Like Master, Like Servant Matthew 20:20-23

A number of years ago, I had a conversation with a man who I was working with who was a professing

Christian. He knew I was a pastor and I knew he was a churchgoer, so we frequently had conversations about Christianity.

What I came to discover is that he embraced a perverted version of Christianity, and this perverted version is known as the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel.

What this polluted Christianity teaches is that God wants you to be healthy and prosperous, and if this is not your experience, it's because of your lack of faith.

If you are poor, you lack faith. If you are sick and remain sick, you lack faith.

The great irony of this movement is that pretty much the only ones who are rich are the false teachers who push this false gospel.

People like Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copeland, and Jesse Duplantis are multi -millionaires who have mansions.

These churches draw lots of people so they make lots of money and enrich these teachers.

This movement truly fulfills what the Apostle Paul warned of in 2 Timothy 4 .3.

The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching. But having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.

And will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. What is interesting is that if you ever watch a service from Joel Osteen, which by the way,

I recommend not to, but if you do, what you will see at the intro of his speech, by the way, it's a speech and not a sermon, is that thousands upon thousands of people look at him as he holds up the

Bible. And what he is communicating by doing this is that he teaches from this book. But Osteen and people like him do not teach the

Bible. But rather, they teach their own perverted version of Christianity from verses taken out of context.

It is true that God blesses His people and brings healing when we pray.

But He doesn't always have that for someone's life. It's not always His will to bring healing.

He does do it sometimes, but not always. And if He doesn't bring healing, it's not because you lack faith.

He's got a plan for you as you go through this. What you learn when you read the

Bible is that the Christian life is not just a life of ease and comfort.

What you read is that it is a difficult road. Every true believer carries crosses just as the

Savior carried a cross. The Bible said it would be this way for Christians. Acts 14 .22

says, through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God. Glory awaits the believer, but hardships are promised before the glory comes.

Jesus addresses this topic with His disciples as they were young in their faith during His ministry, and they needed to hear about their future as His followers.

And this is a topic that we need to hear as well. And we will this morning from Matthew 20 -23.

So this time, I encourage you to turn there with me. If you're using a red Bible, it's on page 981.

This sermon is titled, Like Master, Like Servant. And I will begin by reading the text.

Matthew 20 -23 Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came up to Him, Jesus, with her sons, and kneeling before Him, she asked

Him for something. And He said to her, What do you want? She said to Him, Say that these two sons of Mine are to sit one at Your right hand and one at Your left in Your kingdom.

Jesus answered, You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?

They said to Him, We are able. He said to them, You will drink

My cup. But to sit at My right hand and at My left is not

Mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by My Father.

Here's the big idea. What this message is calling you to do. Pursue the crown that God promises to the faithful.

Pursue the crown that God promises to the faithful. And we're going to see one path howl in this text, but before we jump in, let me give you a little recap of where we were one

Sunday ago. Last Sunday we had a sermon on baptism. Two Sundays ago, we were in Matthew.

And what we saw is the third occasion where Jesus predicted His death and resurrection.

He said that the Jews would deliver Him over to the Romans, and the Romans would flog

Him and crucify Him. The disciples were always confused when

Jesus told them this because of their misunderstanding about who the Messiah was going to be. They thought

He was going to come in power. But they missed the part about the Messiah coming to suffer.

Before He reigns in power. But Jesus told them it would be this way. It was His Father's will for Him.

It was His mission on earth. But as Jesus described the physical suffering that He would face,

He knew the spiritual suffering that was coming. Isaiah 53 predicted that His Father would crush

Him. At the cross, He would endure His Father's holy wrath. At the cross is where love and justice meet.

And Jesus knew that He needed to take sin upon Him to die in our place and face

His Father's justice so that we could dwell with Him forever. The hope that we have is that He indeed did accomplish this.

And anyone who believes in the finished work of Christ experiences His complete forgiveness.

Now this leads us to our text this morning that we've already read, but now we're going to take a close look at. I'm going to begin by zeroing in on verses 21 and 22 where we see here, the mothers of the sons of Zebedee.

They give a strange request to Jesus. The mother of the sons of Zebedee came up to Jesus with her sons.

