Podcast appearances and mentions of King Jesus

In this episode, Pat and Mike are joined by Mike Abendroth to discuss the newly released commentary, Discovering Colossians by S. Lewis Johnson. Mike Abendroth has written numerous books including The Sovereignty and Supremacy of King Jesus, Gospel Assurance, and Discovering Romans. He is pastor of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, MA, as well as the host of No Compromise Radio. You can find more resources from S. Lewis Johnson at https://sljinstitute.net/

What is the soil of your heart? Are you obedient to the words of scripture? Would you say your heart is fertile? These are all questions that may arise as we listen to the parable of the sower in Mark chapter 4. Jesus teaches this parable to a large crowd of people, and He brings a calling to those who have an ear to let them hear. In other words, it seems like what He was trying to illustrate was important for them to hear. As we carry on in our series, Thy Kingdom Come, we will learn of the four conditions of the human heart, the hard heart, shallow heart, distracted heart, and fertile heart. We will see that Jesus' reign is accomplished through His word. Tune in today to listen to the latest message of the series, The Seed is the Word, and let God reveal the soil condition of your heart. 

What is the soil of your heart? Are you obedient to the words of scripture? Would you say your heart is fertile? These are all questions that may arise as we listen to the parable of the sower in Mark chapter 4. Jesus teaches this parable to a large crowd of people, and He brings a calling to those who have an ear to let them hear. In other words, it seems like what He was trying to illustrate was important for them to hear. As we carry on in our series, Thy Kingdom Come, we will learn of the four conditions of the human heart, the hard heart, shallow heart, distracted heart, and fertile heart. We will see that Jesus' reign is accomplished through His word. Tune in today to listen to the latest message of the series, The Seed is the Word, and let God reveal the soil condition of your heart. 

Salvation starts by fearing God- -- understanding we are justly condemned for sin- and knowing that we will receive the due reward for our deeds. Jesus is Lord- Jesus is King- Jesus has a coming Kingdom-

Join us this week as Gabe Anderson teaches through the first part of Matthew 2 and the journey of the Magi to see the newborn King Jesus! ——————————————————————————DATES TO KNOW: Women's Retreat : October 13-15 Registration is now live using the link on our website! ——————————————————————————Thank you for listening to the Albany Hub City Podcast!For more information about Hub City Church you can go to albanyhubcity.com.

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic BostonChurch. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston ordonate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com. Welcome to this space. Every once in a while, I'm glad that we worship down here, it's to keep us humble, keep us grounded, and to remind us that the space upstairs really is a blessing. We're continuing our sermon series called Kingdom Come through the Gospel of Mark: The Gospel of Mark and the Secret of God's Kingdom. The title today is Supernatural and Revelation. So Jesus Christ has come as a king, and in chapter one, he was anointed by the Holy Spirit and the King comes preaching that the kingdom is here, the kingdom has been established with the coming of the King. Therefore, what are we to do? We are to repent of sin, believe in him and follow him and live for the King. Jesus Christ did come performing supernatural miracles for the purpose of revelation to reveal that he is the Son of God and he performed what only God can do. Only God can forgive sins, and that's what Jesus does. He cast out demons, he heals the sick, he even resurrects the dead. And what's fascinating is that the contemporaries of Jesus Christ, those who saw his miracles, those who experienced his power, most of them did not believe in Jesus Christ, they did not have their sins forgiven. And it wasn't until the day of Pentecost, St. Peter's filled with the Holy Spirit, he has the indwelling power of the Spirit and he preaches to these same people and he preaches to people who have seen the miracles of Christ, have heard his sermons, seen his crucifixion, heard about his resurrection, but they weren't saved. The miracles did not convert their hearts, they didn't yet have their sins forgiven and their hearts were still hardened by sin, in disbelief. In Acts 2:22, Peter says, "Men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know, this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, losing the pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it." And it's not until they realize that they have sinned against Jesus Christ, the Holy One of God, that they're cut to the heart. This is Acts 2:37, "Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, 'Brothers, what shall we do?' And Peter said to them, 'Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit for the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.' And with many other words, he bore witness and continue to exhort them, saying, 'Save yourselves from this crooked generation.' So those who received the word were baptized and there were added that day about 3000 souls." So the Apostle Peter responsible for much, if not most of the material of the Gospel of Mark, he presents the miracles of Jesus Christ in such a way that they attest to who Jesus is. He is the King and he offers us, every single one of us, the greatest miracle, the miracle of all miracles, salvation by grace through faith, forgiveness of sin and entrance into the Kingdom of God. And in our text today, we see that Jesus heals a leper and he heals a paralytic, but only one of these men walks away with his sins forgiven. And the question posed before us is, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul, forfeit his soul? What's the point of being healed of paralysis if you then use your legs to serve sin and Satan? What does the profit a man to gain pristine skin in this life while being tormented in hell for eternity? So Mark 1:40 through 2:12, would you look at the text with me? "And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling, said to him, 'If you will, you can make me clean.' Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, 'I will. Be clean.' And immediately, the leprosy left him and he was made clean. And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once and said to him, 'See that you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded for proof to them.' But he went out and began to talk freely about it and to spread the news so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places and people were coming to Him from every quarter. And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. And many were gathered together so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them. And they came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. And when they could not get near because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him. And when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytics, 'Son, your sins are forgiven.' Now some of the scribes were sitting there questioning in their hearts, 'Why does this man speak like that? He's blaspheming, who can forgive sins but God alone?' And immediately, Jesus perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves said to them, 'Why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier to say the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Rise, take up your bed and walk'? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he said to the paralytic, 'I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.'' And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all so that they were all amazed and glorified God saying, 'We never saw anything like this.'" This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word, may he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. First, the King is used. Second, the King is sought. And third, the King is questioned. First, the King is used. In Mark 1:40, the gentleman is characterized as a leper. He has a scale disease and this term designates a variety of conditions in which the skin becomes scaly, but not what today is called leprosy or Hansen's disease. But in Leviticus 13 and 14, this skin disorder was treated as a grave danger to the purity of the community. So sufferers were regarded, in effect, as corpses, walking dead, and physical contact with them produced the same sort of defilement as touching dead bodies. Leviticus 13:45 say, "The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose. He shall cover his upper lip and cry out, 'Unclean. Unclean.' And he shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp." So the disease was serious and also, it rendered the person socially as an outcast. Josephus, the ancient Jewish historian, he said that the disease, those with it were treated as, in effect, walking dead. And if anyone is healed, it was as if someone dead was raised to life. If the person so much has stuck their head in someone else's house, the house was rendered unclean. So the person has been suffering, he's been suffering for a long time, both physically and socially, and what happens is he hears that Jesus Christ has come, he has power and he has been healing people. And the man, immediately, boldly comes to Jesus Christ, it says imploring him, pleading with him. And it's followed by kneeling. So he's entreating with the most earnest urgency, he's crying out, "If you will, you can make me clean." And first, this is great. This is a great start. And pain does this often, suffering does this often. God often allows us to go through seasons of suffering. C.S. Lewis says that pain is God's megaphone to wake us up. So he has pain, he goes to the one that can alleviate the pain and he implores him. And with humility, he asks, "If you will, you can heal me," that, "You have the power." So we see even faith here. In verse 41, it says, "Jesus is moved with pity," in the English Standard Version, "he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, 'I will, be clean.'" Now, if you are reading along in your Bible, most likely, there's a footnote right there at that word, moved with pity or moved with compassion. So this is a question of which word is original. There is a textual question here. The oldest manuscripts that we have do not say moved with pity, it says moved with anger. And if the word was compassion, most likely, in the parallel, Matthew and Luke and the story, that word would've been used, it is not. And if you study textual criticism, you get to text like this, you got to ask why would a scribe change the word? Most likely an overzealous scribe here, read the word anger, Jesus is angry, and he can't believe in an angry Jesus and so, he changed the word to compassion. But I do see an anger here. I do see the indignation of Christ here, a similar indignation to where Jesus, it says, was indignant in John 11 about the death of Lazarus. He was deeply moved in the spirit and greatly troubled. So perhaps there is anger here, we'll see why. And Jesus does stretch out his hand, certainly compassionately, and he touches this man, the Greek pronoun him is left out. So He just stretched out and touched this person, shocking to anyone seeing this because you weren't supposed to touch a leper. Jesus touches the leper, and instead of the impurity passing from the man to Jesus, Jesus's power overcomes the impurity and disease. In verse 42, "And immediately, the leprosy left him and he was made clean. And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once." Sternly charged, it's a word that means growling, it refers to the snorting of a horse. And as applied to human beings, it means to express indignation by explosive expulsion of breath. And I think that's biblical, whenever I'm in traffic, that's how I breathe with this expulsion of breath. My wife rubs my arm and I feel better. And then, he uses the word to send out, ballo. And it's the same word that Jesus used to exercise demons. So it was like casting this man out. He ejects the person from his presence and then he charges him, verse 44, "And said to him, 'See that you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded for a proof to them.'" And what he's referring to is Leviticus 14, if you have been healed, you are to bring three lambs or one lamb and four birds depending on a person's wealth. And as proof to them, as proof to the priesthood that Jesus has come with the power of God. What does the gentleman do in verse 45? "But he went out and began to talk freely about it, to spread the news so that Jesus could no longer openly enter town, but was out in desolate places and people were coming to him from every quarter." And what an amazing, wondrous moment this must've been for the gentleman, having lived for so long, ostracized by society, no human contact. He had lived in isolation for years perhaps, and pain without a single touch of a human hand. What does he want to do? He wants to immediately go show his family, show his friends that he has been healed. And you say, "This is great." This is like, "Jesus, you healed the person. He's basically a walking advertisement to your power. Don't you want him to go and preach about you?" And Jesus didn't want him to because Jesus knew that the substance of the man's message is going to be come to Jesus as the miracle worker, come get this blessing, come get healing from Jesus. And Jesus doesn't want just to heal our bodies, he doesn't just want to meet our physical needs. No, Jesus has come to preach the word, to convert our hearts, to regenerate us, and to save our souls. And what we see here is that the word, but to contrast, Jesus said, don't do this, and the word but is saying he went directly against the orders of King Jesus. Jesus' anger may also stem from the fact that the man completely disobeyed Jesus' instructions. The ability of Jesus to heal now becomes the cause of his inability to move about. Jesus came to preach, he came to preach the gospel and now he can't do that. So he ends up in a desolate place, it says. And this is fascinating because that gentleman had to live in a desolate place, he had to live away from people, he gets healed. And then, right after the healing, Jesus is the one in the desolate place. And what's the text showing us? It's showing us that Jesus exchanged places with the leper. Jesus is saying, "Not only am I willing for you to be clean, I'm willing to make myself unclean for you." And this is really at the heart of the gospel. It's the double imputation, Jesus gets our sin, we get Jesus' righteousness. 2 Corinthians 5:21, "For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might be become the righteousness of God." Galatians 3:13, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who's hanged on a tree,' so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the gentiles so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith." Instead of repenting and believing in the content of Jesus' preaching, the man disobeys Jesus tells everyone that Jesus had healed him, which makes it more difficult for Jesus to preach the gospel. The poor man was so thankful to be healed, but he missed the whole point. What was the point? The point was that he had a deeper uncleanness, he had a deeper leprosy, he had an issue that separated him, not just from the people of God, but from God himself. And he receives the skin healing, but he doesn't receive the heart healing. His faith is only skin deep. He did the right things, he came to Christ, he implored, he kneeled, he begged, he received, and then, he walked away only to disobey the king, revealing that he has not received the cleansing of his soul from sin. God does miracles, God does miracles even today, but the miracles always have a purpose, it's always to attest to the person of God. And unless we repent of sin, those miracles aren't going to do anything for us, not spiritually speaking, not eternally speaking. So when we do experience seasons of pain, when we do go through difficulties, yes, do go to the Lord, yes, beg for the Lord's healing, but stay there, stay with the Lord, stay obeying the Lord. We had a nice lady that came to our community group for quite some time. And she said, "I don't believe. I don't believe. I'm here, just you guys are nice people." And I was like, "Okay, keep coming." And she said, "I don't believe because there's too much suffering in the world. How can a good God allow so much suffering in the world?" And that day at community group, she's like, "For example, there's a hurricane coming directly at Mexico right now and it's going to absolutely decimate Mexico and thousands of people are going to die. Where's your God now?" I was like, "Look, I don't know. Let's pray. Let's pray. Let's pray for a miracle for the hurricane to change directions. Let's pray. The Spirit blows where it wishes, so does the wind." So we pray, we fervently prayed, prayed zealously. And I remember that just like... The next day, what does the hurricane do? The next day the hurricane completely changed its trajectory, completely misses Mexico. And I was like, "Oh yeah, I can't wait for community group. She's going to come in extra saved." And then, she comes to the group, pretends nothing happened. And I was like, "Remember our prayer request?" She's like, "It was a coincidence." I'm like, "No. Oh, my goodness. There's no such thing as a coincidence." Miracles don't save anyone. God does do miracles, but there is a passage where a rich man dies, and a gentleman named Lazarus goes to heaven. And the rich man says, "Lord, please, Father Abraham, resurrect Lazarus, bring him back so my brothers don't end up in this place of torment." And what does the Lord say? The Lord says, "Even if someone comes back from the dead, they're not going to believe." It's not enough. I've seen people experience the power of God in their life and then I've seen them walk away. During COVID, we had a gentleman that came to service. You could tell something was wrong and he's like, "I think I have a demon. Can you please pray for the Lord to cast out the demon from me?" I prayed. His body language completely changed. He received forgiveness from the Lord. And then, I gave him my number. And then, he just disappeared. He received a gift from Lord, disappeared. And then, I found out that he went back to his sinful lifestyle instead of repenting and following the Lord. So don't allow your faith to just stay there at the physical level or at the skin level, no, follow the Lord and ask for the greater healing, which is that of having sins forgiven. Point two is the king is sought, Mark 2:1, "And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home." So Jesus returns to Capernaum, that's his base of operations for the early portion of his ministry. And it says he was at home, whose home is this? And scripture doesn't say that Jesus had a house. Most likely, this is Peter's house because Jesus called Peter in chapter one, "Follow me." And then, Peter says, "Where are we going?" And Jesus ends up at his house. "Follow me to your house because that's now my house." And this is how Jesus operates. When Jesus forgives you of your sins, he is now your king. You and everything you have now belongs to the king, in service to the king. So Peter's house, what is Peter doing? He's hosting the first community group. He's inviting his friends. Jesus is there at the communion group. I don't know if they have some snacks. And they're having a good time. And by the way, this is a great plug for community groups. So if you are not in a community group, it is imperative for you to join a community group. They're awesome. My community group, this week we had 26 people. And you say, "Wow." Well, I always start by counting my family, that's six, six eternal souls. And then, there's another family that has three kids, so that's 11. But we do welcome, we got 25-plus community groups all around the city. We'd love for you to sign up and to join. And just a reminder, it's also a great place to invite those who are not Christians. Sometimes people feel a little self-conscious or insecure about coming to a large group gathering, but in a small setting, especially friends, neighbors, invite them, especially with the Gospel of Mark, this is a tremendous series for you to invite your friends to community groups and to church. So verse two, "And many were gathered together so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them." So the full house. What's he doing? He's preaching the good news, the arrival, and dominion of God is here. And then verse three, "And they came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him. And when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay." Roofs in the dwellings of common people in Israel were made of wooden beams placed across stone or mud brick walls. And the beams were covered with reeds, thorns, several inches of clay. So Jesus is preaching, and all of a sudden, there's dust falling on his head. I wonder what Peter's feeling. Like, "Oh." And by the way, Jesus completely invades his life, that's how Jesus works. When you welcome Jesus into your life, he invades, he dominates. So the roof is falling apart, stuff's falling from the ceiling. And this is just a reminder that it is a sacrifice to welcome people into your house. Hospitality takes work, that's why Peter says, "Be hospitable without grumbling." Why does he say that? If you have been hospitable, you know exactly why he said that. I remember, recently, I repainted my apartment, repainted beautiful. The very first community group, three boys walk in with a basketball like, "Oh no." Scuffed up all my walls, and I was like, "Come on." But I use the best paint, Benjamin Moore, you just wipe it off. But it is a sacrifice, but it's worth it. It's worth it because these gentlemen love their friends so much, their paralytic friend, they know that God can heal him, Jesus can heal him, Jesus has the power to do it. They take Peter's roof apart, unroof the roof, Scripture says, and they lower him down. Verse five, "And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, 'Son, your sins are forgiven.'" Jesus saw their faith, he doesn't see the paralytics' faith. The emphasis here is he saw their faith, they believed on behalf of their friend. The friend's faith isn't emphasized here, perhaps it's because he has been paralyzed, not just physically, but he is paralyzed spiritually. And that's why Jesus starts the healing process by saying, "Son, your sins are forgiven." It was their faith in Jesus leading to action, initiative to overcome obstacles that changes this man's life. And here, I just want to point out that sharing the good news, sometimes it takes teamwork, four-on-one. If you have an unbelieving friend, get three Christian friends, a four-on-one, it's more effective because they ask questions if you don't know the answer, the other person knows the answer, but then, you have some time to think and you just go back and forth. And that's what they're doing here. And Jesus is impressed by their faith in action, and that's true faith. Truth faith is always an action. And Jesus perceived their improvisation as an expression of faith. Mark loves using the word immediately, he uses it all the time, 41 times in the book, immediately, immediately, immediately. And this one text where it's clearly you just need the word immediately, it's not there. And I've been meditating on the fact, why didn't they wait? Why didn't they wait until Jesus is done preaching? Why didn't they wait until he leaves the house? My working theory is that Jesus sermons just took forever and he just preached and preached and preached. But also, I think they felt an urgency from the Holy Spirit that we have to do it and we have to do this now. And I do, I pray that the Lord impresses that urgency upon us to share the gospel with our friends who don't yet know the Lord. And we are to tell them to strive, this is what these gentlemen are doing. Luke 13, it says, "Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door saying, 'Lord, open to us,' then he will answer you, 'I do not know where you come from.'" There is an urgency because we don't know how much time is left, we don't know how much time anyone of us has left, therefore, "Today," Scripture says, "Today is the day of repentance." Today is the day to turn from sins to turn to Christ. Jesus says, "Son, your sins are forgiven." Whatever the expectation of these gentlemen, Jesus is addressing, not this man's felt need, his obvious felt need was healing of his legs, but he has a need that is greater than even that. His deepest need, his most pressing need was that he has transgressed God's law, God's holy law and God is holy. And after all, what's the value of the use of all our limbs if we continue to yield our members as instruments of sin? What good if after having restored his health, the man remains under wrath and the curse of God? And Jesus calls him child, my son. Here he is showing us that this is the relationship that God has for us. He wants to forgive us of our sins and to make us children of the Father. Sin is presented here as the obstacle to healing and sin and sickness are very closely connected in Scripture. 2 Chronicles 7:14, "If my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land." In the Old Testament, transgression can lead to illness. Deuteronomy 28 lists out blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. Therefore, healing and forgiveness are often closely related to each other. Isaiah 38:16, "Oh Lord, by these things men live and in all these is the life of my spirit. Oh, restore to me health and make me live. Behold, it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness but in love you have delivered my life from the pit of destruction for you have cast all my sins behind your back." In places, the terms are even interchangeable, we see heal and forgive almost as if you can just replace them. Psalm 41:3, "The Lord sustains him on his sick bed. In his illness, you restore him to full health. As for me, I said, 'Oh Lord, be gracious to me. Heal me for I have sinned against you." And Jesus himself links disease with sin and healing with forgiveness. In John 5, he heals a gentleman there who also could not walk and then, Jesus finds him after, in John 5:14, he says, "Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, 'See, you are well, sin no more that nothing worse may happen to you.'" But of course, we have to balance this out with John 9. And John 9, the disciples are walking and they see, it says, "As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?' Jesus answered, 'It is not that this man's sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.'" The Bible never says that we suffer in relation to how much we have sinned, and many times God calls the righteous to suffer and allows the wicked to prosper. And this is part of his purpose and remains a mystery to us. But we do know if the Lord allows seasons of suffering for us, it's always with a purpose. In Luke 13:1-5 says, "There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, 'Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you'll all likewise perish.'" The point is that we do not necessarily suffer or get sick and direct proportion to our sins. We live in a fallen world. We're all born guilty of Adam's sin. We all have a corrupt, sinful nature, and we all commit acts of sin which may or may not bring down God's punishment upon us. Therefore, our sin, in Adam, lies at the root of all our suffering. This is what Jesus' point is that he wants to forgive sins, and that begins the process of our total restoration. Our total restoration begins with forgiveness. Point three is the King is questioned, this is verse six of Mark 2. "Now, some of the scribes were sitting there questioning in their hearts." The scribes were the so-called teachers of the law, they were the specialist in the interpretation of the law, the application of it in particular situations or disputes. And these men, it shows that they continually challenged Jesus' teaching and his authority. They did not approve of his message. They didn't approve of him because he didn't go to them for credentials, he didn't go to them for permission, and he's not part of their established big religion, if you will. And so, the opposition here asserts itself. In chapter one, Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness for 40 days. He won, he overcame. And then, Jesus goes into the synagogue. As soon as he starts preaching, a demon begins to interfere with Jesus' teaching, and Jesus casts out the demon from the gentlemen. And here, we see in chapter two, and this is through chapter three, that these Jewish religious leaders, the scribes, members of the sect of the Pharisees, they come as representatives of Satan, as servants of Satan because they are doing Satan's bidding. In being against Christ, they are actually doing the work of Satan. Though routed for a moment by Jesus' exorcisms and his healings, the demons now counter-attack Jesus through human instruments with special fierceness. Why? Because they know that Jesus has come to destroy the works of the evil one and they know that their time is short. Revelation 12:12 says, "Therefore, rejoice o heavens and you who dwell in them, but woe to you o earth and sea for the devil has come down to you in great wrath because he knows that his time is short." So this counter-attack takes the form of arguments with the scribes and the Pharisees and it always begins with the question why? "Why do you speak like this? Why do you and your disciples don't fast like John and his disciples do? Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?" And Jesus responds to each objection in a forceful manner. It's not wrong to ask questions, it's fine. The Lord actually says, come, let us consider, let us think, let us meditate. But here, they're not asking questions, they're questioning. It's a negative word, connotation of calculations only used in the negative sense and they're questioning in their heart. And Jesus sees the heart, he knows exactly what's going on. So in verse seven, they say, "Why does this man speak like that? He's blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone?" Who can forgive sins but God alone? And this is true, only God can forgive sins. Only the one that was sinned against can forgive sins and that's why God is the one that forgives sins, it's his prerogative. Exodus 34:6-9, "The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, 'The Lord, the Lord, a God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation.' And Moses quickly bowed down his head toward the earth and worshiped. And he said, If now I have found favor in your sight, oh Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us for is a stiff-necked people and pardon our iniquity and our sin and take us for your inheritance.'" Isaiah 43:25, "I am he who bloats out your transgressions for my own sake and I will not remember your sins." So by forgiving the man's sins, what is Jesus doing? He's revealing that he is God. "Your sins are forgiven. Because you're the one who sinned against me, I am the one that can forgive you." He's proving that he is God. By saying, "How can you say this? No one can forgive sins except one, that is God," they're appealing to the Shema, the Great Shema, this is Deuteronomy 6:4-5, "Hear o Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength." Verse eight, "Immediately, Jesus perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves said to them, 'Why do you question these things in your hearts?'" Later, he's going to prove that he has the power for forgive sins by actually healing the gentleman, but here, he proves that he's God by reading their minds. He knows exactly what they're thinking in their hearts. 1 Samuel 16:7 says, "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature because I have rejected him for the Lord sees not as man sees man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart." Verse nine, it continues, "Which is easier to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven, or to say, 'Rise, take up your bed and walk'?" And here, you got to pause and say, which is easier? From the standpoint of systematic theology, it may be simpler to perform a miraculous cure for God than to forgive a person's sins. We'll get to that in a bit. But in terms of external proof to these people who are questioning Jesus, it's easier to say your sins are forgiven because no one knows. Who knows if the person's sins are forgiven? It's a lot harder to do a miracle and outside observers have no immediate way of knowing if the sins are forgiven, whereas you can immediately verify a miraculous cure. So Jesus' ability to heal the gentleman is an argument from greater to lesser. If Jesus can do the greater, which is healing the paralytic, he can do the easier from the human perspective of forgiving his sins and the miracle thus confirms the claim to forgive sins. If the man is healed, there can be only one conclusion, that Jesus is God, that he has authority to forgive sins and both the healing and the forgiveness of sins are sure sign that Jesus is God and Jesus is king. But which is easier from God's perspective? The miracle is easier because God created everything just by speaking, he could speak and the man's legs are immediately healed. But to forgive this man's sins requires so much more than just a mere utterance of the word, it would require the greatest thing that has ever been done by God himself. It will take more to forgive this man's sins than to create the entire universe. All God did to create everything was speak, recreating the man's legs, so easy for God. But to forgive this man's sins required the father sending the Son who took on flesh and took the working of the Holy Spirit, all three to undergo terrible suffering. Yes, Jesus Christ suffered in this life, and yes, he suffered on the cross, but the Father suffered also in allowing all of that to happen, the Father suffered in bringing down his wrath on the Son, the Holy Spirit suffered as well. Forgiveness of our sins requires nothing less than the incarnation, the suffering, the humiliation, and finally, the crucifixion of the Son of God. All of this required to forgive even one man of his sins. God created everything just by speaking, but to recreate us from the inside out, it took the gospel, it took the cross. And this is what Jesus did, and this is what Jesus offers us. Mark 2:10, "But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he said to the paralytic, 'I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home." The phrase "that you may know" is a phrase that's repeated often in the Exodus account. When Moses stands in front of Pharaoh, in his confrontation, he says, God's going to send miracles and he's going to send these curses that you may know. This is Exodus 9:13 and 14, "Then the Lord said to Moses, rise up early in the morning and present yourself before Pharaoh and say to him, 'Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, let my people go that they may serve me, for this time, I will send all my plagues on you yourself and on your servants and your people so that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth.'" And what's fascinating is this divine oracle that you may know, that same phrase that was used against Pharaoh is now his prophetic judgment against Israel's own religious leaders. The Son of Man, it's a divine term for the Messiah from Daniel 7, and he has the authority, he has the power to forgive us. Verse 12, "And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all so that they were all amazed and glorified God saying, 'We never saw anything like this.'" The healing establishes the reality of the forgiveness, and it's the sure sign that Jesus is the king, the king has come and the Messianic age has dawned as promised and prophesied in Isaiah 35:5, "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped, then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy." The people here of Capernaum were witnessing incredible miracle. It says that they were amazed. They've never seen anything like it. They see the first reverberations of the messianic kingdom of King Jesus. And indeed, throughout the Gospels, we see that Jesus healed all manner of sickness and disease. And the miracles that are emphasized are emphasized for a reason. When Jesus heals a leper, this means that Jesus can remove the uncleanness of sin and corruption from us. When Jesus gives sight to the blind, he's showing us that those who believe in him now see things from God's perspective and Jesus gives spiritual eyesight through faith. When Jesus restores hearing to the deaf, he's demonstrating that he is the one who can give people the ability to hear God's word and understand its meaning and know that it's true. And when Jesus enables the lame to walk, he's showing us that we must follow him. When Jesus resurrects Lazarus in verse 25 of John 11, "Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?' She said to him, 'Yes Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who is coming into the world.'" In other words, the miracles that we see in the Gospels aren't just meant to impress us or impress people, rather they are signs and pictures that those who believe in God's promises, those promises are true and they will come to pass. In this sense, the greatest miracle of Christianity isn't just the fact that Jesus does miracles, the greatest miracle is that we can be saved. But also, miracles don't just increase people's faith, for some people, if they see the miracle and they turn from it, it serves as damnation for them. I wonder how many people from Capernaum actually believed in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? How many people followed him as a king? And not many. I think it's not many. And we see this in particular in Matthew 11:20-30 where Jesus includes the miracles in Capernaum as actually damnation against them. "Then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done because they did not repent. 'Woe to you Chorazin, woe to you Bethsaida for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You'll be brought down to Hades for if the mighty works done and you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on that day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.' At that time, Jesus declared, 'I thank you, father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. Yes, father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my father. And no one knows the son except the Father. And no one knows the Father except the son and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him. Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I'm gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.'" So friends, today, as you hear the word of God, we call you to repentance, call you to faith in Jesus Christ. And because Jesus Christ forgives sin, healing is guaranteed to all Christians. And that sounds shocking, but God has forgiven you through the shed blood and perfect righteousness of Jesus. And God has even healed some of you, perhaps miraculously through natural means or supernatural means. And God has seen you through every trial which has been brought into your life. And God will heal every one of us, if not in this life, then certainly, at the great day of resurrection. Why? Because you are forgiven of sin, you will be healed. So have you been forgiven of your sins by Jesus Christ? If you don't answer with a resounding yes, then today, right now, as we pray and as we worship, pray in your heart. Lord Jesus cleanse me from my sin. Lord Jesus, heal me of my spiritual paralysis. Wherever in your life you can't follow Jesus because you are just chained by sin today, say, "Lord, free me from that paralysis. Draw me to yourself and put me to work in the kingdom of God." Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly father, we thank you for this incredible text and I thank you for revealing your power. And I thank you that you offer us the revelation of your person, that you give us the gift of repentance and you offer us forgiveness of sins. And that's the beginning of our complete and total restoration. And I pray, Lord, fill each one of us with the Spirit. And give us a zeal, a passion for our friends, our neighbors, our loved ones who don't yet know you, are paralyzed by sin. And I pray that you give us the zeal to do everything we can to draw them to you, bring them to you, to answer their questions, to bring them to scriptures so that they also are given the gift of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. And Lord, we pray for your spirit to be poured out on this church and upon this city, and we pray for great revival and I pray that you use us in the process and we pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

