107. How the Gospel of Matthew PROVES Postmillennialism

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Make no mistake, this isn't some temporary arrangement. This isn't an interim period of time.

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This is not an asterisk that we call the church age where the king is gonna allow a couple victories to happen and then everything's gonna go to hell in a handbasket.

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The world belongs to Jesus Christ. Hello everyone and welcome back to the broadcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf.

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This is episode 107, How Matthew's Gospel Proves Postmillennialism. Introduction.

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Well, before we begin, I just wanna say welcome back to another episode in our series called

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A Practical Postmillennialism where we're exploring the biblical case for the future end times hope instead of all of the eschatological defeatism and spiritual retreatism that you and I have been force -fed over the last century.

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Now on this show, we believe that the world will be conquered by King Jesus whose name will be lifted high above every name and that before this old world is finished, his kingdom is gonna come on earth in full as it already has in heaven.

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I want you to think about it like this. The Bible says that his name has power, that his name saves and that everyone on earth, every tongue on earth is going to eventually confess and bow down to his glorious name.

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But what is Jesus's name? Other than being the name that is above all names, what is his name?

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And maybe you're saying, well, isn't it Jesus? And you'd be right if we were speaking in English.

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But in Hebrew, his name is not Jesus. It's actually Yeshua, the same name that's given to the

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Old Testament conqueror named Joshua. And in that, we detect much of the purpose of Jesus and who he wants to be known by by his name because he's come as the true

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Joshua to completely conquer the land that the Lord his God has given him.

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And unlike Joshua and Joshua's Old Testament campaign, which ended in partial victory in the lifetime of Joshua and eventually morphed into ultimate defeat in the generations that followed, our conquering

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Lord will conquer until all of the pagans, all of the serpent lovers, all of the demonic driven hordes that are currently occupying planet earth are defeated and driven out of the land.

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So that by God's grace and the Holy Spirit's power and Jesus's great conquering commission, the world is gonna be filled with his people and no one else.

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Jesus took the name Yeshua because he didn't want his followers to misunderstand his mission. He is the conquering king.

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He is not an effeminate white European metrosexual donned in a Middle Eastern toga who looks lovingly at you with Fabio -like hair blowing softly in the wind.

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No, he'll break you in half. He's a warrior king in the line of David and in the ministry of Joshua. He is the one who will spiritually curb stomp all of his enemies until the leathery heel of his ferocious sandals has put down all of his enemies and he's piled up all the dead bodies before he has even stopped to take a water break,

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Psalm 110. Now, of course, this is not a picture of physical brutality or violence because the kingdom of heaven is not advanced that way.

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It's advanced by prayer and preaching the word and gathering on the Lord's day, taking the sacraments, making disciples and watching the spirit of God expand the church through these wonderful and spiritual means.

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But just because it's a spiritual kingdom does not mean that it has no effect in the physical world, in the realm of men.

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It will capture hearts, it will captivate minds, it will convert the masses and conquer the enemies of God and it will bring everything in planet earth under the

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Lordship of Christ until there's no more war, no more curse and eventually the final enemy is defeated before he returns and that enemy is death.

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Now, if you're new and you're wondering where we got such a glorious vision and such a ubiquitous picture of all that Christ and his kingdom are going to accomplish, well,

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I would recommend that you go back and watch the former episodes in this series. It's okay, pause this one, come back when you're ready, especially look at the ones where we develop a post -millennial view from the

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Bible. Now, when we say post -millennialism, we just mean that God is gonna have victory over the entire earth, that his kingdom is gonna expand until it's filled with worshipers.

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So we've developed that now over five or six different episodes. You can go back and check those out and come back to us when you're ready.

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Now, if you've been with us for some time, you'll know that we've made episodes on all of the biblical topics in the

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Old Testament. We talked about how Genesis proves post -millennialism, how the history of Israel proves post -millennialism, how the songs of Israel and how the prophecies of Isaiah and how the remaining prophets all tell one unified story of a world filled with worshipers coming under the lordship of our great and awesome king who's gonna crush his enemies, save his people, fill the world with his peace, glory, honor, and fame until the world is flowing with joyful worship, happy obedience, and the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.

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Now, while the Old Testament has laid the groundwork for that glorious vision, we now need to turn our attention to the

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New Testament. And we need to also demonstrate that the New Testament has this vision as well, that Christ and his apostles and the

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Holy Spirit who authored the Bible, especially as we're talking about the New Testament, is presenting a consistent narrative of Christ's victory to the ends of the earth, just as we learned in the

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Old Testament. So with that, let us turn our attention to the book of Matthew, the very first book in the

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New Testament, and that will be our focus for today, how Matthew himself proves post -millennialism.

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Introducing the book of Matthew. Now, before we begin and get right into it, I do wanna give a little bit of an overview of the book of Matthew because it is undoubtedly the most

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Jewish of all the four gospels. It's firmly grounded in Jesus's identity and his mission as the son of Abraham and the son of David.

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That's how Matthew begins. He begins with a genealogy, and the genealogy is really important.

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He establishes that Jesus is from the line of Abraham and David, which not only confirms

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Jesus's Jewishness and not only confirms that he's of the royal line, which is gonna make him king, which is what

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Matthew is gonna deal with, but Matthew also does this to show us that Jesus is the recipient of and the perfecter of all of the promises that God gave to those two great men.