And this is what she said. Say that these two sons of mine are to sit, one at your right hand, and one at your left in your kingdom.

What we see here is a request from James and John. These sons were known as the sons of Zebedee.

Back in the first century, people did not have last names. What would distinguish them from other people is that they would be called son of this, son of that.

You see this in some of these films, right? Son of Aragorn or whatever it might be. Seth, son of David.

Nobody calls me that. James and John's father is Zebedee.

These two men are very important in the Gospel accounts. These are twelve disciples, and these are two of the twelve disciples.

These are two of the three that are in Jesus' inner circle. The other one is Peter. Peter, James, and John. The three had a special experience with Jesus.

These were the three that were on the Mount of Transfiguration with Him when Jesus was beholden with glory in their midst.

These are two important men, but their importance apparently gets to their head. They desire to be at Christ's right and left hand in His future kingdom.

To be at His right and left hand and that is to be in the highest place of honor.

Now as we look at this, there is a small difference between the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Mark as to how this narrative is presented.

In the Gospel of Mark, it is not the mother of James and John who asks the question about sitting at Jesus' right hand in His future kingdom.

It is James and John. Some liberal scholars look at this and say, they see a contradiction.

But there's no contradiction. There's never a contradiction in the Bible. As we look at this, there are two options to explain this apparent contradiction.

The first is that all three of them ask together and Matthew records the mother of these two brothers asking

Jesus. The other option is that the three of them discuss James and John sitting at Jesus' right hand privately and they ask

Jesus on different occasions. Either one works. There's no contradiction.

What we need to see here is that the important place that James and John held in Jesus' plans gets to their head.

It gets to their head enormously. They tell Jesus that they want to sit one at His right hand and the other at His left in His kingdom.

Their mother had a big head too. She thinks there's something special about her sons. More so than the other ten.

So special that she thinks they should be sitting in the highest place in Christ's future kingdom.

We've already seen the disciples talk themselves up in Matthew 18 .1 where they desired to be the greatest and they said, who's the greatest among us?

We see this in our world. Not only do people have a high view of themselves, mothers have a very high view of their children.

Do they not? It is good for parents to be proud of their children, but sometimes a parent can go a little too far, right?

I remember when I was growing up, my mom was so proud of me that she would say, Seth, you can do anything. And I appreciated this, but sometimes it would go too far.

There was a time when I graduated from college and I didn't know what I was going to do and she looked at every job possibility and said,

Seth, you can do that. There was one day when we were watching the news and she said, Seth, you should be on the news.

Go to the news station. She actually said that. And I was thinking, Mom, I'm working retail right now.

It's not as if I'm going to be on TV three months from now. My mom was proud of me, which is good, but I could see when she would go too far and mothers do this.

They think their kids can do anything and we want to have that right balance. This is what the mother of James and John is doing here.

She's getting carried away. She thinks her son should have a great seat in the kingdom of heaven, so great that one would sit at his right and left hand in his future kingdom.

How does Jesus respond to this big request? Let's see this in verse 22. Jesus answered, you don't know what you're asking.

Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink? They said to him, we are able.

So he asked them a question. And he asked them a question where they don't really know what he is asking.

As we look at this, we have to dig to figure out what he is saying. What does Jesus mean by drinking the cup?

That he is going to drink. What cup is Jesus drinking? In the previous passage that we saw two

Sundays ago, we looked at Jesus' predicted future crucifixion. And what he predicted was his physical suffering.

That he would be mocked, flogged, and crucified. But what I pointed out in the sermon two

Sundays ago is that when we talk about the cross of Christ, we can't just talk about his physical suffering.

We must also talk about his spiritual suffering. I explained what that spiritual suffering was two weeks ago.

Jesus uses the expression to drink the cup in our text. In the first century, this meant to drink the whole cup of whatever one was drinking.

In the first century, this was an illustration for endurance. To endure something to the very end until the last drop is poured.

When Jesus talked about himself drinking the cup, he talked about facing the full fury of his father's wrath when he hung on that cross at Golgotha.

What I said two weeks ago is that anyone in hell experiences this. They experience

God's wrath. People often think that God rules heaven and Satan rules hell.

This is wrong. God rules heaven and hell. God enjoys blessing his people in heaven as they dwell in his presence, but God judges people in hell by creating a miserable place of punishment.

