John 12:16-19 (He Shall Have Dominion)

The Shepherd's Church

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Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the

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Word of God, that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

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Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you.

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Perhaps there's not a single person in this room, especially if you're over the age of 10, where you've not heard the phrase

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We don't want to miss the forest for the trees. And when we say that, we're saying we're not talking about being in an actual forest.

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We're talking about we're so focused on the micro details of matter that we're going to miss the macro picture of what's going on.

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We're so focused on the small things that we're going to forget the larger things. For instance, you're at a parade and you see one person's costume, and you're so fixated on that one person's costume, someone asks you, where'd you go today?

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I saw that person's costume. Well, there's a big parade that's happening all around you. You missed it.

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You were so focused on it. Well, I think that's what we have happened to us a lot of times when we read the

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Bible. We get so lost in the details of what's going on in the micro that we miss the macro, and because we miss the macro, we don't understand what's going on in the whole biblical narrative.

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For instance, we get lost in the genealogies of Genesis. Admit it. Get lost in the clothing details of the high priest in Exodus.

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We get lost in the sacrifices of Leviticus. We get lost in the census material of Numbers. How many

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Bible reading plans have died a death in the census material of Numbers and the law giving in Deuteronomy?

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Now, these are important chapters and sections. It's not my aim here to to show you what those are, but they contribute to the macro picture of what

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God is doing in his Bible, and if we get lost and miss that, in the weeds of the matter, then we will miss the story that God is telling us.

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We can't get stuck on a word when a word is connected to a sentence. We can't get stuck to a sentence when a sentence is connected to a paragraph or a paragraph and it's connected to a book, and a book is connected to the

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Bible. We have to always be reading the Bible through these two different lenses, the micro lens and the macro lens.

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We have to see what the passage means in its context and in its larger, broader, redemptive context so that we can have a unified, holistic understanding of the narrative of redemption that God is telling from creation to consummation.

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We need to zoom out like a helicopter pilot zooms out on the forest and he can see the entire thing without turning his neck.

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Well, in the same way, we need to read the Bible that way and see the larger themes that are going on in the

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Scriptures. And there's all kinds. If we zoom out, if we take the opportunity and we do the work to do that, there's all kinds of themes in the

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Bible that we could talk about. For instance, an easy one is the glory of God. For God's glory,

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He created a world and because of His glory, He installed that world with human beings who were to live for His glory.

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And what do they do? About five hours later, maybe. They're not living for His glory anymore.

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They're living for themselves. Now, God could have destroyed that whole thing, but He didn't. For His own glory,

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He pursues them in covenant relationship with them. For His glory, He rescues them at the Tower of Babel or He rescues

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His people. If He rescues His people and puts them on an ark, for His glory, He calls Abraham out.

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For His glory, He raises up people after people in succession until you get to Jesus Christ.

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And for His glory, died on the cross for you and I so that we could live again to the glory of God, whether you eat, whether you drink, do all to the glory of God.

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The whole Bible, when you get to Revelation and you see the glorious end where we live in the presence of the glory of God forever, perfectly glorifying

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Him, the whole Bible is a story of the glory of God. It's a theme that runs from the beginning to the end.

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There's another one, the presence of God. God had perfect presence in His triune community before the earth and the world and the stars and time and space were created.

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God was not lonely when He made us. And let's talk about what kind of decision -making

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God would have if He was lonely and made us. People who rebel, who whine, who complain, who gripe, who shake our fists at God, and who say there is no

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God. He wasn't lonely. He had perfect fellowship with Christ and with the Holy Spirit for all of eternity.

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Why did He make us? So He could share His presence. His perfect presence.

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He made a garden as a microcosm of the cosmos and He put humans in there to share His presence with them.

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That was grace. He didn't have to do that. And then with that grace, we perverted it.

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We turned our back on Him. We chose a serpent over God. So God withdrew His presence. But God wasn't finished.

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The story of the Bible is God pursuing human beings so that He can live in their presence once again. The tabernacle, for instance.

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God says, I will dwell among you. The temple, I will dwell among you, a sinful people.

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He gave them the law to keep them in His presence. He gave them the sacrifices to restore them to fellowship. He is a

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God who is pursuing sinful man so the sinful man can enjoy the beauty of God's presence. Think about Jesus Christ.

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He came and dwelt among us. He shared His presence with us. He died for us on the cross so that His presence actually for three days was stuck in a tomb.

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But when He burst out of that tomb, He shared the Holy Spirit with you and I so that now we live in the presence of God today.

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If you're a Christian, you have the presence of God living with inside of you. At the end of the scriptures, we no longer have types and shadows.

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We no longer have this moment that we're in right now. We are in the face -to -face relationship with Christ and His presence for all of eternity.

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That's the benefit of heaven. The benefit of heaven is not that you no longer have backaches, although that is a benefit.

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The benefit of heaven is that you no longer have to pay your mortgage. Okay, that's a benefit.

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The benefit of heaven is you're face -to -face with the living God through the Lord Christ. It's about His presence.

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Well, there's another theme that we hardly ever talk about in the church. Because the church of Jesus Christ, for the last 100 years, 200 years even, you can go back.

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Has adopted an attitude of defeat. The church of Christ has been happy to say that we are the ones who lose, that we are the ones who fail.

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That Christ has to come and rescue us out of the mess because the church won't have any impact on the world or if it does, very little.

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The theme I want to talk about today is a theme that's in the Bible, but it's a theme that's rarely ever talked about. It's called dominion.

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That God will have dominion. In eternity,

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God had dominion, unchallenged and unrivaled with Christ and the Holy Spirit. He created a world, not because He was needy.

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He created a world. Think about how much dominion God has. He so perfectly had dominion in His trinity that He made a world just so that He could have dominion of that.

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God gets so much glory from what He does. We just have to zoom out and look at it. He placed the sun, if you notice the language of Genesis 1, it says

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He placed the sun in the sky and told the sun to rule over the day.

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He placed the moon in the sky at night and said, I want you to rule over the night, the moon and the stars.

