear it, and it's gonna be like a mustard seed growing into a towering tree over time, eventually bringing all of God's predestined people, red, yellow, black, white, all of them that are precious in his sight coming under the canopy of his lordship,

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Mark 4, 30 through 32, Luke 13, 19. Like leaven, it's going to leaven the entire lump.

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This revolutionary kingdom of Jesus is going to create a spiritual reaction in the world like leaven does with bread, and it's gonna turn this lumpy world into the world that Jesus envisioned, into the world that God commanded in Genesis 1, 28.

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No one is gonna be able to resist this over time. It's not like the leaven works its way into half the lump and then stops.

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No, it's going to work its way through the whole lump, and that truth is as sure as the rising sun is and the waxing moon is.

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Jesus is going to win. His death, he says, was the seed that fell to the ground so that when he died, he could have a never -ending harvest from every tribe and tongue and people,

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John 12, 24, where he draws all people to himself, John 12, 32, like Revelation 7, 9 also says.

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He's the living vine that we are now cultivated into his true branches.

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Christ's church is hardwired for multiplication. He says that some are gonna produce 30 -fold, some 60 -fold, and some 100 -fold.

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Multiplication is what the church does. We don't lose down here. We multiply down here until there's nowhere else to multiply,

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John 15, 5. Since Christ conquered death and since he crushed his insurgent enemies and he equipped his church with heaven's full authority, his kingdom can do nothing but win.

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All we are going to do is over time win. That doesn't mean that there's not gonna be temporary setbacks and there's gonna be temporary defeats.

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That's gonna happen. But when you look at the totality of church history, from 12 to 2 billion is a lot of winning.

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And I think if we last 2 ,000 more years, you'll go from 2 billion to 8 billion or whatever it is, and you'll see a whole lot of winning.

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The earth is gonna be overwhelmed by the victory of Christ until he is made all in all, until the glory of God covers the earth as the water covers the sea.

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1 Corinthians 4 .20, 15 .25, 15 .28, Habakkuk 2 .14.

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The earth is gonna be overwhelmed by the one who is all in all.

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And he is going to win. Part five, Christianizing the world.

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Now, as the church faithfully carries out Jesus's great commission, the gospel is not merely going to save individuals.

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We don't take the gospel to every person on earth. It says to take the gospel to every nation, which is bigger than just individual people.

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It's going to reshape entire societies from the inside out. Wherever the truth of God's kingdom takes root, it's going to challenge and transform the core identity, value and beliefs and practices that form the foundation of human civilization,

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Luke 13 .20 through 21. Like yeast permeating the lump, we talked about this earlier, the presence of spirit empowered communities are going to catalyze cultural renewal on a corporate scale all over the world.

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That means that ancient pagan practices and idolatry are going to be abandoned as the church expands.

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That means that systems of exploitation and injustice and oppression are going to give way to the gospel's reality of sacrificial love, mercy and human dignity.

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The church is the only one who really has the answer for human dignity. Seculars don't, they kill their babies and they kill their old people in nursing homes.

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They don't have the answer to human dignity, the church does. There's no sphere of society that's going to remain untouched by the transforming power of Christ.

01:00:00

Education, what a dumpster fire in our culture, education is. It's owned and ran by idiots.

01:00:07

And not just regular good hearted idiots, but morally degenerate idiots.

01:00:13

The gospel needs to go there and the gospel needs to reclaim education so that no longer is it a woke indoctrination camp, but it's a place where the knowledge of the glory of God comes to our children and prepares them for life in the kingdom of God.

01:00:29

And I'm not just talking about things that should happen, I'm talking about things that are going to happen. Because if he takes over the entire world, the pink haired lesbians who are teaching your second graders are not going to be there forever.

01:00:41

They're going to be replaced. Now, maybe not in our lifetime, but they're going to be replaced eventually so that education is reclaimed for the glory of Christ.

01:00:50

It's going to be based on his wisdom rather than the wisdom of human philosophers and speculation and wokeness and whatever else.