Satan did not create hell. God did. Matthew 25 -41 says that hell is the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Satan has never been to hell. He is terrified of it. And one day, he will receive the worst punishment of anyone in the universe.

But as Satan, demons, and unbelievers are in hell, God's presence is there.

But it's not his presence of blessing. It's not his favor. It's his presence of disfavor.

It's his presence of anger toward sinners who are there. Of any angel who fell like Satan and his demons and any human who dies in their sins.

Revelation 14 -9 -11 describes the presence of God in hell. If anyone worships the beast in his image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God's wrath.

Pour it out full strength into the cup of his anger. And he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the

Lamb. And the smoke of the torment goes up forever and ever.

What Jesus is describing to His disciples in our text is that He is going to face this cup.

He is going to suffer as His Father's disfavor is upon Him. Remember what

Jesus said? My Father, My God, My God, why have You forsaken

Me? The problem with the disciples is that at this point, they don't get it.

We've already talked about how they view the Messiah. Suffering is not in their minds.

They believed what the mainstream Jewish community believed in the first century concerning the

Messiah. That He would come in power, drive out His enemies, and reign.

They did not understand that the Messiah must first suffer. This is why they were always perplexed when

Jesus told them about what was going to happen to Him. That sounds like weakness.

And the Messiah is not supposed to be weak. So they didn't understand it. But they should have because the

Old Testament predicted His future suffering. His physical suffering and His spiritual suffering.

Isaiah 53 .5 says He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.

Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with His wounds, we are healed.

And then Isaiah 53 .10 describes the spiritual suffering. As the prophet proclaimed, it was the will of the

Lord to crush Him. He has put Him to grief. This is the cup that Jesus drank that He is describing in verse 22.

He drank His Father's holy wrath. As one preacher has put it, He drank hell for you.

Jesus poses this question to His disciples. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?

He's talking about His suffering. What He tells James and John, the sons of Zebedee, is this, are you able to suffer as I am going to suffer?

They have no clue what He's talking about. And they ignorantly answer at the end of verse 22, we are able.

You can put yourself in their shoes right now. They're thinking, man, we're associated with this guy that everybody follows.

That everybody's talking about. We're associated with the Messiah. Things are going to go well for us.

Wrong. Things are going to be hard for them. And He's telling them about this.

This is going to be your experience. They don't know what their future holds at this point as Jesus is talking to them.

And we know that because of how silly their comments are. We're going to sit at your right and left hand.

We're going to drink the cup that you're going to drink. They probably think it's a good thing. But Jesus tells them about their future in the beginning of verse 23.

He says this. He said to them, you will drink my cup.

I already explained to you what the cup is. For Jesus, the cup was His spiritual suffering on the cross at the cross

He endured God's holy wrath. When Jesus is talking about the cup, He's talking about suffering.

The cup that Jesus bore was the Father's righteous anger as He took our sins upon Him.

But the cup that His followers will experience is a different kind of suffering.

The New Testament describes Jesus as the head of the church. And His church is His body.

Jesus' life was one of suffering, especially at the end when He would be humiliated, being brutally murdered by His enemies.

As the head suffers, so will the body. So will His people.

The Apostle Paul explains this in Colossians 1 .24 where he wrote, I rejoice in my sufferings for Your sake, and in my flesh

I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of His body.

That is, the church. Do you notice how Paul says he is filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions?

What does that mean? Isn't that odd? What's lacking in Christ's afflictions?

He's describing that He and all members of the church in some way, suffer as Christ suffered.

You know you meet a false teacher when they say you won't suffer. This book is covered in blood.

This is not a comfortable topic, but the Scripture makes clear that this is God's will for believers.

As I mentioned in the introduction, suffering will be present in the believer's life. You can mark it down.

It will happen. Acts 14 .22 says, Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.

2 Timothy 3 .12 says, All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

The closer you follow Jesus, the more pushback you will receive. That's what 2

Timothy 3 .12 is saying. All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

Believers do experience blessing in this life, yes. Think of all the blessings we enjoy.

But believers also experience trials. Some suffering,

God sends your way. James 1 .2 says that you experience trials of various kinds.

