Podcasts about covenant christian school

On March 27th, 2023, a gunman entered the Covenant Christian School in Nashville, Tennessee. Twenty-seven-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who identified as Aiden Hale, opened fire and shot to death 3 children and 3 teachers before Hale was killed by Metropolitan Nashville Police. It was a crime that shocked the nation, but astonishingly, authorities did everything they could to cover up the manifesto left behind by the shooter, until now. Today, the FBI released the full manifesto of the Nashville shooter, and now we know why they tried so desperately to bury it!--Go tohttps://TryFum.com/STEVETURLEY or scan the QR code and use code STEVETURLEY to get your free FÜM Base when you order your Journey Pack today!*The content presented by sponsors may contain affiliate links. When you click and shop the links, Turley Talks may receive a small commission.*Leave a message for Steve! Call now! 717-844-5984--Thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and/or leave a review.FOLLOW me on X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/DrTurleyTalksSign up for the 'New Conservative Age Rising' Email Alerts to get lots of articles on conservative trends: https://turleytalks.com/subscribe-to-our-newsletter**The use of any copyrighted material in this podcast is done so for educational and informational purposes only including parody, commentary, and criticism. See Hosseinzadeh v. Klein, 276 F.Supp.3d 34 (S.D.N.Y. 2017); Equals Three, LLC v. Jukin Media, Inc., 139 F. Supp. 3d 1094 (C.D. Cal. 2015). It is believed that this constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.

Send us a textThe FBI knew about the GA shooter a year ago, did they fumble the ball yet again? Join Hannah as she covers what steps the FBI took with the local authorities prior to the shooting this week in Winder, GA. Following that story, the diary of the Covenant Christian School shooter was released this week by The Tennessee Star. The diary contained almost 100 pages that mainly converged around two topics. Hannah covers those two topics and other details revealed from the diary in today's podcast. Lastly, in the Hannah's Homeschool Hints segment, Hannah continues her discussion helping parents make decisions regarding their homeschool by asking the question, "How do you want to teach?" She provides some thought provoking questions to help you formulate your thoughts on this question and help lay the groundwork for you homeschool. https://www.thehannahmillershow.com/podcasts/https://bobslone.com/contact/bob@bobslone.com

It's Tuesday, February 13th, AD 2024. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes and heard at www.TheWorldview.com.  I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Kevin Swanson                                                                                               Finnish voters reject homosexual candidate for Prime Minister Finland's presidential election on Sunday ended on the right side of the center, reports The Guardian.  Former Prime Minister Alexander Stubb won the election against the homosexual leftist, Pekka Haavisto, in a close race. The vote came out 52% to 48%. New Dutch law allows euthanizing kids under 12 A Dutch law allowing the euthanizing of children under 12 years of age went into effect on February 1st, reports Reuters. This allows for the killing of children who suffer “hopelessly and unbearably” as determined by doctors.  Previously, the Netherlands only allowed euthanasia for persons over 12 years of age. Former Brazilian president investigated for questioning 2022 election results While the leading Republican nominee for U.S. president, Donald Trump, faces 91 criminal charges — some related to his alleged opposition to the 2020 election results -- now Brazil's former president, Jair Bolsonaro, is being investigated for allegedly trying to overturn the results of his 2022 election.   Four of his aides have been arrested by the Lula de Silva government. 86% of Americans don't believe Biden is “fit to serve” An ABC/IPSOS poll found that 86% of Americans do not believe President Joe Biden is “fit to serve.”  That included 73% registered Democrats and 91% of the Independent voting base. This comes after a Special Counsel report described the current president as “an elderly man with a poor memory.” A recent Rasmussen poll found that 42% of likely U.S. voters respected Donald Trump as a leader, and only 21% would say the same thing for President Joe Biden. Donald Trump asked Supreme Court to affirm his immunity claim On Monday, Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on his argument that he has immunity from prosecution on any alleged actions he may have taken to overturn the 2020 election results. He asked the high court to put a hold on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruling that rejected his immunity claim, reports CNBC.  Gunman, pretending to be a woman, shot dead in Osteen's church On Sunday afternoon, a man, pretending to be a woman, entered Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas with a long gun before the 2:00pm service and began firing.   Born Jeffrey Escalante from El Salvador, he pulled out an AR-15 from his trench coat, pointed it at the officers, who then fired upon him, killing him in self-defense, and halting the attack, reports Fox News.  Escalante's 7-year-old son, whose age was initially described as 5, was seriously injured during the exchange of gunfire.  And a 57-year-old man, who was shot in the leg, is expected to survive.   Escalante, age 36, pretended to be a woman named Genesse Ivonne Moreno. He had a history of mental health problems and antisemitic inclinations. Perhaps that's why the word “Palestine” was written on the long rifle. Here's what Joel Osteen said in the news conference: OSTEEN: “These men and women did an amazing job. You said it Chief. It could have been a lot worse. Of course, we're devastated. I mean, this is, we've been here 65 years and have someone shooting in your church. But, you know, we don't understand why these things happen. But we know God is in control.  And we'll pray for that little five-year-old boy and pray for the lady that was deceased.” Christian talk host Todd Starnes wants LGBT movement investigated Christian talk show host Todd Starnes described the shooting as a domestic terrorist attack perpetuated by a member of the LGBT community. Indeed, there have been a dozen such attacks. Transgender people were the shooters at Covenant Christian School in Nashville, at a Denver school, and at an Iowan school.  Plus, the Colorado Springs shooter claimed to be non-binary. Starnes said, “It's time for federal investigations about why the LGBT movement is turning young people into violent extremists.” Kansas City Chiefs win Superbowl The Kansas City Chiefs clinched their third Super Bowl win in five years in Sunday's game with a score of 25 to 22. Quarterback Patrick Mahomes joins the club of five quarterbacks winning three or more Super Bowls.  New England Patriot Quarterback Tom Brady leads the pack with 7 Super Bowl wins to his name. But let us remember what Jesus said, “I do not receive honor from men. ... How can you believe, who receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God?” (John 5:44) The controversial “Jesus Gets Us” Super Bowl ad Speaking of the Super Bowl, the PR campaign for Jesus, better known as the HeGetsUs ad campaign, aired another ad on the Super Bowl broadcast this year. The campaign offered a confusing Christian message relating to love, God's law, abortion, and homosexuality. The ad featured a priest washing the feet of a member of the LGBTQ community, and another woman washing the feet of a young woman outside an abortion clinic with pro-life protesters standing in the background. The message informs everybody that “Jesus didn't teach hate. He washed feet.” Hobby Lobby co-founder David Green contributed to the campaign.  In Revelation 2:20-23, Jesus said this to the church at Thyatira: “I have a few things against you, because you allow that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce My servants to commit sexual immorality. … I will cast her into a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of their deeds. I will kill her children with death, and all the churches shall know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts.” Student in hot water for affirming two genders on shirt When Nichols Middle School in Middleborough, Massachusetts told the students to “wear a positive message of acceptance/love” during the school's Pride spirit week, 12-year-old Liam Morrison chose rather to wear a shirt that stated, “There are only two genders.” The school banned the shirt, and a lower court upheld the ban.  Alliance Defending Freedom has appealed the case to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals. Colorado abortion mills 26% busier And finally, the Denver Post reports that Colorado abortion clinics have increased their business by 26% since the reversal of Roe V. Wade. After multiple pro-abortion efforts succeeded in state referendums since the Dobbs case, 2024 promises to be an active year with more referendums on the ballot. These include Florida, Nevada, Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, and Missouri, reports the Los Angeles Times. Close And that's The Worldview in 5 Minutes on this Tuesday, February 13th in the year of our Lord 2024. Subscribe by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com.  Or get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com).  Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

Riding Shotgun With Charlie #188 Laura Carno FASTER Colorado   It seems like I've known Laura Carno since I started this journey. In 2019 at GRPC, she asked me and Derek Leblanc (RSWC #033) why we called each other “brother” and we weren't calling her “sister”. Since then, she has been our “sister from a different mister”.  This year, I was going to Colorado for some personal stuff, and I was able to reach out to Laura to talk about FASTER Colorado.  FASTER, as it is known, is Faculty & Administrator Safety Training and Emergency Response.   Laura grew up in California with a very pro police and pro military family, but they weren't necessarily a “gun family”. As a young woman in her early 20's she was followed out of a gym by a big guy and her “spidey senses” went off. The only thing she had was a metal pipe for self defense. That was what opened her eyes and realized she may need to be able to protect herself.    Before FASTER, Laura was involved with some local politics and she wrote a book called Government Ruins Nearly Everything which you can, and should, buy on Amazon. The book is a great read, and I do suggest it for everyone! It isn't expensive and it is eye opening!   When she started paying attention to politics, her California friends said the Republicans weren't really doing much, particularly for gun rights, so maybe she should become a “small L libertarian”. In 2008, she realized that Mr Obama wasn't going to do anything good for guns and gun owners.  She kept saying “yes” to new opportunities and she found herself doing new things she never dreamt of doing. By 2013, when Michael Bloomberg came to Colorado for a voting recall, she was running an ad that said “If guns are for you, don't own one. But don't you dare tell me how to defend myself.”  That led to a connection to NRA TV and Cam Edwards (RSWC #168). Eventually, Laura was friends with folks from the Buckeye Firearms Association and school security came up.    Laura went to Ohio to see what this FASTER program was about. She saw that the people taking the class were willing to die for their students. So why shouldn't they have the necessary tools to save the same students. She put in lots of calls and contacts to county sheriffs to let them know about FASTER and see if they were interested in having this in their rural areas. They've got law enforcement and military who train the school staff. Currently they have graduates in 37 school districts and have over 300 people trained to save school children.    One of the events that has opened the eyes of the public was the shooting in Uvalde, TX. People have started to realize that the police are not going to be there to stop school shootings in progress. But the biggest one so far was the Covenant Christian School shooting in Nashville. The police were there in 12 minutes and started taking care of business when they got there. One of the things that also changed is how fast the body-cam and school camera videos were released. These videos made people realize that if the school office was able to return fire and stop the murderer at the school entrance, it would have ended differently.    When talking about things they've learned during the last 8 years, not knowing who would be the teachers/staff willing to step up and take the FASTER courses has shown them some of the least likely people are the willing ones. They're the quiet professionals willing to do what's necessary to save their students' lives.    We talk a lot about the program and the different levels that they do training on. They're up to Level 4 in Colorado. Each of the levels do get more challenging. It's not just shooting, then shooting and moving. It's very realistic to what you're seeing on the body-cam videos.    Please check out the whole conversation with Laura. There's a mountain of work that they're doing. And that we need all over the rest of the country. There's also more interviews with FASTER Saves Lives staff coming up! So stay tuned!   Favorite quotes:  “I know how to take care of myself in other realms of my life, but how do I protect myself.” “I kept saying ‘yes' to things I could have never predicted for myself.” “There are certain attacks that happen that there is no other defense than another firearm.” “Nothing bad has happened in these schools where there's armed employees.” FASTER Colorado Website https://fastercolorado.org/   FASTER Colorado Facebook https://www.facebook.com/FasterColorado/   FASTER Colorado Twitter https://twitter.com/FASTERColorado   FASTER Saves Lives Website https://fastersaveslives.org/ Second Amendment Foundation https://secure.anedot.com/saf/donate?sc=RidingShotgun    Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms https://www.ccrkba.org/     Please support the Riding Shotgun With Charlie sponsors and supporters.    Buy RSWC & GunGram shirts & hoodies, stickers & patches, and mugs at the store! http://ridingshotgunwithcharlie.com/rswc-shop/   Dennis McCurdy Author, Speaker, Firewalker http://www.find-away.com/   Self Defense Radio Network http://sdrn.us/   Buy a Powertac Flashlight, use RSWC as the discount code and save 15% www.powertac.com/RSWC   SABRE Red Pepper Spray  https://lddy.no/1iq1n    

