The Herald of the Kingdom

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Don Filcek, Not Your Average Savior; Matthew 11:1-19 The Herald of the Kingdom

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You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. Our desire is to help you draw near to God by growing in faith, community, and service.
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This message is by Pastor of Teaching and Vision, Don Filsek, and is a part of a series entitled
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Not Your Average Savior, a study of the book of Matthew. Thanks for listening. I'm coming back into a series that I started, actually a couple of years ago,
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I started going through the book of Matthew. And so some people have asked me, like, where are we going? And I meant to say that last week, and so you show up and you're like, where are we going?
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We're going into the book of Matthew and picking up that series. So I'm starting in Matthew 11 today, and you might go, well, what happened to the first 10 chapters?
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Didn't you like those? And so you just kind of skip them or something. And actually, I've already preached on those. And I recognize that there's a lot of people here who weren't here when
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I started preaching through the book of Matthew. But I'll catch up to speed here. The series is entitled Not Your Average Savior.
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And if we can put the graphic up there, it's a little bit of a weird, a strange title for a sermon.
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But my desire is that we meet Jesus in the book of Matthew and that we meet Jesus as he truly was.
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How many of you know, how many of you had this experience where you thought Jesus was like this, and then you encountered him in scripture and you're like, maybe he's not so much like that.
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Maybe he's a little bit more like this over here. Have you had that happen where your view of Jesus changed because you encountered scripture?
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I think we're going to see a little bit of that this morning in that the Jesus that we see in this text might challenge the notions of Sunday school
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Jesus. Maybe some of us were raised in the church where we saw Jesus in this light and he's going to reveal himself in a bit of a different way, a little bit of a different flavor to his ministry and the way he lived his life.
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Matthew at every turn in his record of the life and the ministry of Jesus is pointing to how unique he was, that he was genuinely the unique Messiah and King and he came to reveal himself as Messiah and King.
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And for us where we live today, we turn to all kinds of saviors. So this phrase, not your average savior, really I ought to put savior in quotations on that text because there are all kinds of things that we turn to that we would seek to make saviors in our lives.
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Our culture has all different kinds of issues and things that we turn to to try to save us.
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Some illustrations. Some people would turn to alcohol and drugs to save themselves from pain.
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They would seek to make those things saviors, but they really in the end are no savior at all.
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Some turn to relationships and sex to save themselves from loneliness or low self -esteem. But you might notice that some of the things that we seek out to try to save us from our desperate circumstances end up spiraling us down into deeper problems and difficult circumstances.
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Are you getting what I'm saying? So there's all kinds of saviors, things that we might turn to to try to remedy the situation and there really is only one savior.
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Jesus is not like those other types of false saviors, if you will. In him we find forgiveness.
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In Jesus we find wholeness, completeness. In Jesus Christ we find purpose.
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In him we experience true and abiding sacrificial love, a love that you could search the world over and not find the kind of love that Jesus has to offer you through his cross, through his sacrifice.
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A love that doesn't just give us warm fuzzies, but a love that actually has transforming power in our lives because we finally realize what love really is when we come to Jesus at the cross.
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Jesus is not your average savior. And in our text this morning we will see that Jesus was not the average savior that the
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Jews were looking for. They had a perspective in their mind of what Messiah was going to be like, what was the king going to be like when he came.
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And we're going to see in our text that even John the baptizer, even John the baptist struggled to fit
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Jesus into his own expectations for what a savior and a messiah and a king ought to live like.
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So I want you to open your Bibles to Matthew 11. We're going to take verses 1 -19, that's page 695, 695 in the
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Bible that's in the seat back in front of you. Easy to find there, Matthew 11, 1 -19. If you don't own a Bible, please take that one with you.
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It is our desire that everybody owns a copy of the word of God. Follow along as I read Matthew 11, 1 -19, the words of God to us here at Recast Church in Matawan this morning.
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When Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in their cities.
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Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to them,
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Are you the one who is to come or shall we look for another? And Jesus answered them, Go and tell
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John what you hear and see. The blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear and the dead are raised up and the poor have good news preached to them.
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And blessed is the one who is not offended by me. As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds concerning John.
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What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see?
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A man dressed in soft clothing? Behold, those who wear soft clothing are in king's houses. What then did you go out to see?
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A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is he of whom it is written,
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Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you. Truly I say to you, among those born of women, there has arisen no one greater than John the
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Baptist, yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the
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Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and the violent take it by force. For all the prophets and the laws prophesied until John.
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And if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
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But to what shall I compare this generation? It's like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to their playmates.
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We played the flute for you and you did not dance. We sang a dirge and you did not mourn. For John came neither eating nor drinking and they say he has a demon.
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The son of man came eating and drinking and they say look at him, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.
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Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds. Let's pray.
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Father, I ask that you would open our eyes to your kingdom, that you would open our eyes to the things that you are doing in the world around us, the things that you came to set right.
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Father, that you would open our hearts to gratitude and thankfulness as we offer songs to you, songs ultimately about our gratitude and our thankfulness and recognition of what you have done.
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Father, I ask that you would encounter us in our worship this morning, that you would show yourself as you are, high and exalted and worthy of our worship.
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And yet, Father, that you would challenge us to think about you correctly as we see you in the life of Jesus Christ and we see that he lived a little bit different than us and he did things a little different than us and he wants to push and challenge us to think differently about the kingdom ministry and the things that we are called to do, the way that we are meant to model him.
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I ask that you would be honored and glorified by our singing and it's in Jesus' name that I pray. Amen. Go ahead and make sure your
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Bibles are open to Matthew chapter 11. Although we read that earlier, I think it's good for you to have that open in front of you in order to just be able to follow along because I'm going to walk us through this text.