9.24.23 | Pastor Dane Olney

Dr. Tim Sperduto - 2 Samuel 8-9

Personal Revival, Nation Awakening & Generational Reformation In this episode of The Torch, Brian dives into the emerging digital age of global digital currency, digital ID's, digital passports, and the AI (Artificial Intelligence) phenomenon to unveil the digital agenda of domination for all nations. Biblical prophecy is certainly not quiet concerning this epic hour that is manifesting before our very eyes. In these last days, we can see the dictatorial strategies of the United Nations, World Economic Forum, World Health Organization, The G20 and others, streamlining together for seizing all control. It's a lot easier to dominate a people group or nation economically, than it is politically or militarily. This anti-Christ system that is being constructed leads to the cashless digital society and ID, setting the ultimate stage for the Mark of the Beast — subjugating the entire population of the world. The good news is, The Master and King Jesus is coming, just as He promised, for His Bride and ultimate triumph over all His enemies. For all the latest on all things Victory, be sure to check out our website at https://victoryfla.com and follow us on social media. Welcome to The Torch. A podcast with Brian Gibbs, presenting Biblical insights and prophetic perspectives for cultural and current events in this hour. Contending for personal revival, national awakening and generational reformation.  Produced by VICTORY: A Church of His Presence and Light The Fire Ministries. Coming to you from Sarasota, Florida — Thank you for joining us. Download our app at https://victoryfla.com/app Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/victorychurchfla/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/victorychurchfla/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/victorychurchfl/

Episode Summary:  This world is demanding, especially when we shoulder the burdens of our family, friends, and work—as well as the heaviness of world events. So we often feel overwhelmed, stuck, afraid, and believe we are never enough. If we aren't careful, we can build walls that hinder us from thriving in who God created us to be. In this episode, we discuss what is holding you back? I'm excited to talk to Krissy Nelson who shares from her own story and will help us identify some of the most common walls that hold us back. She draws from biblical stories and truth to give us spiritual and practical tools to bring those walls down, rediscover a vibrant life of joy and move forward from weary survival to daily revival through Jesus. Quotables from the episode: Questioning our identity in Christ is an attack from the enemy. He aims to bog us down in defeat, insecurity, perfectionism and shame so we cannot thrive in who God says we are. We are His revived, beautiful, vibrant children. We are full of life and hope and called to live joy-in-Jesus lives. We build walls around us that actually hold us back; walls like insecurity, fear of failure, doing too much. Insecurity allows us to see God move in our life. We need an encounter with our King Jesus in which our hearts are revived all over again and the walls boxing us in crumble to the ground. Faith is key to moving past what holds you back. You are valuable and are not alone in your struggle. Talking to Jesus and exposing the lies you're fighting to your community and family—even starting with one person—starts a new pattern of freedom, community, and connection. Once we shatter the lies that hold us back, we have to keep from rebuilding them.   Scripture References: Romans 12:2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Philippians 4:6-7  Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.   Recommended Resources:  Say Goodbye to What Holds You Back: Shatter the Walls Surrounding You and Believe What God Says About You by Krissy Nelson  The Hem of His Garment: Reaching Out to God When Pain Overwhelms by Dr. Michelle Bengtson YouVersion 5-Day Devotional Reaching Out To God When Pain Overwhelms   Today is Going to be a Good Day: 90 Promises to Start Your Day Off Right by Dr. Michelle Bengtson, winner of the AWSA 2023 Inspirational Gift Book of the Year Award, the Christian Literary Awards Reader's Choice Award in four categories, and the Christian Literary Awards Henri Award for Devotionals YouVersion 7-Day Devotional, Today is Going to be a Good Day YouVersion 7-Day Devotional, Today is Going to be Another Good Day Breaking Anxiety's Grip: How to Reclaim the Peace God Promises by Dr. Michelle Bengtson Breaking Anxiety's Grip Free Study Guide Free 7-Day YouVersion Bible Reading Plan for Breaking Anxiety's Grip Hope Prevails: Insights from a Doctor's Personal Journey Through Depression by Dr. Michelle Bengtson, winner of the Christian Literary Award Reader's Choice Award Hope Prevails Bible Study by Dr. Michelle Bengtson, winner of the Christian Literary Award Reader's Choice Award Trusting God Through Cancer 1 Trusting God Through Cancer 2 Revive & Thrive Women's Conference Subdue Stress and Anxiety: Fifteen Experts Offer Comprehensive Tools in Ten Minutes a Day. Use my link plus discount code BENG99 to save $90 on course (course will be $99.) Free Download: How To Fight Fearful/Anxious Thoughts and Win   Social Media Links for Guest and Host: Connect with Krissy Nelson Website / Facebook / Instagram / YouTube For more hope, stay connected with Dr. Bengtson at: Order Book Breaking Anxiety's Grip / Order Book Hope Prevails  /  Website  /  Blog  /  Facebook / Twitter (@DrMBengtson)  /  LinkedIn  /  Instagram / Pinterest / YouTube Guest: Krissy Nelson carries a passion to release life and hope into your heart so you can walk in all that you were created for. A popular author and TV show host, she regularly ministers at women's conferences and outreaches. Her TV show, Created for the Impossible, airs on multiple television networks worldwide. Krissy is passionate about empowering, equipping, training, and activating women worldwide to find God's purpose for their lives and to pursue it with passion, wisdom, and hope. She is based out of a quaint little town off the Mobile Bay in Southern Alabama with her husband, Donovan, and their two children.   Hosted By: Dr. Michelle Bengtson Audio Technical Support: Bryce Bengtson  

Discover what it truly means to be "A People of Devoted Worship". This episode explores the critical role of devoted worship in our lives, drawing inspiration from the sacred words of Hebrews 10:19-25. As the Church, we're called not just for occasional involvement but to dedicate our time and heart entirely to worship King Jesus, moving beyond just Sunday mornings. Unpacking the essence of being part of a faith community, we emphasize that worship isn't about ticking boxes or consumerist practices, but about encountering Jesus together, fostering deeper connections, and experiencing the "suddenly's" of God. Join us as we discuss why we must never neglect meeting together, drawing strength and encouragement from our community, especially as we approach the return of Jesus. Understand how devoted worship ensures that God rests upon us, shaping us into a unified body of believers, always ready to inspire each other in love, hope, and good works. Step into this transformative discourse on the true essence of worship and community.

