Hidden Truth

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Don Filcek; Matt 13:10-17 Hidden Truth

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsek takes us through his series on the book of Matthew called
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Not Your Average Savior. Let's listen in. That you look forward to a 2017 that is consistent with His love and care for us, in particular,
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His love and care for you. The fact of the matter is, and as cliche as this sounds, the fact is we do not know what the future holds, but we know who holds the future, right?
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And I can testify, at least as one person in your life, that He has been proving
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Himself to me to be the giver of good things during the blessed times. When things are good,
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I can turn to Him and say, thank you for these blessings, thank you for these things. And at the same time, when things are not going well, and I'm not feeling blessed, and things seem to be a struggle and strife and illness, right now
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I've got a little bit of crud you might notice in my voice, but God has proven Himself to be a rock of stability in the tough times as well.
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Ever present, always there, eager to provide encouragement and strength.
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Tough times, blessings, and good times. And I hope that you see that and are able to reflect back on this past year.
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If you haven't taken the time to do that, I recognize that things get so busy around the holidays with the best of intentions, we might want to reflect and not get that time.
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So let me just encourage you, if it's possible in your schedule to carve out a little bit of time to just maybe even jot down in a journal, write down on a piece of paper the blessings that God has given to you in the last year.
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And maybe even offer up some of the things that you would like to accomplish in this next year to God, saying, if the
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Lord wills, I will. I'm not a big resolution kind of guy, and at the same time, I am for life change.
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And I think sometimes God uses a resolution or something like that to change us and to transform us.
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But make sure that you're always running those types of things past God and saying, if you will, and if you would give me strength, and if you would give me the power, then this in 2017.
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So I encourage you to make sure that it's something that's a spiritual endeavor and not merely a self -improvement endeavor.
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I think often this time of the year we think in terms of self -improvement, and what I would encourage you to think of is in terms of spirit improvement, the
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Lord improving you by the strength that he supplies by his spirit alive in you. So all of that, all that introduction.
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But we're gonna be jumping into the book of Matthew again. I'm gonna be wrapping up chapter 13 in a couple of sermons before we dive into our next series, so I'm not starting off right away in 2017.
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It doesn't always work out that way timing -wise. I just had this thing in my mind that I wanted to finish chapter 13 of Matthew and not leave us partway through a chapter before we jump in.
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So our next series starting in a couple of weeks near the end of January is gonna be on the book of Malachi.
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Part of the fuel, the reasoning behind that is we haven't really gone through a prophet yet as a church, and so it's been seven years of my preaching, and we've gone through a lot of different areas of Scripture, but we haven't really gotten into one of the minor prophets, and so I thought, man,
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Malachi is one of my favorites, and so we're gonna just start there and take that on. And really the theme of that is not necessarily super encouraging at the outset, but I think it's gonna be very helpful for us as a church.
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It's called Dead Religion is gonna be the series title, and it's really kind of looking at the way that we can approach
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God from a very rote and routine way of sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice without that relationship, and what
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God longs for us most is a relationship. And so Malachi is driving towards that at the end of the
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Old Testament. But this morning we're gonna be looking at the teachings of Jesus to his disciples regarding parables.
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We talked about the parable of the soil a couple of weeks ago. Remember that parables are like an extended metaphor, so when we're talking about parables, here we're not even looking at a parable, we're seeing
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Jesus tell us why he used parables. And it's an extended metaphor. These are stories that Jesus would tell, and really the moral of the story would be the point, and so you'd be looking for the moral of the story or the way that it interacts with the real world around you.
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Remember a couple weeks ago I mentioned that the word parable is a Greek word that means to throw something alongside.
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The parables are stories thrown alongside of real life with the goal of comparing that story to the world that you and I live in.
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But often we think of things as illustrations, and parables are not synonymous with illustrations.
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Now an illustration helps to convey a main point. So I might be teaching, and I might give you a main point and then give you an illustration of that main point.
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And how many of you like it when a teacher gives an illustration? It sometimes makes that point snap to life, like it helps.
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When Jesus skipped telling his followers and the people in the crowd, he skipped telling them the main point, and he just told them the story.
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And so they had to deduce what the main point was from the story that he told. Are you getting what
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I'm saying? So an illustration is something that highlights or emphasizes a main point, but Jesus just said, he just went out and told stories.
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It was up to the crowds to track the spiritual meaning of those parables.
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And so in our text this morning, the disciples noticed something about the crowds around them. They noticed that the crowds, the audience, was not tracking with Jesus.
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They weren't getting it. They weren't apprehending the stories and the spiritual meaning behind that.
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Now whether the crowds were actually outright stating that or saying it, or there was mumbling and murmuring, and the disciples out in the crowd actually heard people saying,
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I don't get it, I don't understand, or whatever. So they're going to go to Jesus, and they're going to ask him why he's teaching with parables that are confusing the crowds.