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It's page 695 in the Bible that's in the seat back in front of you, but that's Matthew 11. I want to set the immediate context because we're coming into the middle of a book and how many of you know that books in the
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Bible have a flow, like they were written by an author with intention, they've got flow and there's things that have already transpired by the time that we get to Matthew chapter 11.
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The last chapter, so if you were to go back to Matthew 10 in your mind, of course Jesus has already launched his ministry, we had the birth of Jesus early in Matthew, his baptism under John, John the baptizer, and then his launch into ministry.
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Just at the beginning of chapter 10, Jesus selected his inner circle of 12. So to give you a perspective on where we're at in the ministry and the life of Jesus, he just recently selected 12 disciples to be his closest followers.
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Throughout chapter 10, he talked with them about the ministry he was going to send them out to accomplish, and then he supposedly has actually sent them out here at the beginning of chapter 11, which is right where we pick up.
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So where we see this now is when Jesus had finished instructing his 12, he went on from there to teach and preach in their city.
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So he sends out the 12, they're going throughout Galilee, that is in the north of Israel, traveling from town to town in groups of two.
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Now there were 12 of them, they go out in pairs of two and they're out doing ministry and Jesus kind of picks up the road too and heads out from city to city as well.
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And what is he doing? What does the text tell us that Jesus is going out and doing? Teaching and preaching, right?
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That's what the text tells us. The author Matthew is not being redundant here by saying teaching and preaching.
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I think a lot of times we might have that in our mind that those are the same thing, or you're just not even really thoughtful about what the difference is between these two.
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The word teaching is a more general word for education, but in Greek there's a little bit of a nuance to this word.
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It has the notion that you're very concerned for your audience, that they get it. Now have any of you ever had a professor, a teacher, somebody in your past who was a really gifted teacher that was very concerned that the students got what they were learning?
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Have you had that before? I'm going to say that's probably a good sign of a good teacher. They're concerned for their audience, they're going to bring in things that are relevant to the subject that they're talking about and they're going to really engage you to try to help you to understand what's going on.
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But there's a difference between that and preaching. So that makes much of the audience, preaching or proclaiming, has the nuance or the concept of being more concerned with the content of the message.
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Now have any of you ever had a professor or a teacher that was mostly concerned with their content and not so concerned with whether or not you had any clue about what they're saying?
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Good teacher, bad teacher, what do you think? Jesus did both. Jesus was very concerned for the content of what he's bringing forward.
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He wanted to make sure that he was bringing the correct content, but equally he was concerned about his audience as well and making sure that they understand.
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What I just want to recommend from that is we look at the life of Jesus here right from the beginning. What is he even going out and doing that we're going to see in our text?
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We need balance in the way that we interact with others, both teaching and preaching. Concern for both content and audience.
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We need both of those in our daily lives as we go around and proclaim Christ and we talk about him.
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I think that on the one hand, we live in a culture that is a lot more into teaching and we could slide so far into teaching others and so concerned for the audience that we end up watering down the content of the message of the gospel.
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Do you understand what I'm getting at by that? We can get to a place where what we present is no gospel at all because we want to make our audience feel comfortable.
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How many of you know that there are times when if we're proclaiming the gospel that sometimes people will be uncomfortable with that?
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Do you see why we need to keep the teaching and the preaching in balance? Why we need to keep a focus on our content, but equally we also need to be concerned for our audience.
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I think Jesus models that kind of balance here and we need to contemplate and consider where we are in the spectrum and the interactions we have with co -workers and neighbors and people around us.
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I hope you are having those conversations with people around you about the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ that he died on the cross for our sins that we can be forgiven and made whole.
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Matthew is going to use an event in the life of Jesus Christ in order to model for us, to show us how he taught and proclaimed the kingdom of God, particularly the kingdom of heaven as the text says.
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This story breaks down into three nice sections all focused on John the baptizer. So if you're the kind of analytical person who likes to take notes and likes structure, here's one for you.
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I don't do this for you very often. So for those of you, this is, I'm throwing you a bone if you're organized like that.
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That's the way your mind works. Three points. This sermon has three points. I can do that, you guys. Point one is verses one through six,
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Jesus addresses evidences of the kingdom. So they're evidence of the kingdom. By the way, I didn't take the time to alliterate this, you know, so I didn't go that far.
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But evidences of the kingdom, and he's going to basically take the doubts that John the baptist has about him as Messiah and turn those around into evidences for the kingdom.
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He's going to give John evidence. You doubt that I'm the Messiah? Let me give you some evidence of it. The second thing is in verses seven through 15,
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Jesus is going to highlight the supremacy of the kingdom by comparing John to those who are in the kingdom.
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So he's going to say there's John and then there's people that are in the kingdom. And we're going to have to deal with that in the text as we walk through it.
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I want to point out that you've maybe heard me use an old term, John the baptizer. I'll refer to him as John the baptist,
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John the baptizer, but I want to just clarify something. There were no baptist denominations when John was around, and so I fear that sometimes when you hear the phrase
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John the baptist, you go, I know them, they're Southern Baptists or certain kind of Baptists or American Baptists or Northern Baptists or whatever.
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He was called John the Baptist because he baptized people. And that's it.
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So the denomination thing I think can be a little confusing. I think John the baptizer, have any of you ever heard him called that before?
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Just kind of a little bit more old school way of saying it, but I think it gets the point across in a culture where Baptist has a very distinct meaning in our minds.
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But the third point is disbelief in the kingdom, and in verses 16 through 19
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Jesus is going to tackle the concept of the way that his generation responded to the coming King. He says the
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King came and there was a unique response that we're going to see that his generation had to it, that I think is a way that we still can see people responding to the kingdom, even sometimes we respond in this way in our own culture.