Giving up control can be difficult. When we are asked to surrender and follow someone else's leadership or plan, it can be hard to trust that they are leading in the right direction. The same is true in our relationship with Christ. It is hard to fully submit and surrender our lives, give up our control, and allow Him to take the reins of our lives. But that is precisely what God asks of us. He knows that the fruit and gain we will receive when we let Him take control will be much greater than when we do it on our own. We are picking up in our series, Thy Kingdom Come: His Reign in Our Lives, today we will see how Jesus' reign calls for our ultimate allegiance. We will look at the gospel of Mark and discover how God asks us how surrendered we are to His leadership; by challenging our religious assumptions and reorienting our family loyalty. Listen to the latest message of the series, Choose Ye This Day, to let the Lord examine and speak to your heart.  

Giving up control can be difficult. When we are asked to surrender and follow someone else's leadership or plan, it can be hard to trust that they are leading in the right direction. The same is true in our relationship with Christ. It is hard to fully submit and surrender our lives, give up our control, and allow Him to take the reins of our lives. But that is precisely what God asks of us. He knows that the fruit and gain we will receive when we let Him take control will be much greater than when we do it on our own. We are picking up in our series, Thy Kingdom Come: His Reign in Our Lives, today we will see how Jesus' reign calls for our ultimate allegiance. We will look at the gospel of Mark and discover how God asks us how surrendered we are to His leadership; by challenging our religious assumptions and reorienting our family loyalty. Listen to the latest message of the series, Choose Ye This Day, to let the Lord examine and speak to your heart.  

September 17, 2023 Jesus gave his disciples this story to help understand that forgiveness is not optional. If God has forgiven us a lifetime of sin, we must be merciful when others need our forgiveness. Scripture: Matthew 18:21-35

9.17.23 | Pastor Heath Hardesty

The events of 2 Samuel 3 are incredibly messy. Sin pervades this chapter of civil war in Israel, and you are left wondering, “What good could possibly come from this?” And yet, if we look closely, I think we will see that so much of this chapter reflects our own lives. We make messes. We sin. Our sin matters, and it has consequences that are painful and even leave us in tears, and we, too, are left wondering, “Lord, what good could possibly come out of this?” The encouragement of this text is that God is at work! God is still working despite the messes and even through the messes. God is still building His Kingdom. God is working all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. And everything that happens to David is pointing us forward to the King of all kings and the Lord of all lords, Jesus Christ. One day, as Revelation 11:15 states, “The kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ; and He will reign forever and ever.” I pray that you will join us this weekend as we focus our attention on King Jesus, the One who brings good news to the afflicted, binds up the broken hearted, proclaims liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners.

To describe this sermon in one word would not do the revelation that was laid out for us justice. “Seize the Day” preached by Elder Eric, Pastor Nik, and Pastor Judah is a trumpet sound going off to declare the eminent and very tangible times that we are living in. Through the masterful biblical overview and interconnected scriptures laying out the master plan of God, we were challenged to examine our lives and the works that are still yet to be done for King Jesus. This sermon will change your life if you are serious about the gospel of Jesus Christ. Waste no time with the opportunity you have been given today. Now is the time to Seize the Day!

Summary: On the night before he died, Jesus made the astonishing claim that he had completed the work the Father gave him to do. We wonder how Jesus could have talked about a completed work. His three-year ministry seemed all too short. For every prostitute whose heart he touched, hundreds remained untouched. For every blind man enabled to see, hundreds were still blind. Yet on that last night, with many urgent human needs unmet and useful tasks undone, the Lord said he had completed the work God had given him. How did he do that? That is the subject of today's episode as we consider how best to be focused and effective in the mission assigned to us by King Jesus. For further prayerful thought.In what ways is the term seek, the opposite of haphazard, unfocused living?Why do the pressures of life seem to take us everywhere but to the masters' feet to talk with us about our mission? Almost everything about life, e.g. just buying groceries, is more effective with a plan (a list). Why don't we think about a game plan for growing in Christ or loving our wives well?   Resource Used for this Episode:The FOCUS Notebook.For the printed version of this message click here.For a summary of topics addressed by podcast series, click here.For FREE downloadable studies on men's issues click here.To make an online contribution to enable others to hear about the podcast: (Click link and scroll down to bottom left)

Dr. Nate Magloughlin - 2 Samuel 7

Join us as we continue through our series in Acts as our Lead Pastor, Miles Fidell, guides us through a challenging conversation on the King Jesus Gospel, revealing how our overly simplified presentation of it has caused us to miss the deeper communion with Jesus and the sustained life of discipleship.

By Pastor Dan Nash

No one likes to struggle, and suffering---we could all do without. Or could we? Most often it is the struggle of life that tests the rootedness of our faith. Pastor and author Charles Haddon Spurgeon writes: "We cannot be established except by suffering. It is of no use our hoping that we shall be well-rooted if no March winds have passed over us. The young oak cannot be expected to strike its roots so deep as the old one. Those old gnarlings on the roots, and those strange twistings of the branches, all tell of many storms that have swept over the aged tree. But they are also indicators of the depths into which the roots have dived." The depth of the roots are indicators of the storms of life. How do you handle the storms of life? When storms hit, do the roots of your faith go deeper into Christ or do you feel yourself slowly being pulled away? Jesus, in his parable about the soils, talks about how the seed of gospel lands in some soil and begins to quickly germinate but then this happens: "But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had not root." ~ Matthew 13:6 Pressure, opposition, struggle, and suffering are all realities of following Jesus. For some, these pressures uproot their lives and everything about their faith falls apart. Yet for others the roots of their faith go even deeper and they literally grow stronger through the circumstances. How can we, the face of "March winds" and not only remain rooted, but grow stronger as well? This is one of the focuses of  New Testament book of Colossians. The apostle Paul is writing to Christian who are feeling the pressure to uproot their lives from Christ and find another option; like returning to Judaism or choosing one of the pagan cultural gods. This is why he writes these urgent words: "So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness." ~ Colossians 2:6-7 On Sunday we will study all of what Paul writes in chapter two and discover the strategy he teaches to help all of us remain rooted in King Jesus. To be a part of the conversation, give a listen to part three of Rooted.

Acts 12-1-24

Special arrivals are thrilling. We wait with great expectation and joy. Rather it's a return of a loved one or seeing a person of influence visit your city. Arrivals are mixed with excitement and chaos. In our new message series, Thy Kingdom Come: His Reign in Our Lives, we will see the life of Jesus and the impact of His kingdom coming to our world. With the anticipated arrival of Christ, in Mark chapter 3 we will see how Jesus strategically calls out His disciples. Jesus was more concerned with gaining followers than fans. The twelve disciples were specifically called by Christ. There are a few distinguishing marks that we see from scripture about the disciples. His disciples were called out from the crowd, they spent time with Jesus, and were given authority to minister. We too, are His followers and have the same exact distinguishing marks the twelve had. Join us this week for our first message of the series, The King is Here, where we will see how Jesus' reign brings heaven to earth.  

Jesus invites us all to come. Think of the amazing accessibility of Jesus. There has never been a king who was higher. No king has ever had more power and authority. Yet, this king is accessible. He is approachable. He invites us all to come. He welcomes us into his presence. Main Points:1.  Jesus, the King of Kings invites us to come to Him. The King who has authority and power over every earthly king, does not hide in a castle or a place. He does not isolate himself behind walls and gates. He does not limit his presence to a few people of nobility, aristocracy, or upper-class status.2. King Jesus has time for you. You don't have to make an appointment. He is never too busy. He will never be preoccupied. Jesus is ready and available to listen, to hear your prayer, to meet with you, and to provide for your needs.3. It's an amazing truth, isn't it? You have access to Jesus. You don't have to meet certain requirements. You don't have to get approved. You don't have to meet a list of pre-qualifications. You just have to come by faith. We gain access to Jesus, his grace and his salvation, through faith.Today's Scripture Verses:Matthew 11:28 - “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”John 7:37 - “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.”Romans 5:1-2 - “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.” Quick Links:Subscribe to The 5 Minute Discipleship NewsletterDonate to support this podcastLeave a review on Apple PodcastsGet a copy of The 5 Minute Discipleship JournalConnect on SocialJoin The 5 Minute Discipleship Facebook Group5 Minute Discipleship on Instagram

379// Challenging Complacency in Faith: Lessons from the Magi's Encounter in Matthew 2:1-12   Welcome to the Hearing Jesus Podcast! In this episode, host Rachael Groll teaches on the captivating story of the Magi's journey to find the newborn King Jesus, as described in Matthew chapter 2. Through a detailed exploration of this narrative, we uncover the historical context, the remarkable symbolism behind their gifts, and the challenges posed to both the religious leaders and modern-day listeners.   This episode is a companion to Episode 6 of the Hearing Jesus for Kids Podcast: Hearing Jesus for Kids   For family discussion guides, journaling worksheets, bonus content, and our private discussion forum, please visit our Patreon page:  patreon.com/HearingJesus   FREE APP: Daily Bible Inspirations: https://onelink.to/groll Learn: https://shehears.org Shop: https://shehears.org/resources Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/she_hears/   Hey friends, welcome to the Hearing Jesus Podcast.    Do you sometimes doubt if you are truly hearing God's voice or if it's really your own? Do you wonder how you can know the difference? Do you struggle to feel confident in your relationship with God and what He says in his word? Do you sometimes feel stagnant or like you hit a wall in your spiritual life? Hey, I'm your host, Rachael Groll: missionary, author, pastor, and life coach. And I have been there. I, too, was doubting God's voice in my own life. I, too, felt insecure about the things I thought God might be calling me to do. I wanted to make a difference in the world and be obedient to what God was calling me to do, but I wasn't quite sure how to figure out what exactly that was. I kept telling myself that I was wasting time trying to figure it out or waiting for Him to show me. Or that I wasn't qualified to do the things I thought He might be telling me to do. The answer for me was found in the pages of the Bible, as I learned how to understand what it was actually saying. If you are ready to grow in your faith and to step confidently into the calling God has for you, then join me as we dig deep into God's word so you can learn to live out your faith in your everyday life.   Friend, you are loved, you are cherished, and you are His.   The Hearing Jesus Podcast will encourage and equip you to step into the calling God has for your life, living out your faith in the everyday. Together we will break down walls that keep us from growing spiritually. We will dig deep into our Bibles to understand and connect the Scriptures to our lives. We will boldly obey what God calls us to do, walking through doors that only He can open.     Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

This weekend as we turn our attention to the latter portion of 2 Samuel 2, we will see a first in Israel, civil war. Israel had no guidelines, rules, or laws from God as it pertains to civil war because it was never part of the design. In the sinfulness of man and the deceitfulness of Satan, however, civil war will break out and it will be ugly. Death is the overwhelming theme of this chapter and where does it start, a bad politician. Abner refuses to submit to David as King. It is a mutiny against the Lord and His anointed. And in this mutiny, we see a vivid commentary on the nature of politics and war and even more we are reminded of the only great King who will bring unity to God’s people, King Jesus. I pray you will make every effort to join us. The corporate gathering of God’s people is a sacred moment. Our gathering and your attendance builds up the body of Christ, sends a message to the world, and glorifies Christ. I pray you will join us!