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He placed Adam and Eve in the garden and said, I want you to rule over the earth. God has created a world that magnifies

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His dominion and He's installed vice regents. He's installed us to magnify

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His dominion and extend His dominion to the ends of the earth. Think about the very first thing that He commissions us to do.

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It says that God made a garden. It doesn't say that God made the whole world a garden, right?

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He made a garden and He put man into the garden and He said, be fruitful, multiply and spread out to the ends of the earth, rule over and subdue it.

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So God is saying just how He took the world and made it out of chaos, He put them in a garden and said, go conquer the chaos, go subdue the dusty parts, fill the garden so full of people that you have to extend its boundaries.

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I grew up in North Carolina, which has very different cities than we have here. There, Charlotte is the county.

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The whole county is subsumed by Charlotte because Charlotte, as it grew in population, decided we're just going to take more land.

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Here in New England, we just pack it tighter. It's different. God is saying, fill the garden so full that you have to spread it out and spread it out to the whole world becomes a garden to the glory of God that magnifies

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His dominion. But we fell. Every story that we look at in the

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Bible has this creation, this fall and eventually redemption. We fell. Instead of God's dominion, what did we do?

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We became enslaved to the serpent so that we gave up the right to rule and we gave it over to Him so that He would enslave us, so that He would rule over us, so that He would have dominion over us, so that we no longer would be vice versa.

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We were such regents of the Lord that we would be under His auspices and under His territory, so deeply infected by sin, we couldn't even possibly imagine building anything for God.

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But only thing that people cared about at that time was themselves. It says that they multiplied, but it wasn't

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God's glory. It was sin. They multiplied sin over the face of the earth so that God had to destroy the world.

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And that is the story from Genesis chapter 3 to Matthew chapter 1 of a people who are in rebellion against a

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God who is going to have dominion because they're enslaved to the serpent.

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But Jesus Christ came to redeem it. When Jesus was born, it says in Isaiah that the government will be on His shoulders.

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He's coming to bring dominion back to the world. He came to reestablish the dominion of God, to empower human beings once again, to spread the dominion of God, just like God designed it in the garden.

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This is something I really want us to get a hold of for a second. Everything that God calls good in the garden,

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He doesn't throw it away. When God says that it's good for man to be fruitful and multiply,

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He's not saying that, okay, in the modern world, when we're worried about overpopulation, that we can have one kid or 1 .5

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kids and two dogs. He said, no, it's a good thing to be fruitful and multiply. I still think it's a good thing because God said it.

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When God says for us to rule over the world, I think that's a good thing. And I think that through Jesus Christ, everything that was broken, everything that was lost, everything that was spoiled under sin is going to be redeemed, even human dominion eventually.

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And we will prove this in just a moment. The entire world we blanketed with the glory of God. The entire world will be under the

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Lord's dominion. And as 1 Corinthians 15 says, you can check it out later and read it. We have a lot of things to get through today.

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God will hand or Jesus will hand back a completed kingdom to God. Like a master builder,

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Jesus will not build a half built house. He won't build a shanty.

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They can barely stand up. And when the winds blow and the rain comes down, it'll fall over Jesus. It says he's building the temple one stone by stone.

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You and I are stones in that end time temple in 2 Peter. He will build it until it's complete.

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And when it's complete, he'll hand it over to the Father. Christ will redeem dominion.

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Now, today, I want us to just give a brief introduction to the theology of dominion.

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So that we can understand and see what Jesus is doing in John chapter 12. And then

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I want us to look at John chapter 12 and see what all Christ is doing. Because when he rides into the city of Jerusalem, he's not just proclaiming to be the king of Jerusalem, he's proclaiming to be the king of the cosmos.

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And we need to understand that. He's not just riding on a donkey to create some waves in Jerusalem.

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He is riding in as king, fulfilling prophecy that says he will own the entire world.

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And we'll look at that as well. Now, I do want to be upfront. What I'm telling you today is a very tough sell in the modern world.

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What I'm telling you today is things that you probably won't hear very often in church.

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Because the world looks bleak right now. The economy is down. Our country is going through hard times.

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Nuclear weapons exist and there's crazy people who have them. Bad people are still doing bad things.

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The media just keeps lying and telling us over and over and over how awful things are.

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You and I have been indoctrinated to think that the world is as bad as it possibly could be.

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I'm here to tell you that it's not. I'm here to tell you that Christ is winning. I'm here to tell you that the church is actually gaining victory.

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I'm here to tell you that you can actually have a positive outlook on the world. You can hold your head high. You can walk out of here with a song in your heart because God's kingdom is winning, even though that narrative isn't popular.

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And I don't know why it isn't. I don't know why we enjoy as Christians living in the doldrums.

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The world's so bad. God is good. These things don't cross over. It doesn't make any sense.

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I want to read you something just to give us perspective. Now, this is history, so this isn't the

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Bible, but I want to read this to you so that you'll see sort of a picture of what's been happening over the last 2 ,000 years.

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We miss it. We miss the forest for the trees. I want to read this to you. 2 ,000 years ago,

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Jesus began the church with just 12 men in John chapter one. Along the way, that group was expanded to 70 by the midpoint of his ministry.

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That became a few hundred by the resurrection. Then at Pentecost, another 3 ,000 souls were added in a single day, bringing the early church to about 4 ,000 people in its first 50 days.

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Then after 40 years of missionary work in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the larger auspices of the

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Roman Empire, around 50 churches had been planted in various cities like Philippi, Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus, Corinth, and others.

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By the time the church had grown from about 4 ,000 in Acts 2 to around the end of the book of Acts, 30 ,000 people are said to have been

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Christians at that time, from 12 to 30 ,000. By the year 200

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AD, there were roughly 200 ,000 Christians in the Roman Empire. By the year 250

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AD, there were a little more than a million. By the year 380 AD, just 350 years after Jesus resurrected from the dead, a religion that began as 12 people in an obscure part of the

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Roman Empire overthrew the Roman pantheon and became the official religion of Rome. This undoubtedly unleashed a massive period of new conversion, some even claiming that the church by the year 400

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AD was composed of 10 to 15 million believers from 12. After Rome was sacked by the

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Gothic tribes, numbers became more difficult for historians to track. But from what we know,

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Christians did not punch their time cards and sit down on their laurels. They kept working.