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And Jesus lets them know that our response to his teaching and the crowds' response to his teaching shows something about what is already in our hearts.
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It shows something about what's already in here. We only get it if God has granted us understanding.
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But without a God -given understanding, we will be devoid of that knowledge and that understanding and the capacity, kind of like Jesus' illustration of the seeds in the soil.
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The soil that was prepared beforehand was the good soil that received the word of truth and grew up into a plant that produced and replicated itself.
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So this teaching that we're going to read about here in just a moment is a bit difficult. It's kind of cryptic. To some ears, it might even sound harsh at first reading.
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But I believe that we will all see how important it truly is as we dig in this morning. So open your
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Bibles, if you're not already there, to Matthew chapter 13, verses 10 through 17. Again, Matthew 13, 10 through 17.
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If you don't have a Bible in front of you, could you just do me a favor and raise your hand? And Mark has a stack of them.
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He just wants to give you a Bible. And you can take that home with you if you want. We want everybody to have a copy of God's word on your lap.
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Again, if you need to navigate over to that in a device, it doesn't offend me. I've actually had people tell me they thought that on their first visit to this church, they thought it was really rude that people pulled out their phones while I was talking.
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And I was like, I kind of hope that they were looking at the Bible. I think that's okay. As long as you're using that device to check out
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God's word. But Matthew 13, 10 through 17, recasts
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God's word to us this morning. Then the disciples came and said to him,
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Why do you speak to them in parables? And he answered them, To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.
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For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance.
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But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why
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I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.
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Indeed, in their case, the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says, You will indeed hear, but never understand, and you will indeed see, but never perceive.
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For this people's heart has grown dull, and their ears can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them.
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But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.
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For truly I say to you, many prophets and righteous people long to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you. I thank you for your grace, and for your mercy.
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I thank you for your love shown to us by opening our eyes, and revealing to us the glories of the truth of the kingdom of Christ.
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Father, that we have a king who loves us, who came here, that we just celebrated that over the
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Christmas season, and Father, I pray that it would not just be once a year that we think and contemplate about the glorious sacrifice of Jesus to come here, but also not leave it there in just that baby in the manger, but to recognize that he came here with purpose to be the sacrifice for us.
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Father, I pray that you would be glorified and honored as we seek to worship you in our singing right now.
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Father, we get an opportunity to worship you with our voices, but I pray it would be more than our voices, that it would be genuinely from our hearts a recognition of the way that you have worked in our salvation.
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That it's not us, that it's not because we're so good, it's not because we were worthy, not because we earned it, not because of the cleaning of our own house and our own lives that you were pleased with us, but it's because of your grace and your mercy that we'd reflect that all back to you in gratitude through our singing this morning in Jesus' name.
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Amen. You can go ahead and be seated and get comfortable. Remember, if you need to get up and get any more coffee or juice or donuts, and if you need to get up and stretch out in the back, you're not going to distract me.
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But I would encourage you to keep your Bibles open to Matthew chapter 13, again, verses 10 through 17, if you're not already there, just so that you can see that the things that I'm saying are coming from God's word and that they are guided and directed by him.
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So, I would suggest to you that interpreting parables can be somewhat like interpreting a song or songs like you hear on the radio or Christian songs that you hear sung.
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Have you ever noticed how ambiguous some songs can be? Have you ever listened to a song and you're not quite sure who it's being written about or to or whatever?
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And sometimes you can even jump online if you're curious like I am. Sometimes I'm wondering what is the meaning of this song?
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And then you get out into all people's opinions and thoughts about what a song means. And I have a tendency to want to know what did the author, the writer, or the artist actually mean by it.
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And sometimes that's hard to discern, right? Like you get all these opinions and thoughts out there on the interwebs. But many
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Christian songs, I would suggest to you, are pretty ambiguous. I don't know how many of you listen to some Christian radio from time to time.
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Some of them are fairly ambiguous. I do once in a while listen to Christian radio. But they can be very ambiguous about the object of their affection.
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Who is it that they're saying that they love? And I don't know if you've identified that or noticed that. Obviously if you're listening to a
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Christian station, maybe you're less like me and you just are prone to go, well they're writing about God obviously or they're writing about Jesus obviously.
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But sometimes it's kind of like I'm not sure if this is a love song that was written for his wife or for a girlfriend or what.
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But a song, many of the songs could be written for Jesus or written for a girl or a guy or something.
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But I bring this up to get us in the mode of confusion that the crowds listening to Jesus are going through.
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So sometimes we hear something and we're not quite sure what the person speaking really means by it.
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And to clarify one simple thing, if you do not have a belief that Jesus is everything or that his love is amazing, then a song about how amazing he is or how he is everything is gonna be a little lost on you, right?
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Like you're gonna be kind of confused by the words. It's not gonna make, it's not gonna impact you or impact your heart in the way that it would somebody who really does believe that Jesus is everything.