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. Heavenly Father, we thank you for giving us your holy word, and we thank you for sending us your holy Son. We thank you that your son came as a savior to save us from our sins, but you also came as Lord. And Jesus, we thank you that you went to the cross and you paid the penalty for our law-breaking, our transgressions of the law. And Jesus, you bled. The holy Son of God, you bled on that cross in order to cleanse us, in order to save us, and then also to give us grace. And you came back from the dead as the conquering king and you gave us marching orders to go and make disciples of all nations and to take dominion of this world, to take it back from the usurper, back from Satan, back from the enemy. And I pray, Lord, that you empower us by the Holy Spirit. Baptize us with the Holy Spirit. Send each one of us a special anointing to proclaim your word everywhere we go. To know your word, study your word, meditate upon your word, and to testify to the greatness of our God. Lord Jesus, show us what it means that you are our king. And that when you tell us to follow you, that is a command. Those are marching orders. And wherever in our lives we are not following you, I pray, give us grace. Transform our wills, transform our minds, transform our hearts. Lord Jesus, we pray that you bless the sermon series. We pray that you anoint it and I pray that your holy church will be built up. And I pray those who are far from you will be redeemed and regenerated and transformed from being rebels to being your children. And I pray, Lord, in this season that you send us the gift of evangelism, a passion for evangelists to proclaim the gospel of the king. The king is here. We deserve His wrath, but He came to extend mercy and grace and call us to follow him. I pray that you bless our time in the holy scriptures. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. So we're beginning a sermon series through the Gospel of Mark that we are calling Kingdom Come, the Gospel of Mark and the secret of God's kingdom. And Jesus Christ, when He came, His very first words were the kingdom of God is at hand. So He's established the kingdom, the king is here, and then the Lord Jesus Christ teaches us to pray. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And that prayer is not just a prayer, that's our purpose. Yes, we cry out, Lord, may your kingdom come. But what we're saying is, Lord, give me the power to establish your kingdom. The title of the sermon today is Tremendous News: The King Loves You. And it's tremendous news because we don't deserve that love. It's a shock that He comes as a loving savior. Why? Because we deserve the wrath of God for our law-breaking. And just to give you perspective on this, I take an example from history from Fyodor Dostoevsky. Before he wrote Crime and Punishment, before he wrote The Idiot, before he wrote The Brothers Karamazov, he was actually sentenced to death by a firing squad by Tsar Nicholas I. For what? Listening to stories, criticizing the armed forces, owning an illegal printing press in order to create anti-government propaganda, and contributing to plot against the Tsar. So he was part of a group of rebels. There were 21 members in the circle and Dostoevski is 27 at that time. And they were brought into a public square and they were forced to kneel, kiss a cross, and then undergo a symbolic beheading where swords were broken above their heads. They were tied to pillars in the town square, blindfolded and then they started awaiting their execution. But immediately before they were shot, an envoy from the Tsar arrived with the stay of execution saying, don't shoot. And the men were pardoned by the king from execution and forced to serve in hard labor and a labor camp for four years. And you say, how would that change a man knowing he's about to be executed and all of a sudden there is a stay of execution? Dostoevsky, after the averted execution said, "Today I faced death for three quarters of an hour. I was a hair's breadth away from death, and now I am living again." He wrote his brother after the event, "I'm being reborn in another form." In the same way that the brightest dawn follows the darkest night, the best and the greatest, the most tremendous news always comes right after the deepest realization of the most terrible news. Well, what is the terrible news? That you and I, we have broken the law of God, the holy law of the holy God. This is the ultimate act of insurrection. And God created you with eternal soul. He breathed his spirit into you. We have eternal souls created by an eternal God. So what's the punishment for insurrection against the holy God of the universe? It's banishment from God's kingdom. That's what we deserve. Exile. And how long is that exile? Eternal because God is eternal and so are our souls. We deserve execution. We deserve eternal damnation for rebelling against the holy God. So when the king of kings comes, it's surprising that He doesn't come with execution and eviction notices. When the king comes, the king comes with pardon and amnesty and forgiveness and mercy, but also grace. This is what the gospel is all about, that God is offering to us today, mercy. Mercy is you don't get what you deserve, but He also gives us grace. And grace is we get what we don't deserve. God has mercy on rebels and He gives us grace in adopting us as sons and daughters because of the sacrifice of king Jesus on the cross. Jesus came as a Jewish man, but He's not just the king of the Jews or just the king of Israel. He's the king of everyone and the king of everything. And there's only two kinds of people, children of God or rebels. Soldiers of King Jesus or soldiers of king Satan. And if you turn from your sin and you submit to the king, if you believe in His gospel, something incredible happens. The miracle of the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you are regenerated from within. God gives you a brand new heart with brand new desires and your mind is renewed by the power of God. And God now can look at you as He looks at His son Jesus Christ and say, this is my child in whom I'm well pleased. And grace also is a power source. God gives us grace as energy to become kingdom builders. Jesus Christ said, "Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and everything else shall be added onto you." St. Paul said, "I am what I am by the grace of God, but the grace of God was not in vain in me. It wasn't given to me in vain. Instead," he says, "I worked harder than the rest of them. "And he's talking about the other apostles. So God gives us grace to do what? To follow Him, build His kingdom. And it all starts with the tremendous news that He's willing to forgive us if we repent. And this news does change us, it rivets us and it changes your whole perspective on reality. Would you please look at the text with me today? We're in Mark 1:1-15, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God as it is written in Isaiah the prophet. Behold, I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight." John appeared baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now, John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. And he preached saying, 'After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I'm not worthy to stoop down and untie. I've baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.' In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, 'You are my beloved son with you, I'm well pleased.' The spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness and he was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted by Satan and he was with the wild animals and the angels were ministering to him. Now, after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, 'The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.'" This is the reading of God's holy and inert, infallible, authoritative word, may it write these truths upon our hearts. Four points to frame up our time. First, the king has come. Second, the king is anointed. Third, the king declares war. And fourth, the kingdom has come. First, the king has come. Mark 1:1, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God written by Mark, who was probably an associate of Peter and Peter at that time was serving in Rome when this gospel was written. So this gospel is written to city dwellers and it's written in such a way where busy people can understand the gospel, understand who is Jesus, understand His person and His work. We see that Mark emphasizes action over teaching, it's very vivid. One of his favorite words is the word immediately. And what he's doing, he's writing to busy people. He's trying to get to the point as quickly as possible. And if you're new to the city, what you recognize is after a while here you realize you know who's from Boston because they walk fast and they talk fast. Fast walkers, fast talkers. And that's kind how I preach. I talk really fast, people tell me they can't 2X me on our podcasts or et cetera, but I want to get to the point as quickly as possible. And the point is, Jesus Christ, He's the point of everything. And here we see the freshness of discovery of who Jesus is. That's what Mark is trying to do. Over 150 times, he uses the historic present tense, putting past events in the present tense. Why? To increase the vividness. That what Jesus did, He's continuing to do today in and through the church as empowered by the Holy Spirit. It begins with the word the beginning. That's the very first word, and it's alluding to Genesis 1:1, that in the beginning God created everything and God created man and it was all beautiful. It was all wonderful, but we rebelled against God and Satan usurped dominion from Adam and Jesus Christ has come as a new Adam, as a new creation, as a new beginning for human beings. His name is Jesus in the English. In the Greek, it's Yesus, and Yesus is a transliteration of the Jewish word, Joshua. So Jesus is named after Joshua. In the Hebrew, His name, what it means is savior or literally Yahweh is salvation. So even in the name, what we see is that God is saying what Moses couldn't do, Joshua did. Moses could not take the promised land, could not bring the people of God into the promised land. Joshua did that. What Moses couldn't do, Jesus is going to do. Moses gave the law, but he couldn't transform hearts to obey God willingly. God can force His kingdom upon us and one day He will come with a flaming sword and He will judge. But the first time Jesus Christ comes, He doesn't come with a sword of power or physical sword. He comes with the sword of the spirit, wielding the word of God so people are transformed from the inside out. Moses gave the law, Jesus gives grace, which leads to heartfelt obedience, which empowers us to fulfill the law out of love for God and neighbor. Jesus Christ, a lot of people think that's His last name. That's not His last name. It wasn't Mary and Joseph Christ. This is a title, a kristos. It's from the Hebrew marcia or an anointed one. He's anointed to do what? He's anointed to be a royal figure. He's anointed to be king. So Jesus Christ actually just means is king. Sometimes they drive by churches and they're named Christ is king. I'm like, that means king is king. It's Jesus is king. That's the point, that He's come in order to establish the kingdom of God. He's the son of God. Son begotten of the Father. The Son of God is God as much as the Father is God, but the Son submits to the father's will. So we see right in the center of the faith, the faith is patriarchal with the Father up top and hierarchal, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. When Jesus took on flesh, He was male. Jesus was a man, a Jewish man who lived under the law. And Jesus is the Son of God and the son of man, that's His messianic title. And the Holy Spirit is not an it. It's not just a force. The Holy Spirit is a person, the Holy Spirit is a he. And just for clarity's purposes, God's pronouns are He/Him. And I say that because confusion has come from theological schools. I remember taking classes at BU School of Theology and I realized that's not going to go well because the very first prayer I heard was a prayer to mother God. Well, that is not true. God is father. The gospel, the word gospel means good news or literally an announcement of something good associated with a military victory. It's good news of victory from the battlefield. And the nuance of military victory is extremely important for Mark who presents Jesus' ministry as triumph over Satan, over the demonic forces and over their human agents. In Isaiah, the announcer of good news or the one that brings the good news proclaims the victory of Yahweh Israel's true king over hostile forces. And this is just the beginning. It's the beginning of what Jesus taught and what He began to do and He continues to do today. In Mark 1:2, "As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold, I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." As it is written, it says. This is typical Jewish formula for citation of scripture. And the Greek, it's a perfect tense, has been written, implies past action with permanent results and suggesting that the ancient scriptures, it's not just a dead letter, but it's a living force in the present. As it has been written through the instrumentality of Isaiah, and then God speaks in the first person, meaning God inspired Isaiah by the spirit and he speaks to us through the word of God. And Mark affirms that what happened in Jesus followed the plan of salvation laid out by God and the prophecies of scriptures in the first 39 books of the Bible. Jesus came and His Bible were the Hebrew scriptures, the first three fourths of the Bible and this is why Mark quotes it in the very beginning. It was all promised. And He says, "I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way." So John the Baptist comes and John the Baptist is this voice and he's in the wilderness. And the word for wilderness or desert is érimos, is used three times in our texts today. And at the outset, all the action is in the wilderness. You say, why is that important? Because Adam was placed on the garden. The garden of Eden and everything was in bliss and everything was perfect. They walked in the presence of God, but he traded that garden for a wilderness by disobeying God. So the second Adam enters the wilderness to turn it back into a garden. Jesus is also the faithful son of God who unlike Israel, obeyed God completely. Israel disobeyed God. They were faithless and they walked in the wilderness for 40 years. But even there in the wilderness, God met them and He gave them the law and he cared for them and He provided for them. So in a sense, Jesus here is presented as the new Joshua, as the one who's going to lead the new exodus out of the wilderness to bring us into the presence of God. And what's the voice of one crying in the wilderness? What's he proclaiming? He's saying, "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. Prepare. God is here, the Lord is here. Prepare the way of the Lord." So Jesus is called Lord right from the outset. Who is John? John comes as an Old Testament prophet in the spirit of Elijah. He was a cousin of Jesus so he knew Jesus, he knew his life. In many ways he was a wild man, but the Lord used that. And what was his message? His message is the king is here, the king is coming. Prepare. Prepare. And what's the assumption? Is that we're not ready, that we need to do something to become ready. The king is coming and we need to present ourselves as best we can for the king. And John's not calling for just a coat of paint. No, we've got structural issues. We need an overhaul, a full gut down to the studs. I remember I took a trip to Sochi, Russia in 2013. It was before the Olympics and I wanted to see what they're doing in preparation for the Olympics and I was doing some missions work. And then we're driving up into the mountains of Sochi and I just noticed that everything's beautiful, everything's tremendous. And then I realized I don't see any houses. There are no houses. All I see is a beautiful fence on both sides. And they realized that if we're going to bring people to the Olympics, we have to make everything presentable, but we don't have time to make the houses presentable or the villages presentable so we're just going to cover it all up with a beautiful veneer. Well, John's not calling us to do that. John is saying, "No, no, no. It's not a veneer, not a facade change, not just your behavior must change. No, no, no. We need a regeneration of the heart." And how does that happen? What does he say? He says, "Repent and be baptized." Mark 1:4. "John appeared baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins." So John here, he comes baptizing, and this is the Greek word vaftízo, which means to dip, plunge, immerse, and can be used of dipping a cup in water, et cetera. So John is called the baptizing one. A lot of people think he's baptist, because John the Baptist, there were no Baptist denominations at that time. And by the way, if we're going to call him any denominations, he's definitely not Baptist. He'd get ex-communicated from most Baptist churches. No, he's probably more Pentecostal than anything, but he comes baptizing and you're like, why is he baptizing? What is baptism? Well, baptism at that time was something that the priest did. They washed themselves in ablutions before taking part in sacrifices. And then the latter practice was when Gentiles wanted to become part of the people of God, what was the practice? How did they purge themselves of uncleanness of their pagan life, so to speak? Well, they were immersed in a ritual bath and that became a requirement for their conversion. So what John here is doing is he's going to Jewish people and he's saying, "You have not lived as the children of God. You have not lived as the people of God. You have not lived a life of love and obedience to God and people in submission of God's holy law. You are not saved through genealogy." And so he's calling them to faith in their own God, faith in their own scriptures and says, if he's saying you have lived as Gentiles, you have lived as pagans now through baptism, you are becoming the children of God and it's all started with the heart first. There's a passage in Zechariah that's used extensively in the New Testament that shares several motifs from our text, water imagery and repentance and confession, forgiveness of sins and even reference to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And what this passage emphasizes is even repentance, even asking God for forgiveness, even asking God for mercy and grace, that's a gift in and of itself that it starts with the spirit of God working in our lives. So Zechariah 12:10, "And I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only child and weep bitterly for him as one weeps over a firstborn. On that day, the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadad-rimmmon in the plain of Megiddo. The land shall mourn each family by itself, the family of the house of David by itself and their wives by themselves, the family of the house of Nathan by itself and their wives by themselves, the family of the house of Levi by himself and their wives by themselves, and the family of the Shimeites by itself and their wives by themselves and all the families that are left each by itself and their wives by themselves. On that day, there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness." So John's baptism departed slightly from the baptism practice in the day. In the practice of the day, the Gentile convert would baptize themselves. They would go down to the water themselves. But here there's a second party, John is doing the baptizing, which is a symbol that we cannot save ourselves. We need someone from the outside and that's only Jesus Christ. And also John's baptism was only anticipatory of cleansing from sinfulness. It wasn't until the blood of Jesus Christ that we can truly be ransom from our sins. He comes proclaiming and the message is a message of repentance. What is the word repentance? It's literally a change of mind, a turning a direction of life, a returning. Like in the Old Testament, the prophets would come and they would say, repent. Repent. What they're saying is people of God, people of God turn back to God. Turn back to the word of God, implies a total change in spiritual orientation. And when repentance comes, we are forgiven of sins. It literally means ascending away or release, the release from guilt before God. Verse five, "And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem, were going out to him and we're being baptized by him in the river Jordan confessing their sins." And the phrase here for we're going out to him, it's a word that's applied in the Old Testament to the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt under Moses. And what Mark is doing is deliberately invoking Exodus Moses typology. Why? To show us that the new Moses has come, the new Joshua has come, the new exodus is here. In verse six, "Now John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey." I've always thought that he just did that because he's kind of a nut and this is the way that you attract a lot of attention to start a movement, but actually it's a picture of the primal back to earth reminiscent of the garden of Eden. Remember in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve they sinned and God promised that the day that you sin you will die. That day began their spiritual death, but God pardons them and there's a blood sacrifice. He takes two animals and there's bloodshed and he creates clothing out of skins of the animals. This picture here is as if John is standing outside of the Garden of Eden. It's as if he's standing in that presence of the angel with a flaming sword that blocked the entrance and he's saying this is the way that we get back into the Garden of Eden. This is the way we get back into the promised land, into the presence of God himself. Here the description presents John as an Elijah figure, Elijah in 1 Kings 18, if you remember this is the great battle between Yahweh and Baal. And in the same way Elijah was preaching the same message, 1 Kings 18:21, "Elijah came near to all the people and said, 'how long will you go limping between two different opinions?' If the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal, then follow him. And the people did not answer him a word." John's clothing is similar to that of Elijah. Elijah preached a message of repentance and so does John. Elijah was associated with the wilderness, so is John and with the Jordan. And then also Elijah, when he was taken up to heaven before going he gave a double portion of his spirit to his disciple Elisha, doubling his power. So Jesus here similarly is presented as one greater than John, greater than even this great prophet of God and one that supersedes John. In verse seven, "And he preached saying after me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I'm not worthy to stoop down and untie". He's mightier than I am, mightier in every sense. He's stronger than I am, and also he's more honorable. He's saying, "I'm not even worthy of taking the leather strap that holds his sandal on his foot and unstrapping it." And in rabbinic sources, the untying of the master shoe is the task of the slave, not of the disciple. One rabbi even wrote a pupil does for his teacher all the tasks that a slave does for his master except untying his shoes. So for the rabbis, this is the lowest of the low. The disciples would not do this And John the Baptist, he's saying Jesus is so much more worthy than I am, so much greater in every sense than I am I'm not even worthy of doing the slave like service. And we got to stop here for a minute and we got to meditate on the implications of the meeting behind Jesus washing the feet of the disciples. If John isn't even worthy of doing this, for that's how great Jesus is. Jesus, why would you wash the disciples' feet? You're the king of the universe, why are you stooping down? Why did you take a basin of water? Why are you doing that? And John 13:12-17, "When he had washed their feet and put on His outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, 'Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me teacher and Lord and you are 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 have given you an example and you also should do just as I've 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 are you if you do them." What kind of king is this? This is the king that came to build a kingdom of hearts. This is a king that came to save us from our sins, to wash us from our uncleanness and stark in contrast to any other king. In Mark 1:8, "I've baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." So Jesus is the anointed one, anointed with the Holy Spirit. That's what makes Him of the Messiah and the spirit endowed Messiah is the spirit endowing Messiah. And in the New Testament there's a linkage of spirit and water. 1 Corinthians 12:12, "For just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body. Jews and Greeks, slaves and free and all were made to drink of one spirit." Titus 3:4-7, "But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our savior appeared, he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy. By the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life." Ezekiel 36, "This was promised, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and from all your idols I will cleanse you and I will give you a new heart. And a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules." This is the promise of God that when we come to Him, when we repent of our sins and we beg Him for grace and mercy that He sends us the Holy Spirit. And I wonder, do you have the Holy Spirit? Have you been baptized with the Holy Spirit? Is the power of God, the indwelling power of God within you? And if you're not sure, look to the cross of Jesus Christ, ask for forgiveness of sins and say, Lord God, send me the spirit. Make me a person that is filled with the spirit of God to do the work that the Lord has for us. Second is the king is anointed and we see the baptism of Jesus in verse nine. "In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan and when He came up out of the water immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the spirit descending on Him like a dove and a voice came from heaven. 'You are my beloved son. With you, I am well pleased.'" Here we see again the word immediately, it's Mark's favorite word. The word is used 51 times in the New Testament, and Mark uses it 41 times and what he's showing is that the spirit is at work and he can't be stopped. It says that the sky, the heavens were being torn open, being ripped apart. It's harsh words and not the one for opening of heavens in a visionary context, but it's literally the heavens tore open and all of a sudden we see the presence of God descending on Christ. Isaiah 64 cries out for this day, "Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil. To make your name known to your adversaries and that the nations might tremble in your presence." Mark uses this verb to tear apart twice in his gospel. Here he uses it and then he uses it that one time where Jesus is on the cross and He says it's finished, He's completed the work of redemption and then says that the veil in the temple was torn, ripped apart from top to bottom. What Mark is giving us is a glimpse into the very heart of reality, the meaning of life, the essence of the universe. According to scripture, it's the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit they are at the center of everything. And it's more as though invisible curtain right in front of us is pulled back and God reveals His person and His will. Christian life is like this, learning to differentiate between physical reality, which is not all there is and spiritual reality. And by God's grace we can walk by faith and not by sight. And we see the spirit descending upon Christ like a dove. It says why the dove? Well, the dove is an appropriate symbol for the spirit as it can cross the barrier between heaven and earth. And also, it's an echo of Genesis 1 where the spirit soars bird like fluttering over the waters. The trinity created the world. It was God and God's spirit and God's word, and here the Trinity is restoring the world. We see the Father speak, He is the voice, the son who is the word, and the spirit fluttering like a dove. And what does God say? God speaks and He says, "You are my beloved son." It's a near exact quotation of Psalm 2, which is a messianic psalm. Psalm 2:7 says, "I will tell of the decree the Lord said to me, you are my son, today I have begotten you." Psalm 2 was interpreted messianically in Judaism and in the Psalm the kingship of the anointed one is congruent with that of God. He says, you are my son. And then he includes the word beloved. And where have we heard this before? This is Genesis 22 where God says to Abraham, "The son, your beloved son whom you've been waiting for, I want you to bring him as a sacrifice to me." That's when God tested Abraham and obviously God stopped the sacrifice of Abraham, but that was typology. That was an example of what God the Father would not stop from doing. God the Father would bring down the sword of God's wrath upon his own son in order to redeem us. You're the beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. This is the good pleasure of God revealed, and the first time that was revealed was His delight in creation where He said is very good. So His life giving conviction that is very good that my son is baptized in the Holy Spirit and He's prepared to do battle against the evil one. At the center of the Godhead is a father delighting in His beloved son. And fathers, we are called to be godly and we are called to delight in our children. And children we're called to be godly and to be a delight to our fathers and mothers. And the whole Christian gospel can be summed up like this, when the living God looks at us at every believing and baptized Christian, He says to us what He says to Jesus here. The gospel promises us an imputation of the righteousness of God. The very second that you repent of your sins, your sin was transferred to Christ on the cross and His righteousness is transferred to you. So in a sense, the moment you're justified, God looks at you and says, no matter how you lived, no matter how many commandments you've broken, it says, you are my dear, dear child, I'm delighted with you. And then it begins the process of sanctification where we grow to become a greater delight to our father so that one day we can hear from God the Father. "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your father." The king is here, the king is anointed, the king is God's son. And what does the king do? Immediately after His anointing, He challenges the opposing king, which is Satan, and this point three, the king declares war. Verse 12, "The spirit immediately drove Him out into the wilderness and He was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted by Satan and He was with the wild animals and the angels were ministering to Him. The spirits that drove Him out, ekballei it's the same word that Mark uses to speak of exorcism. It's like a forceful ejection. On the one hand, the Holy Spirit is like a dove gently descending on Christ, but then the Holy Spirit sends Jesus immediately into battle against the enemy. It's the same spirit. And the king here goes on the offensive. Satan means adversary and he's the prince of the fallen angels, the supreme enemy both of God and man. When God created Adam and Eve, He told Adam, "Work and guard the garden, take dominion." And he didn't take dominion of Satan. They obeyed the lies of the evil one and Satan, usurped power, he took dominion of this world. And Jesus here immediately goes to fight the king of this world. And Matthew 4 gives us an explanation of what happened. Jesus in the fasted state for 40 days and Satan comes to Him and tempts Him, Jesus fought Satan with the word of God over and over and over. But what was the temptation? The temptation was Jesus, do not obey the will of the Father perfectly. Jesus join my team. Jesus, you can rule with me. The only thing you have to do is fall down and worship me. And Jesus Christ at that point He understood what Satan is saying. Satan is saying, do not go to the cross. Jesus, you're going to die for these people. Don't die for these. You can rule over them the way I do without dying for them. And he promised Jesus the crown without the cross. And Jesus Christ, the first time he came, He knows that his greatest battle which began here, but his greatest battle will be fought on the cross where Satan through everything he had at the Son of God, but the Son of God conquered Satan's sin and death. 40 days like Elijah, who was also sustained by an angel's provision of food. And it says here He was with the wild animals. And that's generally a sense of close friendly association that the animals were kind to Him, they were nice to Him. And this shows us that Jesus when he came, he came to restore the distortion of the original harmony in the world. And the eschaton, the enmity will be reversed between humanity and the wild animals as promised in Hosea. But Jesus here is presented as the new Adam, that He is the son of man which is a messianic title, but also in a sense Jesus was the son of Adam. Adam was not a son of man, Adam was the son of God and that's made clear in Luke chapter 3 in the genealogy. But Jesus uses this phrase as a messianic title, son of man over and over in Mark 8:31. "He began to teach them that the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed and after three days, rise again." Adam was tested by God's adversary, the snake, which is Satan personified and he lost. Adam lived at peace with the wild animals before the fall and he lost that shalom. Adam was raised by God to a preeminent position to be a son of God, but he lost that as well. That's why Jesus when He uses this title that He is the son of man and why that is so significant because in Daniel chapter 7, this was prophesied. "I saw in the night visions and behold with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and He came to the ancient of days and was presented before Him. And to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all people as nations and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away and His kingdom one that shall not be destroyed." He's the son of man, but He has an everlasting kingdom to show us that he's not just the son of man, He's also the son of God. And this is the only way that this could happen, the only way that we could have redemption is we need to be represented by someone, someone who is like us, someone who is human, but someone who can also bridge the chasm between us and a holy God. So he would have to be a son of God and he would have to be a son of man, and all that came to culmination on the cross where the son of man takes our penalty for sin upon Himself. And the reason why He came back from the dead was because He's truly the son of God. And here at the end says the angels were ministering to Him. It's from the Greek word to serve, to serve on a concrete level as a waiter serves food and drinks. So most likely after his fast of 40 days, angels came and brought him a feast. Fourth is the kingdom has come. Verse 14, "Now, after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God and saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel." John was arrested by Herod's agents for calling out the sin of Herod to calling him to repentance. So Jesus continues the ministry and He says the time is fulfilled. What He's saying and this is the Greek word kairos, "The old evil age of Satan's dominion is over." It's now fulfilled. The new age of God's rule is about to begin and God's rule enters our lives when? The first moment that we repent of our sin and believe in the good news of Jesus Christ, that the law was fulfilled by Christ and he bore the burden for our law-breaking to extend to us the blessing of His law-abiding. This king came to rule, but first initially He came to rule in our hearts. And this is why He doesn't come here with a crown, but He does go to a cross. And on that cross He allows himself to be wounded, allows himself to be fatally wounded. Why? Because that's what it took to heal us. It took the blood of the Son of God and the son of man. He was tempted by Satan to know our temptations, to give us power to overcome our temptations. He experienced suffering to know our suffering and to give us strength to overcome our suffering. He was rejected, mocked, beaten and crucified. He fully understands our pain, and He is able to help. 1 Peter 2:21-25, "For to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, He did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds, you have been healed for you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd, an overseer of your souls." Back to Dostoevski, and the idea that if you truly understand the mercy and the grace that God has given you, we are not to use that grace in vain, but we are to follow King Jesus. Dostoevski later in life he wrote this, "When I turn back to look at the past, I think of how much time has been wasted. How much of it lost in misdirected efforts, mistakes and idleness and living the wrong way. And however I treasured life, how much I sinned against my heart and spirit. My heart bleeds now as I think of it. Life is a gift. Life is happiness. Each minute could be an eternity of bliss." And then in his work of fiction, The Idiot, the main character's named Myshkin, and Myshkin talks about an acquaintance who was sentenced to be executed and then pardoned. And one of his friends asked him and he said, how's he doing now? Whatever happened to that friend who told you all his horrors? His punishment was changed, which means he was granted that infinite life. Well, what did he do with so much wealth afterwards? Did he live reckoning up every moment? And Myshkin's response was, "He didn't live that way at all and lost many, many minutes." I pray that the grace of God in your life is not in vain. Let us stop trusting in our own agendas. Let us stop building our own kingdoms. Let us turn from living as if we are our own king. Let's believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ and live for God. Jesus is king, accept His pardon, enter His kingdom, do His will and worship the king. This is how we enter the kingdom, repent and believe in the gospel. It's good news because it's for everybody. Anyone who turns from sin is welcome in and it's good news because you're welcome to live under the kingship of the greatest king ever. And why did Jesus do this? Why did He do all of this? Why did He become God incarnate? Why did He live amongst us? Why did He obey the will of God perfectly in fulfilling the law? Why did He go to the cross? Why? Because He loves us. And when you understand what his love cost us, that gives us power to follow the king. Let us pray. Holy God, we thank you for your holy word, for your holy scriptures, and we thank you Holy Spirit that you're with us. I pray Holy God give us your power to follow you on a daily basis. Give us your power to be agents of kingdom change. Give us your power to seek first above everything else, the kingdom of God. Jesus, we thank you that you came and you went to a cross. And we thank you that now you're seated at the right hand of God and you are wearing a crown. And I pray, let us never forget that vision that Christ is king and let us be a people who would joyfully follow. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Acts 17:1-9 by Dr. Kenneth Bruce | Senior Pastor