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So Jesus goes out into the cities, he's teaching and preaching, he's proclaiming, trying to get his point across that the kingdom has arrived, and the disciples of John the baptizer show up for the second time in the book of Matthew.
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Now they've come to Jesus prior to this, but I want to catch you up a little bit. How many of you are a little fuzzy on your John the baptist history?
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Maybe a little bit, okay. So I want to just catch us up with a little bit of John the baptist history. John the baptizer showed up in the wilderness as a scruffy, crazy eyed wild man down by the
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Jordan River. Now he was the cousin of Jesus, we saw him earlier, we saw his mom Elizabeth, and she was pregnant at the same time for John that Mary was pregnant for Jesus.
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And they met and they talked through it and all this stuff and there was all this unique interaction. But he's this crazy guy, he lived out in the wilderness.
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Now when I say wilderness, what comes to your mind here in Michigan? Forest, woods, the
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U .P., Canada, the wilderness, right, the U .P., right, eh?
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But the mindset for wilderness needs to be a lot more barren than that, like no trees, think like a couple of snakes and some lizards scurrying under rocks and other than that there's just not much out there in the
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Judean wilderness. Okay, craggy rocks, desert, hot, the only way down to the
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Jordan River from Jerusalem is just this narrow path called the road to Jericho, Jesus alludes to it a few times, not an easy road to travel.
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And people went out to the Jordan River, by the way, John doesn't accommodate to people very well.
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He doesn't bring his message into Jerusalem. He doesn't walk the streets of Jerusalem proclaiming the
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Messiah has arrived, he's like, I'll just get a little close to culture but not very close. So he comes just to the edge of civilization where people have to literally get on the road and travel through wastelands to get to where he is, he's just right on the edge of civilization.
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And he proclaims in an Old Testament prophet kind of way that the
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Messiah has come and that they need to repent of their sins and prepare their hearts for the Messiah. And that's where his baptism differs from baptism as applied in the
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New Testament church. There's two types of baptism mentioned in the New Testament. There's an Old Covenant mentality that is
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John's baptism. Maybe some of you know that baptism did not begin with the early church.
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Baptism actually goes back to, it was founded as a Jewish tradition, a Jewish ceremony.
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When a person became a Jew, they were baptized as a way of showing,
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I want my heart to be cleansed and purified and a fresh start. And that's what John's baptism was, is saying,
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I'm in with God and I want what he has to offer me. Now for Jews to be baptized was a massive thing.
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What John is doing here is basically suggesting, you call yourself Jews but you are dirty still, you are still sinful and you still need to repent and you still need to come clean with God.
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And that was a radical message for Jews of his day and age. So he's basically like this Old Testament, scruffy, crazy eyed man down by the
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Jordan River. I picture his beard to be down to his knees, you can barely see the dude for his beard. Just craggy hair and all kinds of, what does it say he ate in the text of the
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New Testament? Locusts and wild honey, right? I mean this dude is eating insects. He's living in the desert, there's not a lot to eat, he's like, let's fry some locusts on a rock or something.
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They didn't have beekeeping suits back then, so this dude is like trying to get honey from bees out in the wilderness.
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So he's pretty hardcore. And he's basically, his main role is to proclaim the way of the
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Messiah. He's basically saying the Messiah has come. This is his primary role. The Messiah has come. Prepare the way in your hearts for the chosen one of God.
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The one that's been prophesied since all the way back in Genesis. That one would come who would crush the head of the serpent.
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Born of woman, and he's here. The promise of Abraham, realized in flesh. And then he introduces
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Jesus to the crowds. Now, people didn't have movies. People didn't have TVs. The interwebs had not been invented yet.
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And so they didn't have a lot of sources of entertainment. And so can you imagine people just kind of sitting around in Jerusalem going, hey honey, what do you want to do tonight?
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And it's like, hey, let's go down and hear John. That would be kind of cool. I mean I think this had entertainment value for the culture.
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As a matter of fact, I think we see that some people were probably drawn to him because of just entertainment.
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Like, I mean, there's this crazy man out there. Some are actually going to declare that, some actually in the culture thought he was demon possessed.
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Like, let's go watch the freak show. Okay, let's go down to the Jordan and see what's going on.
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And he drew a large crowd out in the edge of the wilderness. He was baptizing people and even ended up baptizing
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Jesus himself after identifying him as the chosen one. He said, behold the
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Lamb. When Jesus walked up into the crowds, John's words were, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
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Do you think that early on in John's ministry, he had a rock solid confidence that this was the Messiah? He said,
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I'm not even worthy of untying this dude's sandals. A picture of the most humble thing that you could do in their culture was to wash people's feet.
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Now can you imagine what the roads would have looked like? You're wearing open toed sandals. Do you know what kind of stuff happened in the roads of that day and age?
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And you're walking and then you're going to take somebody's sandal off and wash their feet. And John says, I'm not even worthy of that.
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Do you think that John had a pretty high estimation of Jesus early on in his ministry? We're going to see John waffle.
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We're going to see him waver a little bit here. Well, why? I want to point out that some other things happened in John's history that we go through the book of Matthew.
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So he baptized Jesus. He said, I'm not worthy. You should be baptizing me. And Jesus says, no. Let's do this to show that I'm with God.
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And later in Matthew 4 .12, we find out that John gets arrested. So if you're taking notes, you can just jot down Matthew 4 .12
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as just a key point in the life of John the Baptist. He was arrested. And he had spoken out against Herod, the king, the king of the
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Jews, at that day and that age. And he had spoken out against Herod for having an affair. We find that in other passages throughout the
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Gospels. And Herod did not take the criticism well. Now, do you think that John the
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Baptist kind of kid -gloved the notion that the king of the Jews was having an affair? Do you think that he was just kind of like, oh, you know, well,
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I heard a rumor that this guy... I mean, who's John the Baptist? How does he preach? How is he proclaiming out in the wilderness? Do you think this guy hammered
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Herod to the crowds? Herod did not respond well to the criticism, which he was very well known for not responding to criticism very well.