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Someone who believes that Jesus does love them. Then that's gonna have a different impact on our hearts and the way that we see things.
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In the same way, understanding the parables of Jesus requires some prerequisites.
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It requires some things are already in the heart of an individual before they hear the parable to be able to come to understanding.
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Things like that Jesus is indeed a king. That he did indeed come the first time to bring in a kingdom and to reflect
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God to us and to bring about salvation. That he was indeed a fulfillment of those ancient prophecies that were given down through the ages to us.
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And so a belief in who he is is fundamental to the understanding of what it is that he's teaching through the parables.
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And in verse 10, the disciples came to him and questioned his teaching methods. They come to Jesus. These guys were not, by the way, very shy.
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I don't know if you've ever noticed that about the disciples. Peter was pretty brash. He occasionally tried to correct Jesus. No, no, you're wrong.
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I've got this or whatever. But they come to Jesus and they question his teaching methods.
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It seems apparent to me from the question in verse 10 and then the flow of the rest of our text that the disciples came with this question because they could see that the crowds were not getting it.
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I mentioned that in my introduction for those of you that were here. Something about the way that the crowds were interacting.
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Maybe it was the blank stare. Maybe it was that they were snoozing. I don't know. But something about the crowds, the disciples were like, they're not tracking with you
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Jesus. Maybe something needs to change here. Something needs to shift because they are not getting it.
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But we must keep in mind that the parables are not technically illustrations.
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Illustrations, as I mentioned before, are a way of driving a point home that you made in your teaching. But they are emphasizing a point.
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Illustrations emphasize a point already made. But the parables that Jesus told were the main point.
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He wasn't using the story to make his point clear. And he was telling a story and his audience had to deduce the main point.
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So they had to try to figure it out. They had to try to figure out the spiritual meaning underneath this illustration. For example, the parable of the soils.
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He's talking about farming. He's talking about agriculture. And it probably wasn't just for farmers.
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You get that after you kind of see him interpret it for us. The seed is the word of God.
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The soil is the heart of an individual. And everything kind of stands for something. And then the metaphor comes alive and you begin to see there's a spiritual teaching that's underneath this.
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In the majority of the parables, Jesus did not explain. He didn't follow up with them and explain it to them.
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He left it hanging. He wanted them to wrestle with it. He wanted them to struggle with it. He wanted their hearts to engage it in a spiritual level of understanding.
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And so that's why they're coming to him and saying, I don't think the crowds are getting this, Jesus. I don't think they're tracking with you. And so in verse 11,
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Jesus goes deep pretty quick in not directly answering their question, but he answers what
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I believe is the heart of the question that they have asked at first. They're basically saying, we're getting it and the crowds aren't.
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What is going on here? I don't believe that the disciples were necessarily asking
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Jesus to change his methods of teaching. I think more than anything, they just wanted to know, why is this happening?
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Why are you doing this? Can you teach us something about the way that we should roll on the basis of the way that you're teaching?
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Teach us something about how to teach and things like that. They were asking because they were understanding, but the crowds weren't getting it.
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And they observed a difference in the connection with the material and they wanted to know why he was using parables when they were clearly not connecting with the masses.
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If the teaching isn't connecting with the people, then it's not very valuable. And it's kind of like,
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I mean a good speech writer for one of the presidents isn't going to write something that doesn't connect with people.
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So they're looking for engagement. They're looking for people to be nodding their heads and yeah, thank you.
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And I mean, you're kind of looking for that. Have any of you ever spoke to a crowd? Have any of you ever been up front and taught before?
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I mean, even when I'm up here, I'm looking for, yeah, thank you. I mean, you guys are giving me some feedback. I know that somebody is connecting with what
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I'm saying up here. But you're looking for that. You're wanting that. And the disciples are saying, Jesus, you're not getting it. You're not getting that.
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Can you imagine Jesus, the King of all glory, come down here, teaching crowds, and they're going, you know, nothing.
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Got nothing here. Maybe you could dance a little bit. Maybe you could, you know, illustrate it more for us.
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Or maybe you could just, you know, bring it with something. You know, if you could just inflect your voice a little bit more and get a little bit more passion in there,
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Jesus, then maybe you could connect with your crowds with something different. Or why don't you just give them an outline?
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Like, why don't you just give them a propositional truth, point A, point B, point C, and just run right through it and give them an outline.
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I mean, Jesus, maybe a PowerPoint would help you here. You know? Maybe that would help you to connect a little bit better, and then you could just really get the main points across.
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Instead, he just tells them stories and leaves it to their heart to discern it spiritually.
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And that's what we're seeing here in the text. They're trying to work all of this stuff out and trying to figure out where Jesus is going with all this.
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Why is he doing this? Jesus explains that they are getting it because they have some help.