This does not happen because God enjoys sending trials your way, but rather He cares much more about your holiness than your temporary comfort.

He cares about who He's making you to be. Not that you're always just happy because your life is easy.

God is willing to make you uncomfortable, to grow you to become more like His Son, Jesus.

John 15 .2 says, Every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

God wants to sanctify you, to make you holy. Sometimes people ask, what is

God's will for my life? One of the answers is to make you holy. 1

Thessalonians 4 .3 says this is the will of God. Your sanctification. Your holiness.

God has a purpose for your life and it involves facing challenges because through these challenges, you learn to trust

God and what God does through that is make you more like Jesus. These challenges might be afflictions that He sends your way, physical trials, mental trials, satanic attacks, but it may also be, and it will also be, opposition from the world.

A few weeks back we looked at the parable of the vineyard where every believer receives heaven as their reward.

Every believer will have a crown. But before the crown comes suffering, as one 17th century

Puritan said, there's no saint without a cross to bear. Every believer has one.

Has many to bear. And it is God's will that before glory, that before fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore, one will face hardship of some kind.

This is what Jesus tells James and John in our text. You will drink My cup.

In verse 23, you will drink

My cup. James and John would drink Jesus' cup as they would suffer tremendously as they were used by God to spread the

Gospel from town to town and even throughout the Roman Empire.

The suffering that these two disciples would experience, James and John, is persecution.

This is primarily what Jesus has in mind when He says, you will drink

My cup. The book of Acts describes the early church and the spread of the

Gospel through them as they preached the Word. Wherever the Bible is preached, that's what grows the church.

And by the way, that's why I love what Abby said earlier. Like, what's building this church? Answer, this book.

Look at the book of Acts. The Word is preached. People come. People are saved.

People are baptized. People are made holy. There's no gimmicks. We don't need a rock band, right?

We don't need a coffee shop. We don't need a smoke machine. The Word builds the church.

And this is what the disciples did. They preached the Word, and the church grew. It grew like wildfire.

And as they spread the Gospel, inevitably, hostility comes because their agenda is different than the world's agenda.

It's working against it. It's trying to thwart it. And inevitably, there's this opposition.

There's this friction that takes place. And James, the son of Zebedee, would experience this.

In Acts 12, verse 2, that verse records that James, the son of Zebedee, died at the hands of Herod.

This would have been about 12 years after Jesus is talking to them right here.

Twelve years from now, he doesn't know this, but he's going to drink the cup. And he's going to drink the cup at the hands of Herod as Acts 12, verse 2 records.

Now there are different Herods in the Bible. Herod the

Great was the king of Judea when Jesus was born. He died shortly after Christ's birth.

But he had sons and grandsons that continued the Herod dynasty of ruling in Israel.

And all the Herods had one thing in common. They were ruthless. They were horrible people.

Horrible leaders. If Herod's running your district or region, bad news.

Your life's going to be hard if you want to do what's right. One of those in this dynasty was

Herod the Great's grandson named Herod Agrippa I. He ruled territories in Judea from AD 41 to AD 44.

Like his grandfather, he was a ruthless man who persecuted God's people. One of those

Christians was James, the son of Zebedee, as Acts 12, verse 2 records. That verse says that Herod killed

James with the sword. He paid the ultimate price for following Jesus.

He gave up his life. This was not only his story, but this was also the story of the other disciples of Jesus.

Of the 12 disciples who are with Jesus as he talks with James and John in this text, of the 12 disciples, 10 would be martyred.

Judas, of course, betrayed Jesus and he died from suicide.

Eusebius, a 4th century Christian historian, he was the first notable Christian historian after the

New Testament era. He recorded the deaths of each of the 10 original disciples.

They all drank the cup that Jesus said they would drink. Now, the other son of Zebedee, John, lived into his old age.

And we might think, well, John had it good. He didn't die. He didn't have it good. We know why

God kept John alive. Because it was God's plan that John would write the book of Revelation.

It shows us, right? Why are we here? We're not here just to have a good life. We're here to serve

God. God keeps John alive so that he can be taken to exile in Patmos, in the

Mediterranean, so that he can write the book of Revelation. And he did.

The experience of the disciples is the experience of believers. And we should not be surprised when we receive pushback in our world.