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So John's been sitting in prison for around a year, maybe up to two by the time that we get to the text that we're in.
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I want you to know that prison might have a tendency to soften your resolve a little bit. Now, this is not prison -like, out for good behavior, or some courtyard time, or cable
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TV, or three square meals. This is not that kind of jail time. This is dungeon time. This is dank.
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This is like they don't really care if you die or not in this dungeon. I mean, you might get fed, you might not get fed, depends on what's available at the time.
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So this is not a pretty picture. John's been sitting in prison, and at one point in the text of Matthew, his followers actually come to Jesus.
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So John has a group of disciples. Jesus has a group of disciples. Really, those ought to come together. Would you agree with me on that?
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They haven't yet at this point. John's disciples come to Jesus and challenge... Are you ready for this?
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They're going to challenge God in flesh about the issue of fasting. They come to Jesus and they say, how come you and your followers don't fast?
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John fasts. You don't. Are you getting... Do you get a little flare?
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Do you think that that's reasonable to say, you can learn something about John's message and John's disciples by that interaction with Jesus?
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They were concerned that Jesus and his followers didn't fast. That happened in the book of Matthew. And I think that that caught...
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I interpret a little bit of this text based on that understanding of John's disciples' interaction with Jesus.
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They were concerned that Jesus was not jumping through the religious hoops that they had. And here in our text in verse 3, the disciples of John come to Jesus a second time.
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Sent by John this time. The first time we don't know if John sent them with a question about fasting or not. This time it's explicit.
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John sent the disciples to ask a question of Jesus. And verse 2 actually tells us that John had heard about the deeds of Jesus Christ and that is what caused him to send his disciples with the question, are you the one?
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Are you the one who is sent or should we be looking for another? So what we have in the text is abundantly clear that something that Jesus did, something about his deeds, something about his behavior, something about the way that he was acting caused doubt in John the
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Baptist about his being the Christ, the Messiah, the Chosen One. Do you see that in the text?
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It's abundantly clear that the deeds of Jesus caused a question in John's mind.
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Now I don't believe that it's because John heard about the miracles. Now the word deeds, what comes to your mind when you think of the deeds of Jesus?
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What are some of the things? The things he did, okay, yeah. Miracles.
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Isn't that a pretty natural assumption that when we see the deeds of Jesus we're talking about miracles? The word that's used here is the word, where we get our word ergonomics from, ergo meaning in Greek to work, just a very strict, straightforward definition.
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It's a very generic term. I like it that it's never once translated in the English Standard Version as miracle because it's too generic for that specific interpretation.
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It's the deeds. Anything that you did yesterday could be called your ergo, your work, your deeds, your behavior, the things that you do.
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Something specific about the deeds of Jesus was creating doubt in the heart and the mind of John the
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Baptist. It's like, I don't believe for a second that this is the miracles of Jesus.
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I hope you're getting that. It's not like John heard about the miracles and the amazing teachings and then sent his disciples to ask.
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It would be like, I heard about your miracles, are you the Messiah? And then Jesus replies, well, look at my miracles.
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Does that seem illogical? Like an illogical way Jesus is going to respond to him?
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I believe that John was hearing that Jesus was hanging out with tax collectors.
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These are some of the deeds of Jesus that John started to catch wind of. He's hanging around with tax collectors. He's eating and drinking with sinners.
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And this has caused John to doubt. I mean, he doesn't even fast. Jesus isn't fasting.
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And his followers aren't being commanded to fast. He's not matching up. Jesus was not meeting
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John's expectations for Messiah. Do you see what I'm getting at in the text? He saw the deeds and he's in prison and he goes, are you the one or should we be looking for another?
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Pretty significant question coming from the guy who baptized Jesus, the guy who said, I'm not worthy of untying your sandals.
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Do you see how doubt can creep into the human heart over time? Also consider that John was stuck in jail.
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I mentioned that earlier. I'm sure that that had an impact on his doubts. Another aspect of this is that, think about the average
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Jewish mindset towards Messiah, this political ruler who's going to come in and vindicate the Jews and crush the
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Romans and bring in and usher in this age of Israelite peace and supremacy.
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And he wasn't meeting that expectation. John's going, I'm your herald and I'm stuck in jail.
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What's the scoop with that? Are you really the one? Maybe you could make a quick stop off in Jerusalem at Kerod's palace and set me free or something.
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Could you ramp that up on your agenda somewhere soon? But I think there's also an aspect.
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I think it's pretty clear from the context and the interactions that John has had so far with the Messiah.
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That he was struggling to question whether or not Jesus was the Messiah because Messiahs and saviors don't hang out with people like that.
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So in verses four through six, we see the first thing. Jesus' reply is our first point and that is evidence of the kingdom.
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He's going to reply with evidences that the kingdom of God has indeed arrived and that Jesus himself is the king that was foretold in the
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Old Testament. But in traditional Jesus' fashion, he doesn't just say yes. Have you ever noticed how Jesus doesn't answer a direct question in Scripture?
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He always provides evidences. He wants you to come up with your own conclusion. So John says, are you the one or should we be waiting for another?
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It would be kind of nice for Jesus to say, yes, I'm the one. No, don't look for another.
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Next question, please. But he doesn't do that, does he? He gives evidences.
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I think that's the nature of faith. By the way, I think that's the nature of good teaching is to leave some things open -ended and to provide opportunity to wrestle with it and to question it and come to the conclusions about the evidence yourself.