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They have some help. They have been given understanding,
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Jesus says to his disciples. Their minds have been opened up to the secrets of the kingdom of heaven,
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Jesus says. But to many among the masses, this knowledge has not been given.
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Jesus is stating something very powerful here about our grasp of the gospel, about the gospel, the message of the kingdom, the secrets of the kingdom.
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He says, in essence, you did not figure this out.
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Recast, you didn't figure this out. Your understanding of the gospel, the fact that you had ears to hear, the fact that you had eyes to see the truth, all of that was a gift from God.
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All of that was given to you. Jesus gave the same teaching. He's there and he's speaking to the crowds.
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He's speaking to the masses. Some got it, some did not. And we have a calling to spread the seed of the gospel to many.
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Some will get it, some will not. And understanding is the main point of this text that we're looking at.
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How does a person arrive at understanding in the heart and believing in the mind and trusting with the heart in Jesus Christ?
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The text is indicating that some are given to know and understand the secrets of the kingdom of heaven. The word, by the way, the word secret is often translated as mysteries.
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The Greek concept of mysteries or secret things, these
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Greek words, the concept is one of hidden truth that must be spiritually revealed.
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It's not gonna be accomplished by deduction, by logic. It's going to be a spiritually revealed truth.
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In this case, Jesus is saying that the kingdom of God focused on the kingship of Jesus is a spiritually discerned truth.
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Jesus taught everyone the same way, but the difference in their understanding came down to this one simple, profound, and maybe even uncomfortable truth.
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Some were given understanding and others were not. Some were open to understanding and prepared beforehand like good soil.
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Like the soil that had been tilled in the illustration of the soils. One type of soil had already been cultivated and had been laid open so that when the seed came it was receptive for it.
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But other soil was not ready. This can be discouraging to some.
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As we consider our hunger and desire specifically in our culture, where we live here, even in Matawan, Michigan in 2017, we have a hunger and a strong desire for equal opportunity and autonomy.
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We are a very individualistic culture, very independent. We can do this and all of us should be able to do it equally and accomplish it together or alone even.
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We like to think of ourselves as autonomous and in control. And we like to think that everyone has equal opportunity to make the same decisions and obtain the same things.
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But Jesus brushes past all of that with further teaching in verse 12 that may ruffle our feathers even further.
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The one who has been given understanding will increase and grow in it. Think about that.
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The one who gets it will get more. And the one who doesn't get it, even what little they have will be taken from them.
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I like to illustrate it with something else. Think about the progression. And some of you, when
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I mention math, if you're anything like me, math is not particularly where you go to with an illustration. But I recognize it connects with some people.
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But it came to my mind as a really good progression. You study pre -algebra and then you go from algebra to geometry and you go from geometry to trigonometry and you go from trigonometry to pre -calc and then to calc.
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And there's a progression there. And each study, each class, builds on the next one in a way that if you miss one of those classes, you're going to be lost.
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It's gone. Anybody with me on that? And how many of you could do a function right now?
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A couple of us. Excellent. And those of you who use it maybe for your work. And most of us have forgotten a lot of math.
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Right? Anybody with me on that? Forgotten a whole lot of math. Yeah. Trying to help my kids even.
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You know, going up into, you know, homeschooling for a while there and whoa, they could get past me pretty quick.
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But the point is that math, the point is the progression and an understanding of how when you get it, then you're given more.
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Those who understand each level with ease will be given more to understand. But those who don't get pre -algebra, they will likely lose even that.
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So think about the illustration. They'll likely even lose it if they're not getting it and there's nothing to build on and then they'll even lose what they had as a base to begin with.
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Now I'm using math as an illustration, but Jesus is speaking in our text about the gospel and deeper spiritual understanding about His kingdom, about Him coming as King.
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And He is saying that those who get it will get more of it. Those who get understanding about Jesus will grow in it, will increase in it.
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Their knowledge and their understanding of God's word will expand as they build layer upon layer with the gospel as the foundation.
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But those who do not understand it will have it taken from them. What does that look like?
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Well, I believe that having it taken from them will just simply mean that it will not strike their heart in the same way.
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It will not have the force that would cause them to wrestle with it. They will not meditate on it. They will not seek further understanding.
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They will just not find it worth their time and effort to continue to wrestle with these kinds of truths.
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Just like these parables. Some people would listen to them and go, I don't have a clue what the guy's saying, and walk away. Others would sit and listen and sit at his feet and go,
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I'm not sure that I understand, but tell me that story again. Let me see if I can figure it out. Let me see if I can work through it.
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Let me see if I can understand. There's a hunger already there to know more and to connect with the teachings of this
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Messiah, this king. How many times, think about it this way, how many times did you have to hear the gospel before it sank into you?
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How many times did you have to hear it? It's likely that you heard it multiple times.
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What was wrong with those other times you heard it? Why didn't it connect with you before it finally connected with you?
