Astonishment is NOT Enough

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I want to invite you to open up your Bibles and turn to Matthew chapter 7.
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We're going to go together to verses 28 and 29.
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This will officially conclude our study of Matthews 5-7, which has been what we've been doing for over a year now.
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And I see no better place to preach from this morning as we are here.
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It's the Sunday before Christmas and we're thinking about Christ and the coming of Christ.
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And today we're going to look at the subject of being astonished by Jesus.
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Every year there is a large social push to put Christ back in Christmas.
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You'll see the posters, you'll see the Facebook messages and the emails.
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And while obviously that's a positive sentiment in a way, it's also one that has somewhat of a problem, because often it is being called for by people who do not have Christ in the other 11 months of their lives.
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They make a social fuss about this being Christ's season, Jesus' season, Him being the reason for the season, all the while not recognizing that He doesn't have a season.
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Jesus is not someone who deserves only a few weeks of celebration a year.
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He is not one who seeks those who would honor Him on occasion.
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The claims that Jesus makes about Himself are far too drastic to be relegated to one time a year.
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Yet for the majority of people this is the only time wherein His name comes up at all, wherein any celebration of Him comes up at all, wherein it's ever at all discussed about Jesus in the family or in the home or at the workplace.
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And I believe the reason for this is that we have in many ways lost the grandeur of Christ.
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We've moved away from the regality of Christ.
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We've stopped being astonished by Jesus.
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Were we to really understand who He is, we could no way relegate Him to only one day or one season in the year.
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If we were to see Christ for who He is, we could not stop celebrating Him all year long every day.
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So today we come to the last portion of Matthew 7, which stands as the epilogue of the Sermon on the Mount.
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Jesus has just completed His masterful message and His hearers are dumbfounded.
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They stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene.
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They wonder at His words.
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They marvel at His message.
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And my hope for today is this, that you too will stand amazed in His presence.
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So let's stand together and read God's Word.
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We're going to read Matthew 7, the last two verses, as the epilogue of the Sermon on the Mount.
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Matthew gives us this small addition to remind us and tell us how Jesus' hearers responded that day.
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It says in verse 28, And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at His teaching.
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For He was teaching them as one who had authority and not as their scribes.
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Our Father and our God, we come to You in Jesus' name.
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I thank You and I praise You that You have given me yet another time to proclaim Your Word.
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And I ask, Father, as sincerely as I know how, to please keep me from error.
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And I pray that You would open the hearts of Your people to the truth.
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And I pray that You would convict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted and use these words to draw people closer to You.
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For believers, I pray for closer walk.
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And for those who are unbelievers, I pray that they would be converted to the preaching of Your Gospel.
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For the Gospel is the power of God and the salvation to all who believe.
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And we rest on it in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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Many people have taken to wonder what it must have been like to live during the time of Jesus.
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And often we look at history through the lens of our own contemporary understandings and we kind of have a bad view of history, I think.
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I don't think we really understand a lot of what was going on.
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I think sometimes we say, man, Jesus preached this awesome sermon, the Sermon on the Mount.
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Why didn't people just begin to follow Him in droves? Why didn't He just inspire thousands? And what a masterful sermon this was.
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And shouldn't this have just created a massive following? How could anyone reject such a powerful message? And yet we forget that we're looking back at this sermon with 2,000 years of history under our belt.
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None of the people at the time of Jesus' preaching knew who He was, really.
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None of them knew that Christianity was going to become the largest professed religion in the world.
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None of the people would ever consider the fact that this man, Jesus, would become the name which is known more than any other name in history among people.
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None of the Jews who were standing by would have believed it if somebody would have told them that within one generation, the temple that they went to every year to worship was going to be destroyed and overrun, burned and sacked by the emperor Titus.
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They wouldn't have believed you if you'd have told them.
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So we look back with 2,000 years of history under our belts at the situation, and we sort of look at it anachronistically.
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We sort of read our lives into their life.
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But they did not have our context.
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To them, Jesus is another of many itinerant rabbis who is going around collecting followers and preaching.
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At this point in history, there were many people who were claiming to be the fulfillment of the one who would be called Messiah.
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At this time in history, there were many false teachers.
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And here is this man.
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He stands and he preaches this message.
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He proclaims this message.
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And the people say he is not like the others.
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And that's what we're talking about today.
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Because even though they'd heard all these itinerant rabbis, although they knew there were many guys going around claiming to have this authority, here was a man who exhibited it.
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And to them, it was an amazing thing.
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To them, it was an astonishing thing.
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It was a jaw-dropping experience.
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This is something we've never heard.