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If you remember in the episode on Genesis, we talked about all of the promises God gave to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah.

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So Matthew's connecting Jesus to Abraham, saying that he is the one who's gonna bring about the promises given to him.

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Since every promise, or since God promised to bless all of the families on earth through the seed of Abraham, and since God promised to establish a worldwide universal reign through the son of David, and he's gonna establish a kingdom that rules over the nations of earth through this

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Davidic son, Matthew's beginning with the genealogy in order to alert you and I that Jesus is gonna be the inheritor and the author and the perfecter of these promises that were made to both men.

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Both, all the promises are gonna come about through Jesus. He's gonna be the true seed of Abraham, who blesses all the families on earth.

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He's gonna be the true seed of David, who sits upon the throne of his father, and he's gonna reign forever and vanquish all of his enemies.

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And if you're tempted to think that genealogies are unnecessary, I pray from now on that you'll think again.

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They're really important. Matthew uses this genealogy to showcase his post -millennial hope.

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Now, there's more going on in the book of Matthew that we need to talk about first. Matthew's gospel is the most kingly saturated gospel of all of Jesus' biographies.

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We're told that the long -awaited conquering king has finally arrived on the shores of this rebellious sphere.

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He's brought his godly and righteous campaign on earth to take it back from the clenches of the devil.

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Did you know that the word king shows up in the book of Matthew more than any other gospel combined?

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It shows up 73 times in this gospel, which trumps Mark, Luke, and John combined together.

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Matthew is focused on the kingship of Jesus, and that king is gonna come and invade this realm that fell to the clenches of Satan.

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That invasion is gonna happen in the first advent where Jesus is born in a manger, and his reign is gonna continue unabated until all rebellion is put down.

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He has come to claim God's long -awaited kingdom and to conform this world back into an

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Edenic garden state. Now, to see this in the book of Matthew, we're gonna look at many verses, and I've arranged those verses into basically five distinct sections.

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The first section that we're gonna explore is the nature of the kingdom as Matthew describes it.

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We're gonna see who this kingdom belongs to and what kind of people are gonna inherit this kingdom. That's gonna be our first section.

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In the second section, we're gonna talk about the proclamations of the timing of the kingdom of God. When does the kingdom of God come?

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Is it something that happens now in our lifetime, or is it something that's long -relocated into the uncertain future?

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That's not what we're gonna see. We're gonna see that the kingdom began during Jesus's lifetime, and it continues down to us today.

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That's the second section. In the third, we're gonna see what Jesus and Matthew teach us about the growth of the kingdom, like how it's like a tiny mustard seed that takes over the entire garden, or the most infinitesimal little yeast element that eventually works its way through the entire batch.

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Christ sows a seed into a field that's gonna be global, total, universal before the kingdom is finished.

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That's the third section. In the fourth section, near the end, we're gonna look at the authority and the mission of the kingdom.

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And we're gonna look at how the church has been called to be salt and light, how we are built upon the unshakable rock, which is

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Christ, and the church has been given the keys to the kingdom to open up the hearts of sinful men through the preaching of the gospel, through prayer, through obedience to the

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Great Commission, how the church has been given universal authority and dominion because we belong to Christ.

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Jesus is not gonna lose down here because his church is down here. That's the point that Matthew's getting at, that this king is gonna be victorious because he's put his church in charge of the world by the power of the

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Holy Spirit. Now, in the end, in the final section, where we're gonna wrap things up, we're gonna look at one of the most glorious passages in all of the

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Bible. It's a single line from the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray. Maybe you've prayed this prayer before.

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Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. We're gonna look at that prayer. And right in the middle of it is the post -millennial hope.

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It's one of the most clear and obvious passages in the Bible and maybe, just maybe, you've prayed it 100 times before and you haven't really thought about the totality of what it means.

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We're gonna look at that. And all in all, the vision that Matthew is setting forward, I pray will encourage you.

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I pray that it will cause you to embrace Jesus's victory and it will point you to the unstoppable power of God who will have dominion and will build his kingdom and we will not lose.

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Now, with that, I wanna offer you a line from the Princess Bride because I can't cover everything.

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I'm gonna say right now, like Inigo Montoya, let me explain. Nope, there's way too much.

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Let me sum up. That's what we're gonna do today. We're gonna sum up the post -millennial hope in the book of Matthew.

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And we will begin with section one, the post -millennial nature of the kingdom.

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Now, I can hardly contain my excitement as we jump into Matthew's gospel.

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It is beyond just being one of my four favorite gospels, you get the joke, Matthew puts the kingdom of Jesus on full display for all to see.

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Now, from the very opening of the book of Matthew, we see that this king has been born.

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He's born in a manger, he's born to rule and his reign actually intersects and irritates the current powers that be because the current powers that be have a stranglehold on power and Jesus is going to take it away from them.

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It's almost like instinctively, the miscreant Herod who was born of Edomite descent, he wasn't the true king, he wasn't the one who was born of Davidic line.

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When Jesus is born, he realizes that Jesus' kingdom is a threat to his kingdom on earth because Jesus is going to wrestle power from the pagans and he's gonna centralize power in his kingdom.