01:00:57

Corrupt power structures that dominate our government are going to be reformed rather than being ran off self existing pride.

01:01:04

The morons, excuse me, but they are who are running Washington right now are going to be replaced.

01:01:10

The bumbling idiots that we have standing in front of the camera who can't even string two sentences together without forgetting where they are.

01:01:17

I'm talking about our president. Sorry, but not sorry. They're going to be replaced by people, by men who love

01:01:24

Jesus Christ. Maybe not in our lifetime, but Christ is going to bring Christian kings and Christian princes all over the world as his rule and his government.

01:01:34

No, no end. That's Isaiah chapter nine. The arts are going to have a revival.

01:01:41

So there's going to be a renaissance in art so that now Christians are the ones making beautiful music like they did when

01:01:46

Handel and Bach and Beethoven were around. Christians are going to be on the forefront of technological advances.

01:01:53

I think Christians should be making technology in this world. Why? Because do

01:01:58

I trust technology in the hands of people who don't have the spirit of God? Do I trust people who make vaccines because all they care about is the

01:02:05

God of mammon, the God of money? I'm going to say this. I didn't take the jab because I don't trust our medical institution.

01:02:13

But if Christians were in the medical industry and they were the ones who were coming up with things that were going to bring life instead of bring death, if they were the ones who would shut down the abortion mills so that we would no longer have the stench of death wafting up to heaven like Jerusalem of old, if we would be the ones who would create technologies that would bring life on earth instead of death, can you imagine what kind of place that this would be?

01:02:36

And we have, and we've done that before. You don't have to wait for someone to give you permission to go serve

01:02:43

Jesus in your industry. Be the hardest working person at your job. Be the most innovative, be the smartest, be the one who studies the hardest, be the one who brings the glory of Christ into your industry.

01:02:54

Don't accept mediocrity and defeat. Don't accept that, oh, I'm a Christian, so therefore that means that I can't really work hard or else

01:03:01

I have idolatry. Bring Christ into your work. Bring the gospel into your home.

01:03:06

Bring it everywhere that the darkness is still found. And we will see the glory of God radiating across this planet once again.

01:03:14

Economic principles need to be altered. They need to be uprooted so that generosity and diligence and care in the poor can be taken care of in the kingdom of Jesus.

01:03:25

Our IRS code is foolishness. Christians can do way better than that.

01:03:32

So that we have a just system of economy so that it's not all about the almighty dollar, so that it's not greed and materialism that's abounding in our day.

01:03:42

Christians ought to be involved in economy. We'd be involved everywhere. The gospel reshapes the very fabric of our society, of our family life, of our marriages, of our parenting, of our gender, which there's only two according to God's creation and his design.

01:04:00

In homes, they are transformed by Christ when husbands and wives lead their children in family worship, where they teach them that they are co -heirs of the grace of life, 1

01:04:11

Peter 3, 7, where children are no longer just commodities, but are treasured gifts. They're quivers in the arrow of a godly man.

01:04:18

Ephesians 6, 4, where men lead not through brutality, but through Christ -like sacrificial love for their brides.

01:04:25

Ephesians 5, 25, where the world witnesses a revolutionary counter -cultural model for how to do life and how to do human relationships and how to do everything.

01:04:37

Over the last 2 ,000 years, there has been incredible momentum from Christians doing godly things in the world, and our society is in a period of time where we have squandered their legacy.

01:04:51

It is time for us to reclaim the mantle of vibrant Christian life and to live it to the glory of God in everywhere

01:05:01

Jesus calls us to, so that the peoples will become Christian.

01:05:06

So that the world will become filled with the knowledge of the glory of God. So the entire people groups and entire civilizations,

01:05:14

Matthew 28, 19 through 20, will know God and will know how to obey Jesus to the glory of God.