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They kept building. They kept extending the dominion of Christ. We know that by 600

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AD, Christianity had spread to most of Western Europe. By 1000 AD, it had reached all of Europe.

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By the 1400s, while the Catholic church was surely corrupted in a need of reformation, world travel became a thing, a newfound possibility where Christian explorers were taking their

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Christian faith to new lands and sharing the gospel with new people. In this era, the gospel was brought to South America, Latin America, various places in Asia and Africa, and the gospel began digging small but very healthy roots.

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By the 1500s and 1600s, the reformation of the church finally came, correcting massive theological errors that had crept in, which were stifling her from sharing the gospel.

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Once those errors and heresies were corrected, men began translating the Bible into the language of the common man.

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And when those translation projects got underway, normal people started learning the Bible and telling everybody that they know who he is.

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This kicked off the greatest and most explosive 400 years of expansion in the history of the church.

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This is what caused Puritanism to overtake England, to migrate to New England and America.

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It was the catalyst for thousands upon thousands of missionaries and missionary organizations being sent all over the world.

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From the reformation of the church until the year 1910, the global population of Christianity exploded to more than 600 million

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Christians, from 12 to 600 million in less than 1900 years.

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To put that in perspective, when Jesus rose from the dead, there were 4 million Jews on earth.

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By 1910, before World War II, there were 11 million Jews on earth, which is 175 % increase, which is nothing to balk at.

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But the church, in that exact same time frame, did not increase by hundreds of percentage points, did not increase by thousands of percentage points.

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She increased by just a hair shy of 5 billion percent from the first day until 1910.

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It's as almost as if God wanted us to have dominion, to take over the whole world even.

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And history is the story of how all this is happening. It's truly astonishing to consider. Since 1910, 400 years, most explosive era of church growth.

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Since 1910, the last hundred years of human history have seen an even faster growth than at any other time in human history.

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That means that those 400 years being the fastest, the last hundred years are now the fastest, meaning that we're increasing in the speed by which we reach the nations.

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We've grown from 600 million to 2 .4 billion, quadrupling in size, so that now every country on earth is reported to have at least one

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Christian. Do you know that? Every country on earth. Mongolia was one of the last.

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God sovereignly changed their dictatorship and now Christians have come in. Every country on earth now has at least one church.

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And perhaps the most ironic thing about all of this is while Satan cannot stop the expanse of his church, he can convince all of us that it's not happening.

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He can convince all of us that we're defeated. This looks like a blowout victory.

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This looks like the enemy is already making plans to throw in the towel.

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A Christian in every country. A church in every country. You only need two or three gathered in his name.

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There you are. There's a church. And what I know about Christianity, it's like leaven.

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You get a little bit in the bread, the whole bread becomes leavened. You get one church in one country, 100 years from now, there'll be 50.

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We saw it. We saw it. Now I'm not here to tell you that the devil is not still fighting.

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He is. He's still fighting. Just like the Falcons were still fighting when the

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Patriots were, came back from their 28 to 3 victory. They didn't give up.

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The enemy's not giving up either, but he's losing ground. Every generation, the enemy is losing ground.

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Every generation, the enemy's kingdom is growing smaller. And Jesus's kingdom is growing bigger. When Jesus said, when

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John said, he must increase and I must decrease, we've seen that play out in the church. The church has increased as Satan's kingdom has decreased.

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Every generation so that Satan, every single year, can see that his demise and his doom grows nearer than when

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Jesus first was raised. I don't want us to be negative Nancy Christians.

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I don't want us to be sarcastic Sallies either. Christ is clearly advancing.

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The gates of hell are falling down. Sometimes it happens slower than what we like.

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Sometimes it happens like grass growing. You come back, you got to mow again, but you try to stand there and look at it.

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It doesn't seem that eventful. I don't want us to be the kind of Christians because I've talked to Christians for the last decade.

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Who say that the world is getting worse and worse and worse. The church is not really having an effect.

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The church is dying. That may be true in America. 10 ,000 Christians a day are coming to faith in China.

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3 million people a year are coming to faith in Christ all over the world. And if the church would wake up, that number would explode.

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The reason that the church continues to grow is because God designed it that way. Let us not believe that that was accidental for 20 centuries.

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And now all of a sudden, now God's lost the ability to figure out how to make his kingdom grow.

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Yeah, he did that for 1900 years. He did that for the 20th century. But now things are really bad.

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Nero was lighting Christians on fire to light up his gardens. Hitler was last generation.

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And that's the generation that the church quadrupled in size. Do we really believe that God is not sovereign over these things that he can't continue to do what he said he's going to do all throughout the

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Bible? God's dominion is by design. That's the theme that we're going to be unpacking today.

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We're going to be looking at how Jesus came into the city of Jerusalem and he reclaimed the throne of Adam and how he began a kingdom that will never end, that will never be shaken, that will never fall, that will only increase and will never decrease.

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Now I'm not talking about year to year. I'm talking about century to century. There's ebbs and flows, but it's going up.

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That's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to develop that from the Old Testament. Then we're going to look at John chapter 12 and we're going to see how

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Jesus gives us three very practical ways that he is going to build his kingdom so that it never ends.

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So with that, turn with me to John chapter 12, 16 through 19. We're going to read the text together.

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Then we're going to pray and we're going to dive into this topic. John 12.

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These things his disciples did not understand at first. But when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written of him and that they had done these things to him.

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So the people who were with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to testify about him.

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For this reason also, the people went and they met him because they had heard that he had performed this sign.

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So the Pharisees said to one another, you see, you're not doing any good. Look, the whole world is going after him and how right they were.