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So this maniacal Herod is in his palace posturing and seething in the final hours of his crumbling empire while the wise men are traveling from the east to bear gifts to the king, to celebrate the fact that this king was born in Bethlehem and that his reign is going to be an everlasting rule.

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So you have that juxtaposition right there in the very beginning of the book of Matthew where Jesus' kingship is threatening the powers that be and yet his kingship is welcoming all the nations on earth.

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So you get that right there in the very beginning of the book. You can also look at his baptism, which wasn't just hollow

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Jewish ritualism at the time. He was being baptized as the true Israel.

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He's the one who walked through the sea like Jordan and he did it faithfully whereas the

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Israelites didn't. He's the one who entered into the wilderness where he would be tempted unlike the

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Israelites who were tempted 10 times and failed 10 times, Numbers 14, 22. Unlike Israel, however,

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Jesus was successful in his baptism. He was successful in his wilderness temptation.

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Satan came and tempted Jesus too and he even offered him pathetically, I might add. He said, if you'll just bow down and worship me,

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Jesus, then I'll give you all the kingdoms of the world. The reason Satan offered

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Jesus all the kingdoms of the world was because he owned them because in Adam's fall,

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Satan became the king of the world. So Satan says, hey, I know why you're here, Jesus.

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You're here to take back the kingdoms of the world. So guess what? I'll give it to you. I'll give it to you.

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All you need to do is worship me. Obviously, Jesus rebuffed that ridiculous lie and he held fast to his fidelity to God but I want you to notice something.

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Satan offers Jesus the kingdom because he knew Jesus was coming to claim it and through obedience to God on the cross,

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Jesus actually did. He bound the strong man, he crushed the serpent's head and he took back control of the world.

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If you believe that Jesus did not come to be king of the world, then what do you do with Matthew 28, 18?

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Which says that, and this is after his resurrection, he says, now all authority in heaven and on earth belong to me.

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He's saying, I own the world. I wrestled it out of the clenches of the devil. Now it belongs to me and now throughout all of church history,

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I'm gonna take what's mine, I'm gonna take what belongs to me, I'm gonna take what I own and I'm gonna conform it to my plan and my image.

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Jesus bought Skid Row, as it were. The earth was basically a perpetual

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Compton. He bought it, he paid for it and now he's transforming it to where Compton no longer looks like Compton or modern day

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San Francisco. Does it look like modern day San Francisco? No, he's casting out the squatters and he is making it a beautiful garden paradise for his glory.

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That's what Jesus is doing. Matthew is driving home that point that the king has come, the king will conquer and the king will produce a world filled with worshipers and he's talking about that over every page of his book.

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At every point, he's talking about Jesus as the prophesied son of David, he's the king of the Jews, he's the heir who's gonna sit on David's throne, he's the seed of Abraham who's going to bless all the families on earth, he does this through his teachings, his parables, his miraculous works, he does that through all of the different things that he's doing in his gospel where Jesus is this long awaited king and he brings this long awaited kingdom back to the shores of men.

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In Matthew, that battle for the soul of earth began at Jesus's birth and that battle is gonna be won on the cross by Jesus and he's the one who's gonna take all his authority in heaven and on earth, he's gonna share that with his church and he's gonna commission his church to disciple the nations,

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Matthew 28, 19. He has brought a kingdom that God prepared before the very first photons were spoken to existence.

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He's the one who is bringing this predestined kingdom to ever hunt down and decimate this planet's darkness and he's gonna bring those who dwell in darkness into his marvelous light.

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Listen to this, in Matthew 5, Matthew 6, this kingdom is coming not for the high and mighty, not for the hoity -toity, this kingdom is coming for the poor in spirit, the persecuted, even the little children are gonna inherit the kingdom that Jesus is bringing,

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Matthew 5, 3, Matthew 5, 10 and Matthew 19, 14. Jesus declares that this light exploding kingdom is going to break out on this world of darkness.

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He's gonna elevate and privilege the one that the world despises and rejects, the culturally insignificant, the socially marginalized, the sick, the infirm, the unclean and the sinner.

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These are the very ones who are gonna be swept up into the kingdom and the jolly heights of Christ's kingdom culture.

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Even the weakest, the most vulnerable members of his empire are going to pry authority and power out of the hands of all of the most vicious pagans and rule.

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And they're gonna bring his rule on earth to the glory of God. The meek are gonna inherit the land, which means that Christian men are gonna be the ones who displace all of the

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Hitlers, the Pol Pots, the Stalins, the Bidens, the Pelosi's and the Trumps with his reign of iron, with his rod of iron and the serpent crushing power until the curse is no longer found.

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Matthew 5, 5, Revelation 2, 26 through 27 and Revelation 12, 5.

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Yeah, I said it. I'm saying that the rulers of this American empire will eventually be replaced by Christian men as the world is filled with Christian rulers because that's what

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Jesus said. The redeemed from every tribe, tongue and nation, the meek are gonna inherit the world.

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The nations are gonna stream joyfully into his kingdom, Matthew 24, 14, that Jesus is gonna repopulate the world as the seed of Christ instead of with the seed of the fallen

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Adam. Racism is gonna be eliminated in his kingdom, Matthew 12, 21.