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And we didn't expect it out of this person.
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See, we expect that out of Jesus.
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We read the sermon.
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Oh, yeah, well, he's the son of God.
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Surely we should expect a powerful message.
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These people didn't know that.
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They didn't know who he was.
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They didn't know the power that he had.
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And yet when he preached, their mouths opened in astonishment.
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Because who is this? For our exposition this morning, I want to examine two concepts that we see brought out in this last epilogue of the message.
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In your outline in the back of your bulletin, it says, it has two blanks.
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I'll give them to you now.
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One, we're going to look first at the astonishing message.
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And then we're going to look at the authoritative master.
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The astonishing message and the authoritative master.
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And we're going to break down this epilogue and see what it was that was so amazing.
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So let's look first at verse 28.
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It says in verse 28, and when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching.
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That word astonished is it means to be amazed to the point of being overwhelmed.
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They were overwhelmed by his message.
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It literally has the idea of being struck with a blow.
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Punched in the face.
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Jesus hit them right on their spiritual chin.
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He gave them a religious gut check.
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Guys know what I'm talking about.
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And that's where it was almost as if they'd been hit literally with a punch to the face.
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But it was a verbal hit.
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And so they stood.
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Have you ever been punched, by the way? A lot of the guys in the room do this.
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A lot of the ladies might still do this.
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But you say, have you ever been punched in the face? You know, that feeling that you get right after you get punched? It's that that that awe and shock that something just changed.
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The relationship with this person just went to a different level.
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Well, that's what has happened.
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Jesus has has dealt them a blow.
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He's dealt a blow to their religion.
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He's dealt a blow to their self-righteousness.
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He's dealt a blow to their understanding of their faith.
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He's dealt a blow to it all.
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He has spiritually shocked them.
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And so they stand amazed, wowed.
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But what was it? What was it that was so amazing? What was it that was so astonishing? Well, this week I went back through the Sermon on the Mount.
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You know, we've been in it for a year and it's easy to forget things that you.
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Well, it's easy to forget things you did yesterday.
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I can imagine that forgetting things you did a year ago and the studies that we've done for the last year.
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It's easy to sort of let those things go out of our mind.
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But think about all the things that Jesus has said over the course of this sermon.
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And and we got it in a period of a year.
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These people got it in what could have been, you know, an hour message or two hour message as Jesus is preaching.
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We don't know how long it lasted, but we know this.
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They're absorbing all of this at one time.
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And he's challenged their self-righteousness.
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He said to them, you have you heard it said, but I say to you this.
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And he told them that anger and hatred was as serious as murder.
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He told them that lust is as serious as adultery.
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He told them that divorce is a sin and one that we should repudiate and regard as not something we should do.
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He told them that oaths are unnecessary, but that our yeses should be yes and our noes should be no.
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He told them that personal retaliation is unacceptable.
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And all of these things were strikes against what they had been taught because their religious teachers were teaching them the opposite.
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That's why Jesus kept saying, you have heard, but I say to you.
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So he confronted them on their understanding of righteousness.
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And at every turn, he said, you think this, but you're wrong.
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You think that, but you're wrong.
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He confronted their religious hypocrisy.
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He said, when you give, don't do it as a show.
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When you pray, don't do it so that men see you.
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Don't babble on like pagans thinking that your babbling is going to impress God.
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He said, when you when you fast, don't parade yourselves around as a religious person.
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Don't do your religious exercises as a show.
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And remember, who are the most religious people at this time? They were the Pharisees.
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And what did the Pharisees do with their religion? They put it on display.
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So if you wanted to be a religious person, who do you look to? You look to the Pharisees.
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What do they do? They put their religion on display.
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What do you think you should do? Well, I should put my religion on display.
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And Jesus says, no, that's wrong.
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He condemned their mistreatment of others.
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He said that they're not to judge others with unrighteous attitudes, but that when they do go to someone, they go to them in love and perform that spiritual eye surgery that we talked about weeks ago.
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And he said that we're always to treat others as we would want to be treated in the same situation.
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And he corrected their understanding of their destiny.
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He told them that not one of them would enter the kingdom of God unless they obeyed him.
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Now, you've got to think just how powerful that statement is.
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He said, you won't go to heaven unless you obey my words.
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Can you imagine a man? This guy, as I've said, he this guy is he didn't have 2000 years to back that up.
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It wasn't today.
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This is then.
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And he said, if you don't obey me.
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You will face me when you die, and many of you will say, Lord, Lord, and I will say to you, making himself the judge, depart from me.
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Imagine this.
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He's either the Lord or he's a megalomaniac.
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That's an important thing to consider.