The trial of Donald Trump started in New York on Monday. Charges against the former president were brought against him because he was allegedly acting fraudulently. It's said that Trump inflated the value of some of his properties, specifically Mar-a-Lago when applying for loans. We discuss the differences in assessed value & appraised value. New York AG Leticia James is politically motivated to take down Trump. The judge is also a rabid hater of Trump. The writings, or “manifesto”, of the Covenant Christian School shooting were leaked. It sounds like the Leftist's playbook. Sign up for our newsletter: https://www.toddhuffshow.com Stack of Stuff: https://www.toddhuffshow.com/stack-of-stuff Email: todd@toddhuffshow.comPhone: 317.210.2830Follow us on…Instagram: @toddhuffshowFacebook: The Todd Huff ShowTwitter: @toddhuffshowLinkedIn: The Todd Huff ShowTikTok: @toddhuffshowSupport Our Partners:https://www.toddhuffshow.com/partners Links:https://www.mypillow.com/todd Promo Code: TODDhttps://mystore.com/toddhttps://4patriots.com Promo Code: HUFF for 10% offhttps://faith-lit.com Promo Code: TODD for 15% offhttps://americaschristiancu.com/radio/https://getthetea.com Promo Code: HUFF for 10%https://www.patriotshave.com Promo Code: TODD for 10%https://icreateartbox.com Promo Code: TODD for 10%

The trial of Donald Trump started in New York on Monday. Charges against the former president were brought against him because he was allegedly acting fraudulently. It's said that Trump inflated the value of some of his properties, specifically Mar-a-Lago when applying for loans. We discuss the differences in assessed value & appraised value. New York AG Leticia James is politically motivated to take down Trump. The judge is also a rabid hater of Trump. The writings, or “manifesto”, of the Covenant Christian School shooting were leaked. It sounds like the Leftist's playbook. Sign up for our newsletter: https://www.toddhuffshow.com Stack of Stuff: https://www.toddhuffshow.com/stack-of-stuff Email: todd@toddhuffshow.comPhone: 317.210.2830Follow us on…Instagram: @toddhuffshowFacebook: The Todd Huff ShowTwitter: @toddhuffshowLinkedIn: The Todd Huff ShowTikTok: @toddhuffshowSupport Our Partners:https://www.toddhuffshow.com/partners Links:https://www.mypillow.com/todd Promo Code: TODDhttps://mystore.com/toddhttps://4patriots.com Promo Code: HUFF for 10% offhttps://faith-lit.com Promo Code: TODD for 15% offhttps://americaschristiancu.com/radio/https://getthetea.com Promo Code: HUFF for 10%https://www.patriotshave.com Promo Code: TODD for 10%https://icreateartbox.com Promo Code: TODD for 10%

Last March 27th, a tragedy of unimaginable proportions unfolded in Nashville, Tennessee, as a transgender gunman opened fire at The Covenant Christian School, killing three adults and three children. While news outlets brought the calamity to the world, counselors at Daystar Counseling Ministries, some three miles away, mobilized immediately, grabbing therapy pets and other tools to the reunification centers. Sissy Goff, Director of Child and Adolescent Counseling, was one of them. She spent the rest of the week helping parents and children navigate and go on with their lives in the aftermath of such evil. Goff understands that rare tragedies like what happened at Covenant are piled onto the already burdensome stresses of everyday life. And being a Christian-based counseling center, she offers the only hope, which is that found in Scripture. On this episode of Lighthouse Faith podcast, Goff talks about what happened that day of the Nashville shooting, as well the rise in depression and stress in children's lives today. Divorce, death, bullying and more are all part and parcel of the reason for the 27% rise in anxiety among 3- to 17-year-olds. Hear some solutions as Goff explains how to become a worry-free parent. Highlights: 0:01:23 - Counseling After School Shooting and Anxiety 0:06:11 - Guidance for Grieving Parents 0:14:53 - Understanding Childhood Anxiety and Resilience Development 0:17:46 - Parental Anger and Anxiety 0:25:49 - The Impact of Divorce on Children 0:37:46 - Impact of TikTok on Mental Health Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Trust your people to make good decisions" - Michael Sabo of Covenant Christian School. Join us for an enriching conversation on leadership and education

They don't call it the White House for nothing. Simon Ateba, Today News Africa reporter, joins Stew to talk about the mysterious cocaine found inside the White House. For decades, Asians have been treated as second-class citizens in America precisely because they are not dysfunctional. Kenny Xu, president and spokesman of Colors United, is here to talk about Asian-American discrimination in the wake of the SCOTUS affirmative action ruling. It's been three months since a female-to-male trans person went on a shooting spree at The Covenant Christian School in Nashville. Joey Mannarino, host of the Joey Mannarino show, joins Stew to talk about the LGBT mafia and how they have turned to violence. Stop giving your tax dollars to the D.C. swamp and join the fight against voter fraud at http://freedomlawschool.org Peymon Mottahedeh, the founder of Freedom Law School, is here to talk about their fight against election fraud. Watch this new show NOW at Stewpeters.com! Keep us FREE and ON THE AIR! SUPPORT THE SPONSORS Below! Protect your retirement, Visit our friends at Goldco! Call 855-706-GOLD or visit https://goldco.com/stew Kick-ass Chuck Norris has now released a morning KICK! Try it HERE: https://americareadysupply.com/stew Gun Holsters, BIG SALE! Just go to https://www.vnsh.com/stew and get $50 OFF! Clean up your AIR with these high quality air filtration systems, and protect yourself from shedding: https://thetriadaer.com/ Check out https://nootopia.com/Stew for help increasing your mental & physical strength to battle the deep-state's KRYPTONITE plot against Americans! Magnesium is VITAL for sleep and stress, Get high quality magnesium and support the show with using Promocode STEWPETERS10: https://magbreakthrough.com/stewpeters High Quality CBD, Check out: https://kuribl.com/ Use Promocode STEW20 for 20% off your order or premium CBD! Pandemic Preparedness and Antarctic krill Oil is a lifesaver, FIX your inflammation today at https://StopMyInflammation.com Go Ad-Free, Get Exclusive Content, Become a Premium user: https://www.stewpeters.com/subscribe/ Follow Stew on Gab: https://gab.com/RealStewPeters See all of Stew's content at https://StewPeters.com

Join us as we recap the Nashville shooting at Covenant Christian School. We speak about Transgender ideology, gun control, as well as what our response should be. Get right with the Lord because no one is promised tomorrow

On today's episode of Human Events Daily, Jack Posobiec turns our attention back to Nashville as the nation awaits to see the “Tranifesto” of Audrey Hale after her targeting of the Covenant Christian School and murder of six innocent people. Next, Poso comments on New York hotels being turned into migrant housing and how it will affect you as Americans. Finally, Jack pulls out all the stops as new information has come out about the CIA's involvement in the censorship of the Hunter Biden Laptop story. All this and more ahead on Human Events Daily! To donate to the White family's medical bills in their time of need, you can use this link.Here's your Daily dose of Human Events with @JackPosobiec Save up to 65% on MyPillow products by going to MyPillow.com/POSO and use code POSO Go to www.itargetpro.com to get 10% off and free shipping with offer code POSO

How can Christians have reasonable dialogue and respectful conversation around difficult topics and be a light in the world? Adam, Tymarcus and Elizabeth tackle some difficult conversations in this episode. Largely, the tragedy that occurred in Nashville at Covenant Christian School, as well as the recent twitter debate over Joshua Butler's latest book. Resources Mentioned Theology in the Raw Episode 1062 After Nashville Moral Numbness Is Our Enemy - Russel Moore, Christianity Today — One of the best ways to support the show is by becoming a Patron. Your support helps us continue producing this show. Follow us on social: Instagram Twitter Editing and support by The Good Podcast Co. If you would like to sponsor this show, email sponsor@thegoodpodcast.co

Welcome to this special episode of Not Your Momma's Bible Study. This will be a unique episode, I'm calling it one of our Truth Talks. Truth Talk episodes are where I really hit hard on a hot topic in our culture today and take that topic and I put some truth over it. And so today I have a special treat for you,  my friend Dana Gayer is here,  she is a wealth of knowledge for us and has lots of information to share with us today on the topic of firearms and gun reform, firearm education because we are just days away from another school shooting in Nashville at Covenant Christian School with the loss of three precious babies and three teachers and employees of the school.  Show Links: Season 4 Reading Plan  Not Your Momma's Bible Study Kit Holman Illustrated Bible Handbook Nelson's Quick Reference Chapter-by-Chapter Bible Commentary She Reads Truth Bible Holy Bible App Get on the Waitlist Not Your Momma's Bible Study Community Connect with Dana: Facebook Instagram Website   Let's Connect:  Facebook  Instagram Twitter  

The beginning of this episode Pastor Cory makes some comments about the Nashville school shooting at Covenant Christian School as a heads-up. The rest of the sermon is about Jesus... friend of humans (sinners.)