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God opened your eyes. God gave you ears to hear. Suddenly it made sense to you in a way that it didn't before.
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Many of us in this room can't even remember where we were. You can remember who was talking to you when the lights turned on and you went, oh, he loves me.
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He died for me. I'm not worthy of that, but are you serious? This is what it is?
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You mean I don't have to work hard for it? You mean it's a gift? You remember when the lights came on and you were like, oh.
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Because many are working for it. Many have a false understanding the gospel hasn't settled in because it's just all these rules and regulations and it's the church looking for money and doing this and wants that and it's all these motives.
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But when the gospel of the kingdom of God rests on us, when we actually see him in his glory and we realize that he loved us so much that he sent his son in, it becomes all about that, right?
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It becomes all about Jesus and not about all of these secondary things about, well, this person went to this church and they weren't kind to me or I got cut off by a person with a fish on the back of their car or whatever.
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And all of those things that can really get in the way. And I don't mean to minimize those because those kind of things really do interfere, right?
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We need to be a good testimony and a good witness, but at the end of the day, it's about God opening eyes.
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And he might use you to do that. He might use you as a tool to bring that secret message of the kingdom
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I mean, we kind of have, in essence, the decoder ring, if you will. We have the opportunity to bring this glorious message.
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What is in secret to some minds can be revealed through you. That's a beautiful and amazing reality.
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Some of us remember that moment when our eyes were opened. But so far in our text, by the way, Jesus hasn't really answered their question, why do you teach in parables?
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He's explained some of the dynamics of what happens when he's teaching in parables. He's talked about the different responses to his teaching.
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And they're like, yeah, we could tell there was a different response to the teaching, Jesus. We get that. Some are given understanding,
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Jesus has declared, and others are not. Some are given that, and some are not. But the real kick comes in verse 13 when he finally gets down to the heart of the answer.
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Here is why I teach in parables, he says definitively. Because the crowds see, but do not see.
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And they hear, but they do not hear. They do not understand.
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Can you hear me now? Jesus is saying that he teaches in a way that those who are granted understanding will get it.
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This is with intention. They teach in a way that those who are granted spiritual eyes to see will see.
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Those who are granted ears to hear will hear. But those who have not been given this spiritual insight will not.
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In part, this fulfills a prophecy that he then goes into declaring by Isaiah that predicts a generation that will hear, but not understand, and will see, but not truly perceive.
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And by quoting this passage in Isaiah, Jesus is identifying himself with the message of the kingdom. Anyone who embraces his message will repent and be healed, he says.
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That's a pretty serious teaching. In that day and age when he's standing in front of Pharisees and the religious leaders who are declaring authority over him, and power over him, and he's basically saying, no, you need to come through me.
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My message, my words, my teaching is the pathway of life and healing between you and my father.
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That's pretty significant. And that's what he's declaring outright. Obviously, the quotation from Isaiah is using metaphorical language.
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Seeing and hearing in the secondary sense are being used as a metaphor for knowledge and understanding.
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You can see, but not really see. There's a way of hearing, but not really hear. And those of you who are married know exactly what
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I'm talking about. You had situations where you were hearing, but not quite hearing.
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And then you get yourself in trouble by nodding yeah, yep, uh -huh. And then that's not good. So I would suggest both seeing and perceiving, and hearing and understanding.
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Those go really well together if you can put those together. That's great, especially in a relationship.
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But those in the crowds could see Jesus with their eyes, right? They had physical eyes. I mean, the majority of them,
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I don't think the vast majority of them were blind. They were able to take in Jesus. They could hear his teaching with their ears.
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And in our generation, I would suggest to you that in a similar way, many of us have access to the Bible. As a matter of fact, we're a generation very privileged with the
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Bible. How many of you would say, raise your hand and say, I probably have more than one Bible at my house. Like, look at that.
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That's amazing. I mean, people died in the Middle Ages for owning and possessing a
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Bible. For owning a Bible in England, people were burned at the stake. And now, we have the privilege of the
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Word of God in multiple formats, all accessible in our phone, in our iPad, in our computer.
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We have copies of it. We have all different kinds of versions of it. You have all different kinds of study notes available to you that just wasn't available down through the centuries, and it's now here.
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And we have access to the Bible to see and hear for ourselves. That's significant.
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But many will hear the good news proclaimed and not really wrestle with it.
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Some will read. I've encountered people, I've been interacting with a guy just within the last week who has read the
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Bible, has actually memorized portions of the Bible, and doesn't believe it's God's Word. For real.
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He spent a lot of time in this Word, and he knows it. And I'm praying for him, and we're working together through things, and I'm trying to proclaim the
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Gospel and make it make sense, and he doesn't see the coherence. It's that understanding, that spiritual significance of this to him that doesn't make sense to him right now.
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He doesn't have eyes to see. He doesn't have ears to hear yet. Many will hear the good news proclaimed and just not wrestle with it at all.