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Classism is gonna be gone. Secular democracies and godless autocracies are going to fail under the ever expanding dominion of the sun.

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I mean, can you imagine what a sight it's going to be to behold as God by the spirit is drawing people from the east and the west and the north and the south into the kingdom of the beloved son?

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Well, Matthew 8, 11 and Matthew 28, 19, not only prophesy that but command that.

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No demonic opposition is going to triumph over Jesus' advance.

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Have you ever wondered why the demons come out with all their soldiers in the gospel? Well, it's like every page.

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There's some demon who's shrieking or some devil that's trying to attack Jesus and they fail.

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They fail. The demons had to obey him when he spoke, Matthew 8, 16.

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They ran from him in sheer panic off the sides of nearby mountain cliffs, Matthew 8, 32.

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They begged the son of David to have mercy on them like groveling peasants licking the mud off of his perfectly shined boots,

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Matthew 15, 22. Why? Because there is no power in heaven and on earth that can thwart the power of Christ.

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He had all authority over them. In his wilderness victory, he bound the strong man

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Satan, Matthew 12, 29, and he was sharing that demonic triumphing power, the power that triumphs over demons.

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He shared that with his church. He promised to his church that the gates of hell would not stand against us when we advance,

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Matthew 16, 18, which is far from the picture of eschatological defeatism that good but deluded men like John MacArthur herald.

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Make no mistake, this isn't some temporary arrangement. This isn't an interim period of time.

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This is not an asterisk that we call the church age where the king is gonna allow a couple victories to happen and then everything's gonna go to hell in a handbasket.

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The world belongs to Jesus Christ. Do you really think that he,

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Jesus, is gonna allow that cowering and squirming devil, the one who he crushed at the cross, whom he triumphed over in the wilderness, that he's gonna allow that pitiful and pathetic little beast to wrestle control of this kingdom back out of his solid, fearsome hands?

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I hardly believe that I should even dignify such a stupid and obvious question with an answer, but nonetheless,

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I will absolutely not. Matthew tells us that this king who owns the nations and will conform them to his will, his rule will go on unabated and nothing will pull that out of his hands.

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Section two, the post -millennial timing of the church age. The post -millennial timing of the kingdom.

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From the very first pages, Matthew pounds the glorious truth into our prefrontal cortexes.

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The long -awaited kingdom is not some far -off future reality, but it's an inaugurated reality that has exploded onto the scene at the coming of Christ.

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John the Baptist tells us this. He cries out thunderously, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,

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Matthew 3 .2. He's not talking about a kingdom that's way off into the distant future, but one that crashed into Judah like a tidal wave.

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It's not like people didn't notice it. It was there and it was at hand. It was right in front of their faces.

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When the king himself began his ministry, he took up the same refrain.

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He said the exact same thing as John the Baptist. He said, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,

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Matthew 4 .17. When he commissioned the 12 disciples to go out and herald this great kingdom, he told them, proclaim this as you go, saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand,

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Matthew 10 .7. At hand, at hand, at hand. The long -expected reign of the

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Lord has arrived. I mean, how much more clear could it possibly be? It's at hand.

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It's not at a distance. It's not at eons and thousands of years of way. It's not a mascot kingdom or a paper tiger that's gonna wither after a few good blast of nasal air.

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Matthew unmistakably cast this kingdom as an expansive, exponential, growing realm that began in the first century, that is gonna be boldly and unashamedly preached throughout the entire world as a testimony to all the nations,

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Matthew 24 .14, before we ever dare worry that the end of time has come.

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If it hasn't gone into all the nations yet, then stop packing your suitcase for an eschatological rapture.

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You've got work to do. Section three, the post -millennial growth of the kingdom.

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As we turn our attention to the divinely inspired parables in the book of Matthew, Matthew 13 especially, we find an embarrassment of riches, regarding the unstoppable expansion of the kingdom.

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These word pictures from the lips of our Lord leave no room for doubt. His reign will not stall out like an old engine.

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It is going to remain. It's gonna continue to grow like a mustard seed. It's gonna become a worldwide universal filling kingdom.

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In Matthew 13, 31 through 32, Jesus proclaims this. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field.

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It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it is grown, it is larger than all of the garden plants and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.

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Can you imagine something so infinitesimal, so easily overlooked and discounted as the way that Christianity began and yet it's growing into a towering tree that provides shelter and life for all of the birds of heaven.

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That's what his kingdom has done. Over the last 2000 years, it's grown from 12 people and 12 people that were all killed except for John.

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So you think about this really insignificant little beginning that the kingdom of God started with and now to see that it's 2 .5

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billion people, that it began in a manger, in a feeding trough made for pigs.

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It started with a carpenter's son in the most backwoods, podunk part of the

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Roman empire, which was Nazareth. And yet now it's a kingdom that's overshadowing the kingdoms of this world, that it's gonna continue to grow until it's filled the entire world with the domain and reign of Christ.

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It's exactly what the parable of the mustard seed tells us is going to happen, but it doesn't stop there.

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He goes on to say another parable, just in case we're confused about what a mustard seed is.