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic BostonChurch. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston,or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com. Over the last 11 weeks we have been looking at some of just the super essential, practical, non-negotiable commitments that all of us as followers of Jesus need to make in order to grow in our faith, in order to persevere in our faith, in order to experience the abundant life that Jesus Christ came to give us. And if you have your Bibles, open up to Matthew chapter 24. The title of today's sermon as we finish this series is, Commit to Finish Well. And on the surface that might sound a little bit redundant because that that's really what commitment is. The whole purpose of commitment is to see something through to completion. And the whole reason you need to make commitments, it only is necessary when you're attempting to do something that's going to be difficult, that you're going to be tempted to give up on or possibly quit. And Jesus promised to give us abundant life. We looked at that when we began this series, but that doesn't mean that the Christian life is going to be an easy life. That the abundant life that Jesus talks about, yeah, it comes with peace that passes understanding. It comes with joy and contentment and hope, but it comes with its fair share of difficulties as well. The Christian life is we live in this tension of both tribulation and hope that John 16:33, Jesus told his disciples, "I have said these things to you, that in me, you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart, for I have overcome the world." This is the tension that we live in as followers of Christ, that in this world we will be faced with tribulations, with temptation, persecution, with many trials. And there will be times when we are tempted to give up. There will be times where all we can do is hold on to the hope that we have in Jesus Christ and do what he calls us to do, which is to endure, to overcome these tribulations by standing firm, by persevering, by holding fast until he returns so that we may finish well. It's a race that we must run with endurance, but as we're going to see in our text today, it's also a race that could come to an end at any moment. And at the heart of our text today, we're going to be looking at a really large passage of scripture and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that and introduce it here in a little bit. But at the heart of this passage, Matthew chapter 24 is verse 36 through 44 where Jesus says this, he says, "But concerning that day and hour, no one knows." And he's talking about his return, "not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. For as in the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, and marrying and giving in marriage until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away." And he says, "So will be the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field, one will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding at the middle, one will be taken and one left. Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known and what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore, you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming in an hour you do not expect." And the big idea is that Jesus is coming back. No one knows exactly when, but when he comes, he says it's going to be like some people are asleep. That they're just completely caught off guard unaware by his return. It's going to be like in the days of Noah, people are just going on with their lives, ignoring the warnings coming from the Prophet Noah until that day when the flood comes and just swept them all the way. And he says, "It's going to be like that. When I return some people are going to be caught off guard as if they were asleep. But others," Jesus said, "well, they're going to be wide awake. They're going to be ready, waiting for Jesus' return." And Jesus doesn't tell us exactly when he's going to return, but he does teach us how to be ready for his return. And that's what we're going to be focusing on today. Today as we've said, is Palm Sunday. In the passage that I just read, it comes from a larger passage of scripture that's often referred to as the Olivet Discourse. It's in Matthew chapter 24 through 25. And in Matthew's gospel, this is the sermon that Jesus preached on the Mount of Olives to his disciples sometime after his triumphal entry on Palm Sunday, but before his crucifixion on Good Friday. And there's way too much here for us to get through all of it verse by verse today. But we are going to get through most of it section by section. And as we do, we're going to be looking at five lessons, five steps that Jesus gives us that will enable us to be ready for his return, five areas that we need to endure in, in order to run this race and to finish well. And so the outline of today's sermon, Five steps to Finishing Well. The first step is to endure in hope. This is the beginning of Matthew chapter 24. Point two, endure in obedience. That's the end of chapter 24. Third, endure in faith. That's the beginning of chapter 25. Endure in mission. And then finally at the end of his sermon is the call to endure in love. Before we jump into the first point of today's sermon, would you please join me in prayer for our sermon today? Father, we thank you that you are a good and a just God. That you will not tolerate sin and evil forever, that a day is coming when you will judge the world in righteousness, where all sin will be accounted for, either in hell for all of eternity as it deserves, or on the cross by Jesus Christ in our place. Jesus, we thank you for your sacrifice. We thank you for taking the punishment, the wrath that our sins deserve so that we can look to your coming, not with the fear of punishment, but with the hope of salvation, of deliverance. That you have saved us, you've justified us, you've saved us from the penalty of our sin, that you right now by the power of your Holy Spirit are saving us, delivering us from the power of sin in our lives. And that you will come again to once and for all time deliver us from the very presence of sin for all of eternity. We long for, we look to that day. And Lord, we pray as we do that you would give us the strength to endure. That by the power of your Holy Spirit we would persevere for the glory of your name. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. All right, point number one today is to endure in hope. And this comes from the beginning, Matthew chapter 24. Beginning in verse one, Matthew sets the context for us. He says that, "Jesus left the temple and was going away when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. But he answered them, 'You see these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.'" And then later, "As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, 'Tell us when these things will be? What will be the sign of your coming at the end of the age?' And Jesus answered them, see that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name saying, 'I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All of these are but the beginning of the birth pains. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." And so Matthew begins, he sets the context for us. Jesus and his disciples, they're in Jerusalem and he begins to notice that his disciples are, they're starstruck by the impressive buildings, the stones of the temple. And he answers them. In verse three he says, "You see these things?" He says, "Listen to me. Truly, I say to you, there's not going to be one of these stones left on top of another. They're all going to be thrown down." And then his disciples come to in verse three and says, "Well, tell us Jesus, what are you talking about? When are these things going to happen? What are going to be the signs of your coming at the end of the age?" And then Jesus begins to answer their question. And as you read the next two chapters, it becomes clear that Jesus' answer is not so crystal clear. That he doesn't give him a straightforward, "Well, here's the time and here's the date." And actually what you see is that as he answers, he seems to be actually describing multiple different events all at the same time. Events that are distinct, but that are in some ways similar, some ways connected. On the one hand he's predicting the literal fall of Jerusalem. He's predicting the literal destruction of the temple, a prediction that actually came true within the lifetime of his own disciples. That happened, we know this from history. Now, on the other hand, when you look at the larger context of Matthew and especially the Gospel of John, we see that Jesus often compared the destruction of the temple to the destruction of his physical body, that he was foreshadowing his crucifixion and his resurrection. And this is why a few chapters later in Matthew 26, when Jesus is standing trial, well, some of his accusers come and say in Matthew 26:61 that, "This man said he was able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days." Well, we know Jesus actually did say something like that, but he wasn't referring to the literal temple at that time. He was talking about himself. That he was going to be crucified, buried, and that three days later he was going to rise from the death. Now, on the other hand, Jesus is clearly not just talking about himself. He's clearly not just talking about the temple, he's talking about the end of the world. And so he's preparing his disciples for God's judgment. He's preparing his disciples for the judgment of God that was going to be poured out on him later that week on the cross in their place for their sins. And he's also teaching them about the judgment of God that was going to fall on the whole temple system, that this was going to be a sign. That that old temple with its old, it wasn't needed anymore, because Jesus had come to fulfill all of that. Jesus was the true temple, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. And his disciples were as well as the Holy Spirit came to dwell in them and that they didn't need the priests and the sacrifices. Jesus was the high priest. Jesus was the sacrifice. But then thirdly, he's foreshadowing the judgment of God that was going to someday day come on all of creation. There was going to come a day when Jesus is going to return to judge the world in righteousness and to make all things new. And the apostle Peter later on in his life, he wrote in second Peter chapter three, remembering the words of Jesus. He quotes him in II Peter 3:10, "That the day of the Lord will come like a thief." And then he says, "The heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved and the earth and all the works that are done on it will be exposed." Nothing's going to be hidden from the judgment of God. And so verse 11 he says, "Since these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness in godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn. But what is our hope? Verse 13, "But according to his promise we are waiting for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells." And this should cause the enemies of God to tremble in fear, to humble themselves and repent. But the reason that Jesus is telling his disciples this is because he wants them. He needs them to fix their eyes on this hope, because this hope is going to be the only thing that is going to allow them, enable them to persevere the tribulation that is about to come. And we need the hope of Jesus' return, because as we wait for his return, the truth is, things are going to get pretty bad. That before Jesus returns to rescue his church and lead us to glory, Satan is going to do everything he can to ravage the church and lead us astray. Jesus continues in verse four and he says, and so therefore he says, "See that no one leads you astray. For many are going to come into my name, saying, 'I am the Christ and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you're not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. And all of these are but the beginning of the birth pains. And then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.'" Jesus warns about three tactics that Satan, that the enemy is going to use, three categories of tribulation that he's going to wield against the church in order to lead us astray. In the first category we see. The first category of tribulation we see is that of trials. And what I mean by trials here, as Jesus talks about, there's going to be times of great difficulty. Wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, pestilence, disease, that he says, "There's going to be an increase in lawlessness. That it will just become common for people to lie, to cheat, to murder, to steal. And that these trials, they're going to be experienced, they're going to be common to everyone, but that Satan is going to use them in order to lead people astray. To lead people away from God, to lead them to extinguish their love, to grow cold in their love for God and their love for one another." And Jesus refers to these tribulations as birth pains. That they'll come and they'll go. They'll ebb and they'll flow throughout human history. And every time they do it's going to feel like the end of the world. It's going to feel like things couldn't possibly get any worse. And that these cycles of tribulation, they're going to come, they're going to continue until eventually a time of great tribulation, which the church will have to endure. But this will take place immediately before the return of Christ. It'll be painful, they'll be scary, but the hope is that these pains are leading to something glorious. And Jesus doesn't try to sugarcoat it. He says, "It's going to be bad." But he says in verse 13, "But listen, the one who endures to the end will be saved." And so in the trials of life, dear Christian, endure. The second category we see, the second category of tribulation is that of persecution. Verse nine, it says, "They will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another." Again, like the pangs of trials, persecutions, they come and go throughout church history and as they do, Jesus says, "They're going to cause some Christians to fall away, to turn against one another, to even hate one another." And I think a lot of people think that Christian persecution, oh, that's just something of the past. That's maybe something the early church experienced under the Roman Empire, but that doesn't happen today. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. It is estimated that since the dawn of the church, 70 million Christians have been martyred for their faith in Jesus Christ, 70 million. And over half of those took place within the last 100 years. And estimated around a 100,000 Christians are martyred every year, because they bear the name of Christ. And those of us who grew up here in America, we don't think about this often, because the world doesn't want to look at it. The world turns away from it, pretends like it's not happening. And much of it is happening far away on the other side of the world. I think a lot of Christians got a wake-up this week, these demonic evil attack that took place at the Covenant Christian School in Tennessee. It was a young woman who hated God, who hated Christians and targeted her rage at a Christian school. Satanically murdered three adults, three children, and I don't use that word satanic lightly. What is persecution? Persecution is what happens, when Satan tempts a person to love their sin and their perversion so much that they are willing to kill for it, rather than look to the one who loved them so much that he was willing to die for it, to die for them. It's demonic, it's evil, it's satanic and it's heart-wrenching when it hits so close to home. But this is a reality that many Christians throughout history and around the world today face every single day. This is the reality that got Jesus nailed to a cross. This is the reality that led every one of his apostles to a brutal martyr's death. That when the general calamity of the trials of life are not enough to pull us away, well then Satan is not above using specifically targeted evil at the people of God through the form of persecution. And sometimes it's social coercion, sometimes it's economic exclusion, sometimes it's threats and acts of violence. And Jesus warns us, verse nine, "They'll deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death and you'll be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another." Again, he doesn't sugar coat it for us, but he does leave us with this hope in verse 13, "That the one who endures to the end will be saved." So endure in trials, endure in persecution. The third category of tribulation we see in this passage is that of temptation. That Satan, look at verse 11, "Many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because of lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold." And then later in verse 24, he says, "For false christs and false prophets will arise and even perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect." Obviously, that's not possible, but he's trying to communicate how severe the temptation will be. That Satan doesn't always need to use persecution when sometimes all it takes is a little temptation. Sometimes all he needs to do is raise up a false prophet to tell us what we want to hear. Raise up a false pastor who instead of boldly preaching the truth that we need to hear will cower before the crowds and just tell them what they want to hear. This is, I mean these signs, they're everywhere. We see them all around us in this world today, the pains of labor. And when we feel them and when it feels like they've become too much, there's really two ways we can respond. We can look at this rising hatred of God, of persecution against Christians around the world. We can look at the cult of rampant perversion and sexual immorality that is domineering our culture. We can look at the wars, the rumors of wars, the famines, the disaster of the disease. We can look at the alarming apostacy in churches around us that scoff at the Word of God. We can look at these signs and lose heart. We can get discouraged, we can get angry. We can get bitter. We can allow our love to grow cold. We can believe the lie that these pains are just leading to a meaningless death. Or we can believe the truth, that these pains of labor will someday eventually give birth to eternal life, to new creation. And so dear Christian, endure the pains of this tribulation. Pick up your cross and fix your eyes on Jesus, the founder, the perfector of our faith who promises us Matthew 7:13, "That the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few." And then 24:13, "But the one who endures to the end will be saved." And finally, Matthew 24:32. Jesus gives us this beautiful illustration of hope, because after hearing all that, we need some hope. And this is what he says. He says, "From the fig tree learns its lesson, as soon as its branches become tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see all of these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates." I don't know about you, but I am ready for summer in more ways than one. Outside the front window of our apartment we have these two magnolia trees, and right now they look like death. They're barren. There's no leaves. They've got these ugly, fuzzy, grayish, greenish, brownish buds on the end of their branches. But when we see that ugliness, we get a little bit excited because we know what's about to come. We know it's only a matter of time before these buds start to bloom, before this barren tree begins to explode with color, with new life. And I really think this is just the providence of God. I looked out our window this morning and I can see just a few here there, 10, 11, maybe 12 of these buds beginning to open. The signs of life and color peeking through. Jesus may return in our lifetime, or he may not. We don't know the day or the hour. If he doesn't return soon, we have the promise of scripture that he is going to be with us. He will never leave us or forsake us. He will give us the power and the strength to persevere. And if he does return soon, he will do so in power and great glory to save and glorify his church and to put an end to Satan, sin, and death once and for all. In these last few verses of this first passage in verse 29, Jesus tells us, "Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the heavens, and the powers of the heaven will be shaken. Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and all of the tribes of earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." And so first and foremost, in order to finish, well, we need to endure in this hope. And we see this here in this first section that we've looked at. But now as we look at the rest of Jesus' sermon throughout Matthew through chapter 24 and 25, what we see is that Jesus teaches a series of parables and each one of these shows us another step, another area that we will need to endure in order to finish well. And that we can endure in because of this hope that we have in Jesus Christ. And this really shows us practically what this is going to look like in day-to-day life. Point number one was, endure in hope. Point number two is verses 45 through 51 to endure in obedience. Jesus says in verse 44, "You must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect." And then he begins to teach this parable. He says, "Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. But if that wicked servant says to himself, 'My master is delayed,' and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him, at an hour that he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place that will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Parables are a lot like jokes. And I don't say that to say that this parable is funny. It's not. This is a very serious and grave warning that Jesus gives us. But they are in the sense that they're the closest, modern equivalent in the sense that a lot of the details in a parable are really meant to get you to the punchline of the parable. They're usually not meant to be read allegorically. They're meant to communicate one big idea, one big aha moment. As we read these parables, we got to ask, "What is the punchline of this parable?" And the punchline of this one Jesus is teaching us is, don't be like this wasted servant living a wasted life. In other words, you need to live every day as if it were your last because it very well could be so. That there is an urgency to our obedience to Christ. And the reason that there is an urgency to obedience is because we all have this tendency to want to put it off, to get to it later. How many of us have been in that place in life where we tell ourselves, "I want to follow Jesus, but I'll get serious and really give him my full obedience someday, later. I just got some stuff I want to do first." I've been there. I was that stereotypical church kid that went off to college and drifted away. And you know this about me, my first semester I joined a band and on the weekends, I wasn't going to church on the weekends, we were driving all over the Midwest, touring, playing shows. And I remember one spring morning we were on some college campus, we'd been up late playing a show the night before. And I don't know, we got up at the crack of like 10:30 or 11:00 and decided to go out and try to find something to eat. As we were driving through town, I see this woman, she's got a nice dress on, she's got a big fancy hat. She's walking down the street by herself waving a palm branch. I was like, "What on earth is she doing?" And then suddenly it dawned on me it was Sunday, today was Palm Sunday. I'd considered myself a Christian, and yet it had been so long since I thought about God or I thought about church, I didn't even realize the season, that Easter was just a week away. I was oblivious. I was like the hypocrite in this parable. And if you're waiting until later to give your full obedience to Christ, that's a really dangerous game to play. Later may never come. And if it does, you might not have the heart to respond when it does. Hebrews three warns us. Hebrews 3:12. It says, "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end." And so endure in obedience so that you may not be hardened by deceitfulness of sin. That's point two. Point three is to endure in faith. And this is the beginning of the next chapter, chapter 25:1-13. Jesus tells us another parable. He says, "Then the kingdom of heaven will be like 10 virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bride groom. Five of them were foolish and five of them were wise. And when the foolish ones took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wises took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, 'Here's the bridegroom. Come out to meet him.' Then all those virgins rose, trimmed their lamps. And the foolish ones said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' But the wise answered saying, 'Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.' And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. And afterward the other virgins also came saying, 'Lord, Lord, open to us.' But he answered, 'Truly, I say to you, 'I do not know you.' Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.'" So again, we got, this is not an allegory, it's a parable, so the punchline here is, does Jesus know you? He answers the foolish and he says, "Truly I say to you, I do not know you." And this is echoing a statement that he made in the Sermon of the Mount earlier in Matthew chapter seven. He says, "Listen, not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord', will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. And on that day, many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'" When Jesus returns, he's not going to be impressed with our self-righteous list of accomplishments as we stand before his throne in judgment. The question is, does he know you? Do you have faith? Do you have a relationship with Jesus Christ? Oftentimes we're tempted to put off our obedience to Christ. Well, oftentimes we're often tempted to put off our relationship with Jesus Christ to say, "I'll get serious about my faith later. I'll spend time in fasting and prayer. I'll start to read my Bible later. Someday when I'm less busy, someday when I have more time." Well, later may never come. And the question is, Jesus wants us to feel an urgency that if he came back today, would it be like you're meeting a stranger, or would it be like you're meeting a friend, somebody that you know, someone you have a relationship with? You need to endure in faith. Point number four is to endure in mission. This is verse 14 through 30, Matthew chapter 25. This is the parable of the talents. And we looked at this last week, so I'm not going to read through the whole thing again for us this week, just to give you the CliffsNotes version, the parable of the talents that there's a wealthy master, a wealthy king. He's entrusted three of his servants with a certain amount of money, with a certain number of talents to invest as he departs and goes on a long journey. And then he comes back to settle accounts with them after a long time. And what we're told is that the wicked servant, he took his master's money, he hid it, he buried it in the ground, and when the master comes back he punishes him. But the good servants, they took their master's talents, they invested them faithfully. And when the master comes back, he says to them in verse 23, "Well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful over a little, I'll set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master." And last week when we looked at this parable, we looked at it through the lens of giving and generosity. And that's, I think a good way to look at it. It's one of the ways that you can look at it. But ultimately, Jesus was talking about a lot more than just managing money when he was teaching this parable. He wants us, we need to look at this through the lens of God's mission that Jesus is teaching about the Kingdom of God. Now, Jesus is the master, right? He's gone on a long journey. He's ascended into heaven. We don't know the day that he's going to return, but we know that when he does return that he will be back. And while he is gone, he has left us with a mission to accomplish. If you remember back in Matthew 24:14, Jesus tells us this, "That this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." We all love this idea of doing evangelism, of making disciples, of answering God's calling for our life, investing our talents for his kingdom. But so often we are not doing those things now, because again, we keep saying, "Oh, well, I'll do those things someday later." And what we're doing in those moments is we're really acting like the foolish, like the wicked servant. Were burying God's talents in the ground. And Matthew 9:57 we're told that as Jesus and his disciples were going along the road, someone came and he said to him, "Hey Jesus, I'll follow you wherever you go.' And Jesus said to him, "Well, foxes have holes in birds of the airs have nests. But the son of man has nowhere to lay his head." And to another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Well, Lord, let me first go and bury my father." And Jesus said to him, "Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." And yet another said, "I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to those at my home." And Jesus said to him, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." And obviously Jesus is using a bit of hyperbole here, but the point is clear, that the mission doesn't start tomorrow, the mission starts today. That we cannot put this off. We need to go, proclaim the kingdom of God, keep both hands to the plow and not look back. We need to endure in this mission. And then finally, we're called, at the end of his sermon Jesus calls us to endure in love. That is point number five, Matthew 25:31-46. But first, if you remember back to the beginning of chapter 24, Jesus warned us about this. He said, "That many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold." That we need as the church to endure and love. We need to endure in our love for God, we need to endure and our love for our neighbors, for people in general. But at the end of his sermon here, Jesus gives us a parable in which he is calling us specifically to endure in our love for one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. This is the meaning of the final parable. This is the parable of the sheep and the goats. Matthew 25:31. Jesus says, "When the son of man comes in his glory and all of the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. And before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on his left and then the king will say to those on his right, Come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me in. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me." Then the righteous will answer him saying, "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you a drink? When did we see you as stranger and welcome, or you are naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?" And the king will answer them, "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me." And then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink. I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, I was naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me." Then they will also answer saying, "Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and not minister to you?" Then he'll answer them saying, "Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." And I think most of us, at least for myself, whenever I've heard this read or preached, it's usually preached in the sense of, this is a call for Christians to do good works. This is a call for Christians to be charitable and compassionate and to care for those are who are in need. And those are certainly all good things that Christians should do. But that's not the point of what Jesus is talking about here. Because again, so the parable, it's not an allegory. And so what it is the punchline of the parable, it's verse 40, "That the king will answer them, 'Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of," the least of who? "One of the these, my brothers, you did it for me." And when you read the gospels, when Jesus uses that language of the least of these, when he uses the language of my brothers and sisters, he's referring to his disciples. That as Christians we should love our neighbors as ourselves, that we should be charitable and compassionate to people in general. But the big idea that Jesus is talking about here is that this needs to be especially true for how we love and care for our brothers and sisters in Christ. That as Christians, when we love other Christians, when we care for the body of Christ, it says, "If we are caring for Christ himself." And when we don't, we see the warning there as well. Now, we need to think about this in the context of the sermon that Jesus is preaching. Jesus is preaching to a people who are about to face tribulation. And in just a few days he's going to lead the way by going to the cross himself. And I think part of what's going on here is that Jesus is, he's foreshadowing the reality that a time of difficulty was about to come for himself, that he would be crucified, and that when he was his followers, his disciples, his brothers and sisters would be tempted to desert him, to betray, to deny, to be ashamed to associate with him. And that's exactly what happened. But he's also saying, "That a time of difficulty is coming for you, my church as well. And when it does, you're going to be tempted to do the same, to turn against and to abandon one another." And he's reminding us that in those moments when it becomes the most costly, the most inconvenient to love one another, that is precisely when we need to love one another the most. And we have a very direct example of this in the New Testament. In II Timothy chapter one. The apostle Paul writes in second Timothy 1:15, he says to Timothy, "Listen, you are aware of all of those in Asia who turned away from me, among whom were Phygelus and Hermogenes. May the Lord grant mercy to the house of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains. But when he arrived in Rome, he searched for me earnestly and found me. May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day." And so he says, you remember Phygelus and Hermogenes, right? Phygelus, goat, Hermogenes, goat. They're hypocrites. They claim to be followers of Jesus, but they were fakes, they were frauds. When it came time to prove their faith, they were ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They turned and they abandoned the apostle Paul. Onesiphorus, now there's a sheep, right? He cared for Paul while he was in prison. He wasn't ashamed to go to him and give him help in his time of need. He's the real goat in the modern sense, not to get too confusing. But you see what's going on here. He cared for Paul. And in caring for Paul, it's as if he cared for Christ. And look at what Paul prays for him in verse 18. He says, "May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day." On what day? On the day when Jesus comes to separate the sheep from the goats. That as the church we must endure for love and love for one another always, especially when it's hard, especially when it's costly, especially when the world around us hates us. By doing so, we honor Christ and we prove, we test testify to the world that we truly are his disciples. And Jesus, in John 13:34, he tell his disciples, "A new commandment I give to you that you love one another, just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another." And he says, "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have loved one another." And so the five steps to finish well, endure in hope, endure in obedience, endure in faith, endure in mission, endure in love. And Jesus gave this last commandment that we just read. If you remember this, he gave this in the context of the Last Supper, right after having washed his disciples' feet. It says John 13:12. It says, "When he had washed their feet and he put on his outer garment and resumed his place, and he said to them, 'Do you understand what I've done for you? You call me teacher and Lord, and you're right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I've given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed you if you do them, I'm not speaking of all of you, I know whom I have chosen, but the scripture will be fulfilled. He who ate bread has lifted his heel against me.'" He's talking about Judas who would betray him. "But I'm telling you this now before it takes place, that when it does take place, you may believe that I am he, truly, truly, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me." Today is a special day, today is Palm Sunday. It's the beginning of Holy Week and it's fitting that we look to the return of Christ on the day that he first entered, his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Today is also Communion Sunday, we remember the crowd that cried, hosanna, that welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem as their savior. We also remember that crowd quickly turned into the mob that later that week rejected him as their Lord. And their response, it stands as a warning, as a reminder throughout the ages that our greatest need is not for a savior who is going to come and save us from our circumstances. Our greatest need is for a savior who's going to come and save us from ourselves, save us from our sin, our guilt, our shame from the wrath of God that those things deserve. And communion is a time for us to remember and to give thanks and to celebrate that Jesus Christ came to do just that. Jesus died on the cross to deliver us from the penalty that our sin deserved. That Jesus rose from the grave to deliver us from the power of sin over our lives. And that Jesus is going to come again to judge the living and the dead, and to deliver us from the very presence of sin, a once and for all and for all eternity. God, we thank you for your amazing grace. We thank you that the signs are all around us, that the winter is almost over, that spring and summer are almost here. And that when we see these signs, we know for certain that you are with us. You have promised to be with us always to the very end of the age. And whether that day be soon, or whether that day be long beyond our time here on earth. Lord, I pray that you'd give us the grace and the power to walk faithfully and endure to the end for the sake of your name and glory. That every one of our lives would be used as a witness, as a testimony to your goodness, to your grace, to your power, to your glory. And we thank you for the blood of your son, Jesus Christ that was poured out for us, so that we could be forgiven, so that we could be redeemed from our slavery to sin and adopted into your household as sons and daughters. And we come now as your children and just continue to give you thanks and give you our praise. In Jesus' name, amen.