Believers are promised suffering. And as I mentioned earlier, this can be hardships the

Lord sends your way in love to prune you so that you will bear more fruit.

Or it can be persecution from a hostile world. Both of these will happen in a believer's life.

And this is what Jesus is thinking as He tells them they will drink the cup of suffering. Jesus told us the world will hate us.

And we shouldn't be surprised when they do. In John 15 and 18, this is what

Jesus said, if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.

The world is going to hate you. Much of the world will. He told us it would be this way. That's real

Christianity. If most of the world loves you, we have to ask the question, am

I truly following Jesus? Is 2 Timothy 3 .12 happening in my life?

All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Recently in the news,

Roe v. Wade has come into the forefront. And if you want to know what

Roe v. Wade is, it is this. In 1973, the Supreme Court folded to loud, immoral voices who said that women should be able to have an abortion.

It is within their rights to have one. Abortion stops a beating heart.

The Bible says that life begins at conception. David said in Psalm 51 .5,

In sin did my mother conceive me. So it's talking about conception. David was a sinner by nature at conception.

How can you be a sinner and not a person? You're a person. You're a person right from the beginning.

Which means that we need to protect that life in the womb. These are the most weak among us.

This is not a debatable issue. This is clear, black and white. Now in 1973, when the

Supreme Court folded to these loud voices, what they said was that women have the right to have an abortion.

And the Supreme Court made the Constitution say something that it never said. The 14th

Amendment gives rights to citizens for privacy, but the Supreme Court said that this privacy includes abortion.

What's interesting is that when the Constitution was written, what moral guide are they following?

The Ten Commandments. What's the Sixth Commandment? Thou shall not murder.

So of course that's not what they had in mind when they put the 14th Amendment in there in 1868. But abortion, it is taking the life of a human in the womb.

It is stopping a beating heart. I've heard it said that the heart starts beating at 21 days.

So this is not an opinion. This is not open for debate. This is fact that must be held to by moral people.

And Christians are the moral people in this world. And when the Constitution was written in the late 18th century, they followed the

Ten Commandments. And the 14th Amendment followed what the Constitution writers wrote when they wrote the privacy.

So in other words, they didn't have in mind abortion, not even close when they wrote that. In 1973, the

Supreme Court were functioning as kings, as Caesars, making their own edicts.

Recently, we discovered that the Supreme Court was planning on overturning Roe v. Wade. And a clerk from the

Supreme Court leaked this upcoming decision, which is unprecedented in the court.

You don't leak opinions that are going to be made months later. There's obviously a political motivation here to put pressure.

In fact, this week, one of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn it received a death threat.

In fact, the guy was at his house with a gun, planning on taking his life. Now, you didn't hear that on the news because they don't want you to know about that.

But some news stories covered it. This is very serious. They don't want

Roe v. Wade to be overturned. God is against abortion.

That is crystal clear. The Bible makes that abundantly clear. And if God hates abortion, that means that Satan loves it.

He wants abortion to continue in this land. And here is the point I'm making.

If you stand against Satan's evil agenda, you will experience pushback.

This whole agenda is an attack on biblical Christianity.

What's interesting is that the pro -life movement is often pretty weak. And we found that out recently.

Some people don't even want Roe v. Wade to be overturned. What? Thankfully, there's many who do.

But people, they call it Overton Window. As time goes on, the window gets bigger.

And people fall for things. People start to believe the lie. It's like the frog in the warm pot.

A frog would not jump into a boiling pot. But if you slowly turn it up, what happens is that the frog doesn't leave.

It feels comfortable in there. But eventually it dies. It'll burn. This is what our society is.

As Satan moves his agenda forward, it moves forward slowly over time to the point where people are believing crazy things.

Nobody would believe these things overnight. But as they move it slowly over time, people are like, oh yeah, that sounds like a good idea.

That sounds good. That's how he works. He's deceptive. He's crafty. John the

Baptist was murdered by one of Herod the

Great's sons, Herod Antipas. Why was John the Baptist murdered? For challenging him?

Because he was committing incest? John the Baptist was in the public square calling out the sin of one of their rulers.