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He says, the kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour till it was all leavened,

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Matthew 13, 33. Again, another parable about a tiny little thing that eventually takes over the big thing.

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It works in an unseen sort of way, in a way that barely is perceivable. It's like standing outside trying to see if your grass is growing.

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It is, but you can't notice it. It takes a long time. It works itself out over periods of time.

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This organic life -giving enzyme called the leaven is gonna permeate and transform the entire lump.

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And just in case we're dull of head, the leaven is Christ, the lump is the world.

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He is going to take over the entire world. He's going to cause the entire earth to come under his rule.

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Every square inch of it is gonna be leavened by the reign of Christ. There's no stopping it.

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I don't know if you know much about bread. I don't, but I know this. If leaven gets in the bread at all, it will undoubtedly leaven the bread.

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It's not like you can stop the process once it started. Once that element has been injected into the dough, it's over.

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It's eventually going to be entirely leavened. Once Christ burst out of the grave, there was no stopping his universal reign.

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It may take time to work itself through the entire lump. It may take centuries.

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It may take millennium. It's 2000 years so far into that project. We have no reason to believe that somehow, some way leaven is going to stop being leaven.

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You would have to go against the laws of nature to think that a lump of bread will only be halfway leavened and then it'll just somehow stop.

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That's not how it works. Christ has started a process that will finish the world.

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You can believe that. This upside down supernatural kingdom is further captured in a third parable about the wheat and the tares,

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Matthew 13, 24 through 30, and also in verses 36 through 43.

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In that third parable, Jesus depicts his kingdom as a man who is sowing seed in a field.

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And the field is the world. The man is Christ. But an enemy comes in and maliciously sows weeds among the wheat.

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This is the parable of the wheat and tares. You may have heard it. Yet, instead of prematurely uprooting the weeds and damaging the wheat, the master

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Christ tells his servants to allow them to grow together until the harvest at the end of the age.

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Why? Because the tiny seeds of truth that are sown by the son of man will grow exponentially and they will end up overtaking and displacing the poisonous weeds before it is all said and done.

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Now, let me elaborate on that point a little bit more, just in case you think, as many of our Amillennial brothers do, that nope, there's a field, and that field is gonna have 50 % wheat and 50 % tare, and we can never, ever encroach upon those sacred polarities.

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There's a reason that the master lets them grow together, and it's not because he wants to keep a field that is halfway filled with tares.

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No, he lets them grow together because when the tares stay there, there are future offspring in the tare, in the actual reproduction of the tare that will be converted to wheat.

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Let me say it to you this way. If you have a family member, let's say a grandfather who does not believe in Jesus, they're tare.

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They're someone who is, unless the Lord redeems them, they're going to be ripped out in the end.

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And yet, if you are a believer, you're wheat. Do you see what

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I'm saying? In the line of a tare comes wheat. Jesus refuses to remove the tares in his field because there are future generations of wheat that are going to come from them.

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The kingdom is eventually, all the tares are going to eventually be replaced by future generations of wheat so that in the end, the entire field will be wheat.

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In the same way that God says that he could raise up children from stones, children of Abraham from the stones,

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Matthew 3, 9, he can also cause the spiritual seed of Christ to germinate and to spring forth even from the progeny of Satan's own children.

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The tares cannot permanently be rooted up because the kernel of the gospel that is going to eventually come into their family line would be disturbed and destroyed.

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So the wise farmer knows these things and he lets the tares alone, knowing that those families will also one day be converted.

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A stalk that appears as a tare in one generation may birth grandchildren of flourishing wheat in the next.

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So he leaves them, allowing them to reproduce seeds in his world to increase upon increase, generation after generation, knowing that eventually all of the tares are going to be overshadowed.

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I mean, think about the impatience, the incredible patience of our king. What magnanimous restraint to leave the harvest until its totality, declining to be rash, to uproot what he doesn't like today in order to have what he wants tomorrow.

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His vision is not like ours, myopic and focused on the minute by or second by second comeuppance in our world.

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No, he waits patiently. When the pesky tares have become little more than a long forgotten memory, he will have waited until his kingdom came on earth as it is in heaven.

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Your Lord designed his kingdom for exponential growth, for reproduction, for total field occupation.

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From the most miniature, obscure little mustard seed and the most infinitesimally small little leaven lump to the field that is planted with wheat.

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The word that has been planted within you, within this age, will achieve its total victory.

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The sower has developed an intricate, wise and fruitful plan for the end gathering of the nations and it will not be blotted out.

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So with that, I want you to take heart, my friends. Brothers and sisters, the field belongs to Jesus.

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And so the field will soon belong to none of those who reject him.

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And if those visions weren't clear enough, Jesus reserved some of his most sobering words for the tares called the

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Jewish leaders, for the ones who rejected him. Jesus told them, point blank, clear as day, if you're a tare, this is your future.

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This is what he says in Matthew 21, 43. Therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruit.

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If you're a tare, your days are numbered. Even the privileged nation,

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Judah, who was entrusted with the oracles of God, who witnessed the miracles of the

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Red Sea and of the plagues that came down and rescued them out of the stenches of the

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Egyptian empire, the Jews who knew the oracles of God would see the doom fall upon them in the year

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AD 70. While they held the old covenant kingdom close to their chest, white knuckling it with fear, forbidding the

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Gentiles from coming in, the son of God came to wrestle control of the kingdom out of their hands.