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I say they won't wrestle with it though, to be fair, because the rest of the quote in verse 15 of Isaiah, the indictment at the beginning of verse 15 shows the people to be guilty for their lack of understanding.
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Now you go, I thought you just said that God gives understanding to some, and some he doesn't privilege them with that.
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But I think there's something about their heart. There's something here that's going on that's like Pharaoh hardened his heart, and God hardened
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Pharaoh's heart. Like there's something about that that's going on that the will of the individual to reject God at this level is real.
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They really do desire to push him aside, to push him off, and God just continues to just not give them understanding.
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That's the way that that goes. And so, the indictment at the beginning of verse 15 shows that people are guilty for their lack of understanding.
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Their heart has grown dull, which you kind of go, well, is that okay? Is that their fault?
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But the word dull is a fairly weak translation of a Greek word that's very powerful. It's got a lot of color to it.
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That Greek word is a picture of mental laziness. It actually has the word fat right in it.
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It's kind of like they've just sat around and not done anything, and they've not exercised themselves, and they've not put any effort in, and so their mind has just become kind of gelatinous.
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It's just not functioning well, and it's not been sharpened, and it's not been honed, so their mind is just dull and weak, mentally lazy.
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Their hearts have grown lazy is what Jesus is saying here, what Isaiah was getting at, and with their ears, they can barely hear, and here is the kicker.
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They have willingly closed their eyes to the truth. Now, if you plug your ears, you can probably still hear me talking, but it's kind of muffled.
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That's the imagery that we're given here. They have closed their eyes, put their fingers in their ears, and they're going, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, because they don't want to hear the teaching.
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That's the imagery that we're given of those who refuse to hear and to wrestle and to struggle with the truth.
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They have closed their eyes, plugged up their ears, and they are just talking loud so that they don't have to hear the words of truth.
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The reason is given why they've closed their eyes, why they've put their fingers in their ears, lest they understand and repent and find healing from Jesus.
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They don't want this. They don't want to understand. They don't want to repent and they don't want healing.
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They have closed their eyes so that they are not enticed to turn and repent from their own wicked ways and turn to the
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King for healing. Why would somebody do that? Why would somebody not want healing? Maybe because they love their brokenness more than they love the thought of being healed.
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Is that possible? Can you imagine that being possible? Can you see any signs of that in our culture where people would value brokenness over healing?
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It's all around us. It's all around us. Not even to the point where it's not fair and not right for us to call it broken anymore.
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It's all okay. We're the ones who need to be healed now. I believe that one of the keys to this is found in the word turn in verse 16.
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The context of Isaiah is the brink of destruction for Israel. They have forsaken the covenant of God.
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Again, it's kind of cool how he quotes from one of the prophets. We're going to get into the prophets. The theme of most of the prophets is you have broken your side of the equation.
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You have broken your covenant with God and now judgment is coming unless you turn from your wicked ways and turn back to the covenant and honor
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God as your King. That's the whole message of the prophets in a nutshell.
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You've sinned. God is angry. He's frustrated with you. You have broken your covenant and now judgment is coming imminently for you unless you turn away.
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Why would someone not want to accept the glorious good news of forgiveness through Jesus Christ?
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Because in asking for his forgiveness we must turn from our own way of living to his way.
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This is called repentance. That's the word. Repent means to turn and you see that in the text.
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It's a prerequisite to accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. It's about humility.
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It's about coming and saying I have not done this right and I have not gone the wrong way. My feet are on the wrong pathway.
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They are in the wrong way and if I continue on this pathway it leads to death and destruction and God I need you to take me and lift me and put me on a new pathway that leads to life and eternity and good things and love for others and love for my community and kindness.
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Not necessarily that everything goes well. This is not just a primrose path that everything smells great and everything goes well but it is the way that leads to life and that is what the picture of salvation is is being lifted up from this way that is our own way doing things in our own strength doing things in our flesh and the way that we want to please ourselves and sometimes even this looks like a religious way.
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This can look very religious. This can because some of us just to be honest we're a little bit more have a penchant towards kindness so what makes me feel better for some of us what makes us feel better is just doing nice things.
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I mean I feel really great when I give to United Way or I feel really great when I give to the poor or when I help out at the food pantry so I mean our own way can look pretty nice sometimes.
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Sometimes it looks wicked because we also recognize that our flesh wants other things too and so all of us who maybe on the outside have this really nice path and we're walking down it and all that stuff we also have some darkness in our own hearts that nobody else sees and nobody else knows about and all of that.
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We need to be picked up and repent and turn from this pathway to this pathway. That is the idea of repentance and that's a prerequisite to accepting
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Jesus as our Lord and Savior but listen to the glory at the end of verse 15 that is available to those with ears to hear and eyes to see.
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This is what is at stake in the message of the kingdom. It is healing that comes from Jesus Christ.