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Jesus lays out evidence. He says, here's the evidence. You come to the verdict. What is the evidence?
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He's saying the very kingdom of God is in your presence. He says, the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and good news is proclaimed to the poor.
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Now this is not just an abstract resume that Jesus is putting together. Not just a few, you know, like he's just pulling together a hodgepodge of things that he did just as a sampling.
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Here's a sampling of my ergo. Here's a sampling of my works or things that I've done. He says, the prophecies of the
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Old Testament are coming to pass in your midst. You see, each one of these specific things, the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed.
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I could take you through an Old Testament study of how each one of those is a prophecy that is stated.
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When the Messiah comes, the blind will see. When the Messiah comes, good news will be preached to the poor.
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When the Messiah comes, the deaf will hear. Are you getting what I'm saying? The majority of those found in the book of Isaiah.
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I really think that Jesus had in his mind the book of Isaiah when he made this statement.
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He's saying, look, John. I know you're in jail, but I know you know.
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I know you're smart. I know you're a bright guy. Look at the Old Testament and you can see for yourself.
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Here's the evidence. These things are being accomplished. I am who
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I said I am. They all tie back to prophecy. Jesus says,
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John, you want to question my credentials? Here is my resume. And in essence, Jesus says,
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I might not match your expectations for the social and political agenda that you have for Messiah, but I match the
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Old Testament prophecies. And how many of you know that we have some traditions and some culture and some baggage that's wrapped up around Jesus in our hearts?
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And Jesus is cutting to the chase and saying, we need to forego the traditions and get back where to figure out who the
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Messiah is? Here in Scripture. You should have a definition of Jesus, an understanding of Christ, an understanding of the
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Messiah that comes from here. Not from cultural hearsay. Not because my mama said so.
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Not because Grandma used to sing this song to me and I really liked it. Where should our understanding of the
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Messiah come from? Scripture. From the Bible. And even
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Jesus is challenging John on that point. I know I don't meet your cultural expectations for what a
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Messiah is, but where is that found in here? Here is my life. Here are my credentials.
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Here is the way that I'm fulfilling prophecy. And Jesus offers John a warning.
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These are the words that He's giving to John's followers to take back to John while he's in prison. He says, All synonyms you're going to see blessed in the
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English Standard Version. Blessed, joyful, happy are those who are not offended because of Jesus.
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Offended, the word there is tripped up. It's a nice picturesque word. I mentioned that some Greek words have a really good picture in your mind.
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You're walking along the path and you stumble over a rock and fall flat on your face. Tripped up.
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Blessed are those who are not tripped up. Tripped up by me. What's he implying by this? To John. Remember who is he saying it to?
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To John the baptizer. He says, You'd be more happy. You'd be more blessed if you weren't being tripped up by me right now.
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And the words of Jesus ring true to us in 2012 just like they did around AD 30. Jesus trips some.
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Talk about God all you want in public. You can come up and talk with me. I would love to have some interaction.
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I don't get the privilege of going to your workplace and seeing where you work and engaging on the same level with your coworkers as you do.
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But I've at least experienced this to some degree. I've hung around enough non -Christians to know that there's a reality of this in my experience and that is that if you talk about God, it's okay.
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It's fairly acceptable. How many of you would say you could talk about God or spiritual things at your workplace and somebody might just engage in a really aggressive way but for the most part people will just kind of banter back and forth about God.
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Is that accurate? It's okay? How about Jesus? Bring Jesus into that conversation and then what happens?
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Do things get dicey pretty fast? Do all of a sudden some are over here and some are over here?
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Is Jesus a polarizing figure? Yeah. Yeah, I think he is.
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Very few people have a laissez -faire attitude about Jesus. Either we walk with him or we are tripped over him.
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But very few fall in between on that. So Jesus offers evidence of the kingdom.
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He says, I am in essence. Look at the evidences. Look at the Old Testament and do
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I not match this? And the evidence is the power exerted in people's lives and I think that that is still the primary evidence that we have to offer others.
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Now it's a little bit different. It's not so much physical miracles that we point to. The blind seeing and the deaf hearing but there's certainly a spiritual fulfillment of that in our midst.
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The dead raised to life. Good news proclaimed to the poor. In a spiritual sense are these things that the church is still doing today?
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They are. And we've had an opportunity at Recast to have front row seats to seeing people's lives being changed.
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To having the eyes opened, spiritual eyes opened of people who were blind.
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Of having ears opened that were not hearing the truth. Of seeing people who were dead in their sins raised to new life.
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That is still the evidence that the kingdom has arrived and the King has come and His name is
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Jesus Christ. But Jesus uses this as an opportunity to highlight the supremacy of the kingdom, the new covenant kingdom over the old covenant by comparing
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John the Baptist to the lowliest member of the kingdom of heaven and He says some radical things coming up here.
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Having answered John's disciples, they leave. They take off according to the text. Go back and tell
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John the answer. But Jesus turns to the crowds who just heard Jesus challenge
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John. They might even be thinking Jesus doesn't like John because He just challenged whether or not
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He was even blessed. He said, you'd be blessed if you weren't tripping over me. And so Jesus asked them a couple of questions.
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He said, I know you're already thinking about John. John just came up. John's disciples just came up. Let's use this as a teaching opportunity.
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Again, as a master teacher, Jesus brings the current situation around to talk about what the real content is and He's going to bring this around to talk about the kingdom.
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And so He says, Who was John? Who was he? What did you go out to see?
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Did you go out to see a reed shaken by the wind? What is a picture of a reed shaken by the wind?
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What is He getting at by that? He's saying, did you go out to see a man who's just waffling, who's driven by any wind of doctrine, that's a weak -willed individual who's just going to teach you whatever you want to hear?