Acts 17:1-9 by Dr. Kenneth Bruce | Senior Pastor

We live in a world created for rhythms. From the seasons to team sports, rhythms constitute the ebb and flow of our daily lives. But if we're not careful, we can make participating in these rhythms the markers of our righteousness before others and God, rather than drawing nearer to the One for whom all rhythms point. It is in Matthew 6 that we see what it looks like for kingdom citizens to embrace kingdom rhythms to behold King Jesus.

9.10.23 | Pastor Heath Hardesty

Rosh Hashanah, also known as Yom Teruah, was initially fulfilled the day that Jesus became King of kings and Lord of lords! It's final fulfillment will come about when King Jesus returns. Join us explore the fundamental themes of this Holy Day and it's fulfillment in Jesus!

John the Baptist's ministry was to prepare Israel for the arrival of King Jesus. To enter Christ's glorious kingdom, we too must repent and believe, lest we suffer God's eternal wrath. Pastor Pilgrim preaches Matthew 3:1-12 at King's Cross Church. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kings-cross-sermons/support

In 1 Kings, we have the amazing account of how God used King Solomon to build the Temple of the house of the LORD. It is a wonderful type picture of the Millennial Temple that King Jesus will rule and reign from in Jerusalem for a thousand years. The temple that will be built for the time of Jacob's trouble will be inhabited by Antichrist. On this episode of Rightly Dividing, we look at the First Temple, the Second Temple, the temple of Antichrist as well as also conducting a little Open Forum Q&A as well! God tells David that Solomon will be a son to Him, and in many ways Solomon is a wonderful type of Christ. God made Solomon into the wisest man that ever lived, and Paul tells us that God takes the ‘counsel of his own will', put those two things together and the picture quickly comes into focus. Bring your Bible questions and join us for another exciting Open Forum Q&A on this episode of Rightly Dividing.

Ever wondered about the grand purpose of our existence and how to glorify God in your everyday life? Get ready to embark on an enlightening journey through the scriptures as we delve into our divine purpose from a Christian viewpoint. We start by navigating biblical verses from Isaiah, Psalms, Corinthians, and Revelation, shedding light on how we were created for God's glory and to enjoy Him forever. We contemplate on the powerful revelation of all nations glorifying King Jesus one day, emphasizing the importance of praising His will and power that has breathed life into all creation.In the second half of our discourse, we take a deep dive into the significance of glorifying God in our everyday actions and decisions. With guidance from biblical teachings, we explore how we can reprogram our minds to continuously seek if our actions bring glory to God and how to shift our priorities towards heavenly matters, detaching from worldly distractions. We wrap up our engaging conversation with an inspirational quote from Jim Elliot, encouraging us to live life fully for God's glory. It's more than just a conversation; it's a roadmap to a joyful and fulfilled life. Let's embark on this transformative journey together, understanding and living our life of purpose.https://www.jacksonfamilyministry.comhttps://bobslone.com/home/podcast-production/

https://andrewhorval.substack.com/p/king-jesus-christ-or-king-abaddon --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/andrewhorval/support

This message is from September 3rd 2023. We were at one of our partner Churches in Central Florida to share about our ministry to Vietnam. The Lord spoke this message into my heart from Matthew 12:12 and I know it will bless you as it has me. You are valuable to King Jesus. 