01:05:21

The idolatrous pantheons of the Greco -Roman world and the idolatrous pantheons of Wall Street and Hollywood and everything else need to bow the knee to the supremacy of King Jesus, 1

01:05:36

Corinthians 8, 5 through 6. Tribal codes need to be displaced by the perfect law of liberty, by Christ's righteousness in his kingdom ethics,

01:05:46

James 1, 25. Old establishments of tyranny, depravity, spiritual darkness are progressively being dismantled as redeemed nations are reconstructing their beliefs and their behaviors and their society based off of heaven's laws.

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I think the law of Christ, I think the law of the Bible needs to come into our land. Do you trust our sinful law that's been saturated with human greed and pride that it can bring more life than the law of God?

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All of these things need to be reformed and redeemed, Isaiah 60, verse 12, Revelation 11, 15.

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Brothers and sisters, we don't have to wait to be faithful.

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We can be faithful today. And your faithfulness will help build the kingdom that Christ has called you to build.

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If you wanna see evil flee, stand up and pursue it. They are a paper tiger.

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They growl really loudly, but they have no power. You know, when

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Jesus came, the demons fled from him. Satan himself was crushed by him.

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This roaring and powerful lion that's roaring and seeking whom he may devour will flee from the

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Christian when they resist him to his temptation, which means brothers and sisters, the devils of hell, the world and the flesh must flee when the church advances.

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That means that the craziness of our society that we see today is only temporary.

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And it can be pushed back if the church, if the church would just be the church.

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Conclusion. The cosmic battle rages on.

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From the shores of Galilee all the way down to our time today, the invasion has come and it's been reclaiming this fallen world for the last 2 ,000 years.

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His advent, as we said before, was the D -Day where it brought heaven's liberation to the tyranny of sin, to the death that we've experienced and to this world that was bound by the strong man.

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And Jesus came to disarm him and to disarm the dark powers and to render judgment on the apostate

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Jewish nation and to bring his church. The same risen conqueror that brought his church has been advancing through his church century after century after century to make his triumph complete.

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Everywhere the gospel spreads, it dismantles the dominions of darkness and it establishes his new creation order and it brings his lordship into every sphere of life.

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Like leaven, the kingdom brings spiritual health and vitality to a sin -stained world.

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The only question now is will you get involved? The torch is passed to us, the revived company of Christ ambassadors, his end -time army, we're here.

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And we've been lavished with incomparable blessings in Christ, with every gift in the spiritual places, with weapons of warfare, the word, prayer, the gospel, the sword of the spirit.

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We've been given all these things. Will we advance? Will we take it into every sphere of society?

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The weapons of our warfare are not bombs and grenades like the petty kingdoms of this earth. No, our weapons are the means of grace, faithful evangelism, discipleship, participating in the sacraments, gathering on the

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Lord's day. Those are the weapons that send the terrorist, the spiritual terrorist, that send the pagans at flight.

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Those are the weapons that will send Jesus as king or will advance Jesus' kingdom to the ends of the earth. Brothers and sisters, the war for the world's soul rages on.

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Your commander, Jesus Christ, has called you to duty. He's told you to put on your uniform and to put on your armor.

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And when you will serve him in that way, you will see the enemies of God rendered helpless by the power of Christ.

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You will see the knowledge of the glory of God spread in your lifetime. My prayer is that the church would wake up and make war once again.

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Thank you for watching another episode of the broadcast. Thank you so much for watching another episode of the show of the broadcast.

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We are pushing near 800 subscribers at this point. Our watch hours are going crazy.

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I'm blown away by what God is doing with this show. It's a nerdy theological show that talks about eschatology and culture, and yet every week we're growing.

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We're growing by over 150 subscribers per month, which is crazy for a small little show like this.

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I just want to say thank you so much for watching. Thank you for participating, but don't just be a hearer of the word.

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Do the word. Do what Christ has said. And let's see Jesus' kingdom take back the little kingdom that all of our pagan underlords have built.

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Let's see him take it back and rebuild Christendom even better than before. God bless you.