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic BostonChurch. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston,or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com. Over the last 11 weeks we have been looking at some of just the super essential, practical, non-negotiable commitments that all of us as followers of Jesus need to make in order to grow in our faith, in order to persevere in our faith, in order to experience the abundant life that Jesus Christ came to give us. And if you have your Bibles, open up to Matthew chapter 24. The title of today's sermon as we finish this series is, Commit to Finish Well. And on the surface that might sound a little bit redundant because that that's really what commitment is. The whole purpose of commitment is to see something through to completion. And the whole reason you need to make commitments, it only is necessary when you're attempting to do something that's going to be difficult, that you're going to be tempted to give up on or possibly quit. And Jesus promised to give us abundant life. We looked at that when we began this series, but that doesn't mean that the Christian life is going to be an easy life. That the abundant life that Jesus talks about, yeah, it comes with peace that passes understanding. It comes with joy and contentment and hope, but it comes with its fair share of difficulties as well. The Christian life is we live in this tension of both tribulation and hope that John 16:33, Jesus told his disciples, "I have said these things to you, that in me, you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart, for I have overcome the world." This is the tension that we live in as followers of Christ, that in this world we will be faced with tribulations, with temptation, persecution, with many trials. And there will be times when we are tempted to give up. There will be times where all we can do is hold on to the hope that we have in Jesus Christ and do what he calls us to do, which is to endure, to overcome these tribulations by standing firm, by persevering, by holding fast until he returns so that we may finish well. It's a race that we must run with endurance, but as we're going to see in our text today, it's also a race that could come to an end at any moment. And at the heart of our text today, we're going to be looking at a really large passage of scripture and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that and introduce it here in a little bit. But at the heart of this passage, Matthew chapter 24 is verse 36 through 44 where Jesus says this, he says, "But concerning that day and hour, no one knows." And he's talking about his return, "not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. For as in the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, and marrying and giving in marriage until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away." And he says, "So will be the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field, one will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding at the middle, one will be taken and one left. Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known and what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore, you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming in an hour you do not expect." And the big idea is that Jesus is coming back. No one knows exactly when, but when he comes, he says it's going to be like some people are asleep. That they're just completely caught off guard unaware by his return. It's going to be like in the days of Noah, people are just going on with their lives, ignoring the warnings coming from the Prophet Noah until that day when the flood comes and just swept them all the way. And he says, "It's going to be like that. When I return some people are going to be caught off guard as if they were asleep. But others," Jesus said, "well, they're going to be wide awake. They're going to be ready, waiting for Jesus' return." And Jesus doesn't tell us exactly when he's going to return, but he does teach us how to be ready for his return. And that's what we're going to be focusing on today. Today as we've said, is Palm Sunday. In the passage that I just read, it comes from a larger passage of scripture that's often referred to as the Olivet Discourse. It's in Matthew chapter 24 through 25. And in Matthew's gospel, this is the sermon that Jesus preached on the Mount of Olives to his disciples sometime after his triumphal entry on Palm Sunday, but before his crucifixion on Good Friday. And there's way too much here for us to get through all of it verse by verse today. But we are going to get through most of it section by section. And as we do, we're going to be looking at five lessons, five steps that Jesus gives us that will enable us to be ready for his return, five areas that we need to endure in, in order to run this race and to finish well. And so the outline of today's sermon, Five steps to Finishing Well. The first step is to endure in hope. This is the beginning of Matthew chapter 24. Point two, endure in obedience. That's the end of chapter 24. Third, endure in faith. That's the beginning of chapter 25. Endure in mission. And then finally at the end of his sermon is the call to endure in love. Before we jump into the first point of today's sermon, would you please join me in prayer for our sermon today? Father, we thank you that you are a good and a just God. That you will not tolerate sin and evil forever, that a day is coming when you will judge the world in righteousness, where all sin will be accounted for, either in hell for all of eternity as it deserves, or on the cross by Jesus Christ in our place. Jesus, we thank you for your sacrifice. We thank you for taking the punishment, the wrath that our sins deserve so that we can look to your coming, not with the fear of punishment, but with the hope of salvation, of deliverance. That you have saved us, you've justified us, you've saved us from the penalty of our sin, that you right now by the power of your Holy Spirit are saving us, delivering us from the power of sin in our lives. And that you will come again to once and for all time deliver us from the very presence of sin for all of eternity. We long for, we look to that day. And Lord, we pray as we do that you would give us the strength to endure. That by the power of your Holy Spirit we would persevere for the glory of your name. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. All right, point number one today is to endure in hope. And this comes from the beginning, Matthew chapter 24. Beginning in verse one, Matthew sets the context for us. He says that, "Jesus left the temple and was going away when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. But he answered them, 'You see these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.'" And then later, "As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, 'Tell us when these things will be? What will be the sign of your coming at the end of the age?' And Jesus answered them, see that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name saying, 'I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All of these are but the beginning of the birth pains. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." And so Matthew begins, he sets the context for us. Jesus and his disciples, they're in Jerusalem and he begins to notice that his disciples are, they're starstruck by the impressive buildings, the stones of the temple. And he answers them. In verse three he says, "You see these things?" He says, "Listen to me. Truly, I say to you, there's not going to be one of these stones left on top of another. They're all going to be thrown down." And then his disciples come to in verse three and says, "Well, tell us Jesus, what are you talking about? When are these things going to happen? What are going to be the signs of your coming at the end of the age?" And then Jesus begins to answer their question. And as you read the next two chapters, it becomes clear that Jesus' answer is not so crystal clear. That he doesn't give him a straightforward, "Well, here's the time and here's the date." And actually what you see is that as he answers, he seems to be actually describing multiple different events all at the same time. Events that are distinct, but that are in some ways similar, some ways connected. On the one hand he's predicting the literal fall of Jerusalem. He's predicting the literal destruction of the temple, a prediction that actually came true within the lifetime of his own disciples. That happened, we know this from history. Now, on the other hand, when you look at the larger context of Matthew and especially the Gospel of John, we see that Jesus often compared the destruction of the temple to the destruction of his physical body, that he was foreshadowing his crucifixion and his resurrection. And this is why a few chapters later in Matthew 26, when Jesus is standing trial, well, some of his accusers come and say in Matthew 26:61 that, "This man said he was able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days." Well, we know Jesus actually did say something like that, but he wasn't referring to the literal temple at that time. He was talking about himself. That he was going to be crucified, buried, and that three days later he was going to rise from the death. Now, on the other hand, Jesus is clearly not just talking about himself. He's clearly not just talking about the temple, he's talking about the end of the world. And so he's preparing his disciples for God's judgment. He's preparing his disciples for the judgment of God that was going to be poured out on him later that week on the cross in their place for their sins. And he's also teaching them about the judgment of God that was going to fall on the whole temple system, that this was going to be a sign. That that old temple with its old, it wasn't needed anymore, because Jesus had come to fulfill all of that. Jesus was the true temple, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. And his disciples were as well as the Holy Spirit came to dwell in them and that they didn't need the priests and the sacrifices. Jesus was the high priest. Jesus was the sacrifice. But then thirdly, he's foreshadowing the judgment of God that was going to someday day come on all of creation. There was going to come a day when Jesus is going to return to judge the world in righteousness and to make all things new. And the apostle Peter later on in his life, he wrote in second Peter chapter three, remembering the words of Jesus. He quotes him in II Peter 3:10, "That the day of the Lord will come like a thief." And then he says, "The heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved and the earth and all the works that are done on it will be exposed." Nothing's going to be hidden from the judgment of God. And so verse 11 he says, "Since these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness in godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn. But what is our hope? Verse 13, "But according to his promise we are waiting for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells." And this should cause the enemies of God to tremble in fear, to humble themselves and repent. But the reason that Jesus is telling his disciples this is because he wants them. He needs them to fix their eyes on this hope, because this hope is going to be the only thing that is going to allow them, enable them to persevere the tribulation that is about to come. And we need the hope of Jesus' return, because as we wait for his return, the truth is, things are going to get pretty bad. That before Jesus returns to rescue his church and lead us to glory, Satan is going to do everything he can to ravage the church and lead us astray. Jesus continues in verse four and he says, and so therefore he says, "See that no one leads you astray. For many are going to come into my name, saying, 'I am the Christ and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you're not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. And all of these are but the beginning of the birth pains. And then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.'" Jesus warns about three tactics that Satan, that the enemy is going to use, three categories of tribulation that he's going to wield against the church in order to lead us astray. In the first category we see. The first category of tribulation we see is that of trials. And what I mean by trials here, as Jesus talks about, there's going to be times of great difficulty. Wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, pestilence, disease, that he says, "There's going to be an increase in lawlessness. That it will just become common for people to lie, to cheat, to murder, to steal. And that these trials, they're going to be experienced, they're going to be common to everyone, but that Satan is going to use them in order to lead people astray. To lead people away from God, to lead them to extinguish their love, to grow cold in their love for God and their love for one another." And Jesus refers to these tribulations as birth pains. That they'll come and they'll go. They'll ebb and they'll flow throughout human history. And every time they do it's going to feel like the end of the world. It's going to feel like things couldn't possibly get any worse. And that these cycles of tribulation, they're going to come, they're going to continue until eventually a time of great tribulation, which the church will have to endure. But this will take place immediately before the return of Christ. It'll be painful, they'll be scary, but the hope is that these pains are leading to something glorious. And Jesus doesn't try to sugarcoat it. He says, "It's going to be bad." But he says in verse 13, "But listen, the one who endures to the end will be saved." And so in the trials of life, dear Christian, endure. The second category we see, the second category of tribulation is that of persecution. Verse nine, it says, "They will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another." Again, like the pangs of trials, persecutions, they come and go throughout church history and as they do, Jesus says, "They're going to cause some Christians to fall away, to turn against one another, to even hate one another." And I think a lot of people think that Christian persecution, oh, that's just something of the past. That's maybe something the early church experienced under the Roman Empire, but that doesn't happen today. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. It is estimated that since the dawn of the church, 70 million Christians have been martyred for their faith in Jesus Christ, 70 million. And over half of those took place within the last 100 years. And estimated around a 100,000 Christians are martyred every year, because they bear the name of Christ. And those of us who grew up here in America, we don't think about this often, because the world doesn't want to look at it. The world turns away from it, pretends like it's not happening. And much of it is happening far away on the other side of the world. I think a lot of Christians got a wake-up this week, these demonic evil attack that took place at the Covenant Christian School in Tennessee. It was a young woman who hated God, who hated Christians and targeted her rage at a Christian school. Satanically murdered three adults, three children, and I don't use that word satanic lightly. What is persecution? Persecution is what happens, when Satan tempts a person to love their sin and their perversion so much that they are willing to kill for it, rather than look to the one who loved them so much that he was willing to die for it, to die for them. It's demonic, it's evil, it's satanic and it's heart-wrenching when it hits so close to home. But this is a reality that many Christians throughout history and around the world today face every single day. This is the reality that got Jesus nailed to a cross. This is the reality that led every one of his apostles to a brutal martyr's death. That when the general calamity of the trials of life are not enough to pull us away, well then Satan is not above using specifically targeted evil at the people of God through the form of persecution. And sometimes it's social coercion, sometimes it's economic exclusion, sometimes it's threats and acts of violence. And Jesus warns us, verse nine, "They'll deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death and you'll be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another." Again, he doesn't sugar coat it for us, but he does leave us with this hope in verse 13, "That the one who endures to the end will be saved." So endure in trials, endure in persecution. The third category of tribulation we see in this passage is that of temptation. That Satan, look at verse 11, "Many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because of lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold." And then later in verse 24, he says, "For false christs and false prophets will arise and even perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect." Obviously, that's not possible, but he's trying to communicate how severe the temptation will be. That Satan doesn't always need to use persecution when sometimes all it takes is a little temptation. Sometimes all he needs to do is raise up a false prophet to tell us what we want to hear. Raise up a false pastor who instead of boldly preaching the truth that we need to hear will cower before the crowds and just tell them what they want to hear. This is, I mean these signs, they're everywhere. We see them all around us in this world today, the pains of labor. And when we feel them and when it feels like they've become too much, there's really two ways we can respond. We can look at this rising hatred of God, of persecution against Christians around the world. We can look at the cult of rampant perversion and sexual immorality that is domineering our culture. We can look at the wars, the rumors of wars, the famines, the disaster of the disease. We can look at the alarming apostacy in churches around us that scoff at the Word of God. We can look at these signs and lose heart. We can get discouraged, we can get angry. We can get bitter. We can allow our love to grow cold. We can believe the lie that these pains are just leading to a meaningless death. Or we can believe the truth, that these pains of labor will someday eventually give birth to eternal life, to new creation. And so dear Christian, endure the pains of this tribulation. Pick up your cross and fix your eyes on Jesus, the founder, the perfector of our faith who promises us Matthew 7:13, "That the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few." And then 24:13, "But the one who endures to the end will be saved." And finally, Matthew 24:32. Jesus gives us this beautiful illustration of hope, because after hearing all that, we need some hope. And this is what he says. He says, "From the fig tree learns its lesson, as soon as its branches become tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see all of these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates." I don't know about you, but I am ready for summer in more ways than one. Outside the front window of our apartment we have these two magnolia trees, and right now they look like death. They're barren. There's no leaves. They've got these ugly, fuzzy, grayish, greenish, brownish buds on the end of their branches. But when we see that ugliness, we get a little bit excited because we know what's about to come. We know it's only a matter of time before these buds start to bloom, before this barren tree begins to explode with color, with new life. And I really think this is just the providence of God. I looked out our window this morning and I can see just a few here there, 10, 11, maybe 12 of these buds beginning to open. The signs of life and color peeking through. Jesus may return in our lifetime, or he may not. We don't know the day or the hour. If he doesn't return soon, we have the promise of scripture that he is going to be with us. He will never leave us or forsake us. He will give us the power and the strength to persevere. And if he does return soon, he will do so in power and great glory to save and glorify his church and to put an end to Satan, sin, and death once and for all. In these last few verses of this first passage in verse 29, Jesus tells us, "Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the heavens, and the powers of the heaven will be shaken. Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and all of the tribes of earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." And so first and foremost, in order to finish, well, we need to endure in this hope. And we see this here in this first section that we've looked at. But now as we look at the rest of Jesus' sermon throughout Matthew through chapter 24 and 25, what we see is that Jesus teaches a series of parables and each one of these shows us another step, another area that we will need to endure in order to finish well. And that we can endure in because of this hope that we have in Jesus Christ. And this really shows us practically what this is going to look like in day-to-day life. Point number one was, endure in hope. Point number two is verses 45 through 51 to endure in obedience. Jesus says in verse 44, "You must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect." And then he begins to teach this parable. He says, "Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. But if that wicked servant says to himself, 'My master is delayed,' and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him, at an hour that he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place that will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Parables are a lot like jokes. And I don't say that to say that this parable is funny. It's not. This is a very serious and grave warning that Jesus gives us. But they are in the sense that they're the closest, modern equivalent in the sense that a lot of the details in a parable are really meant to get you to the punchline of the parable. They're usually not meant to be read allegorically. They're meant to communicate one big idea, one big aha moment. As we read these parables, we got to ask, "What is the punchline of this parable?" And the punchline of this one Jesus is teaching us is, don't be like this wasted servant living a wasted life. In other words, you need to live every day as if it were your last because it very well could be so. That there is an urgency to our obedience to Christ. And the reason that there is an urgency to obedience is because we all have this tendency to want to put it off, to get to it later. How many of us have been in that place in life where we tell ourselves, "I want to follow Jesus, but I'll get serious and really give him my full obedience someday, later. I just got some stuff I want to do first." I've been there. I was that stereotypical church kid that went off to college and drifted away. And you know this about me, my first semester I joined a band and on the weekends, I wasn't going to church on the weekends, we were driving all over the Midwest, touring, playing shows. And I remember one spring morning we were on some college campus, we'd been up late playing a show the night before. And I don't know, we got up at the crack of like 10:30 or 11:00 and decided to go out and try to find something to eat. As we were driving through town, I see this woman, she's got a nice dress on, she's got a big fancy hat. She's walking down the street by herself waving a palm branch. I was like, "What on earth is she doing?" And then suddenly it dawned on me it was Sunday, today was Palm Sunday. I'd considered myself a Christian, and yet it had been so long since I thought about God or I thought about church, I didn't even realize the season, that Easter was just a week away. I was oblivious. I was like the hypocrite in this parable. And if you're waiting until later to give your full obedience to Christ, that's a really dangerous game to play. Later may never come. And if it does, you might not have the heart to respond when it does. Hebrews three warns us. Hebrews 3:12. It says, "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end." And so endure in obedience so that you may not be hardened by deceitfulness of sin. That's point two. Point three is to endure in faith. And this is the beginning of the next chapter, chapter 25:1-13. Jesus tells us another parable. He says, "Then the kingdom of heaven will be like 10 virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bride groom. Five of them were foolish and five of them were wise. And when the foolish ones took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wises took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, 'Here's the bridegroom. Come out to meet him.' Then all those virgins rose, trimmed their lamps. And the foolish ones said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' But the wise answered saying, 'Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.' And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. And afterward the other virgins also came saying, 'Lord, Lord, open to us.' But he answered, 'Truly, I say to you, 'I do not know you.' Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.'" So again, we got, this is not an allegory, it's a parable, so the punchline here is, does Jesus know you? He answers the foolish and he says, "Truly I say to you, I do not know you." And this is echoing a statement that he made in the Sermon of the Mount earlier in Matthew chapter seven. He says, "Listen, not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord', will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. And on that day, many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'" When Jesus returns, he's not going to be impressed with our self-righteous list of accomplishments as we stand before his throne in judgment. The question is, does he know you? Do you have faith? Do you have a relationship with Jesus Christ? Oftentimes we're tempted to put off our obedience to Christ. Well, oftentimes we're often tempted to put off our relationship with Jesus Christ to say, "I'll get serious about my faith later. I'll spend time in fasting and prayer. I'll start to read my Bible later. Someday when I'm less busy, someday when I have more time." Well, later may never come. And the question is, Jesus wants us to feel an urgency that if he came back today, would it be like you're meeting a stranger, or would it be like you're meeting a friend, somebody that you know, someone you have a relationship with? You need to endure in faith. Point number four is to endure in mission. This is verse 14 through 30, Matthew chapter 25. This is the parable of the talents. And we looked at this last week, so I'm not going to read through the whole thing again for us this week, just to give you the CliffsNotes version, the parable of the talents that there's a wealthy master, a wealthy king. He's entrusted three of his servants with a certain amount of money, with a certain number of talents to invest as he departs and goes on a long journey. And then he comes back to settle accounts with them after a long time. And what we're told is that the wicked servant, he took his master's money, he hid it, he buried it in the ground, and when the master comes back he punishes him. But the good servants, they took their master's talents, they invested them faithfully. And when the master comes back, he says to them in verse 23, "Well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful over a little, I'll set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master." And last week when we looked at this parable, we looked at it through the lens of giving and generosity. And that's, I think a good way to look at it. It's one of the ways that you can look at it. But ultimately, Jesus was talking about a lot more than just managing money when he was teaching this parable. He wants us, we need to look at this through the lens of God's mission that Jesus is teaching about the Kingdom of God. Now, Jesus is the master, right? He's gone on a long journey. He's ascended into heaven. We don't know the day that he's going to return, but we know that when he does return that he will be back. And while he is gone, he has left us with a mission to accomplish. If you remember back in Matthew 24:14, Jesus tells us this, "That this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." We all love this idea of doing evangelism, of making disciples, of answering God's calling for our life, investing our talents for his kingdom. But so often we are not doing those things now, because again, we keep saying, "Oh, well, I'll do those things someday later." And what we're doing in those moments is we're really acting like the foolish, like the wicked servant. Were burying God's talents in the ground. And Matthew 9:57 we're told that as Jesus and his disciples were going along the road, someone came and he said to him, "Hey Jesus, I'll follow you wherever you go.' And Jesus said to him, "Well, foxes have holes in birds of the airs have nests. But the son of man has nowhere to lay his head." And to another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Well, Lord, let me first go and bury my father." And Jesus said to him, "Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." And yet another said, "I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to those at my home." And Jesus said to him, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." And obviously Jesus is using a bit of hyperbole here, but the point is clear, that the mission doesn't start tomorrow, the mission starts today. That we cannot put this off. We need to go, proclaim the kingdom of God, keep both hands to the plow and not look back. We need to endure in this mission. And then finally, we're called, at the end of his sermon Jesus calls us to endure in love. That is point number five, Matthew 25:31-46. But first, if you remember back to the beginning of chapter 24, Jesus warned us about this. He said, "That many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold." That we need as the church to endure and love. We need to endure in our love for God, we need to endure and our love for our neighbors, for people in general. But at the end of his sermon here, Jesus gives us a parable in which he is calling us specifically to endure in our love for one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. This is the meaning of the final parable. This is the parable of the sheep and the goats. Matthew 25:31. Jesus says, "When the son of man comes in his glory and all of the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. And before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on his left and then the king will say to those on his right, Come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me in. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me." Then the righteous will answer him saying, "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you a drink? When did we see you as stranger and welcome, or you are naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?" And the king will answer them, "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me." And then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink. I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, I was naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me." Then they will also answer saying, "Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and not minister to you?" Then he'll answer them saying, "Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." And I think most of us, at least for myself, whenever I've heard this read or preached, it's usually preached in the sense of, this is a call for Christians to do good works. This is a call for Christians to be charitable and compassionate and to care for those are who are in need. And those are certainly all good things that Christians should do. But that's not the point of what Jesus is talking about here. Because again, so the parable, it's not an allegory. And so what it is the punchline of the parable, it's verse 40, "That the king will answer them, 'Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of," the least of who? "One of the these, my brothers, you did it for me." And when you read the gospels, when Jesus uses that language of the least of these, when he uses the language of my brothers and sisters, he's referring to his disciples. That as Christians we should love our neighbors as ourselves, that we should be charitable and compassionate to people in general. But the big idea that Jesus is talking about here is that this needs to be especially true for how we love and care for our brothers and sisters in Christ. That as Christians, when we love other Christians, when we care for the body of Christ, it says, "If we are caring for Christ himself." And when we don't, we see the warning there as well. Now, we need to think about this in the context of the sermon that Jesus is preaching. Jesus is preaching to a people who are about to face tribulation. And in just a few days he's going to lead the way by going to the cross himself. And I think part of what's going on here is that Jesus is, he's foreshadowing the reality that a time of difficulty was about to come for himself, that he would be crucified, and that when he was his followers, his disciples, his brothers and sisters would be tempted to desert him, to betray, to deny, to be ashamed to associate with him. And that's exactly what happened. But he's also saying, "That a time of difficulty is coming for you, my church as well. And when it does, you're going to be tempted to do the same, to turn against and to abandon one another." And he's reminding us that in those moments when it becomes the most costly, the most inconvenient to love one another, that is precisely when we need to love one another the most. And we have a very direct example of this in the New Testament. In II Timothy chapter one. The apostle Paul writes in second Timothy 1:15, he says to Timothy, "Listen, you are aware of all of those in Asia who turned away from me, among whom were Phygelus and Hermogenes. May the Lord grant mercy to the house of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains. But when he arrived in Rome, he searched for me earnestly and found me. May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day." And so he says, you remember Phygelus and Hermogenes, right? Phygelus, goat, Hermogenes, goat. They're hypocrites. They claim to be followers of Jesus, but they were fakes, they were frauds. When it came time to prove their faith, they were ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They turned and they abandoned the apostle Paul. Onesiphorus, now there's a sheep, right? He cared for Paul while he was in prison. He wasn't ashamed to go to him and give him help in his time of need. He's the real goat in the modern sense, not to get too confusing. But you see what's going on here. He cared for Paul. And in caring for Paul, it's as if he cared for Christ. And look at what Paul prays for him in verse 18. He says, "May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day." On what day? On the day when Jesus comes to separate the sheep from the goats. That as the church we must endure for love and love for one another always, especially when it's hard, especially when it's costly, especially when the world around us hates us. By doing so, we honor Christ and we prove, we test testify to the world that we truly are his disciples. And Jesus, in John 13:34, he tell his disciples, "A new commandment I give to you that you love one another, just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another." And he says, "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have loved one another." And so the five steps to finish well, endure in hope, endure in obedience, endure in faith, endure in mission, endure in love. And Jesus gave this last commandment that we just read. If you remember this, he gave this in the context of the Last Supper, right after having washed his disciples' feet. It says John 13:12. It says, "When he had washed their feet and he put on his outer garment and resumed his place, and he said to them, 'Do you understand what I've done for you? You call me teacher and Lord, and you're right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I've given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed you if you do them, I'm not speaking of all of you, I know whom I have chosen, but the scripture will be fulfilled. He who ate bread has lifted his heel against me.'" He's talking about Judas who would betray him. "But I'm telling you this now before it takes place, that when it does take place, you may believe that I am he, truly, truly, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me." Today is a special day, today is Palm Sunday. It's the beginning of Holy Week and it's fitting that we look to the return of Christ on the day that he first entered, his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Today is also Communion Sunday, we remember the crowd that cried, hosanna, that welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem as their savior. We also remember that crowd quickly turned into the mob that later that week rejected him as their Lord. And their response, it stands as a warning, as a reminder throughout the ages that our greatest need is not for a savior who is going to come and save us from our circumstances. Our greatest need is for a savior who's going to come and save us from ourselves, save us from our sin, our guilt, our shame from the wrath of God that those things deserve. And communion is a time for us to remember and to give thanks and to celebrate that Jesus Christ came to do just that. Jesus died on the cross to deliver us from the penalty that our sin deserved. That Jesus rose from the grave to deliver us from the power of sin over our lives. And that Jesus is going to come again to judge the living and the dead, and to deliver us from the very presence of sin, a once and for all and for all eternity. God, we thank you for your amazing grace. We thank you that the signs are all around us, that the winter is almost over, that spring and summer are almost here. And that when we see these signs, we know for certain that you are with us. You have promised to be with us always to the very end of the age. And whether that day be soon, or whether that day be long beyond our time here on earth. Lord, I pray that you'd give us the grace and the power to walk faithfully and endure to the end for the sake of your name and glory. That every one of our lives would be used as a witness, as a testimony to your goodness, to your grace, to your power, to your glory. And we thank you for the blood of your son, Jesus Christ that was poured out for us, so that we could be forgiven, so that we could be redeemed from our slavery to sin and adopted into your household as sons and daughters. And we come now as your children and just continue to give you thanks and give you our praise. In Jesus' name, amen.