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic BostonChurch. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston ordonate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com. Our Heavenly Father, you are a holy God and we marvel at your holiness and we are in awe at your glory. And we stand in amazement that though we rebelled against your reign and your rule, against your dominion over us, you Lord, did not leave us in our ignorance and darkness, but you provided a way for us to be saved. You did it through the life, the death, the burial, and the ascension of your son Jesus Christ. Lord Jesus, we thank you for revealing the fullness of the law of God to us. We thank you that you came, not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, to ratify it, to show us that the law of God is good, and that we have transgressed it, and we deserve the wrath of God for that transgression. But Lord Jesus, you and your mercy and your love and your kindness went to the cross on our behalf. And today, as we remember your sacrifice on the cross, let us never lose sight of the fact that you were motivated by love toward God and neighbor. This is the epitome of what it means to love, Jesus. Thank you for defining love for us. That love is to lay down your life for those whom you love. And Lord Jesus, we thank you that you taught us the holy scriptures, and you expounded on the holy scriptures, and then you gave us the Holy Spirit, the indwelling power of God who is with us. Holy Spirit, today I pray that you light our hearts on fire for the mission that you have before us. The great mission and the great commandment and the great commission, empower us to fulfill your will here in the city. Give us a vision of what it means to be a city within a city, a humanity within a humanity, a people within a people, a people who submit to you, submit to your word and do everything that we do out of love for God and neighbor. And Lord, continue to use our lives to build up your kingdom. Show us how you have called each one of us individually to build according to the blueprints that you have given us. Lord, bless our service and bless the sermon, and we pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen. Today is our annual Mosaic Boston vision sermon. And every Sunday we meet here at this wonderful temple, Temple Ohabei Shalom. I always know who's new because they come in and they're mesmerized by the building. They haven't learned to see the flaws in the building as I have. I look at the roof and I'm like, "Oh, please don't collapse on us." Or the seats, that they're not the most comfortable. But it's a wonderful building. And temple Temple Ohabei Shalom means, the temple of the lovers of peace. And every Sunday we here open up Yahweh's holy word, God's holy word, which outlines the plan of God's peace, the plan of God's true shalom, which is universal flourishing. On our branding, we put our values which are love Jesus simple. Love, why? Because that's the point of the whole thing. God is love. And then God, out of love, gives his son, Jesus, motivated by love, lays down his life on our behalf, and God extends that love to us in forgiveness and by grace through faith in Christ. And then Jesus Christ is the word of God. He's the one that reveals God's word to us, confirms God's word. He shows us that everything that preceded him was true. And he does that by coming back from the dead. And what Jesus does is he shows us though God is love, love is not God. Jesus defines what it means to love God, what it means to love neighbor as self. And then by simple we mean that the Holy Spirit loves to simplify. Truth is simple. Satan loves to obfuscate. Satan loves to add rules upon rules, human tradition, manmade rules, and people lose sight of what it means to love God. And by simplicity, we have a very simple method of ministry here at Mosaic, we do what the early church did, we gather for worship publicly in the temple and then we meet in small groups around the city during the week. And that's how we practice community. And then service, we volunteer here and we volunteer our time, and we do want to see the next generation of believers built up. We volunteer at Mini Mosaic. A little more later on that. We are recruiting more volunteers for Mini Mosaic, which is a crucial ministry. But what is our vision? Where are we going? And by vision, I do not mean I foresee the future. By vision, I mean I believe that the Lord has impressed on my heart and mind blueprints for how we are to operate, how we are to build this church, how we are to build the kingdom. And this is how often God works. Moses goes up on the mountain and he is given the blueprint for the law of God, the 10 Commandments, the moral law. Moses goes up on the mountain again and he's given the architectural plans, the blueprints for the tabernacle. How are we to build the tabernacle? David, in the same way, receives from the Lord, the blueprints for how are we going to build the temple of God. Ezekiel gets a vision of the temple in the city, of the land and he gets blueprints. And then God's spirit comes upon God's people and God says, "I've given you opportunities, talents, I have given you skills, I have given you resources." And then the Holy Spirit helps you find your place in how you then practically build the kingdom of God. Our vision, and I'll unpack every word, "Mosaic Boston aspires to joyfully become a worldwide kingdom building force by proclaiming, believing and obeying the whole council of God, and thereby building men and women of God committed to the great mission, the great commandment and the great commission." So first of all, we aspire to do everything we do joyfully. Psalm 100 verse one and two, "Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into his presence with singing." Philippians 4:4, "Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice." There's this one episode in holy scripture where God gives the power of the Holy Spirit, to the disciples and they go and they're doing miracles, and they started casting out demons in the name of Jesus Christ because the name of Jesus is above every other name. And then they come back to Jesus and they're like, "Jesus, even the demons obey us." You know what Jesus says? "Rejoice not that the demons obey you, rejoice that your names are written in heaven." So everything we do, we do as propelled out of the outflow of our joy, in that we get to be the children of God. We were adopted into the family of God and he's given us a wonderful mission. We aspire joyfully to become a worldwide kingdom building force. One of the reasons that God puts Israel, the people of God, in the Promised Land initially was because of the geographic location. In many profound ways, Israel, the promised land stood at the crossroads of the whole world. Israel stood at the crossroads of continents and of historic empires. Israel is right in the middle, connecting Africa, Asia, and to a certain degree, even Europe. It's a land bridge and that's why it's called the cradle of civilization. And some of the most important trade routes in the world went straight through Israel. And why did God place them there? God placed them there because he wanted them to stand at the crossroads, to shape and influence the cultural forces of the day, and witness to God, witness to Yahweh, witness to the fact that there is only one God and he has created everything and he has given us a law, and we have transgressed that law, and we deserve the penalty for breaking the law of God is death. So we need redemption. Isaiah 43:10, "You are my witnesses, declares the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen that you may know and believe me and understand that I am He. Before me know God was formed." Exodus 19, five through six, "Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine. And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." So Israel was commissioned by God to testify to the world about who God is and then minister to the world as priests proclaiming the excellencies of God. Jesus echoes the same words to the disciples after his resurrection, Acts 1:8 "But you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth." St. Peter in First Peter 2:9 says, "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." In Revelation one, four through six, John, to the seven churches that are in Asia, "Grace to you in peace from him who is and who was and who is to come. And from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom priest to his God and father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever." Amen. And God still wants his children to be his witnesses, to be a kingdom of priests, proclaiming the truths of God's word. And he wants to call us, and he's calling us to stand at the crossroads of life. And Boston, in many ways, is the crossroads of the world. People from all over the world come here for education, career, success, money, opportunities. This week, end of August, beginning of September, this week before Labor Day, I always play the same game every year. I try to count the moving trucks. How many moving trucks can I count? This week, I'm telling you, I don't know what happened, a hundred plus. I stopped counting after a hundred. And the moving trucks, they're all here. And if you know anything about U-Haul, they give keys to anybody. You got a heartbeat, you got a license, 18 years old, just graduated high school, here's keys to a truck. And then they show up in Boston. They don't know how to drive here. People have lived here for 10 years, don't know how to drive here. You got to know the ins and outs. You've got to be a master driver to make it here. And so it's chaos, but we are to extend grace. But what I'm saying is, is there a more strategic place in the world to plant your life and to commit to serve as a witness to King Jesus? Jesus is Lord, this is what we're... Jesus told the disciples early on, "Go and make disciples of all nations." We live in a place where the nations come to us. And over the years I've got so many stories, but one just came to mind recently. A few weeks ago we had this couple that was with us for a couple weeks and they were just visiting. And what they said was, "We were part of this church seven years ago and God so blessed us seven years ago that we've been following the ministry," and they felt called by God to go to Sydney, Australia and they're part of a church planning team. And they said, "We have a confession to make all the resources you put online, we just steal it. We just take it." And I was like, "Good, it's not mine. It belongs to the kingdom. Use it for kingdom purposes." Incredible influence worldwide just by preaching the gospel here. And what are we preaching? We're preaching that Jesus is king. Jesus is king above all kings. He's Lord above all lords. And there are only two kingdoms. There's God and his kingdom, there's Satan in his kingdom. There's no neutral territory. It's either you're with Christ and you're in the kingdom of God or you're against Christ and you're in the kingdom of Satan. And what we preach is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Anybody who believes, anybody who receives the grace of God, anyone who repents of sin and submits to Christ, you're transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved son. That's Colossians one, 13 and 14. "He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." And once you're in his kingdom, we work the rest of our lives to submit everything in our lives and in our spheres of influence to King Jesus. At every single one of our membership classes, we use the metaphor of cruise ship verse battleship to explain how we view the church. A lot of places where the church has been around for a long time and they're resourced, what happens is you can professionalize every single part of the ministry and you cater to everyone's needs, and you go to the church, it's like a show. You have a good time and then you're gone. It's like on a cruise ship. Why do people go on a cruise? To rest and to be entertained, to eat tremendously, to have a good time. Well, church is not like a cruise ship. We're not here to entertain you. We're here to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and the full counsel of God. And God has given us a mission. And on a battleship, what unites the people? What unites the people is the mission. Why are we here? What's our purpose? And the Lord Jesus Christ tells us we have an enemy. And if you're new to the city, welcome to spiritual war. There is a battle for the souls. And I feel this every end of August, beginning of September. I feel it. I see it. There's prophetic dreams. It's people from all over the world. Powerful souls are brought here, and now there's a battle for their souls. Which kingdom are you going to serve? Which king are you going to follow? But recently I've realized we're not just a battleship. In my church office, I have a beautiful painting. It's a sunset in the back, it's gorgeous. And then this is just a massive aircraft carrier, rusted, beat up from battles, but it's going, it's steadfastly, steadily moving, powerfully moving forward. And then planes land on the aircraft carrier and that they descend and ascend. That's how I view ministry in Boston. People from all over the world. It's like their plane lands in our aircraft carrier and then the mechanics go to work. They see what's wrong with the engine, they fix things up, they fuel you up, give you new directions and new inspiration, passion, desire to continue serving the Lord. In a similar way to the people of Israel worshiping in a beautiful temple in Jerusalem at the crossroads of their world, we find ourselves worshiping God the same God at the crossroads of the world here. So we see the strategic importance of a church proclaiming the gospel of God, the full counsel of God here. By making an impact here, we truly are making an impact worldwide. Now, how do we do that? How do we want to make an impact for the kingdom of God, a worldwide impact? How? By the word of God. Proclaiming, believing and obeying the whole council of God. In Acts 20, St. Paul, after spending some time with believers in Ephesus, he's leaving them, and then he says the following to them, "Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God." What an interesting way of phrasing his ministry, explaining his ministry. Had he not taught them the whole council of God, there would have been some kind of responsibility on him. He would have been guilty of their blood. And he says, "I didn't shrink." Why with that language? Because there is sometimes a temptation to back off from doctrines that make people squirm. We approach preaching the word of God as we do with the goal of proclaiming the whole council of God. From Genesis to Revelation, this is the inerrant, infallible, authoritative word of God. This is the foundation of everything that we do. Do you not think I know which doctrines make people squirm? Oh, I know. I've done this long enough. I can tell by body language, uncomfortable, uncomfortable. Sometimes people make it very obvious they get up and they're flip me the bird on the way out. You guys don't see that. I see that. My life would be much easier if I did not touch the difficult doctrines. But to remain faithful to God and to remain innocent of the blood of all, I can't but stand on the word of God. This is what we do at the church, we stand on the word of God. Why? Because we want to deepen in you, not just your faith, but your obedience. And that's what true faith always leads to, obedience to the Lord. And we saw this with Romans, the bookends and Romans one and Romans 16, the phrase obedience of faith. Romans 1:5, "Through whom we have received grace in apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations." And then Romans 16:26, "But has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings, has been made known to all nations according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith." And by proclaiming, obeying and believing the word of God and the whole council, we thereby aspire to build men and women of God committed particular three things, the great mission, the great commandment and the great commission. And I start with the great mission. It's usually known as the cultural mandate. The word culture isn't in it and the word mandate isn't in there either. And I actually think that this title diminishes the weight of the charge. God creates Adam and Eve, he creates humanity. And then the first imperative that he gives them, the first charge, the first mission, is found in Genesis 1:26 through 28. And because it's the very first imperative, it carries primacy. The creation mandate as some have called it, is rather a dominion mandate. It's a mission to take dominion, commanding human beings to bring every sphere of society, as well as nature itself, into subjugation to Jesus Christ. So this is Genesis 1:26 through 28, what I call the great mission. "And then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female, he created them, and God blessed them, God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." There are three questions of supreme importance to every single person. One, who is God? Second, who am I? And third, what does God require of us? And holy scripture here answers these three questions in the very opening chapter, and how you answer these questions impacts the trajectory of your life and eternity. We learn in the opening chapter of holy scriptures that God is, he is the supreme creator of all things seen and unseen, including humanity. And we also learn that man is unique in all of God's creation being made in the image of God. And therefore God has given us a unique responsibility of doing what? Taking dominion, exercising dominion over the world that God has made. And that's why twice it's repeated. This is why I've created you, to take dominion. This is the blessing, take dominion. God creates man in his image and after his likeness so that man would fill the earth with his offspring, continue to image forth more of God and exercise dominion over the created order. God has ultimate authority and he's given us delegated authority. His authority is absolute, ours is derived from God. He says, let us make man in our image after our likeness. There's a divine counsel. God uses the plural here, let us make. The divine counsel precedes the creation. And it's striking that it's plural, and the interpretation is from the whole council of God that this is the Holy Trinity. It's not a full revelation of the Trinity, but the doctrine of the Trinity makes sense of this text best. And man is to image God in at least three ways. First of all, God made us rational creatures. We can think, we can reason. We are to understand truth. We are to pursue truth. We are to develop our powers of discernment. God has also made us moral beings, that God has written His law upon our hearts. We know when we sin, we know when we have transgressed the law of God. And then God has also given us the charge of dominion. He's given us a royal office to bring everything in subjugation to him. Let them have dominion, in the Hebrew it's [foreign language] to master, to reign, to prevail against, to rule, to create order where there's chaos. And it begins with what? It begins with taking dominion of yourself. You are responsible for you. That you are responsible to submit yourself to the Lord. And when you do, he fills you with the power of God to continue taking dominion. He says, let them start with the fish, the birds and the livestock over all the earth. God made life to feed us. He made plants to eat in Genesis 1:29, and animals are given to as food after the flood in Genesis nine. And he does want us to take good care of the animals under our charge. God is a loving God. He even cares about animals. Proverbs 12:10, "Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel." I don't have any beasts at my house, but I have fish. I have five fish, and it is a godly thing to feed your little beast. They get really excited. I feed them. My youngest daughter is four. She's like, "Dad, don't feed them. I want that to be my job." She likes to... We are to master. We are to subdue. We are to care for what God has entrusted to us, and we are to develop its latent potential. And every type of being is to be subservient to humanity. Humans are not on the same level with dogs. We're not on the same level with animals. We are higher. We're not on the same level as the earth itself. We are beings that tower high above all other creatures. We are to be their king and their crown. We are kings of creation under God, and we have a delegated authority for restoring created and creation order, to rule with benevolence, not like a despot out for his own gain. Fill the earth, subdue, rule over it. It's stewardship. Dominion doesn't mean destruction, it means responsibility. And also it means to create. Genesis 1:27, look, three times the verb create is used. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female, he created them." It's significant that God, for the very first time we find out that God is a creator. He creates, and he creates us in his own image and we are to be agents of creation and recreation. Man was created to image God, and image God by exercising true dominion under God's authority, for God's glory. We are to promote the worship of God. The service of God is to be maintained. And we are to develop and improve the creation around us. Improvement and development takes place when we're empowered by the king of kings. And then once we do take dominion, we submit everything to the feet of Christ. In order to subdue the earth, we must first understand its processes. This is why research is foundational for fulfilling the divine mandate. And then once we get that knowledge, we must apply in technology and engineering and medicine and agriculture, must be implemented for use, and business and commerce transmitted to future generations via education. The creation can also be described and praised in the humanities and fine arts. We are to further the good, the true and the beautiful. The dominion mandate thus authorizes all honorable human occupations as stewardship under God. So we must learn how the world operates, which requires expertise and knowledge and engineering and mathematics, physics, aerodynamics and agriculture. And then we teach our offspring to be involved in these areas as well. The tragedy is that leadership in practically all of these fields in our city and in our world has largely been taken over by secularists and humanists. People that don't honor God, they're not taking dominion for God, they're taking dominion for the enemy. So God's primeval commission here, the great mission has been, in many ways subverted. And Christians today need a new renewed vision and commitment, not only to Christ second coming, yes, he's coming. He's going to fix everything. And not just to the great commission. Yes, that's important. But once people are disciples of Christ, we are to teach them to obey everything that he taught us from the very beginning. So we need a renewed vision of the great mission of responsible world stewardship. So whatever your chosen field, you should aspire to be the very best. The mindset is whatever your job, whatever your field, I'm not just here to take part, I'm here to take over. I'm here to take dominion of whatever God has called me to. In Colossians 3:17, "Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God, the Father, through him." First Peter 4:10 and 11, "As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace. Whoever speaks as one who speaks oracles of God, whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies, in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen." So as we study creation, as we use our talents in creation to subdue it under the feet of Christ, we become agents of this common grace. We are to make the world a better place by using our skills and talents to build things that are beautiful and useful, while countering the forces of evil and sin that oppress and distort creation. We live in a fallen cursed world, and it's only by the power of the Holy Spirit can we seek to reverse the effects of the curse. And Genesis 1:28, at the heart of the great mission, "and God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, over every living thing that moves on the earth." The primary purpose of marriage is given here in Malachi 2:15, it's reiterated, "Did he not make them one with a portion of the spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth." If God's will is godly children, then of course it makes sense that Satan would do everything in his powers to prevent this, from sexual perversion to gender confusion, to abortion to divorce. And men and women of God must carry this work out. We must work together and have children who are then trained in a godly Christian fashion to carry out the dominion mandate. Overpopulation is not a concern for God, nor should it be a concern for us. The very idea of depopulation is demonic because Satan came to steal, kill and destroy. The words, fill the earth, incidentally suggest that fears of population explosion are much overdrawn. Evidently the world is well able to support a large population. And Satan's always behind depopulation. Why? Because Satan's not omnipresent. Satan can only be in one place at one time. He's not God. And the demonic, well that's numbered, they're numbered. And the more godly people there are, the more the demonic forces are outnumbered. It's the same power, the strategy over and over. Remember in Egypt when Israel was in the captivity, they were enslaved by Pharaoh. Now Pharaoh realized that they were multiplying so much more than the people of Egypt. What does he do? Force depopulation. We're going to kill the children of Israel. And Moses was saved by his mom. This mandate to be fruitful and multiply, this mission, is so important God repeats it twice after the great flood in Genesis nine. And how are we to go about this whole process of subduing and taking dominion and being fruitful and multiplying? It's all to be done with love, never harshly, but always tenderly, carefully and faithfully. The nature of man's dominion, if he is to be Lord of all, he must be servant of all. This was true in the garden before the fall as it is today. Remember the words of our Lord Jesus Christ concerning the exercise of authority in Matthew 20:25, "But Jesus called them to him and said, you know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave. Even as the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom." For many godly authority is true authority, but it's not based on force or coercion or manipulation. And to understand dominion, we can look at Ephesians five and draw analogies there. That dominion is not exploitive, it's not oppressive, it's always loving. Christ in the church, for example. Christ is the head of the church and Christ's headship of the church leads the church to thrive, to be fruitful, to become evermore lovely. Or the relationship between husband and wife, also Ephesians five. Under her husband's righteous headship, a wife is to thrive and be fruitful and become evermore lovely. And we've been given dominion over creation. If we exercise godly dominion over creation, under the lordship of Christ, creation will thrive and be fruitful and become evermore lovely. Knowledge and appreciation of our fellow creatures is essential. And it's all to be done in love. Romans 5:17, "For if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through the one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ." Romans right there, he says, if you've given grace, God gives you grace to save you. You're in the kingdom of God now, and now we are to expand God's kingdom by taking dominion. We are to reign in life. And it's a mindset shift. If you think about everything you are and everything you have, where in your life is there chaos? And where in your life do you need to take dominion, that you need to take responsibility? You know those days where you do not want to work out, it's the last thing... Instead of working out, you just want a large cheese pizza. And at those moments you got to remind yourself... Once in a while you got to take a break. But as a pattern rhythm of life, we have to take dominion of our bodies. I will tell my body what to do. Take dominion of your health. Take dominion of your mind, as much as you can, take dominion of your soul. Now I started thinking about just even house chores like this. I see trash and I'm like, "Ah, got to take dominion. That's my job, those dishes to do. I'm taking dominion of these dishes." But if you start thinking like that, I'm like, "Huh, all right, where in my life is life out of control? Where do I need dominion? Holy Spirit, give me strength." So take good care of what God has given you. Take good care of your possessions, of your finances. Take good care of your relationships and desire greater influence. Desire greater dominion. Seek to expand your domain of dominion. First Chronicles 4:10, there's a gentleman named Jabez and he prayed the following, "Jabez called upon the God of Israel saying, oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my border and that your hand might be with me and that you would keep me from harm so that it might not bring me pain. And God granted what he asked." Do you ask God, "Lord enlarge my borders, Lord, give me more influence. Give me more of a domain to take dominion of?" Adam was given the charge to do this, the great mission, but he was given the charge of the perfect world. Therefore, his job was a gardener in the perfect world where everything was perfect. He didn't need a house in the garden of Eden, they lived outside. They didn't need air conditioning. Everything... The temperature was perfect. For Adam, it was 67. For Eve, it was around 73. God kept everyone... But everything was perfect. And God gave Adam a job. In Genesis 2:15, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it, work it and guard it." So Adam's task was given to him before the fall. Before the curse, there were no weeds. He didn't have to toil by the sweat of his brow. Pregnancy or childbirth did not come with pains. Yeah they lived in a different world. There was no need to build shelter to survive in a harsh environment. And Adam did not do his job even in the perfect environment. He did not take dominion. He abdicated his responsibility. When Satan came and tempted Eve and him, he did not fight Satan, and therefore dominion of the world of the created order moved from Adam to Satan. That's why Jesus, when he came, three times in John 12, John 14, John 16, calls Satan the ruler of this world. This was supposed to be man's role, but Adam's willful sin led to him forfeiting the dominion. And then Jesus Christ comes and he comes to destroy the works of the evil one. And I find it fascinating, how did Jesus take dominion up until age 30? Jesus started his ministry at age 30. That's when he started teaching the word of God, telling everyone the kingdom's at hand, repentant and believe. But Jesus Christ, in crucial years of his youth, what did he do as vocation? He was a carpenter. He was a builder. Adam lived in a perfect world. He didn't have to build houses. Everything was perfect. Jesus Christ comes in the fallen world. How is he taking dominion? He is building. He's building structures in the real world to house real families. And that was part of God's blueprint. How do you expand the kingdom of God? By building, in order to house, to house families and house people and house the church. So now we are tasked with the same work, take dominion, in a fallen world, and we take it from Satan, we take ground for Jesus Christ. And real estate is part of it. We, as a church, we do have a vision of taking dominion... Yes, I want to take Boston. This is the reason why I moved here in 2009. My pitch to everybody was, we are taking Boston and we're going to proclaim the gospel of God until we fill Fenway Park with converts. Everyone in Fenway Park is going to get saved. Everybody. That's the vision. We want to take this city. But part of taking the city is taking dominion, getting rooted, getting real estate. And just one example of where I see this in scripture, Jeremiah 29, God sends the prophet Jeremiah as a prophet to proclaim to the people of God in captivity. They were taken from the promised land to Babylon. And he says, this is God's plan for how you are going to build the kingdom in Babylon. Everyone knows Jeremiah 29:11, it's on every Christian mug that you find. "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare, not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." But the plans are actually outlined in the same chapter. That's why I'm like, you can't just pick and choose verse. He gives us the plan. He gives us the plan in verse four and seven, Jeremiah 29:4, "Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters and take wives through your sons and give your daughters in marriage that you may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there and do not decrease, but seek the welfare of the city where I've sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf for in its welfare you will find your welfare." So we do pray for the Lord to give you a vision, to be rooted here, to think about, "Okay, what's it going to take?" And I will tell you, I've been trying to do this 14 years in Boston. Trying to take dominion in Boston, you know how people say if you make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. If you make it in Boston and take dominion here as a believer, you can do it anywhere. You know real estate prices, and I know how hard it is to be fruitful and multiply and have children. You know what that takes. But the vision is still before us. And then whatever gap we have in our resources, we say, "Holy Spirit, we need you to supernaturally provide." And the Lord does that over and over. One way, if you are single or if you don't have children, if you have a love for children, one way that you can take part in this great commission here at Mosaic is joining mini Mosaic, volunteering at Mini Mosaic. We don't take anyone, by the way, we only take the best. There is a Navy SEAL tryout process. But this is one of the ways that we build up the future generation of believers. And then also we do recognize, statistically, 90% of people who become believers become believers before the age of 18. So we are to build up the kingdom of God and we do that through the great commission without forgetting the great commandment. God gives his people a moral framework to navigate the entire breadth of life, and he does that in the 10 Commandments. Adam was put in the Garden of Eden to work it and guard it. And the word guard means keep evil out. And he failed, and evil entered the world. So God gives his law to his people to show them the ways of life and to guardrail against death. You ever hear of getting Storrowed You know what that is? It's when... Remember the 18-year old who was just given the U-Haul truck keys? It's when that 18 year old follows Google Maps instead of the huge signs right before you enter Storrow, and they're just driving, they hit through the sign, and then they get stuck under a bridge. I view that as that's why God gave us the 10 Commandments. God doesn't want you to get Storrowed. If you break the commandments, the commandments end up breaking you. And yes, in the faith there are moral obligations. The 10 Commandments are still in force. This is how God wants us to frame our lives. Next week we're starting a very new sermon series through the Gospel of Mark. We're calling it Kingdom Come. It's going to be a tremendous series. But I write my sermons a week ahead, so next week's sermons already written, it was written on Friday. And last time I preached through Mark was in 2012, and I still got all the word docs. And I went back and I read my sermon from 2012. The introduction was great. It was like what's the best news you ever heard? And I had my classic joke in there. It's a girl, it's a girl, it's a girl and it's a girl, because I have four. But then I got to this point where I wrote this, and I got to confess because it's terrible. I said, "Jesus doesn't teach on morality in the Gospel of Mark. The point of the faith isn't morality, it's not morality, it's just about relationship. It's not religion, it's a relationship." Jesus Christ was Jewish and he was a Jewish Rabbi, he's the son of God who became the son of man. He said, I didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, to ratify, to show you what the point of the law is. Jesus Christ lived his life perfectly under the 10 commandments, offers his life as a sacrifice for our lawbreaking of the commandments. He gives us grace, saves us and empowers us in the Holy Spirit, to then live a life of obedience of faith according to the commandments. And then Jesus comes and he summarizes. He says, the first four commandments are all about loving God. And the next six are all about loving neighbors. So God defines what it means to love. Deuteronomy five gives us 10 commandments. "And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, hear O Israel, the statutes and the rules that I speak in your hearing today, and you shall learn them and be careful to do them. The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb, not with our fathers, did the Lord make this covenant but with us, who are all of us here alive today. The Lord spoke with you face-to-face at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire. And while I stood between the Lord and you at that time to declare to you the word of the Lord for you were afraid because of the fire and you did not go up into the mountain. He said, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain, observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath, honor your father and your mother as the Lord your God commanded you that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. And you shall not covet your neighbor's wife. And you shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field or his male servant or his female servant, his ox or his donkey or anything that is your neighbor's." The Sabbath here is a commandment given and is a commandment that transcends time. The Sabbath is a reminder that the purpose of life transcends work. The Sabbath is the only element of the creation that's explicitly marked as holy. The Sabbath belongs to God. Stress and burnout are hazards for driven people and the Sabbath is the best antidote. And God gives us the Sabbath that's still enforced. We do not Sabbath on a Saturday. We Sabbath on a Sunday. Why? Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is... This is one of the great proofs for the resurrection of Christ. What would it take for Jewish people who for thousands of years were taught the Sabbath is on a Saturday, the Sabbath is the seventh day, the Sabbath is on a Saturday. This is the day that you commit to the Lord. And then all of a sudden these same people are now taking the Sabbath on a Sunday. Why? Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. God built it in to the calendar. Religious people added hundreds of manmade rules to the 10 commandments, to the law of God. And they obfuscated the whole point. The whole point was this is how we love God. This is how we love people. And when Jesus came, he reminded us that the whole point of the law is love. Matthew 22:34, "But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law. And he said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets." So what do we do here on Sundays? We gather to worship God. Why do we worship God? Why do we sing to him? Because we love him. Why do we hear from His word? Because we love him and we love what he said. And then we pray together and we celebrate Holy Communion. These are essential practices of the means of grace and the life of a believer. All of our service follow the basic pattern of meeting together that's traced back to the early church. We sing, we pray, we teach from scripture and we respond by taking communion. And our goal isn't to manufacture particular feeling or experience. We want you to meet Jesus Christ. And when you meet Jesus Christ, that changes everything, and that leads to transformation. We're passionate about the person and the work of Jesus Christ. We long to see the message of the gospel, that Jesus Christ lived the life that we were supposed to live in obedience to God's commandments. And then Jesus dies the death that we deserve to die for our lawbreaking, and he goes to the cross, bears the wrath of God, takes the curse upon himself in order to extend mercy and the blessing of obedience to us. Every single one of us, we've broken at least one of the commandments. Not one of us has truly loved God from the heart or neighbor as self. We deserve eternal damnation. We deserve to be banished from the presence of God. But Jesus fulfilled all the commandments from the heart perfectly and then offers himself as a sacrifice to pay the penalty for our sins. When you look to the cross and you see Christ dying on behalf of you, on behalf of your sins, to redeem you, your soul, your body, your heart is filled with love, love for God, and then your heart is filled with love for neighbor. And we do practice loving neighbor as self here, beginning with believers, beginning with Christians. The way that we practice community is in our community groups. We have 20 plus community groups that meet different places, different homes around the week. What do we do in the groups? We open scripture, usually the passages that were associated and read on Sunday. We study the scriptures, we have conversation about the scriptures, and then we pray for one another. We do take membership seriously. At Mosaic membership, we hold in high regard. What's membership? It's a commitment, a mutual commitment. When a church commits to take responsibility for a person and a person commits to take responsibility for the church. And membership is a commitment and a covenant to further the mission, the vision, and the life of the church. How do we become members at Mosaic? The first step is to take a membership class. We will have the dates of the next one advertised soon. If you are new to the faith, perhaps you haven't been baptized as a believer, we practice baptism as believers, because Jesus Christ was baptized as an adult and we follow his example. And what is baptism? It's a public symbol of the spiritual death and resurrection of the believer who's died to their sin and resurrected to new life and Christ. If you have not been baptized as a believer, as an adult, we'd love to have a conversation with you about that. And then if you truly love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, you love your neighbor as yourself, what do you want to do? You want to share the gospel with those who don't know the Lord yet. And this is the great commission, Matthew 28, Jesus before his ascension, verse 16, it says, "Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshiped him. But some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age." So we're not only supposed to take dominion over the physical realm, but we're also to take dominion over the spiritual realm as well. And we do that by proclaiming the word of God, proclaiming the gospel, and making disciples of all nations, spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. Baptism is done in the name, that's singular. And then we're given three names. In the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit to show us that there's unity in the Godhead, although there are three different persons. And in this charge where we see that God is community. In the very beginning when God created everything he said, let us make man in our image. The God who is community, the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit and perfect love, creates humanity for community. So God who is community here is telling us, community of believers, to go and welcome new members into the community. I love on the outside of the temple, if you haven't seen it, you can see on the way out, it says "A house of prayer for all nations." I love that. I do pray that Mosaic continues to be a house of prayer for all nations, and for as long as you're here, I pray that you are blessed. And then we are to take the message of the gospel and the kingdom building word wherever we go. And then we are to make disciples. We are to preach the gospel. We are to teach people that there's only one way of salvation. There's only one name by which we are to be saved. And the task of evangelism is so important that Christ gives us the great commission five times, in each of the gospels and in the Book of Acts, Jesus commissions us to go and tell the world the message of salvation. That though we are at war with God, he is giving us pardon, he's giving us amnesty, he's offering us forgiveness. And then we're ushered into the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Jesus calls his followers to give their lives in service of others and to take the gospel to the ends of the earth and make disciples. And whether you've spent your whole life in church or if you're just beginning to investigate the claims of Jesus, there is a place for you here. You're welcome to join, to serve and to expand God's kingdom in Boston, beyond, into the ends of the earth. Mosaic Boston aspires to joyfully become a worldwide kingdom building force by proclaiming, believing and obeying the whole council of God, and thereby building men and women of God committed to the great mission, the great commandment and the great commission. Praise be to God. This time we're going to transition to celebrate holy communion. We do this the first Sunday of every month at Mosaic. For whom is holy communion? It's for followers of Jesus Christ who are living in humble repentance. So first, if you are not a believer in Jesus Christ, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service. Or if you are living in unrepentant sin, we ask that you refrain, instead just think about the gospel and spend some time in repentance. If you would like to partake and have not received the elements, please raise your hand, and one of the ushers will give them to you. And as they do that, I'll pray for our time in communion. Oh holy God, we thank you that though there was a chasm between us and you, that you sent your son Jesus Christ, the perfect lamb of God, the Passover lamb, and Jesus, you were slain, and from your wounds you bled. Your body was crucified, and the word tells us your body was broken. And the greatest pain that you experienced on the cross was not just the physical, excruciating anguish, but the greatest pain you felt was the separation from the loving Father. When you cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Lord, you went through that, you went through that experience of drinking the wrath of God, the whole cup. And you did that for us so that we wouldn't have to. And Lord, right now, as we remember your sufferings, we rejoice that you did that because you love us. You did that because of the joy that was set before you. So we thank you Lord and we pray that you deepen our love for you, even now, expand even our capacity to love you and to love neighbor, and as we meditate upon your suffering on the cross. Lord, we repent of all sin of folly. We repent of insubordination, we repent of building our own kingdoms. And Lord, we receive mercy, we receive grace. And we pray that you continue to fill us with the spirit, continue and empower us to do your will. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. If you're new, there's two lids. First lid up top, you open up gently, and that opens the cup. And then there's a lid at the bottom. And that's how you receive the bread. "On the night that Jesus Christ was betrayed, he took the bread, and after breaking it, he said, take, eat, and do this in remembrance of me. Then proceeded to take the cup and he said, this cup is the cup of the new covenant of my blood, which is poured out for the sins of many. Take, drink and do this in remembrance of me." Lord Jesus, we thank you for washing our souls with your blood. We thank you Jesus, that by your wounds and the wounds of your body, we can find healing, healing for our souls, healing for our minds, healing for our bodies. Pray Holy Spirit, now send us that healing. Send us your power, send us your anointing. And Lord I pray that you continue to fill our hearts with the fire of your Holy Spirit for the great mission that you have for us. And to all do it with love according to the great commandment, love for you and love for neighbor. And Lord then empower us to your witnesses and to fulfill the great commission by making disciples. Give us opportunities to share the gospel with friends, family, neighbors. And I pray, Lord, in this season, save many people and draw them to yourself, draw the elect, and continue to convert and continue to build up your kingdom. And I pray, Lord, that you give us all grace now as we continue to worship you because you are worthy of all worship. And we pray this in the name of the Father, of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