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Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you so much that you're a sovereign king and a powerful king and a mighty king and that you can accomplish whatever you set forth to accomplish.

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Lord, as we began with anecdotes and historical stories, Lord, I pray that as we get into the meat of the text of the

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Old Testament and new, that we would see that this is a dominion by design.

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That we would see that it's baked into the fabric of creation, that you will reign as the waters cover the seas, from the river to the ends of the earth.

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You will have dominion. Lord, let us abandon our pessimism.

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Lord, let us abandon that really negative form of pre -millennialism, which says that everything is going to come crashing down.

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Lord, I pray that we would just forget the titles, forget the millennial positions, forget all the different phrases, and that we would just look at what scripture says today and that we would have hope and have faith that your kingdom will continue until the ends of the earth and that you have made us through Christ a part of it.

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It's in Christ's name we pray, amen. We're going to be developing a theology of dominion.

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So I'm going to go fast through these verses. So if you have a pen, you can jot them down. You can look at them later.

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Some of them are more conclusive than others. I'll try to let you know which ones those are. Some of them are more supplemental.

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I'll try to let you know which ones those are. But I'm going to build a case that God is going to own the entire earth, that he's going to fill it full of believers before he returns.

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So let's go. What a great way to start. Let's go. Every time

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I have dominion, you got to be a little amped. All right, Genesis 128. God created a world that he intended on us to fill.

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So if we believe what God says, then we believe that God intended for humanity to fill the earth.

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Sin happened. Redemption happened. The plan still is there. God intended us to fill the earth. I believe he's going to have us do it.

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That is a theological basis. Genesis 128. If he said it, he's going to accomplish it.

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If he said we're going to fill the earth, I believe he's going to accomplish it. The second one, Genesis 12, 1 through 3.

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When humans sin, God enters into covenant with them. And one covenant he enters into is with Abram.

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And this covenant is incredibly important for us understanding God's intention for the earth.

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Because you can say, okay, God originally intended for humans to have dominion, but they sinned. He scrapped that plan.

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God doesn't scrap his plans, by the way. Everything will become complete. But let's just say he scraps that plan, and now he's onto a new plan.

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And that plan is worse than the first plan, because instead of us having the whole world, we end with a nosedive into the middle of the ocean.

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It's a tough sell. I'm going to prove it wrong. Genesis 12, 1 through 3. Now the

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Lord said to Abram, go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father's house to the land which

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I will show you. And I will make you a great nation. And I will bless you.

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And I will make your name great. And so you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you and the ones who curse you

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I will curse. Now check this out. In you, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

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That's a lot of families. In Abraham, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

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He's not talking about all the families of Canaan, all the families of Palestine, or even all the families of Egypt when they had a 400 year stint there.

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All the families of the earth will be blessed by and in and through Abraham.

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He's going to be a great nation with a great name. A great name in that day was something that had renowned.

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They would actually post up statues of you so that your name would show that you have dominion.

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So for us, we put a white picket fence around our house. They would put statues of the king around their empire to show our king reigns here.

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God is telling Abraham that he's going to have a great name. The root of that word means a multiplied name, a name that actually covers all the families of the earth.

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All the families of the earth. It says in you this is going to happen. So I want you to understand this.

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This is not in Abraham this is going to happen. It's that word in you or that phrase in you means sort of from out of you is going to happen.

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Paul picks this up in Galatians 3 and he says that if you're a Christian, you're a child of Abraham because Jesus is the true seed of Abraham.

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And it's through Jesus that the whole world is going to be blessed. It's through Jesus that this promise in Genesis 12 is going to happen.

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That all the families of the earth are going to be blessed through Christ. We're children of Abraham today.

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God didn't say, okay, Jesus came, scrap Abraham's covenant. We're a part of it.

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The whole world hasn't been blessed yet, has it? Every family on earth hasn't been blessed yet, has it?

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So God has still work to do before the end will come. The end won't come until all the families of the earth are blessed because God doesn't renege on his promises like we do.

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I believe God said it and he meant it, but we still have more verses to go. So we get in there, right?

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I believe that the world at one point in the future is going to be so filled with believers in Christ that every family on earth will be blessed.

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I'm going to take that as what it says. I believe that Islam is going to fall. I believe that atheism is going to be eliminated on the face of the earth.

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I believe that secularism, leftism, abortion, woke LGBTQ politics and everything that we see right now is going to bow the knee to Jesus at some point because Jesus Christ will reign.

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I believe when Jesus said, your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, that he wasn't joking. That he actually intended his kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.

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Do you know that in heaven, there are no rivals? In heaven, there's no dissension. In heaven, there's no people who say, well, you know,

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God, I don't really believe in you. Well, if his kingdom is going to come on earth, just like it is in heaven, it's going to be amazing.

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It's going to be believers all over the place. You get in a car accident and they get out and they say, oh, it's OK, brother,

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I forgive you. No more of this Boston stuff where people are just like, I'm going to sue you. That's going to be gone.

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The question is, are we going to believe what the Bible says? Are we going to believe what the news says? Are we going to believe what

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CNN and Fox and OAN and Daily Wire?

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Are we going to believe all the negativity that they're feeding us? It's poisoning us. Are we going to believe the word? We're going to have courage, even if it conflicts with our worldview.

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Are we going to believe that? This is predicted not just in the covenant of Abraham, it's predicted in the book of Numbers.

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That's the book where our Bible reading plans end. There's some really good stuff in there. After the people have just been in 400 years of Egyptian slavery, after God brings them out with a mighty hand, after he brings them to the to the mountain of God and the mountain shakes and it quakes and God's presence comes down and fills the temple or fills the tabernacle with his glory.

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And the people hit the deck and they say, we can't bear the holiness of God. So they saw it. They saw the 10 plagues.

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They saw God deliver them. They saw the Egyptians dead bodies on the soil. They saw it. And what did they do?

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They grumbled against God. God was so displeased with their lack of faith that he threatens to destroy them and make a nation out of Moses.