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He wasn't like that. They didn't go out to the wilderness, take that long journey out there to see a weak -willed man.
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They didn't go out to see either a refined man with wealthy clothing. The word there, soft clothing, ironically, used often in Greek for effeminate.
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Soft, literally what it means. And He's like, you go to a king's palace to find somebody in soft clothing.
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John was a man who dressed in manly clothing. Something like that, I guess. But He does say, you go into a king's house and I think that just seeing how
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Jesus was so keyed into the things that are going on in His culture. John is literally in a king's house.
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When Jesus is saying this, that's where John is imprisoned. He's imprisoned in the dungeon in the basement of the king's house.
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And that's pretty clear from earlier texts and different texts that that's where He is. So Jesus is almost kind of playing with words here.
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He's like, you go into a king's house to find a man like that. Oh, wait, He is in a king's house. What then drew their interest to this man out in the desert crying?
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In verse 9, He answers for them. He says, you went out to see a prophet. And yes, that's right.
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It is a prophet. He was a prophet. And even more than a prophet, says Jesus. And at that exclamation that John was more than a prophet,
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I imagine the crowd begin to murmur, did you just hear what He said? More than a prophet? What's more than a prophet? And I imagine the conversations in the crowd began just kind of like this murmur of what in the world?
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Because in the Jewish mindset, you didn't get higher than a prophet. I mean, that's the highest office that a human could hold, the mouthpiece of God.
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How can He be more than a prophet? There was nothing higher.
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And not only that, but to say more than a prophet to this generation is crazy. These people have gone 400 years without the office of prophet being fulfilled in their midst.
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No prophets for 400 years since Malachi, the ending of the writing of the Old Testament. And nothing revealed to them in that intermediate time that's
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Scripture worthy. But Jesus explains in verse 10 that John was the prophet who was prophesied in the very last
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Old Testament book who would have the privilege according to Malachi 3 verse 1 to prepare the way for the coming of the
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Lord Himself. That's why He calls Him highest among prophets. Now in context,
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Malachi, if you go back into Malachi 3 verse 1 in context, Malachi is talking about the coming of God Himself and saying one is going to come who's going to prepare the way for the coming of God.
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And Jesus does not correct this but actually uses that understanding in His message here.
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And He says Malachi prophesied that one would come who would prepare the way for the coming of God.
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Are you hearing what I'm saying? Are you getting what I'm saying? Malachi said one's going to come who is going to prepare the way for God's coming.
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John was that man. Can you finish the logic? Then what does that make
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Jesus? Jesus doesn't finish the logic for them but it's abundantly clear.
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I believe hands down without question that Jesus is giving a backhanded claim to His own deity.
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As a matter of fact, every scholar that I read about this text says Jesus is talking about His own deity here.
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Malachi says God is coming and a man is going to come to prepare the path for Him. And then Jesus says
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John was the man who prepared the path for the coming of God. He just doesn't finish it for them.
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And for that role as herald, John gets the title greatest among humanity.
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He is the hinge between the old and the new covenant. John is the one chosen to be the herald of the coming
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King. And yet here it comes at the end of verse 11. After building up,
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John as the highest among those born of women which is a euphemism for... How many of you here were born of a woman? Any aliens here that are just kind of taking on human form in our midst or something?
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Okay, we're all here born of a woman. I only really got two people to raise their hand on that. Are we sleepy this morning?
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Raise your hand if you're born of a woman. Let's just get your arms exercised here. Okay, excellent. So I'm glad to see more hands that time.
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It's just a euphemism for human. So he's saying, John up to this point has been the highest born human.
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And obviously even in that, was Jesus born of a woman? I think he's saying he's something different than that.
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He is something different than that. Although he is that strictly speaking, he's more than that.
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Highest among those born of women, Jesus declares that the least in the covenant kingdom of heaven is greater than John.
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What has he just said about John? John, the highest in the old covenant. The greatest in the old covenant kingdom.
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The one who had the privilege of heralding the way of God in flesh, and yet he is lower than the lowest in the kingdom of God in the new covenant.
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Are you getting that? What is this saying about the privilege of a new covenant relationship with God?
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It's immense. It's hard to understand, but we're talking about epics and eras here.
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We're talking about that John's ministry was still an Old Testament prophet.
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He was the last of a line, according to verse 13, in a long line of prophets. And since his coming, according to verse 12, there's been ushered in a time of violence against the kingdom.
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Jesus predicts. He says, from the time of John until now, there is going to be a time of violence against the kingdom.
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And it began with John's arrest and his eventual beheading. And violent men will continue to ravage the kingdom by force.
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And that proves to be the case down to this very day where we live now. 2011. Very, very, very conservative statistics would say that 105 ,000 people in 2011 lost their life because they believe in Jesus Christ for salvation.
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And that's not counting people who died in their car on their way to church and got in an accident or something like that.
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This is people who, because the very reason they lost their life is because they are a follower of Jesus.
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Are you getting what I'm saying here? 105 ,000. Now, I don't know if that sounds like a high number or a low number, but let me put that in perspective of just dividing it out over time.
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One person every five minutes in 2011 lost their life because they are a follower of Jesus Christ.
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Do we live in a privileged country? Do we live in a privileged place where we don't even, that doesn't even resonate.
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Anybody in here know personally someone who has given their life because they're a follower of Jesus Christ? We don't.
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And so we become so myopic. We have such a close view, a blinded view to what the plight of the church is around the world.
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Because we're busy checking our email and doing all the things that we do all day long. And I say we because I'm in there too.
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But I think we are in a position and in a place where we need to make hay while the sun is shining.
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Because I don't believe it's always going to be that way. I believe the church in America has been granted an immense gift that we rarely contemplate or rarely consider.