The only way you will experience true persecution, the only way you will be obedient to Jesus Christ is if you are a public

Christian. Not one who just follows Jesus in your home and in the church, but follows

Jesus in the public square. Like John the Baptist did. And he got his head chopped off for it.

There was a video from a few years back where theologian Paul Washer explained this sober truth from history.

The reason early Christians and the reason other Christians down through history were martyred is not because they're just following Jesus.

No, they are martyred because the state feels threatened by them.

Christians don't worship their gods. They don't follow their immoral agenda.

We know the values of our society. How do we know it? Turn on the news.

Watch a game. Watch a baseball game. Did the

Minnesota Twins have a pro -life night? No, they didn't have a pro -life night.

They had a gay prime night. Are the

Minnesota Twins going to host John Harris? It's laughable, right? Of course not.

We know their values. If you stand against Roe v.

Wade, if you stand against their agenda, including their social justice agenda, if you stand against this, you have a target on your back.

This is Satan's agenda. This is the world he temporarily rules. And this is his agenda.

Christians in America should be unanimously speaking out against it. Romans 1 talks about how

God gives people over to their sins. Do you know what Romans 1 is? 2022

America. And the world has a problem with the ones who are going after their idols.

If you go after someone's idols, they get angry. They want you gone.

They want you out of the picture. They want to fire you. They want to fine you. When you go after their false morality, you cross the line.

And then they will come for you. Just as we get righteously angry when someone actually violates true morality, they get unrighteously angry when you violate their false morality.

Now I'm not saying that they're going to take your life yet, but they will call you all kinds of names. You won't be hired for a job.

You'll be fired. It'll be harder to work in the public square. You'll be labeled as someone to avoid.

You'll be called all kinds of names. In the first century, Christians were called child molesters because the adults met with the children.

They were called cannibals because they ate the Lord's Supper. They were called atheists because they didn't worship the

Roman gods. They were called all these things that they were not.

And yet, they're called these things, and people in society are like, man, these people are the problem. These are the bad people.

We're seeing it, aren't we? And Jesus is telling you, this is the cup you're going to drink.

Do what is right and stand for God's truth and stand against Satan's agenda.

As you call out evil, we must always share the Gospel, by the way. It's always an opportunity for evangelism.

I mean, if you're called to stand before Congress, stand before the leaders, preach the

Gospel, and say, you need to turn from your evil. You need to follow Jesus Christ. Call people to repent.

Show people that there is a better world coming, and they will be in that world if they will put their trust in Him.

This is the road God calls us to, and you will face opposition. Those who are most vocal against Satan's agenda are those who are experiencing the most pushback.

We have a man visiting our church in three days that has battle wounds from his stand for the truth.

He was supposed to speak in Michigan the week before, but they cancelled him because people protested him. John Harris has suffered for the name of Christ.

He's not popular in American Christianity, and he's not popular because most of American Christianity is compromised.

Watch the documentary Enemies Within the Church. You will see it. The whole thing is factual.

They gave the movie, the documentary, to lawyers and said, can we get sued for this?

They looked at all the evidence. They said everything you said is true. Everything you said is documented. The facts.

The truth hurts, right? There's an old quote. The truth hurts. You put the truth out there. The reason

John Harris is not popular in some places is not because he's a mean person.

It's not because he's a bad guy. He's a very good guy. He's actually very nice.

Very down to earth. Gracious. The reason people don't like him is because he's exposing their corruption.

He's shining light in a dark place. And when you do that, people get angry.

Herod was furious when John the Baptist exposed his sin publicly.

The sin of incest. And he responded by taking his life. Every Christian leader should be receiving some pushback right now from the hostile world because the world is advancing evil at high speeds.

They're not even pretending anymore. They're just pushing it forward. And it is the responsibility of men of God to do something.

It is also the responsibility of every Christian man, woman and child to stand against the devil's agenda in the places where God has placed you.

Every one of you has a place of influence. Shine the light of God in the midst of darkness. And let me just say this.

I didn't even plan on saying this. I am fed up with weak pastors. I was talking to someone who said

I wouldn't recommend two -thirds of the chiropractors or actually Eric Herring. He goes to our church. I don't recommend lots of pastors.

And I'm not saying this because I'm saying I'm some great guy. I'm a beggar.