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And Moses said, more of the Egyptians will hear about it and they'll say that you wooed your people out here into the wilderness, that you couldn't bring them into the promised land.

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And because you don't have power to do what you say you're going to do, they're going to mock you and they're going to shame you.

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And how often do we as Christians act like that today? God's given us the world and yet we have so little faith.

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Oh yeah, God's going to return at any moment because of COVID or the mark of the beast.

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We can explain those things and we're going to have an eschatology talk afterwards in here and you can come talk and I'll tell you what those, what

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I think those things mean. But they're not meant to scare us. They're not meant to terrify us. They're not meant to depress us.

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They are meant to be the holistic picture of God taking back authority and rule over the earth.

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This is what God says to his wayward people. I have pardoned them according to your word.

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But indeed, as I live, all the earth will be filled with my glory.

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All the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord. Numbers 14, 20 through 21. What I want us to see here is that this passage should hit really close to home for us.

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Because when we fail to believe the promises of God, we're just like Israel, we grumble.

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Grumbling is caused by not believing what God has said. God didn't promise us one country to take over like he did for Israel.

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He promised us the whole earth would be taken over by the spirit and dwelt Christ -led church. And if we don't believe that, we will grumble.

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We'll grumble about our government. How often are we guilty of that, right? We'll grumble about elections.

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We'll grumble about how strong the enemy is, that pitiful, lying, wounded snake who will be his head crushed in the end.

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We murmur about the state of the country. We murmur about everything under the sun. When we're supposed to have joy, we're on the winning team.

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When we do those sorts of things, is it any wonder that a theology of a rapture that comes and rescues us out of the pain and takes us to a comfy, cozy place in heaven has proliferated in the church?

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Because we're escapists. We want to avoid the pain of trying to see

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Jesus' kingdom extended on earth and believe his promises. And we want to just say, well, that'll never happen because everything's so bad and stuff.

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I'm being tongue -in -cheek, but if we have a positive view of what God has promised, won't it affect our behavior?

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Won't it affect the way we live? There's records in the history of the church where men were marched to the stake and burned to death singing hymns to Christ.

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God grew his kingdom through that. Dietrich Bonhoeffer killed on one of the last weeks of the

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Nazi concentration camp's existence, and he was singing hymns. Paul singing hymns in prison.

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The disciples saying, we've been counted worthy to suffer for the sake of Christ. Who are we? We're the most comfortable people that have ever lived on the face of the earth.

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We're the richest people that have ever lived on the face of the earth. If you're poor in this room, you're richer than the kings of Egypt.

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We have more comfort than any, and yet we have more discontentment. Why? Because we haven't believed what

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God has said in his word, that he's sovereign and he reigns. It says that God promises this on his very life.

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You don't say promises like that if it's not important. You don't say that I swear on my life that this is true unless you're willing to give up your life for it.

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And guess what he did? He on his very life bought and paid for the dominion that God commanded.

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He bought and paid for it at the cross. So that when he says, I've pardoned them according to your word, he's looking past Moses and looking to Christ.

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When he says, but indeed as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord. I think that that verse,

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Jesus himself could even claim as his own and say, indeed as now I live after the resurrection, the whole earth will be filled with the glory of Christ because I live.

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It's certain. Will we believe it? It also happens in the

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Psalms. That's all over the Psalm. Psalm 2 is a Psalm of Jesus's dominion, where it says that he will be given the nations as his inheritance.

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Do you believe that he will be given the nations as his inheritance? Would you look at Jesus and say,

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I don't believe that. That's his inheritance. Why are you talking about that? Psalm 22, seven.

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This is this, this one is my favorite. When Jesus is hanging on the cross and he says, my

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God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He's quoting Psalm 22, the Psalm 22 verse one in the ancient world.

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When you quote the first verse of a Psalm, that means you're quoting the entire

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Psalm. You know what Psalm 22 is about? Read it. It says that it said that the wicked have encompassed me.

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They gamble for my clothing. It reminds you of something that happened on the cross. Says they give me wine to drink.

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My tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. He's talking about his crucifixion.

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Jesus is pointing them back to Psalm 22 and saying, this was already prophesied. Why am I sharing this with you?

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Because the Psalm doesn't end in defeat. The Psalm doesn't end with, and the

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Messiah was crucified. End of story. The Psalm ends like this.

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All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord and all of the families of the nation will worship before you.

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When Jesus is claiming Psalm 22 on the cross, he's saying that promise God gave to Abraham where all the families of the earth are going to be blessed through Abraham.

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That's me. All the families of the earth are going to be blessed by me, by my rising from the dead. His resurrection is not the end of the story.

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It's the beginning of the story. It's a story of God's victory over the nation. It's a story of God's victory over the nations. I'm sorry

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I'm getting excited, but if you can't get excited about this, then maybe you need to check your pulse.

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On his very life, he purchased dominion. Psalm 72, eight says, may he, this is a

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Messianic Psalm. It's looking forward to Jesus. May he rule from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth.

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Verse 19 of that same Psalm, blessed be his glorious name forever. And may the whole earth be filled with his glory.

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Amen and amen. Do we believe he's being metaphorical? Do we believe that Jesus is being poetic and Shakespearean?

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No, he means that the whole earth will be filled with his glory and he will accomplish it before the end comes.

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Psalm 82, eight, I'm not going to read it. It says he will possess all of the nations. Psalm 98, two, he will reveal salvation to the nations.

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Psalm 102, 15, everyone on earth will end up fearing the Lord, especially the pagan kings. Amen. So what we're looking at here as the whole earth being filled with believers, even the kings bowing their knee to Jesus, think about what kind of world that that will look like the minute before Jesus returns.

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When he says, now my kingdom is complete. Now I will come and I will take that kingdom and I will hand it over to God as a spotless bride adorned and ready for her husband.

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We got a long way to go. We got to stop looking around every corner for an antichrist.

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We've got to stop looking around every corner for a mark of the beast. I've heard so many Christians, please hear me here, who say we can't take the vaccine because if we do, it's the mark of the beast.