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He is now in charge. Like Donald Trump, he looked at them and said, you're fired. They were replaced.

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Now under the dominion of Christ, he indeed is gonna take his kingdom to all the tall and all the small and all the weak and all the wayward.

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And everyone in between until the world is finally and fully brought in.

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The wheat of Christ's reign are being distributed globally to everyone who has ears to hear.

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There's no ethnic or national barriers. Nothing is gonna restrain the increase of the

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Lord's dominion. Can you feel that? Can you see that? Do you comprehend the unstoppable momentum that Jesus is building?

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Good. Then rejoice in that. The kingdom of God has been planted as a seed on earth, and it will not stop until it is a towering, globally reaching tree under which all the nations on earth will be sheltered and blessed.

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Section four, the post -millennial authority and mission of the kingdom. Now if the parables alone were not enough to demonstrate the unstoppable advance of the kingdom of God, then our

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Lord's direct teachings to his disciples should utterly obliterate any remaining doubt.

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What I'm gonna tell you now is that Christ not only assured victory in his lifetime, but he also assured victory through the life of the church.

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Jesus was not the MVP who could win the game while he was in, but once he got hurt and killed, well, then the church went to hell in a handbasket.

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No, Jesus won the game and then installed his church through his spirit to advance his victory on earth.

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In the words that Jesus gives his disciples, we're gonna see that the church's full authority and optimistic mission are laid bare.

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In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declares to his followers, you are the salt of the earth and you are the light of the world,

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Matthew 5, 13 through 16. Do you see what Jesus is saying here? That we, the citizens of his kingdom, have been given the high calling of preserving that which is decaying and illuminating that which is darkened.

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Just like when you're in a dark room and you turn on the light, the darkness does not conquer the light.

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The light conquers the darkness. Jesus has called you to conquer the darkness in the same way that a, let's say, a lamb, you slaughter a lamb and your family has way more meat than it could possibly eat and you decide to save it.

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Well, in our day, we would refrigerate it. In their day, they would pack it full of salt so that it would preserve it.

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Jesus is telling us that the world around us is rotting and that if we wanna preserve it, then we have to be involved.

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We are not meant, as Christians, to merely hold the line or to eke out some kind of hidden, secretive, esoteric, remnant existence in the basements of our churches.

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No, we're called to radiate the brilliant light of Christ into every corner of earth.

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We're called to be the ones who chase the shadows out of the world, to chase the decay and the rot out of the world.

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We, through our faithful presence, are to hold back the putrid corruption that has infected cities like Washington and Hollywood and we are to bring the light where there is darkness and to bring the salt where there is death.

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That's the charge of the kingdom that Jesus gave us. We are not on defense. We're not on defense.

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I've lived in a church age in my lifetime, in 40 years that I've been living, where the church has been on defense.

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We've been sitting on our hands, we've been sitting inside our buildings, we've been doing church services, and that's great, but that's it.

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We have been entirely on defense instead of offense.

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We've been retreating instead of advancing. We've been in isolation instead of bringing the gospel vividly, boldly, and publicly to the nation.

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We, brothers and sisters, are not called to hide or to cover our lamp.

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Like Jesus says, don't hide it under a bushel. We're to let it shine like a city on a hill.

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We're to engage, we're to infiltrate, we're to transform every aspect of human culture and society until it all is salted, until it all is brightly lit with the glory of Jesus Christ.

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There is no realm, no sphere, no institution, no business, no city, no government that's off limits from the expansion of his kingdom.

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If we are salt and we are light and we live in the city on a hill, we have to shine to all the darkened valleys.

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Now, how can you be assured of such lofty claims? Because our Lord doesn't send us out like Jehovah's Witnesses so that the entire family inside the home turns off the lights and hides.

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You're not the ones who are knocking on doors to ask census questions.

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You're not the spam caller that everyone ignores and avoids. No, he sent you out with the keys to the kingdom.

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No one else on earth has the keys to the kingdom, which Matthew 16, 19, but the church. The church has the keys.

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Everyone else is living in a world that is filled with locks and prison, and you and I have the key to unlock it.

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The same authority by which our king binds and looses in his authority and in his incarnation, when he did all of these things, he gave to the church.

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He promises to build his church upon the rock of his church, upon the little pebble of Peter and the apostles that is gonna come down to us.

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It's gonna be a little pebble that is a mountain that fills the entire world. Matthew is telling us, do you see what

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Matthew's communicating here? That the church has been granted the very keys to open and shut the kingdom of God on earth.

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The words that we preach open locks. The disciples that we make knock down gates, the visible and invisible doors of the hearts of men that we open through the preaching of the gospel is the kingdom advance that Jesus is talking about.

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It's not theoretical. It doesn't lack substance. It's not esoteric mumblings by Jesus.

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It is among the chief means that the Lord our God has appointed us to, to extend his sovereign authority and reign on earth as it is in heaven.

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We are not hollow vessels. We are not empty gongs. We are not pronouncing voided out proclamations.

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When we speak kingdom truth to a world filled with lies, we're paving the road for the gates of hell to be knocked down and the entrance of Christ's reign into every fallen crevice on earth.