Guest: Houston City Council At Large 2 candidate Rev. Willie Davis On this week's show:The horrific murders in Nashville at the Covenant Christian School by a radical transgender activist named Audrey Hale has sent the left's gaslighting into hyperdrive;I was completely nuked on Instagram and Facebook for posting REAL pictures and asking REAL questions about the transgender shooter's motive;The radical gender ideologists have been celebrated and promoted by the Democrat party, teachers' unions, the media, and our degenerate culture, so they will refuse to tell the truth about the motive of the shooter;Rev. Willie Davis and I discuss the state of our culture and the Houston City Council race (keep your eyes on this man! He is going to WIN);As we approach the 30 year anniversary of the Waco, TX siege, I see many parallels with what is going on with January 6 prisoners and other enemies of the administrative state and the establishment;Trump gets indicted, and now a precedent has been set. What will happen next??;MORE!All content: AngelasSoapBox.comNew FB and IG: TheRealAngelaBoxTruth: AngelaBox

It's Friday, March 31st, A.D. 2023. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard at www.TheWorldview.com. I'm Adam McManus. By Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) Nigerian Muslims killed pastor, kidnapped wife On March 23rd, Fulani Muslim herdsmen killed a pastor in Kaduna state, Nigeria, just two weeks after terrorists killed a Baptist pastor's son in the same area, reports The Christian Post. Rev. Musa Mairimi of the Evangelical Church Winning All was killed in his home and his wife was kidnapped at gunpoint. In Romans 3:15-18, Paul wrote, “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Trump indicted in New York Yesterday afternoon, former president Donald Trump was indicted by a New York City grand jury in Manhattan, making him the first former president to be charged with a crime in American history, reports CBS News.  In fact, CNN claims that he has been indicted on 30 counts related to business fraud. The Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, has been investigating Trump for allegedly falsifying business records in connection with a "hush money" payment made in 2016 to a disreputable actress. The charge or charges against Trump are sealed, but they will be unsealed in the future. CBS News legal analyst Rikki Klieman said, “He will be processed. He will have a mugshot. He will get a booking number. He will give fingerprints ... and ultimately whether or not he will be handcuffed is discretionary for the police, in this case the NYPD." On Truth Social, Trump wrote, “This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history. … I believe this witch hunt will backfire massively on Joe Biden. The American people realize exactly what the radical left Democrats are doing here." Then, on Fox News, Trump's attorney, Alina Habba, said this. HABBA: “I think his sentiments are that this is the result of him leading in the polls, doing incredibly well. He is the leading candidate. When people are afraid of someone being successful and fixing the mess that our country is, they come after you. This is the same thing that President Trump has been dealing with for years. He's disappointed in what has become a sad day for our country.” And George Washington Law School professor Jonathan Turley echoed the Trump attorney's sentiments that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's indictment of Trump smacks of politics. TURLEY: “The chaos that is erupting is pretty much the element for Donald Trump. I mean, it's like trying to kill an orca by throwing him into the water. He's obviously doing well in the polls because Alvin Bragg just gave him a proof positive that the criminal justice system is being politicized.” Minnesota train derailment Hundreds of people in Prinsburg, Minnesota had to evacuate after a train hauling ethanol and corn syrup derailed and caught fire early Thursday, reports the Associated Press. Minnesota officials said the BNSF train derailed around 1 a.m. in Raymond, roughly 100 miles west of Minneapolis. That prompted the evacuation of essentially all of the town's 250 homes because they were within 1/2 mile  of the derailment. The evacuation order was lifted around noon. "Trans Day of Vengeance" at Supreme Court April 1st The Trans Radical Activist Network is organizing a "Trans Day of Vengeance" rally to be held tomorrow, April 1st at 11:00 am at the Supreme Court. They claim their rally is not connected to the March 27th murder of three children and three adults at the Covenant Christian School in Nashville, Tennessee at the hands of Audrey Elizabeth Hale, the 28-year-old gunwoman. Hale was pretending to be a man. Their alleged purpose is to protest the various bills in numerous states which will outlaw mutilating surgeries and cross sex hormones for kids. In a statement to Newsweek, organizers condemned Hale's murderous rampage and said the Trans Day of Vengeance "means fighting back with vehemence. We are fighting against false narratives, criminalization, and eradication of our existence." Kentucky bans transgender mutilating surgeries for kids In related news, Kentucky became the latest state to ban puberty-blocking drugs and body-mutilating sex-change surgeries for youth younger than 18 after lawmakers overrode a veto by Democratic Governor Andy Beshear, reports The Christian Post. On Wednesday, the Republican-led Legislature overwhelmingly voted to override Beshear's veto on Senate Bill 150, voting 29-8 in the Senate, followed by 76-23 in the House. Covenant School principal gave her life to protect students And finally, Dr. Katherine Koonce, the principal at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, was among the six Christians murdered by Audrey Elizabeth Hale, but the steps she took that morning and before are credited with helping save lives, reports FaithWire.com. According to Nashville City Councilman Russ Pulley, Koonce was in a virtual meeting when the shooting began. She immediately got off the meeting and “headed straight for the shooter.” He said, “She also made sure the school was prepared with active shooter training and protocols. Those actions saved countless lives.” John 15:13 says, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends.” Close And that's The Worldview in 5 Minutes on this Friday, March 31st in the year of our Lord 2023. Subscribe by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com. Or get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