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And if the mark of the beast is in us, then we'll lose our salvation. God is the author of salvation, not

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Pfizer and not Moderna. It says that no one can snatch you out of his hand.

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I don't care if you've had the vaccine or not. That's between you and the Lord. But if the Lord has grabbed you and claimed you and he holds you, do you really think he's so impotent and so weak that a vaccine could pull you out of his arms?

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That's silly. Look at what the devil's done. We're in the greatest blowout victory that has ever happened in history, and we've got our heads down.

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Sullen. Psalm 138, 4 -5 says it unequivocally.

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All the kings of the earth will give thanks to you, O Lord, when they have heard the words of your mouth, when they will sing of the ways of the

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Lord, for great is the glory of the Lord. Psalm 145, 13 says your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations.

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Not some, all. As long as there's people on this earth, his kingdom will continue.

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And as long as there's people on this earth, his kingdom will expand. And so the very end, when he comes and claims it as his own, on his very life, he purchased this kingdom.

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And it could not be more clear. Isaiah is even more clear than that. Let's talk about that just for a few moments.

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I'll go quickly. Isaiah 2, 2 -4 says that the messianic kingdom will begin in Jerusalem, and it will spread out to the ends of the earth.

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What happened when Jesus came? It began in Jerusalem, it went to Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the

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Roman empire, and now it's going to the ends of the earth. Prophecy fulfilled. Isaiah 9, 6 -7 says there will be no end to the government of the

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Messiah. That means that no government will stand in the way of him extending his government. That means that his government will blanket the entire earth.

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Isaiah 11 -9 says mortal enemies will become friends. We read this last week. All the mothers cringed when

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I said children will play near the hole of cobras. That is a metaphor for how much peace

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Messiah will bring to the earth. It says they will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain.

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Just in case we're not sure what he means by mountain, he says for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the

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Lord as the waters cover the seas. Intimate knowledge of God will break out on every square inch of this planet before the end comes.

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Did you know that? Isaiah prophesied it. Maybe you're saying, Kendall, this is way too optimistic for me.

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I'm a realist. You haven't looked around at the world lately. Well, guess what? I don't build my theology by looking around at the world.

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I build my theology by looking at scripture. And I don't see that pessimism in God's word.

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We got to trust the word, guys, even if it messes with our expectations. Bible says let the word of God be true and let everyone else be a liar.

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Have the courage to look into it for yourself and believe something different if it's proved in scripture.

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Don't keep living with hopelessness. Don't keep living with, I can't wait till the

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Antichrist shows up because I'm out of here. You remember the parable of the talent?

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The one who had five used it wisely and he received five more. The one who had two used it wisely and he received two more.

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It's the one who buried it in the sand who was most severely rebuked by his master.

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Don't bury your faith in the sand waiting on an eschatological rapture. Don't live in negativity and pessimism and do nothing for the kingdom of God.

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Put it to work. Yeah, people might not like you. They don't like Jesus, but count yourself worthy that you can suffer for him instead of worthy that you can build up human approval for a few years and then have nothing to show for your faith when you meet the king.

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Think about creation. Do we really believe that God could create an entire cosmos but lacks the power to fill it with his people?

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That's silly. Think about salvation. We're a reformed church, which means that we believe

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God grabs us, drags us, and brings us to Christ. Do we really believe that if he's that powerful to change us from death to life that he can't sovereignly do that again and then do it again and then do it until the whole world is filled with Christians?

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Do we really believe that God can't do that? Don't let us dishonor

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God with our small faith. Let us worship him and thank him and see him for who he is.

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Isaiah 45, 22 says, Turn to me and be saved all the ends of the earth for I am

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God and there is no other. He's not begging. He's not pleading. God's not up in heaven saying,

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Gee, I really wish that they'll pick me like the rotund little child in the dodgeball game. That was me.

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That's not God. Look what he says in the very next verse.

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I have sworn by myself the world is gone forth from my mouth, the word in righteousness and will not turn back.

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That means everything he says will come true. That to me, every knee will bow and every tongue will swear allegiance.

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He swears this on his own life. Listen, church defeatism, Christian defeatism cannot reconcile these verses with the truth.

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We're either a defeated church or we're a victorious church. And the verses

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I'm sharing with you do not even give the option for us to be a defeated church.

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From 12 disciples in John 1 to 2 .4 billion today. Somebody please convince me that the church is losing.

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We'll be meeting afterwards. Come convince me. Other Isaiah passages.

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I'll just summarize them. Isaiah 52 says, All the earth will see is salvation. Isaiah 62 .2

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says, The nations will see God's righteousness. Psalm 66 .18 says, God will gather the nations into himself.

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Psalm 66 .23, which is the second to last verse in Isaiah's amazing book says,

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All mankind will eventually come and bow down and worship him. We could go deeper, but I think we've proved it.

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God intends to have dominion over the earth. Now we're going to see how.

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We've understood what? What does God want? God wants dominion over the whole earth. How is now the question. How is

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God going to have dominion over the whole earth? And we're going to look at John 12, 16 through 19 to give us a picture of how

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God is going to accomplish that. Verse 16 of John 12. These things his disciples did not understand at first, but when

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Jesus was glorified, they remembered that these things were written of him, that they had done these things to him.

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Three times in his passage, it says these things. What are these things? These things are

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Jesus riding to the city on the back of a donkey in fulfillment of prophecy, saying that he's king of Jerusalem.

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These things is that he was anointed by Mary to be king in the beginning of John chapter 12, verse three.

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It's these things that caused him to ride into the city in the same way Solomon rode into the city. It's these things where the town welcomed him as messianic king by putting palm branches on the ground as he walked in singing

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Hosanna in the highest. These things is the prophecy of Zechariah chapter nine, verse nine and 10, which says that he will have eternal dominion.

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Now the disciples didn't understand. What else is new? We don't either.

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That's the way God's kingdom works. It's that he didn't come to save the sophisticated. Look to your left and your right.