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People say, oh, Jesus was a good teacher.
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No, he wasn't.
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He was either the Lord, the God of glory, or he is a megalomaniac because he considered himself to be the judge of all men.
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And if he's not, then he's a liar and he's crazy.
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That's serious to think about.
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People, Gandhi, I'm going to get to this later in my sermon.
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I might as well say it now.
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Gandhi talks about how much he loves the Sermon on the Mount, and he said that he read the Sermon on the Mount every day, that he meditated two hours a day, and he always read from the Bhagavad Gita, which is the Hindu scriptures, and he read the Sermon on the Mount, and that he said he saw so much comparison, so much that he loved between the two.
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But here's the problem, Gandhi.
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You don't believe that Jesus is Lord.
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You don't believe that Jesus is God in the flesh.
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You don't believe that he came to be the savior of all men.
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You reject that part.
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And guess what? You can like some of the Sermon on the Mount, but most of the Sermon on the Mount is absolutely opposed to what you believe.
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Because when Jesus said, I will stand as judge, I like what one of my friends in the ministry said about that.
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He said, in speaking of the issue of Jesus and his divinity, he said there's nothing ordinary about a man who claims that one day he will judge the world.
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If anybody came out among us today and said, I will be your judge, follow me.
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You would all think that he was crazy.
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Consider that.
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So Jesus is in the Sermon on the Mount making very powerful claims about himself.
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He's making very powerful claims about who he is.
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He talks about his purpose.
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What did he say his purpose was? It's in the Sermon on the Mount.
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I have not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill the law.
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You know, that's something Abraham couldn't say.
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Abraham didn't fulfill the law.
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Abraham lived prior to the law.
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But not only did he live prior to the law, he broke the law over and over.
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He lied.
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We know Abraham wasn't perfect.
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He lied about who his wife was.
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He lied about her being his sister so that he would keep from having to get himself killed because apparently she was so beautiful that no man could keep from her.
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So he had to lie.
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So he couldn't fulfill the law.
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Moses couldn't fulfill the law.
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Moses couldn't even make it into the promised land because of his pride, the Bible says that God kept him out of the promised land and he only got a chance to look at it because he could not keep the law.
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Moses couldn't fulfill the law.
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None of the prophets fulfilled the law.
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All they did was cite the law.
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And what did Isaiah say about himself when he saw God? He put his hand over his mouth.
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He said, woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips.
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I live among a people of unclean lips.
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I am terrible.
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I am worthy of judgment.
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That's the way the prophets saw themselves.
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They didn't see themselves as those who fulfilled the law.
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Abraham didn't see himself as one who fulfilled the law.
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Moses didn't see himself as one who fulfilled the law.
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But Jesus did.
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He said, I didn't come to destroy the law.
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I came to fulfill the law.
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I came to be the perfect example of law keeping and the only perfect example of law keeping in the history of man.
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Imagine the hubris.
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Imagine the pride of a man saying that if he wasn't God in the flesh.
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See, there's so much in the Sermon on the Mount that speaks to who Jesus is.
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And we read right past it.
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Jesus is proclaiming his own deity.
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He is proclaiming his own power and glory in the sermon.
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And we read right past it.
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But I don't think the people missed it.
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If they missed that when he said he came to fulfill the law, I don't think they could have missed the last few verses.
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When he said first, he says, I'm going to be the judge because many will come unto me on that day and say, Lord, Lord, proclaiming his title as Lord, many will come to me and say, Lord, Lord, and I will say unto them, I never knew you determining himself to be the judge, the one who will say I never knew you, the one in whom you have to have a relationship with so that you would be able to go to heaven.
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He determines himself to be that person.
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And then he says any person.
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Any person who hears my words and doesn't do them.
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Will be like a person who built his house on sand and when the winds and rains and the flood of judgment come, it'll wash him away.
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Notice he said on my words.
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Any person who's listened to me and doesn't do what I say.
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Will be like a person who built his house on the sand, but the person who does what I say is like a person who built his house on the stone, who built his house on the bedrock.
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And when the rains come and the winds blow and the floods roll in, it will stand because it's founded on me and my words.
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Do you see the power that Jesus is expressing for himself? This is amazing.
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This is incredible.
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If any normal human being were to say these things about himself, we find him to be out of his mind.
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But not Christ.
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But not Christ.
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Upon hearing what Jesus was saying about himself, the whole people gasped with astonishment and rightfully so, because what he said was astonishing.
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But verse 29 adds a commentary on that astonishment.
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It adds something to it because verse 29 says this about the authoritative master.
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It says, for he speaking of Jesus.