I'm put in this position by God and I just want to be faithful. That's my goal. But there was a debate recently where they had this far left person about the woke gospel.

They got a weak... They didn't get John Harris to be on the other side of the social justice issue. They got a weak person.

A weak pastor. And the point where he got the most angry was not at Satan's agenda that's being pushed forward.

He got most angry at people like us. You're being mean.

You're being too rigid. I'm thinking, what a coward. That's not right.

Titus 1 .9 says you're supposed to stand against the evil schemes. You're supposed to protect the gate.

Not say that the bad guys are on the right. The bad guys are the ones holding the line in the

Bible. What he's saying is the bad guys are the Bible people. That's what the world says.

It's ridiculous. It's not okay.

So, we will receive pushback. And if you follow compromised

American evangelicalism, you know what? You'll be okay. You'll just be pointing the finger at the ones.

In fact, those people might be the ones throwing the first stone at the ones who are actually standing for the truth.

Isn't that sad? But we should be surprised it's this way. There's always a remnant.

There's always a remnant. And we should not be surprised when most of the people are going with the world.

Those who are willing to stand with Christ in the face of persecution are those who stand on the word of God.

And by the way, everybody eventually is going to have to make a choice. Which side are you on? It's just that some have joined the bus earlier, and some will probably join later, and some never will because they love the world too much.

Now, this is what Jesus says in the remainder of verse 23. He said this, To sit at my right hand and at my left hand is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my

Father. Now, three weeks ago, what we saw is that in one sense, everyone receives the same reward.

Everyone receives eternal life for believing in Jesus. But in another sense, some believers will be rewarded more than others.

And this is what Jesus is saying here. Those who endure the most for his sake in this life will be the ones who are rewarded the most in the next.

What he is specifically talking about here is suffering experienced from a world who hates God. In other words,

God notices your suffering. When you face opposition, He notices and He will reward you greatly for that in the age to come.

If you stand with Christ when it's unpopular to stand with Him, He will reward you. As one author writes,

The affliction that brings eternal glory is that which is brought about and is willingly endured because of faithfulness to the

Lord. It is suffering because of the Gospel. Being persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

The one who has the greatest glory beside Christ in Heaven will be the one who has faithfully endured the greatest suffering for Him on earth.

End quote. And then Jesus says at the end of verse 23 that the

Father has prepared some for this great reward. And my prayer is that we would be in that number.

That we would be in that number who will receive the words well done good and faithful servant.

You stood in the face of opposition. You were faithful to me. You showed that you loved me over the world.

The praise of man is so fleeting. May we not fall for that. So pursue the crown that God promises to the faithful.

In this text we've seen one path how? Here's that path. Through enduring suffering of opposition from this godless world.

Through enduring suffering of opposition from this godless world. Suffering comes before the crown.

Jesus told us it would be this way. The Christian life in this world does indeed contain blessing.

But it's also accompanied with trials. And one of those trials will be pushback from the world. It will be persecution.

It will be, as my old pastor said, a raised eyebrow. It might be a raised fist. It might be martyrdom.

It might be name calling. There's a spectrum here. But there's going to be some kind of pushback for following Jesus.

He does not want you to run from his opposition. The opposition will find you as you follow him.

So be faithful. Be faithful as you drink the cup. Now next

Sunday we will look at the remainder of this conversation where Jesus tells his disciples what a true follower looks like.

And what he is going to describe is completely different from how this world thinks people should be.

But this time let's bow our heads in prayer. Father in Heaven, what a wonderful God you are.

And what a calling you've given your people. And Lord, you give us the grace to pursue this calling, to endure challenges, and may we count it joy,

Lord, to suffer for your sake. And I think sometimes when we read these passages as Americans, we've had it so good that we can be like, oh, what's the suffering like?

But we see it, Lord, in our world. The mainstream world hates the Bible.

I mean, frankly, Lord, they hate you. And they hate your people. And of course we're going to receive opposition from them if we're following you.

And may we be those, Lord, who do not move an inch but stand strong on the Word of God. And may it not be that we get pushed back because of our character, because we don't say something in the right tone.

We always need to be careful with that. May we always speak the truth in love, but may we not budge at all on the truth of your