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We're not the wise ones. He came to save the dismally dull, the spiritually dumb, the blind, the deaf, and the ones who are dead in their trespasses.

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Of course, they had no clue what Jesus was talking about because they were just like us. And if we believe that we would have been any different, we would not.

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We would have probably been worse. At least Peter walked on water for a few steps.

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Can you imagine? I'd have hit that water, gone. The gospel confuses us when we're lost.

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When we don't have the Holy Spirit inside of us, we can't understand the gospel. Can't understand what Jesus is saying. Every atheist who hears the gospel today grinds their teeth at it.

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Every family member who doesn't believe in Jesus, who begs you not to bring up Christ at the dinner table anymore, they hate

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Jesus because they don't have the Spirit of God. Every person that you tell about Jesus scoffs at you in some way because they are still dead in their sins.

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The disciples at this point were not indwelled by the Holy Spirit. That doesn't happen until Acts, when the

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Holy Spirit comes down at Pentecost. So of course they didn't understand. Jesus wasn't inviting them to go home and have a good think about it or to go read a book about it.

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They had the Old Testament and they didn't get it. It says that their understanding did not come until Christ was glorified.

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It says that is what caused them to understand. It says that they didn't understand these things that were written until Jesus was glorified.

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Which means that Jesus died and their confusion was actually increased. Jesus sat in the grave and they sat around in Jerusalem and said, what is going on?

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How did the Messiah die? They were more confused. On the third day when he rose from the dead, they were confused. Thomas was confused.

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All of them were confused. It wasn't until Jesus rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, sat on the throne in glory that they understood what

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Jesus was talking about. It broke upon their consciousness when the Spirit came inside of them.

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Why? Because the Spirit gives you and I new birth and the Spirit gives us understanding. They were thinking, this is how

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I imagine it. After Jesus went to heaven and they had a few moments to themselves, they're like, man, what a wild week.

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He was dead. Then he rose again. He told Thomas to stick his finger in the wound.

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Thomas believed. Then he went to heaven. What a whirlwind of a week. Imagine as they're sitting down, taking a break, maybe having a meal.

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They talked about him riding into the city on a donkey. And they said, you know, I know the

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Solomon did that. And I understand that that is about his kingship. But it just seems like there's something more involved in the story than what

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I'm seeing. And I can imagine John, John, the one who wrote it, all of a sudden you have that moment where the

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Holy Spirit just reveals something to you. You can just reach out and grab it. Maybe John's Bible study that morning was in the book of Zechariah.

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And as he was reading it, he didn't get it. Later that day, it crashed upon him. And he said, oh, dear

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God, that's him. When John wrote his book, he said, that's him.

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From that moment forward, they understood the importance of what Jesus had done. He came into the city as cosmic king.

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It says these things, the disciples did not understand at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered.

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What did they remember? They remembered Zechariah. The things that were written, look at what it says in Zechariah.

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Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion. Shout in triumph,

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O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming to you. He is just and he is endowed with salvation.

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Humble and mounted on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey. And I will cut off the chariot from Ethreum and the horse from Jerusalem.

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And the bow of war will be cut off and he will speak peace to the nations. And his dominion will be from sea to sea and from the river.

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When that word is capitalized, it means Euphrates. From there to the ends of the earth.

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John, I imagine with the disciples, it's like he's a great king.

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He's a king who's going to not just have Jerusalem. He's a king who's not just going to have Judea. He's a king who's not just going to have

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Samaria. He said he's not just going to topple the Roman empire. He's going to have the whole earth. It broke upon.

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They understood it at that point. Do you understand it today? Do you understand what

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Jesus has said? That he's a king over all the earth. And if you have, what is that going to require of you?

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Well, I think it means that we would obey our king. And in obedience, because we love Jesus, it says, if you love him, you'll obey him.

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We don't obey for him to love us. We obey because we love him. Well, if we know that he is a king that's going to have dominion and we know that he died on the cross to bring us into his kingdom, then we know that Jesus Christ has equipped us, empowered us and made us a people who now participate in his dominion.

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Jesus is not leading a group of couch potatoes who sit in church and do nothing.

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If he wanted to do that, he could have snapped his fingers and he could have won the whole world in an instant, Thanos style. He could have.

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He didn't. He didn't. He started with 12. He spent three years with him.

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He's God. Like he could have done it in an instant. But he took three years to train them.

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And then after he trained them, he sent them out on little missions at first to get their feet wet. And then after that, he said,

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I'm going to leave, but the Holy Spirit's going to come and you're going to thank me for that, because it's better that I leave and the Holy Spirit come to you. It's better that the

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Holy Spirit is in us than the disciples face to face with Jesus. That's what Jesus said. And then he said,

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I'm going to send you, Acts 1 -8, to Jerusalem, the city that just killed me. I'm going to send you to them so that you can win them over.

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And then I'm going to send you to Judea. And then I'm going to send you to Samaria. And then I'm going to send you to the Roman Empire. And then

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I'm going to send you generation after generation after generation to the ends of the earth.

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Christians, that is our purpose. We've been brought into the kingdom to be people who help build the kingdom.

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That's what God has done. And we know that because of the very next verse. Jesus is a great king and now he's acting like a king and he's doing the kinds of things that a king does.

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And this shows us what his kingdom is going to look like. Verse 17. So the people who were with him when he called

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Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to testify about him. These are the people who just saw

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Nazareth risen from the dead and they could not be quiet about it. Jesus prayed for their belief in John chapter 11.

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They did believe. They saw the miracle of God. They saw the resurrection. And they went around telling every single person that they knew.

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They did not wake up the next morning and say, you know, I really need to start a personal quiet time.

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That's good. That's important. I'm not pooh -poohing that. They didn't wake up and say, oh,

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I need to find a good local church where I can listen to some preaching and singing and go home and live my life as if I didn't do it.

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They didn't say that. The first thing they did was they told everybody that they knew. They told their aunt, their cousin, their nephew.