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That is the magnitude of trust, responsibility and great commission that Jesus our

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King has given us. And why don't we see it? And why don't we do something about it?

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Why do we sit back and do so little? Why do we fail to see the unlimited scope and the confidence with which our labors are to be carried out?

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In the very next verse, the Lord doubles down. And not only does he promise that the church has the keys to the kingdom, he says, again,

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I say to you, when Jesus says that, he's saying, listen up, turn up your hearing aids. If two of you agree on earth about anything that they ask, it will be done for them by my father in heaven,

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Matthew 18, 19 through 20. The same thing Jesus said in the Sermon on the

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Mount when he said, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and everything else will be added to you.

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What he's saying is if you seek the kingdom, if you seek to advance the kingdom, if you agree on earth, then it's going to be done.

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I mean, why do churches not say, well, not in their prayer meetings and in their session meetings, and when the elders and the deacons get together, why don't they agree that the town that we live in is going to be our mission field and we're gonna take it over for the glory of Christ?

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Why don't we do that? Jesus says, if you agree about that on earth, it'll be given to you on earth. If you seek first the kingdom, then everything will be provided.

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Why don't we do that? Why don't we think about, well, you know, what's the next little program that we can start at the church?

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Why don't we advance on the earth? He told us to do that, and he gave us staggering assurances that it would happen.

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And I'm not saying it's gonna happen quickly, but if you think about the fact that 12 men took the gospel all throughout the

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Roman world and made disciples and made disciples and made disciples, that movement eventually toppled the

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Roman empire. It lasted as long as it did because it was as evil as it was, but it could not outlast the kingdom of God forever, and neither can

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America. The reason America is putrid and disgusting and broken is because the church has stopped advancing.

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The authority to bind and loose, to ask and receive, to tear down and to build up has been given to the church of God so that if we're not building, then the world is going to be collapsing.

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When Jesus said, all authority in heaven and earth has now been given to me and go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the

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Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I've commanded, and I am with you always, we can have supreme confidence that God is with us, that our

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Lord hasn't sent us out like sheep to be eaten by the wolves. He sent us out as his emissaries.

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He sent us out as wise builders to build upon the unshakable cornerstone, which is Christ. No mission could be more confident of success than ours.

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When he says that I will be with you always, brothers and sisters, let those words settle down in your heart and in your spirit and let them encourage you.

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We are not called to make a few clandestine converts and plant a few insignificant churches and hold fast in this agony of defeat, hanging on to our life raft like Leo DiCaprio until finally he falls down in the frozen waters below.

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That is not our mission. We've been commissioned by the unstoppable king to disciple, to transform, to populate the entire globe with the gospel of Christ, with disciples of Christ, from isolated communities to dense cities, from obscure tribes all the way to the halls of the worldly powers.

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There's no nation, no people group that is off limits for the advancement of the gospel. We are to penetrate everywhere and bring his gospel everywhere.

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The great commission is nothing less than a cosmic mandate to bring the world under the reign of Christ.

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That is the bold unbroken vision of Jesus and his apostles in Matthew. That's the earth shattering message that he gives to us today from Matthew 28.

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And it's the expectation that it's actually going to happen, Matthew 24, 14.

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So brothers and sisters, don't lose heart. Don't be intimidated by the immensity of the task.

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It might take another 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 years for us to accomplish it, but do your part today.

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And also don't be intimidated by how evil the world is. The world is as evil as it is because we have not advanced.

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The world will be healed of its evil. The world will be healed of its curse.

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The world will bow the knee to Jesus in the end as we finally and totally go forward.

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It is not by our strength that we do this. This is how the kingdom multiplies through the preaching of the gospel, through church services where we take the

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Lord's supper, where we proclaim the majesties of God, where we pray, where we bow our heads, where we eat and give thanks, and where we do everything we do to the glory of God.

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That is how the church advances. That is how the keys open up the locks in this old world.

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Remember, you and I are salt and light. When the road gets long, when your perspective gets lost, when you get a little discombobulated, remember the unstoppable nature of what

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Jesus is talking about in Matthew 28, 19 through 20. He has granted all authority and he has granted his presence to you to accomplish his mission.

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So raise up your sights, lift up your eyes, and look upon the fields which are already white for the harvest,

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John 4, 35. It is all his mission and he's called you to be a part of it.

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What a privilege that you get to be a part of the mission of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords so that every tribe, every tongue, and every nation will bow to him.

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So go forth and boldly proclaim the glorious vision, the ever -increasing kingdom that Jesus is gonna own the world.

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Go to your libraries where they have their drag queen story hours and tell them, this is not your library. This library belongs to Jesus.

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He has all authority in heaven and on earth, you don't. When they have their gay days in your towns or when they have, outside of abortion clinics where they murder children, take the gospel there and put it to them and show them.

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Bring the salt and bring the light and eventually they will stop and they will either be crushed by Jesus or they will bow down and worship him.

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But you have to bring the salt and the light. As sure as the sun rises, the knowledge of the glory of the

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Lord is gonna cover the earth as the water covers the seas. That's our mission, that's our calling and I'm calling you to be a part of it.