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And that is that we live in a time, an era, and a place where we can teach, we can proclaim, we can show the love that Jesus Christ has for our community, for our culture, for our neighbors, for our coworkers, for those without much recourse, without much kickback, without much persecution.
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And I do not believe it's always going to be that way. I'm not prophesying that America's going to go down in a couple of years and we're going to be persecuted in an underground church and all that.
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It could happen. But what I'm saying is we live in a privileged time.
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And we need to take advantage of the opportunity that we have to proclaim the truth of Christ and let the chips fall where they may.
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And the irony is with that, the chips don't fall in very hard places for us. And we're not going to get whipped or beaten or killed, most likely for sharing our faith with somebody in the cubicle next to us.
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Well, Jesus' point though here is that there is a kingdom that he came to usher in. John was the herald of that kingdom.
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Those who are in his kingdom that is acknowledging him as king are greater than John who will not see that kingdom before he dies.
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As a matter of fact, John would be beheaded before the initiation of that kingdom at the cross, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
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John was highly privileged as the herald but missed the glory of the new covenant of seeing it with his eyes by just months.
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This is not saying that John the Baptist did not go to heaven. I have hope and I have firm belief that John was satisfied with Jesus' reply, believed that Jesus was the
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Messiah and was beheaded as one of the first of those who violent men take by force, according to the text.
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I believe that John's question was very similar to the questions that we can have over the course of suffering and difficulty.
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When you go through difficult times, is it pretty easy to lose track of your faith?
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Is that a time of questioning and wondering and wavering a little bit? I think that this was just John's way of saying,
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I just really need something from you right now, God. Could you just confirm it one more time?
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I just need to hear the words that you are the Messiah. And I think it worked. I really think that John accepted that.
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I have firm conviction that that's the case. But Jesus wants us to listen carefully to this message.
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He says, those who have ears to hear, let them hear. And when He's talking about ears to hear, who has ears?
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Got ears in here? But do you have ears to hear? Do you have ears tuned to this message?
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In essence, He's saying, if you have spiritual ears, if you are clued in to the things of God, if you're clued in to the history of God, if you're clued in to the things that God is doing in your midst, then listen up.
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Because this is for you. The very last chapter of the Old Testament contained a prophecy that He wanted us to understand.
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The prophecy of John. And it says that a man in the line of Elijah would come.
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And Luke 1 .17 identifies John as that Elijah that was prophesied. And Jesus acknowledged that this is hard to accept.
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He said it's hard for people's mind to get around this, but if you accept it, the logic follows that the kingdom of God arrived in Christ.
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And Jesus Christ is the King of the new kingdom of heaven. That's what
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He wants us to grasp. The kingdom has arrived and Jesus is the King. Saying that to His culture.
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Saying that to His generation. But His generation wasn't ready for it. Verses 16 -19 is disbelief in the kingdom.
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The way that generations, the way that cultures, the way that people respond to the kingdom. He uses
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His current culture to address it. He compares His generation to a group of children playing at the market.
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It's like the moms have come to do the shopping and the kids are all playing around in the market square. And they're playing a game.
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And it appears that children's games have not changed significantly over the years. So they're playing a game like Simon says or a game like follow the leader.
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But the interesting thing is what's different from their culture and our culture is that all the kids in their culture wanted to be the leader.
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Is that right? You guys were supposed to laugh at that. I think our kids all want to be leaders too.
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They all want to be Simon. They all want to be it. They all want to be the leader and follow the leader. And that is what
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He's illustrating. He's going to use that. These kids in the marketplace. The self -proclaimed
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Simon among the group says, When I play the flute, everybody dance.
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And all the other kids go, Why do you always get to be Simon, not dancing? And so Simon says,
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Okay, okay, all right. When I play this song, I want everybody to mourn. Pretend like it's a funeral and everybody mourn and act sad.
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Plays the song. Ah, we're happy now because we're not going to do what you told us to do. Are you getting what the picture is here?
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Kids playing at a game and not following each other's lead. He's showing us that His generation was not that different from our own.
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Like kids, we all want to be Simon. We all want to be the leader and follow the leader. We want to play the flute and have others dance to our tune.
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And not only limited to that, not only limited to that we want others to follow our lead, but we want
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Jesus to follow our lead. We want Jesus to act like us. We want
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Jesus to reflect us. We want to tell Him what to do. We want to tell
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Him, give me a nice car. Make my family issues work out. Do this for me.
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Do that for me. We treat God like we're the leader and He is to follow our lead. And that's the way that Jesus' generation was.
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They said, we want Messiah to look like this. And you're not quite matching up, Jesus. So maybe you could get to our agenda.
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Maybe someday you could, when are you going to get rid of these Romans? When are you going to start jumping through our hoops? When are you going to start acting like the religious guy we know you're supposed to be?
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And so they keep playing the flute, saying, Jesus, dance to our tune.
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He says, how can you win in a situation like that? John came with an ascetic lifestyle. He fasted.
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He abstained from alcohol. According to the Scriptures, he was such a thoroughly religious person that even
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Jesus Christ Himself was a little too progressive for John. John was stumbling over Jesus' behavior and the way that He was acting.
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Honestly, it sounds like some churches I know where Jesus couldn't be a member because of the whole wine thing.
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The whole wedding at Cana where Jesus made wine. And it's like, well, we don't do wine at this church. Could Jesus be a member at your church?
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Jesus wore open -toed sandals when He taught. I could really get started on that and I don't want to be critical, but at the same time, could
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Jesus be a member of our church? Is He religious enough for us?
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Are you getting what I'm saying? John lived a life of extreme self -control and his culture accused him of being demon -possessed.
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So along comes Jesus drinking and even making good wine at a wedding. It says He made good wine.