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They told their mom, their dad, their third cousin. They took twice removed. They told their neighbors.

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They told the checkout lady in the Jerusalem apple stand. They told their barber if such a thing existed.

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They told everybody who this Jesus was. I can imagine in the checkout line in Jerusalem, hey,

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I know a man who raises people from the dead. The checkout lady's like, huh? And then instead of saying, instead of apologizing for it like we do, well, if you want to hear more, probably what he said was,

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I know a man who can raise people from the dead. When do you want to talk about it? I can talk about it now. I can come back at five.

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I can come back tomorrow at eight. When do you want to do this? The message was so important that social customs went out the window.

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The message was so important. Heaven and hell lie in the balance that offending people's sensibilities didn't matter to the disciples.

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They went throughout all the world. They got beaten. They got stolen. They got thrown in prison. Didn't matter a bit to them because Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

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If he really rose from the dead, it's the most life -changing message that has ever happened. And what can we do but share it?

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If we really believe Jesus rose from the dead, if we really believe an empty tomb was found in Jerusalem, if we really believe that the

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Holy Spirit lives inside of us, why are we quiet? Why are the loudest voices in our society pink -haired soccer players who hate

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God? Why are we quiet?

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When we've got the antidote that would save the nations, the only thing that's stopping us is us.

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It's not that the Holy Spirit's less powerful in you than he was in the Apostle Paul. It's that we've forgotten who

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God is. We've forgotten how powerful he is. We've forgotten how awesome the message of his resurrection is.

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I told this story, I think, before, but I'll tell it again. I was in a Puritan class in Gordon -Conwell because I'm the nerd that takes

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Puritan classes. I could have taken just basic history, but I was like, no, I want to take Puritanism in America.

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And I met my favorite professor there. His name was Garth Rozelle. He's a near 80 -year -old man.

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Every day we talked about the Puritans, and he was just as stone -faced as anyone that you could ever imagine to meet.

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One day he got to Jonathan Edwards' explanation of the gospel, and he started talking about the gospel.

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And this stone -faced, old, weathered -faced man wept like a baby.

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And he took time before he recovered, and he said, I'm sorry,

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I can't help myself. It's sweeter now than it was when I first believed. Is that true for us?

01:00:08

Because it's sweet. It's sweeter now than it ever has been. And what's in the way between you and God to where his gospel no longer tastes sweet and his gospel no longer explodes off your lips?

01:00:23

What's holding you back? Because I see when the shepherds saw the stars, they went telling everybody.

01:00:31

When they saw Lazarus risen from the dead, they went telling everybody. When Jesus rose from the dead, they went telling everybody. At some point,

01:00:37

Satan has closed your lips. Don't let him do it. The gospel's still sweet.

01:00:46

How can you do it? Start a Bible study in your home. If you're a dad, lead your children in family worship.

01:00:53

If you're on a college campus, start a Bible study and post flyers about it and tell people to come. Don't be surprised if nobody comes the first week.

01:01:01

You have plenty of conversations that you can have. Go up to somebody and say, hey, you want to join my Bible study? It's this week. If you don't want to do it this week, you want to do it this week.

01:01:08

It's okay. You can be excited about what you believe. You don't have to be quiet. Start a podcast.

01:01:13

That's what a lot of Christians do. We got two or three of us in here who have one. Build a business.

01:01:21

Be good at what you do. If you're really good at what you do, build a business. Raise money. Fund the kingdom. Fund missionaries. Send people to the uttermost parts of the earth.

01:01:28

Fund translation projects. We still need the Bible translated in languages that haven't been translated before.

01:01:33

Take your money and sew it into the kingdom of God and do something that is not going to be wasted away like Netflix and other things.

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Talk about Jesus at your work. Get to know your neighbors. Invite them over for dinner. I'm not saying these things because I've mastered them.

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I'm saying these things because these are examples of things that we all can do to share the gospel of Christ so that the nations will finally hear.

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There's so many examples that you and I can do. Just start talking. Don't let the enemy keep you silent anymore.

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The last thing that we're going to see, he takes confused people and he makes them Christians. He takes

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Christians and he makes them witnesses. The third thing that he does to build his kingdom is that he takes those witnesses and those witnesses will gather the nations.

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For this reason, also, the people went and met him because they heard that he had performed this sign.

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So the Pharisees said to one another, you see that you are not doing any good. The world has gone after him.

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Just like Caiaphas who said, isn't it better that one man die for the nation? So the Pharisees just said it.

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They just said the point. The nations are going to go after Christ. They can't stop him.

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The Pharisees can't stop the advance of Jesus. Their nasty opinions of him could not stop the advance of Jesus.

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The Romans couldn't stop the advance of Christ. The Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church, all the religions of this earth, godlessness in every place, secularism, evil government, all of our feelings and doubts, nothing will stop the advance of Christ's church because he rose from the dead to guarantee it.

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And he will not stop until it is finished. Do we believe that? Let's pray.

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Lord Jesus. You are a great king. You're a mighty king.

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You're a sovereign king. And you're a king who will have what you determine to have.

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It says in your word that whatever you determine by your pleasure, you will have as a matter of certainty.

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And Lord, you've declared that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God as the water covers the sea. You've declared that intimate knowledge of Jesus will break out upon the nations.

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Maybe not in our generation, but if we work and if we build and if we are faithful to what you said, we don't sit on our hands and we get excited about the resurrection of Christ and we start telling the world it could happen in our generation.

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Lord, you've breathed the breath into your church countless times before where nations come under the conviction of the

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Holy Spirit and they become saved. What an opportunity we have, Father, in an era where the entire world is connected via communication and technology.

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Lord, let us not, with so many great gifts, spurn your graces.

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Lord, let us not waste our life with vacations and retirements and 401ks and entertainment and football and everything else.

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Lord, let us stand before you in heaven having used the small talents that you've given us for your great glory.

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And Lord, I pray that in our lifetime, we would see your kingdom advance. In Jesus' name, amen.