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I don't want our generation to be the silent generation that did nothing. When heaven and the eternal state, when we're all gathered together and we're talking about what happened in our generation, what we saw the

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Lord do, I don't want our generation to be the generation that did nothing.

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Section five, a post -millennial prayer. Now, as we draw to a close, we have surveyed the unstoppable nature of Jesus's kingdom and I hope that we've been encouraged in that.

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We've witnessed how it's arrived, we've witnessed the expectation of its exponential growth and the cosmic authority that Jesus has given to his church to advance it on earth as it is in heaven and yet our

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Lord has reserved for us one of the most thunderous, unmistakable revelations of his post -millennial agenda embedded within the

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Lord's prayer. It's so plain, it's so true, it's so inescapable, it's been repeated by untold millions of Christians throughout the centuries and yet I believe that it's often been recited mindlessly without grasping the earth shattering significance that it's talking about.

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I'm speaking about the words that our Lord himself taught us to pray. This foundational petition that lays the entire biblical vision for post -millennialism before us in a single majestic stroke.

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Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

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Thy kingdom come and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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Do you understand what Jesus is saying? Can you see past the numbing fog of our spiritual repetitions and our habits of praying this prayer?

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Can you look underneath the surface of this and see for a moment as clear as day what Jesus is saying here?

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The Lord commands us to pray for his kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.

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To come upon this terrestrial ball until it mirrors the perfect ceaseless obedience that is rendered to him in heaven.

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We are not to ask for a defeated kingdom. We are not to pray that we lose down here.

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We are to pray that the earth would come into conformity to Christ in the same way that heaven has.

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We're to cast out the serpent from this realm in the same way that Jesus cast him out of heaven.

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We are to bring the earth under the rule of Jesus in the same way that he is ruling heaven.

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We're commanded to pray and therefore to envision and work and cultivate a longing for the complete overthrow of sin on earth so that the monarch

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Jesus will reign from pole to pole, from continent to continent until he reigns over every nanometer of this planet just like he does in heaven.

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The significance of this prayer cannot be understated. There is no petition that is greater than that.

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It's the very centerfold of the Father's priorities. It's his first order of business and his command on how we are to dialogue with him.

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He has called us to pray that the kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven.

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I can't think of a more clear passage for the post -millennial hope. Why else would he have us pray in such glorious and unmistakable ways if he wanted everything to come crashing down and defeat?

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Why would he tell us to pray for an all -encompassing paradise on earth, obedience, peace, the governments of the world to be sanctified and brought under his authority and power?

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Why would he tell us to pray such a expansive vision, especially using the present perfect tense as it is in heaven, if that were not the already accomplished reality that he was asking for us and commanding us to pray for and participate in now on earth?

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The words of this prayer are not chirpings or wishful thinking. They're not eschatological fantasies.

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They're a very calibrated revelation that our Lord has told us to pray. In Eden's tragic garden, it seemed like everything was lost.

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Now Jesus is telling us to pray that everything will be found. It's a mandate as old as the curse itself.

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It's a prayer that now we're praying to see the dominion of the serpent be crushed totally under the authority, the seed of Christ.

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The meek will at last inherit this earth that has been purged into ruin.

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It is a consummation that is coming on an earth that fell into ruination. Jesus told us to pray this prayer.

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Do we pray it? And when we pray it, do we pray it thoughtfully? Do we pray it knowing that he will have dominion?

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That's what the book of Matthew is all about. Conclusion.

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Brothers and sisters, I wanna thank you so much for watching another episode of the podcast and for joining us as we've been going through the

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Bible and talking about the post -millennial hope. The gospel of Matthew resounds with the resplendent declarations of the promises of Jesus as King, how he's gonna claim the world as his rightful inheritance.

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May that message inspire you and fill you with faith and embolden you with hope and stir an unquenchable longing inside of your soul for you to get involved in the kingdom of God.

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The coming day will be here, will be here one day when the whole world has been made under the rule of Christ.

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My prayer is that you would participate. My prayer is that you would have crowns and jewels to lay at the feet of Christ because of your faith and because of your courage.

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This is not a fleeting dream and it's not a farcical myth. These are the conquering words of a conquering

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Lord and I encourage you to be the soldiers of Jesus Christ, to be faithful citizens in his ever -expanding kingdom, to live out the victorious reality every day.

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Everywhere you're tempted to see defeat, proclaim the victory of Christ in your home, in your parenting, in your marriages, in your work, in your driving, wherever the curse is found, you bring salt and you bring light and you bring hope and you bring

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Christ. Wield the keys that Jesus has entrusted you, bind and loose what can be bound and loose.

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Throw open every door for the King of glory so that he may come in and take heart amid all your trials, amid all your conflicts, amid your depression and your anxieties, submit it to the

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Master because the Master that you serve isn't simply winning minor skirmishes but he is methodically claiming the entire earth as his own.

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In the days ahead, we're gonna continue this theme, we're gonna continue going through the rest of the Gospels and the letters of Paul and then the other epistles and maybe we'll even dive into the book of Revelation but that might be a longer series.

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But until then, be of good cheer. You are more than conquerors because of him who loved us.

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There is nothing that can separate you from the love of Christ so therefore brothers and sisters, be of good cheer and go and serve your