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And by the way, none of this notion of grape juice, you just can't get past it in the text. As a matter of fact, those at the party criticized the people who were putting on the party because they said, usually people bring out the good wine first and then when people have had enough of it that they kind of get a little tipsy, then they bring out the cheap stuff because you won't be able to tell the difference.
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So none of this business about grape juice or no alcohol content. The wine that Jesus made, people were saying they could get drunk on it.
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That's just reality. He comes drinking and making good wine and He hangs out at the parties and He eats from the buffet and enjoys the spread and He hangs out with the down and out.
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And He receives from His generation the labels, glutton, drunkard, friend of tax collectors and sinners.
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Now I don't believe for a second, I want to be clear on this. I do not believe for a second that Jesus was a glutton.
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I don't believe that. I don't believe for a second that Jesus ever got drunk. I don't think anybody could ever point to His life and validate these claims.
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It was the reputation that they gave Him because of who He hung out with and the way that He ministered.
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But consider this. In reality, this is truth. This is what the Scripture is telling us about our
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Messiah, about our Christ, about Jesus, our Savior. He was God in flesh.
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He came down and He was open to the accusation that He was a party boy.
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He was open to that kind of criticism. Jesus in our text gives evidence of His kingdom.
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Jesus talks about the supremacy of His kingdom. And finally, Jesus explains rejection of His kingdom based on His methodology, the way
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He ministered. But then He declares this at the very end of our text. Look at it with me.
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Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds. How much does your life reflect the
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Savior that we find in this passage? Catch this. Jesus is literally saying that wise living...
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Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds. He's talking about the wisdom of the way that He has ministered. The wisdom of hanging around with sinners.
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The wisdom of a type of ministry that says, I will go there for the cause of Christ. Wise living in true service for His kingdom could open you up to criticism that you are a glutton and a drunkard.
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A servant of the kingdom ought to be known as a friend of sinners. Living for the kingdom looks radical.
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Now, some of you are going, okay, Don, how are we going to apply this this week? Woo -hoo, party time, all right.
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It's time to go out and get a groove on. We're going to the raves this weekend or whatever. I mean, what does that even mean?
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What's a rave? You know what
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I'm getting at here. I mean, what is the application? Is it all just fun and games? Is that what we're talking about here? Is it just going out and party it up, live it up?
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Okay, I believe what we're talking about here is an intentional entering into real people's lives in our community.
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Not merely so that we can slap them with the Bible, but so that we can bring love to them.
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So we can show them love in their culture, within their context, in incarnational ministry.
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Like Jesus, in heaven, took on flesh and came down to be one of us.
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Entering into the fray with others. Which, by the way, when push comes to shove,
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I would dare say is very uncomfortable for many of us in this room. To really, genuinely go there.
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When's the last time any of us were invited to an unbeliever's party? Consider that. When's the last time we were invited to an unbeliever's party?
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Now, obviously, you know your own strength. You know your own weakness. I mean, if somebody's in here and they're struggling with alcohol, and I'm not talking about going and hanging out at the bar if you're a recovering alcoholic or something like that.
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Obviously, we're talking about sensibilities here, right? But simultaneously, we are to be hanging out with the down and out in our culture.
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If you've acknowledged that Jesus Christ is your King and you have asked Him to save you, then you are in the kingdom.
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And a child of the kingdom is in a place of great privilege, according to this text. So let's take this time of communion as we take the juice and we take the cracker to remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
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Let's reflect on the supremacy of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. That He has placed us in high standing.
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And then the call to us to then, in turn, go out and share that with others who are down and out.
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I want you to use the next few minutes to reflect on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as we pass the juice and the cracker.
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Reflect on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that has sealed our forgiveness and our hope for the final coming of a kingdom that will not fade, that will be here on earth someday.
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If you're here and you've not yet acknowledged Jesus as King and Savior, then I'd ask that you skip communion this morning because really what communion is, it's a remembrance, a memorial service for what
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He has done for us. And if you find yourself in a position where you're like, I don't believe that He did that for me, then how could you possibly be remembering what
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He did for you if you don't believe He did it? So that's one of the reasons that we ask you to skip it. But while the song is played, consider, what is it that might stop you from bowing to Jesus Christ as King and asking
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Him to save you today? If you're in that place and you're questioning and you're wondering and maybe you have just some legitimate, honest questions that you have that you want answered, please come and talk with me, come and talk with Kyle.
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You could come and talk with somebody in the worship team and ask questions and maybe find some answers to the things that you're wondering about Jesus Christ as King and Savior.
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Let's pray. Father, I rejoice in Your sending
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Your Son Jesus as the King, the King of an awesome kingdom that is both now and yet a future hope that we have, sealed for us through His death, burial, and resurrection, that He is the risen
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King, the living King, the one who, if He remained in the grave, we have no king on the throne.
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But He rose again, that He's now ruling at Your right hand. We rejoice in that and I ask as we take the juice to remember
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His blood that was shed for us and we take the cracker to remember His body that was broken for us. Father, that You would move in our hearts a deep and abiding joy and rejoicing that would bubble over in conversations and talk and that we wouldn't find ourselves in that situation where we're put to it trying to work a conversation and wiggle it around to get
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Jesus in there somewhere, but Father, that we would just be a people who are just enamored with You and that joy of what
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You have done for us just pours out of us naturally. Father, I ask that You would help us to take advantage and as I said earlier, to make hay while the sun is shining, that Father, You have given us a great and awesome culture where we are free to talk about these things, where we can have genuine, honest dialogue about Jesus.
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Help us to not be shy to mention His name and to bring Him up in spiritual conversations and just talk nebulously about You, but Father, that we would genuinely reflect on the awesome glory of the cross and let the cross be before us this week.