On this episode of the NTEB Prophecy News Podcast, transgender school shooter Audrey Hale died at the hands of Nashville police after she had murdered 3 children and 3 adults at the Covenant Christian School in Tennessee. But those kids were not her main target, she was gunning for the pastor with whom she had been having counseling, and when she couldn't find him she murdered his 6-year old daughter and 5 others instead. So far, the police have released just about everything related to the shooting, everything that is except the Transgender Manifesto that Audrey Hale used as a ‘field manual'. Why won't they show us the manifesto? I will hazard a guess and say they won't release it because it would show a detailed plan to murder Christians who won't bow to the demands of the transgender nazis. Hey, here's a great question. Why are so many members of ANTIFA transgender? On this special edition of the Prophecy News Podcast, we open our King James Bibles and show you the demonic transgender agenda and the war they are waging against Christians across America.

Tony's Tuesday recap, Covenant Christian School, the victims

As we continue praying for the tragedy that struck earlier this week at Covenant Christian School in Nashville, we shouldn't be surprised that children lead the way in providing hope in the midst of the darkest of situations.

This episode of Impolite Company is dedicated to MNPD Officers Rex Engelbert and Michael Collazo for intervening and saving as many lives as possible at Covenant Christian School. It is with a heavy heart that we discuss the shooting at the Covenant Christian School in Nashville TN. On today's episode we discuss the tragic event that led to the deaths of 6 (3 children, and 3 adults). A 28 year old former student targeted the school because it was a soft target according to her manifesto that was found in her home after the shooting. The 28 year female struggled with gender dysphoria and identified as a man. Today we discuss not only the event itself, but also how we must protect our schools and the steps that it will take to secure our kids.#covenantchristianschoolshooting #schoolshooting #gunviolence #protectourkids

- BRAD HAMBRICK: "Making Sense of Forgiveness: Moving from Hurt toward Hope" - CHRIS WHITE: Electric Jesus - Bill Furey of Covenant Christian School - "A New Survey Suggests that NOSTALGIA Can Play a Major Role in Relieving Stress. So How Does that Help Us as Christians?"

Rachel and Jacinta discuss the Religious Discrimination Bill with wonderful and insightful guests. First up, Steph Lentz who was fired from Covenant Christian School after coming out as lesbian. Later, we are joined by Equality Australia Director Ghassan Kassisieh to dissect the Religious Discrimination Bill Steph Lentz in the Star Observer: https://www.starobserver.com.au/news/sydney-christian-school-fires-out-lesbian-teacher-steph-lentz/205054 Equality Australia: https://equalityaustralia.org.au  Catch the Well Well Well team each and every week via podcast at joy.org.au/wellwellwell or via your favourite podcast platform  

With faith we can all accomplish so much. With motivation and Moxie; we can consistently achieve and help others for a greater good. Yesterday we were joined by Nicole Astra, owner and creator of Moxie Vox (bold voice). Nicole is a talented and experienced voice over actress with an impressive professional catalog. An Aurora native, we speak of the Aurora of her childhood and what it is today. Nicole is an alumni of Aurora Christian, Covenant Christian School & Judson University. But wait, there's more! How many actual four leaf clovers have you seen, touched and held? Nicole started an initiative titled: Clovered In Prayer. What started as a way to positively engage others for prayer requests has grown into a movement for community. Lastly, we spoke of miracles in this episode. Nicole is all about the story being told; she shared with us her personal miracle and we appreciate her for it. Recently, Nicole was the lead talent in Mayor Richard Irvin's 2021 State Of The City address “Talking Cities”. Nicole is part of the team at Bureau Gravity (56 S. LaSalle St.), a dynamic media hub in the heart of downtown Aurora. Stay tuned for more fantastic work from herself & the team. And keep your eyes peeled for Moxie Vox. Nicole can help you harness your bold voice! The second largest city's first daily news podcast is here. Tune in everyday to our FB Live from 8:30 am to 9 am. Make sure to like and subscribe to stay updated on all things Aurora. Twitter: goodmorningaur1 Instagram: goodmorningaurorail Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6dVweK5Zc4uPVQQ0Fp1vEP... Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/.../good-morning.../id1513229463 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/goodmorningaurora #aurorail #positivevibes #positiveenergy #downtownaurora #spotify #kanecountyil #bataviail #genevail #stcharlesil #saintcharlesil #elginil #northaurorail #auroramedia #auroranews #goodmorning #localnews #april2021 #today #monday --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/goodmorningaurora/support