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Was teaching them as one who had authority and not as their scribes.
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Now, that word scribes there simply means teachers of the law.
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The people they were used to hearing teach Jesus wasn't like them.
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You know, the biggest difference between Jesus and them, all of the teachers that they were used to quoted other people.
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The rabbis in Jesus's day made their authority on the backs of older people who had authority before them.
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So the rabbi would be asked the question, well, what should we believe about this? And so and he would quote a former authority and he would say, well, Rabbi X said this and before him, Rabbi Y said this and before him, Rabbi Z said this.
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So we stand on the backs of these people and that's where we gain our authority.
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We we cite them and even the prophets cited.
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Think of the prophets.
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The prophet never came out and said, I say unto you what they say.
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Thus saith the Lord.
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They never quoted on their own behalf, they never quoted themselves, the prophets spoke on behalf of the Lord, the scribes and the Pharisees spoke on behalf of other scribes and other Pharisees and other rabbis.
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But Jesus says, no, I say to you.
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He spoke with authority.
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He spoke with a different authority than anybody had ever spoke with before.
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And no one since.
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In fact, Jesus repudiated all the other guys.
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He said they have said to you all these things and they're wrong.
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I say to you the truth.
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I speak truth to you.
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Jesus did not speak as simply a religious wise man.
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He spoke as one who had the authority to judge people.
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He spoke as one who he said men would stand before and be responsible for listening to his words.
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He understood his own authority and he saw himself as being one who there was an investment of authority in.
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Think about the way Jesus describes himself in Scripture.
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What's that? What's one of the most famous verses we use to prove that Jesus is the only way to heaven? John 14, six.
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Right.
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I am the way, the truth and the life.
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And no one cometh unto the father, but by me.
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Think of that.
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Just try to wrap your head around somebody saying that wrap your mind around someone uttering those words about himself.
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I've had people ask me, do you think Jesus understood he was God? First of all, how does God not understand he's God? But OK, well, I'll answer by saying this.
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Listen to what he says about himself.
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I am the way.
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I am the truth.
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Remember, old pilot had a problem with that.
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Jesus said, I came to bear witness to the truth and pilot said, what is truth? We don't know what truth is truth.
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That's that's that's that's in the eye of the beholder.
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It's like beauty.
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We don't know what truth is.
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But Jesus said, I am the way I am the truth.
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I am the life.
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Remember, John says in him was life.
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He gives life.
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And he said, and I'm the unique, only solitary way to heaven.
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No one comes to the father, but through me.
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Have you ever looked at the I am statements of Jesus? Listen to these.
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There are seven in Scripture, seven times Jesus uses the word I am.
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He says, I am the bread of life.
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John six thirty five.
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I am the light of the world.
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John eight twelve.
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I am the door.
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John ten nine.
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I am the good shepherd.
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John ten eleven.
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I am the resurrection and the life.
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John eleven twenty five.
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And I am the true vine.
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John fifteen one.
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I am.
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I am.
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I am.
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Jesus consistently and repeatedly expresses his own authority, power and divinity.
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I don't understand how these guys of other religions can say, oh, yeah, Jesus was a great prophet.
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If you don't believe these things about him, how can you say he was a great prophet? Most of them really don't believe it.
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Most of them say that simply to placate Christians.
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They really don't believe he was a great prophet or they don't believe he said these things.
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The Muslims would just say, well, he never said that.
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I want to show you one of the one of the things I think is the most amazing thing Jesus ever said outside of some of the more popular verses.
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This is one of the least less popular verses.
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But I think it's so amazing that we often overread it and don't think about it.
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Turn to John eight.
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Speaking of himself, John eight and go to verse fifty six.
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Jesus is having a confrontation with the Pharisees.
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And he says in verse fifty six, your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day.
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He saw it and was glad.
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So the Jews said to him, you are not yet 50 years old and have you seen Abraham? Now, before we go to verse fifty eight, just stop right there.
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And Jesus is talking to them.
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They're talking about Abraham being their father.
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He says, no, you're Abraham's not your father.
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You're of your father, the devil.
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If you believe if you were sons of Abraham, you believe in me again, the power of that where if you really were a child of Abraham, you'd believe in me, but you're not.
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So you don't.
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But then he goes on.
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He said, Abraham rejoiced at my coming.
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He saw my coming prophetically.
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And they said, you're not even 50 years old.
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You're saying you've seen Abraham.
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You're a crazy man.
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You're not even 50 yet.
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Abraham's been dead now for hundreds of years.
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You are out of your mind.