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He is offering to heal the hearts of anyone who will embrace his message of the kingdom and come under his protection and his authority.
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Eyes that see according to this text are blessed eyes. Ears that hear the message are blessed ears.
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We are so privileged if we have discerned the spiritual reality of the kingdom of Jesus Christ just like the anticipation we heard about in the response of reading on Christmas day.
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Verse 17 reminds us that many long to see what we have seen and to hear what we have heard.
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Think of it this way. If you're hearing from God and understanding his conviction, his challenge, his encouragement, if these messages from the word make sense to you, if you believe that Jesus is king and have asked him to lead you and save you, you're blessed if your eyes see.
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You're blessed if your ears hear. The fact of the matter is though, God has opened your eyes.
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God has done that for you. You can take no credit. You can take no spiritual pride. You are not brilliant in figuring it out.
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God gets the credit for opening your eyes and opening your ears to hear and see. So we may have gotten a little far afield from the original question which is why did
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Jesus teach in parables? Why did he seem to veil his teaching in cryptic stories? Why would he do that?
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And the answer is pretty direct and even a bit mind bending. But Jesus says in essence that he taught in parables so that his kingdom would be made up of people who have been spiritually assembled.
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Not assembled by their wit. Not assembled because of their smartness. Not assembled because of their educational prowess, their mental acuity, their ability to really get it and research and figure it out.
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He hasn't called only the intelligent, the scholarly. Nor has he merely called the simple or the street smart.
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He has spread the seed and only that which has been prepared beforehand will be ready.
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This text is clear in its message but is really hard against our pride. The doctrines of the sovereign grace of God exist to bring us to humility and to war against spiritual pride in us.
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So let me summarize real quick with four applications from this text about Jesus' use of parables if we can get through these.
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The first is if you get it, you've been blessed with understanding. If you get it, you've been blessed with understanding.
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There is no room for pride in anything that Jesus says here in our text. No room for pride in any of us regarding our salvation.
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We didn't figure it out on our own. And even the laziness of our own hearts had to be overcome in the process of God saving you and me.
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So a simple application from this text is gratitude and humility combined. Gratitude, thankfulness, and humility combined.
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When you realize the work that God has already done for you in bringing you to the salvation and the saving message of Jesus Christ, we should fall on our knees in thankfulness to Him.
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He has given us knowledge. He has opened our eyes to see and our ears to hear so we can understand with our hearts and repent and be healed.
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And we should push aside any feelings of spiritual pride that you might have. If it wells up in you, you recognize maybe some of us have been trained in spiritual pride by our upbringing.
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We were raised in a church where we were told that we were better than other people or it was implied that we were better than others because we went to such and such a church or we did such and such a thing in such and such a way.
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Maybe it was bred into you. Maybe it was something that was taught to you or just a part of something that you caught.
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Fight it. Push it away. War against spiritual pride when you see it come up in your life.
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Spiritual pride is a grotesque warping of the gospel that looks down on others and thinks that if God would grade on a curve, we would definitely be in the upper end of the people in the world.
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That's the way that it thinks. Like the vast majority of people who think they're better than the average driver. Somebody's wrong.
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Somebody's wrong. We can't all be better than the average. You can't all be like me. But, yeah.
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Send me emails later. I think, in all honesty, many of us think that we're better than the average person.
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You can point to examples. You could use case studies. You could go, well, I've never done that, never done that, never done that.
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Check off your boxes and be like, yeah, I'll fight against it. There's no room for that.
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In your walk with Christ, that is detrimental and dangerous to you. It is assuming that you've got something to do with it.
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Jesus has everything to do with it. You're taking glory from Him when you do that. It's all about Him.
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And He saves all kinds of people from all kinds of walks of life, all around the world, rich, poor, intelligent, dim, all different kinds of people.
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He saves us all. Ironically, when it comes to spiritual understanding that results in salvation,
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Jesus says that this understanding of the secrets of the kingdom are given. They're given to you. We all get them the same way, as a gift.
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Second, we should model our interaction with the world after Jesus. Notice that in the same passage that Jesus talks about spreading the seeds of the message of the kingdom,
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He's acknowledging that the difference in the responses of those who listen to the message of the kingdom is in what has been given to them.
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To some it's been given to understand, and others it has been given, have been given ears to hear and eyes to see.
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But Jesus taught about His kingdom to all, any and all who would listen. He would just go out and share it to the crowds, and we should spread the seed of the good news around indiscriminately as well.
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It's not up to us to determine who gets the message. Equally, it's not up to us to figure out who will respond.
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But let this reality rest on your heart. He will use some of us to bring others into His glorious kingdom.
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The beauty in what Jesus teaches here regarding evangelism is that the pressure is off you.
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The pressure is off you. All you need to do is to be faithful to proclaim it and leave the results up to Him.
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You are not on the hook for the response of others to the message of the gospel. But you are responsible to be an ambassador of the kingdom to the world around you.
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Third application, we are so privileged to have the word of God available to us. Through the pages of the
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New Testament, we have something that ancient prophets longed for in verse 17. We have a full disclosure of the
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Messiah. We have spelled out for us the clear communication of the salvation that God has offered to all.
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The hope that was offered in the Old Testament is now fulfilled for us and put down in writing for our eyes to perceive and to study and to wrestle through.
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What a glorious and beautiful gift we have in the pages of Scripture. Don't read it because you have to.
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Read it because your eyes have been blessed with the opportunity to see and your ears have been blessed with the opportunity to hear.
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We have some Bible reading plans here. It's a great time of the year to be talking about this, but if you're interested in reading through the
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Bible in a year, this is the plan that I recommend. It takes a book at a time. It doesn't bounce you all over the place.
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Some Bible reading plans have you with four bookmarks in different places and you're reading here and you're reading there.
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This just helps you to go through one book at a time, bounces back and forth between Old Testament and New Testament. I really recommend it.
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These are available at the welcome table. It is the first, so you could just jump in and start with your first reading today.
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This one also leaves some reflection dates for those of you that are like me that is like, oh, what if I miss a day? It leaves a couple of days blank there for you to reflect so that that way if you miss a day here or there, you're not way behind.
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So if you're anything like me, you would appreciate that. Check that out, but taking in God's word is valuable.
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It's not magic. Like I said, I've got a friend who has read it, has read it multiple times and has not given his life to Christ.
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There's no magical, mystical formula, but if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, this becomes life -giving to you.
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It becomes valuable to you. You begin to be nourished by it and it begins to build upon previous understanding and it becomes a glorious thing that you look forward to.
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Lastly, let me wrap up by declaring a difficult truth from this text in the pages of scripture and that is simply this.
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Some will not respond. You see that in the text and I feel like it has to be dealt with. Some will not respond.
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Some will turn away from the glory of the kingdom and they will reject the king. And some of us have those people in our families, we have those as neighbors, we have people around us who have rejected the king and they are not curious and they have no, as a matter of fact, they have animosity.
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They don't want to turn from their own way and repent and be healed. And there's a variety of reasons why a person might get there.
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I don't want to oversimplify that. But the door is not closed on anyone who still has breath.
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The door is not closed on anyone who still has breath. I would encourage everyone in this room to consider the name of someone, not just think about sharing the gospel in general terms.
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Think of the name of someone that God may be calling you to reach out to with the message of the kingdom in this next year in 2017.
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I think 2017 would be amazing if everybody in this room were to take that challenge on to share the gospel with one person.
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Just one person. I'm confident that you can come up with a name in the next five seconds of somebody that you know does not believe that you should be sharing this glorious message of forgiveness and salvation and reconciliation with God with.
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Well, to wrap up, Jesus taught in parables so that his kingdom would be comprised of spiritually taught, spiritually united, spiritually formed followers.
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And we remember that message that unites us every week by coming to the table of communion. Jesus taught his followers to take a piece of bread and they would take a drink of wine when they gathered together as a ceremony of remembering his sacrifice for them.
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We take a cracker and grape juice to remember his body that was sacrificed in our place.
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We take a cup of juice to remember his blood that was shed for us.
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Without his sacrifice, we would not have forgiveness and we would be lost in our sins.
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Because of his great love for us, this mystery of the kingdom has been revealed to those with eyes to see and ears to hear that the king came here.
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Here's what our eyes have seen. Here's what our ears have heard. The king came here. He lived a sinless life.
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He died a gruesome death so that he could purchase with his very blood people from every tribe, tongue, people, nation.
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And he wants us to proclaim that message until he returns. So if you're all in with Jesus Christ, feel free to come to one of the tables and take communion during this next song.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the message that you have allowed my eyes to see and my ears to hear and it's not because of my eyes.
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It's not because of my ears. It's because of your grace. A grace that I pray for others.
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A grace that I pray for everyone in this room and a grace that I pray goes out through us in 2017.
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A grace that empowers us and gives us boldness. We don't know how many days we have left until your return.
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We don't know how many days we have left on this earth and life to breathe your air. But Father, I pray that you would help us to be about your mission, about your purpose.
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And your purpose is this expansion of this glorious and beautiful kingdom of people that worship
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Jesus Christ as their king. Father, I pray that you would help us to take that as a serious role in our lives and to share indiscriminately and that you would bless the seed as it goes out and that we would leave those results up to you.
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Fathers, we have an opportunity to reflect on that glorious entrance into the kingdom through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
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I pray that you would help us as we reflect on his body broken for us and his blood that was shed for us.
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It would not just be a morose and somber thing, but it would be a joyful thing recognizing that he did so because of his great love for us.
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And without that sacrifice, we would indeed be condemned. So Father, thank you for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.