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Verse 58, Jesus said to them, truly, truly, that double truly there, the verily, verily in the King James is an emphatic statement of Jesus to indicate, to listen to this truth statement, verily, verily, truly, truly.
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I say to you before Abraham was, I am beloved.
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If we were to look at that linguistically, we'd say that's bad grammar.
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Because technically we would say before Abraham was, I was.
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But you see, Jesus wasn't concerning himself here with grammar.
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Jesus was concerning himself with identifying himself for who he was, who he is.
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He is the I am.
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In the Old Testament, when Moses asked God, what is your name? He said, I am who I am.
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And when you go before Pharaoh, you tell him I am has sent you to see that divine title.
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It's a title of self-existence.
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It's a tie.
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It's a title of eternal existence.
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It's a title of uniqueness and absolute independence.
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When you think of existence, because the word I am means I exist.
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When you think about existence and you think about your existence, your existence is absolute dependence.
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You exist because you have the right atmosphere.
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If our earth was a little closer to the sun, it would be too hot and we'd all blow up.
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If our earth or we'd all die of heat.
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If it was a little further away, it'd be too cold.
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We'd all freeze.
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We live in the perfect environment for life right here.
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We live because we have enough food.
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We live because we have enough water.
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And if somebody said, I am, they always have to add a qualifier.
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I am because I have the right atmosphere.
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I am because I have the right food.
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I am because I have enough water.
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I am because I have the shelter that is necessary.
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I am.
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I am.
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I am because.
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But Jesus doesn't add the because.
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He says, I am period.
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I am before Abraham ever took a breath.
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I am before Enoch ever took a breath.
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I am before Noah ever took a breath.
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I am before Adam was formed from the dust of the ground and the breath of life was breathed into his nostrils.
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I am.
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You see, Jesus knew who he was.
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And that's why he could speak with the authority with which he spoke.
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Because he knew that he was the God man.
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He knew that he was God incarnate, that he was God in the flesh and the authority that he had was unrivaled before or after.
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No one spoke with the authority he had before and no one has spoke with that authority since.
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For he is God and there is no other.
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The NIV commentary says this, the application commentary.
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I like this.
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I really like this statement.
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It says amazement at Jesus's teachings does not indicate acceptance.
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Goes on to say this.
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The term amazed is the passive form of expresso.
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That's the Greek, which in Matthew is not a description of faith.
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So listen to me, beloved.
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When it says they were astonished at his teachings, that doesn't mean they believed.
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They were just amazed.
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They were surprised.
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Their jaws were dropped.
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They've been hit in the face.
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They had been punched by the spiritual truth of Christ, but they hadn't been converted.
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They had only been astonished.
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Now, I wanted to conclude with that from that commentary because I want to challenge you today.
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This is a time of year when many people sing about awe and wonder and they lift up the idea of the praise and the wonder of Christ and they glorify, at least in a human way, all of the astonishment of the manger and the virgin birth.
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People sing songs.
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They put up replicas of the manger.
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They decorate whole cities with lights.
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They cry out to put Christ back into Christmas.
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But all the while, they're not changed.
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Astonishment is not enough.
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Amazement is not conversion.
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And I imagine that's the case for many of you today.
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Perhaps you are amazed by Jesus.
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Perhaps you're amazed at his claims.
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Maybe at his words and and maybe you even claim to be his.
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But your heart is not committed to him and you are still living in sinful rebellion.
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So to all who hear me this morning, I give this admonition.
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Don't just stand in awe, but believe and respond in obedience.
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Don't just be amazed, but believe.
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Don't be hearers only.
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As many people left that day as hearers of the Sermon on the Mount, amazed at what was said, but not persuaded to believe it.
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In the end, the sermon is really about submission.
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We cannot just be amazed at Jesus.
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We cannot be astonished by his message only.
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We cannot just be astounded by the incarnation.
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We must submit ourselves to him because that's how he ended the sermon.
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If any man hears these words of mine and does them, he will be like a man who builds his house upon the rock.
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But if any man hears these words of mine and does them not, will be like a man who builds his house upon the sand.
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Jesus spoke with authority because he had authority.
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Have you bowed the knee to that authority? Let's pray.
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Father, thank you for this time that we've had to make much of Christ.
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For that is our goal, Father, to make much of our Savior.
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To not exalt self, to not exalt our own understanding, to not exalt our own ways or our own traditions, but to exalt Christ.
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I pray, Lord, that you have brought your people here to hear your word this morning and they might be converted and changed by it.
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That believers might be pushed to a closer walk with you and that unbelievers might be converted and that we would all submit to Jesus.
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As your word tells us, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
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And it is in his name we pray.
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Amen.