CH Verdin Psalm 2 King Jesus by Chaplain Braswell

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic BostonChurch. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston ordonate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com. Our Heavenly Father, you are a holy God and we marvel at your holiness and we are in awe at your glory. And we stand in amazement that though we rebelled against your reign and your rule, against your dominion over us, you Lord, did not leave us in our ignorance and darkness, but you provided a way for us to be saved. You did it through the life, the death, the burial, and the ascension of your son Jesus Christ. Lord Jesus, we thank you for revealing the fullness of the law of God to us. We thank you that you came, not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, to ratify it, to show us that the law of God is good, and that we have transgressed it, and we deserve the wrath of God for that transgression. But Lord Jesus, you and your mercy and your love and your kindness went to the cross on our behalf. And today, as we remember your sacrifice on the cross, let us never lose sight of the fact that you were motivated by love toward God and neighbor. This is the epitome of what it means to love, Jesus. Thank you for defining love for us. That love is to lay down your life for those whom you love. And Lord Jesus, we thank you that you taught us the holy scriptures, and you expounded on the holy scriptures, and then you gave us the Holy Spirit, the indwelling power of God who is with us. Holy Spirit, today I pray that you light our hearts on fire for the mission that you have before us. The great mission and the great commandment and the great commission, empower us to fulfill your will here in the city. Give us a vision of what it means to be a city within a city, a humanity within a humanity, a people within a people, a people who submit to you, submit to your word and do everything that we do out of love for God and neighbor. And Lord, continue to use our lives to build up your kingdom. Show us how you have called each one of us individually to build according to the blueprints that you have given us. Lord, bless our service and bless the sermon, and we pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen. Today is our annual Mosaic Boston vision sermon. And every Sunday we meet here at this wonderful temple, Temple Ohabei Shalom. I always know who's new because they come in and they're mesmerized by the building. They haven't learned to see the flaws in the building as I have. I look at the roof and I'm like, "Oh, please don't collapse on us." Or the seats, that they're not the most comfortable. But it's a wonderful building. And temple Temple Ohabei Shalom means, the temple of the lovers of peace. And every Sunday we here open up Yahweh's holy word, God's holy word, which outlines the plan of God's peace, the plan of God's true shalom, which is universal flourishing. On our branding, we put our values which are love Jesus simple. Love, why? Because that's the point of the whole thing. God is love. And then God, out of love, gives his son, Jesus, motivated by love, lays down his life on our behalf, and God extends that love to us in forgiveness and by grace through faith in Christ. And then Jesus Christ is the word of God. He's the one that reveals God's word to us, confirms God's word. He shows us that everything that preceded him was true. And he does that by coming back from the dead. And what Jesus does is he shows us though God is love, love is not God. Jesus defines what it means to love God, what it means to love neighbor as self. And then by simple we mean that the Holy Spirit loves to simplify. Truth is simple. Satan loves to obfuscate. Satan loves to add rules upon rules, human tradition, manmade rules, and people lose sight of what it means to love God. And by simplicity, we have a very simple method of ministry here at Mosaic, we do what the early church did, we gather for worship publicly in the temple and then we meet in small groups around the city during the week. And that's how we practice community. And then service, we volunteer here and we volunteer our time, and we do want to see the next generation of believers built up. We volunteer at Mini Mosaic. A little more later on that. We are recruiting more volunteers for Mini Mosaic, which is a crucial ministry. But what is our vision? Where are we going? And by vision, I do not mean I foresee the future. By vision, I mean I believe that the Lord has impressed on my heart and mind blueprints for how we are to operate, how we are to build this church, how we are to build the kingdom. And this is how often God works. Moses goes up on the mountain and he is given the blueprint for the law of God, the 10 Commandments, the moral law. Moses goes up on the mountain again and he's given the architectural plans, the blueprints for the tabernacle. How are we to build the tabernacle? David, in the same way, receives from the Lord, the blueprints for how are we going to build the temple of God. Ezekiel gets a vision of the temple in the city, of the land and he gets blueprints. And then God's spirit comes upon God's people and God says, "I've given you opportunities, talents, I have given you skills, I have given you resources." And then the Holy Spirit helps you find your place in how you then practically build the kingdom of God. Our vision, and I'll unpack every word, "Mosaic Boston aspires to joyfully become a worldwide kingdom building force by proclaiming, believing and obeying the whole council of God, and thereby building men and women of God committed to the great mission, the great commandment and the great commission." So first of all, we aspire to do everything we do joyfully. Psalm 100 verse one and two, "Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into his presence with singing." Philippians 4:4, "Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice." There's this one episode in holy scripture where God gives the power of the Holy Spirit, to the disciples and they go and they're doing miracles, and they started casting out demons in the name of Jesus Christ because the name of Jesus is above every other name. And then they come back to Jesus and they're like, "Jesus, even the demons obey us." You know what Jesus says? "Rejoice not that the demons obey you, rejoice that your names are written in heaven." So everything we do, we do as propelled out of the outflow of our joy, in that we get to be the children of God. We were adopted into the family of God and he's given us a wonderful mission. We aspire joyfully to become a worldwide kingdom building force. One of the reasons that God puts Israel, the people of God, in the Promised Land initially was because of the geographic location. In many profound ways, Israel, the promised land stood at the crossroads of the whole world. Israel stood at the crossroads of continents and of historic empires. Israel is right in the middle, connecting Africa, Asia, and to a certain degree, even Europe. It's a land bridge and that's why it's called the cradle of civilization. And some of the most important trade routes in the world went straight through Israel. And why did God place them there? God placed them there because he wanted them to stand at the crossroads, to shape and influence the cultural forces of the day, and witness to God, witness to Yahweh, witness to the fact that there is only one God and he has created everything and he has given us a law, and we have transgressed that law, and we deserve the penalty for breaking the law of God is death. So we need redemption. Isaiah 43:10, "You are my witnesses, declares the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen that you may know and believe me and understand that I am He. Before me know God was formed." Exodus 19, five through six, "Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine. And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." So Israel was commissioned by God to testify to the world about who God is and then minister to the world as priests proclaiming the excellencies of God. Jesus echoes the same words to the disciples after his resurrection, Acts 1:8 "But you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth." St. Peter in First Peter 2:9 says, "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." In Revelation one, four through six, John, to the seven churches that are in Asia, "Grace to you in peace from him who is and who was and who is to come. And from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom priest to his God and father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever." Amen. And God still wants his children to be his witnesses, to be a kingdom of priests, proclaiming the truths of God's word. And he wants to call us, and he's calling us to stand at the crossroads of life. And Boston, in many ways, is the crossroads of the world. People from all over the world come here for education, career, success, money, opportunities. This week, end of August, beginning of September, this week before Labor Day, I always play the same game every year. I try to count the moving trucks. How many moving trucks can I count? This week, I'm telling you, I don't know what happened, a hundred plus. I stopped counting after a hundred. And the moving trucks, they're all here. And if you know anything about U-Haul, they give keys to anybody. You got a heartbeat, you got a license, 18 years old, just graduated high school, here's keys to a truck. And then they show up in Boston. They don't know how to drive here. People have lived here for 10 years, don't know how to drive here. You got to know the ins and outs. You've got to be a master driver to make it here. And so it's chaos, but we are to extend grace. But what I'm saying is, is there a more strategic place in the world to plant your life and to commit to serve as a witness to King Jesus? Jesus is Lord, this is what we're... Jesus told the disciples early on, "Go and make disciples of all nations." We live in a place where the nations come to us. And over the years I've got so many stories, but one just came to mind recently. A few weeks ago we had this couple that was with us for a couple weeks and they were just visiting. And what they said was, "We were part of this church seven years ago and God so blessed us seven years ago that we've been following the ministry," and they felt called by God to go to Sydney, Australia and they're part of a church planning team. And they said, "We have a confession to make all the resources you put online, we just steal it. We just take it." And I was like, "Good, it's not mine. It belongs to the kingdom. Use it for kingdom purposes." Incredible influence worldwide just by preaching the gospel here. And what are we preaching? We're preaching that Jesus is king. Jesus is king above all kings. He's Lord above all lords. And there are only two kingdoms. There's God and his kingdom, there's Satan in his kingdom. There's no neutral territory. It's either you're with Christ and you're in the kingdom of God or you're against Christ and you're in the kingdom of Satan. And what we preach is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Anybody who believes, anybody who receives the grace of God, anyone who repents of sin and submits to Christ, you're transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved son. That's Colossians one, 13 and 14. "He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." And once you're in his kingdom, we work the rest of our lives to submit everything in our lives and in our spheres of influence to King Jesus. At every single one of our membership classes, we use the metaphor of cruise ship verse battleship to explain how we view the church. A lot of places where the church has been around for a long time and they're resourced, what happens is you can professionalize every single part of the ministry and you cater to everyone's needs, and you go to the church, it's like a show. You have a good time and then you're gone. It's like on a cruise ship. Why do people go on a cruise? To rest and to be entertained, to eat tremendously, to have a good time. Well, church is not like a cruise ship. We're not here to entertain you. We're here to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and the full counsel of God. And God has given us a mission. And on a battleship, what unites the people? What unites the people is the mission. Why are we here? What's our purpose? And the Lord Jesus Christ tells us we have an enemy. And if you're new to the city, welcome to spiritual war. There is a battle for the souls. And I feel this every end of August, beginning of September. I feel it. I see it. There's prophetic dreams. It's people from all over the world. Powerful souls are brought here, and now there's a battle for their souls. Which kingdom are you going to serve? Which king are you going to follow? But recently I've realized we're not just a battleship. In my church office, I have a beautiful painting. It's a sunset in the back, it's gorgeous. And then this is just a massive aircraft carrier, rusted, beat up from battles, but it's going, it's steadfastly, steadily moving, powerfully moving forward. And then planes land on the aircraft carrier and that they descend and ascend. That's how I view ministry in Boston. People from all over the world. It's like their plane lands in our aircraft carrier and then the mechanics go to work. They see what's wrong with the engine, they fix things up, they fuel you up, give you new directions and new inspiration, passion, desire to continue serving the Lord. In a similar way to the people of Israel worshiping in a beautiful temple in Jerusalem at the crossroads of their world, we find ourselves worshiping God the same God at the crossroads of the world here. So we see the strategic importance of a church proclaiming the gospel of God, the full counsel of God here. By making an impact here, we truly are making an impact worldwide. Now, how do we do that? How do we want to make an impact for the kingdom of God, a worldwide impact? How? By the word of God. Proclaiming, believing and obeying the whole council of God. In Acts 20, St. Paul, after spending some time with believers in Ephesus, he's leaving them, and then he says the following to them, "Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God." What an interesting way of phrasing his ministry, explaining his ministry. Had he not taught them the whole council of God, there would have been some kind of responsibility on him. He would have been guilty of their blood. And he says, "I didn't shrink." Why with that language? Because there is sometimes a temptation to back off from doctrines that make people squirm. We approach preaching the word of God as we do with the goal of proclaiming the whole council of God. From Genesis to Revelation, this is the inerrant, infallible, authoritative word of God. This is the foundation of everything that we do. Do you not think I know which doctrines make people squirm? Oh, I know. I've done this long enough. I can tell by body language, uncomfortable, uncomfortable. Sometimes people make it very obvious they get up and they're flip me the bird on the way out. You guys don't see that. I see that. My life would be much easier if I did not touch the difficult doctrines. But to remain faithful to God and to remain innocent of the blood of all, I can't but stand on the word of God. This is what we do at the church, we stand on the word of God. Why? Because we want to deepen in you, not just your faith, but your obedience. And that's what true faith always leads to, obedience to the Lord. And we saw this with Romans, the bookends and Romans one and Romans 16, the phrase obedience of faith. Romans 1:5, "Through whom we have received grace in apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations." And then Romans 16:26, "But has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings, has been made known to all nations according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith." And by proclaiming, obeying and believing the word of God and the whole council, we thereby aspire to build men and women of God committed particular three things, the great mission, the great commandment and the great commission. And I start with the great mission. It's usually known as the cultural mandate. The word culture isn't in it and the word mandate isn't in there either. And I actually think that this title diminishes the weight of the charge. God creates Adam and Eve, he creates humanity. And then the first imperative that he gives them, the first charge, the first mission, is found in Genesis 1:26 through 28. And because it's the very first imperative, it carries primacy. The creation mandate as some have called it, is rather a dominion mandate. It's a mission to take dominion, commanding human beings to bring every sphere of society, as well as nature itself, into subjugation to Jesus Christ. So this is Genesis 1:26 through 28, what I call the great mission. "And then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female, he created them, and God blessed them, God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." There are three questions of supreme importance to every single person. One, who is God? Second, who am I? And third, what does God require of us? And holy scripture here answers these three questions in the very opening chapter, and how you answer these questions impacts the trajectory of your life and eternity. We learn in the opening chapter of holy scriptures that God is, he is the supreme creator of all things seen and unseen, including humanity. And we also learn that man is unique in all of God's creation being made in the image of God. And therefore God has given us a unique responsibility of doing what? Taking dominion, exercising dominion over the world that God has made. And that's why twice it's repeated. This is why I've created you, to take dominion. This is the blessing, take dominion. God creates man in his image and after his likeness so that man would fill the earth with his offspring, continue to image forth more of God and exercise dominion over the created order. God has ultimate authority and he's given us delegated authority. His authority is absolute, ours is derived from God. He says, let us make man in our image after our likeness. There's a divine counsel. God uses the plural here, let us make. The divine counsel precedes the creation. And it's striking that it's plural, and the interpretation is from the whole council of God that this is the Holy Trinity. It's not a full revelation of the Trinity, but the doctrine of the Trinity makes sense of this text best. And man is to image God in at least three ways. First of all, God made us rational creatures. We can think, we can reason. We are to understand truth. We are to pursue truth. We are to develop our powers of discernment. God has also made us moral beings, that God has written His law upon our hearts. We know when we sin, we know when we have transgressed the law of God. And then God has also given us the charge of dominion. He's given us a royal office to bring everything in subjugation to him. Let them have dominion, in the Hebrew it's [foreign language] to master, to reign, to prevail against, to rule, to create order where there's chaos. And it begins with what? It begins with taking dominion of yourself. You are responsible for you. That you are responsible to submit yourself to the Lord. And when you do, he fills you with the power of God to continue taking dominion. He says, let them start with the fish, the birds and the livestock over all the earth. God made life to feed us. He made plants to eat in Genesis 1:29, and animals are given to as food after the flood in Genesis nine. And he does want us to take good care of the animals under our charge. God is a loving God. He even cares about animals. Proverbs 12:10, "Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel." I don't have any beasts at my house, but I have fish. I have five fish, and it is a godly thing to feed your little beast. They get really excited. I feed them. My youngest daughter is four. She's like, "Dad, don't feed them. I want that to be my job." She likes to... We are to master. We are to subdue. We are to care for what God has entrusted to us, and we are to develop its latent potential. And every type of being is to be subservient to humanity. Humans are not on the same level with dogs. We're not on the same level with animals. We are higher. We're not on the same level as the earth itself. We are beings that tower high above all other creatures. We are to be their king and their crown. We are kings of creation under God, and we have a delegated authority for restoring created and creation order, to rule with benevolence, not like a despot out for his own gain. Fill the earth, subdue, rule over it. It's stewardship. Dominion doesn't mean destruction, it means responsibility. And also it means to create. Genesis 1:27, look, three times the verb create is used. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female, he created them." It's significant that God, for the very first time we find out that God is a creator. He creates, and he creates us in his own image and we are to be agents of creation and recreation. Man was created to image God, and image God by exercising true dominion under God's authority, for God's glory. We are to promote the worship of God. The service of God is to be maintained. And we are to develop and improve the creation around us. Improvement and development takes place when we're empowered by the king of kings. And then once we do take dominion, we submit everything to the feet of Christ. In order to subdue the earth, we must first understand its processes. This is why research is foundational for fulfilling the divine mandate. And then once we get that knowledge, we must apply in technology and engineering and medicine and agriculture, must be implemented for use, and business and commerce transmitted to future generations via education. The creation can also be described and praised in the humanities and fine arts. We are to further the good, the true and the beautiful. The dominion mandate thus authorizes all honorable human occupations as stewardship under God. So we must learn how the world operates, which requires expertise and knowledge and engineering and mathematics, physics, aerodynamics and agriculture. And then we teach our offspring to be involved in these areas as well. The tragedy is that leadership in practically all of these fields in our city and in our world has largely been taken over by secularists and humanists. People that don't honor God, they're not taking dominion for God, they're taking dominion for the enemy. So God's primeval commission here, the great mission has been, in many ways subverted. And Christians today need a new renewed vision and commitment, not only to Christ second coming, yes, he's coming. He's going to fix everything. And not just to the great commission. Yes, that's important. But once people are disciples of Christ, we are to teach them to obey everything that he taught us from the very beginning. So we need a renewed vision of the great mission of responsible world stewardship. So whatever your chosen field, you should aspire to be the very best. The mindset is whatever your job, whatever your field, I'm not just here to take part, I'm here to take over. I'm here to take dominion of whatever God has called me to. In Colossians 3:17, "Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God, the Father, through him." First Peter 4:10 and 11, "As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace. Whoever speaks as one who speaks oracles of God, whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies, in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen." So as we study creation, as we use our talents in creation to subdue it under the feet of Christ, we become agents of this common grace. We are to make the world a better place by using our skills and talents to build things that are beautiful and useful, while countering the forces of evil and sin that oppress and distort creation. We live in a fallen cursed world, and it's only by the power of the Holy Spirit can we seek to reverse the effects of the curse. And Genesis 1:28, at the heart of the great mission, "and God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, over every living thing that moves on the earth." The primary purpose of marriage is given here in Malachi 2:15, it's reiterated, "Did he not make them one with a portion of the spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth." If God's will is godly children, then of course it makes sense that Satan would do everything in his powers to prevent this, from sexual perversion to gender confusion, to abortion to divorce. And men and women of God must carry this work out. We must work together and have children who are then trained in a godly Christian fashion to carry out the dominion mandate. Overpopulation is not a concern for God, nor should it be a concern for us. The very idea of depopulation is demonic because Satan came to steal, kill and destroy. The words, fill the earth, incidentally suggest that fears of population explosion are much overdrawn. Evidently the world is well able to support a large population. And Satan's always behind depopulation. Why? Because Satan's not omnipresent. Satan can only be in one place at one time. He's not God. And the demonic, well that's numbered, they're numbered. And the more godly people there are, the more the demonic forces are outnumbered. It's the same power, the strategy over and over. Remember in Egypt when Israel was in the captivity, they were enslaved by Pharaoh. Now Pharaoh realized that they were multiplying so much more than the people of Egypt. What does he do? Force depopulation. We're going to kill the children of Israel. And Moses was saved by his mom. This mandate to be fruitful and multiply, this mission, is so important God repeats it twice after the great flood in Genesis nine. And how are we to go about this whole process of subduing and taking dominion and being fruitful and multiplying? It's all to be done with love, never harshly, but always tenderly, carefully and faithfully. The nature of man's dominion, if he is to be Lord of all, he must be servant of all. This was true in the garden before the fall as it is today. Remember the words of our Lord Jesus Christ concerning the exercise of authority in Matthew 20:25, "But Jesus called them to him and said, you know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave. Even as the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom." For many godly authority is true authority, but it's not based on force or coercion or manipulation. And to understand dominion, we can look at Ephesians five and draw analogies there. That dominion is not exploitive, it's not oppressive, it's always loving. Christ in the church, for example. Christ is the head of the church and Christ's headship of the church leads the church to thrive, to be fruitful, to become evermore lovely. Or the relationship between husband and wife, also Ephesians five. Under her husband's righteous headship, a wife is to thrive and be fruitful and become evermore lovely. And we've been given dominion over creation. If we exercise godly dominion over creation, under the lordship of Christ, creation will thrive and be fruitful and become evermore lovely. Knowledge and appreciation of our fellow creatures is essential. And it's all to be done in love. Romans 5:17, "For if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through the one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ." Romans right there, he says, if you've given grace, God gives you grace to save you. You're in the kingdom of God now, and now we are to expand God's kingdom by taking dominion. We are to reign in life. And it's a mindset shift. If you think about everything you are and everything you have, where in your life is there chaos? And where in your life do you need to take dominion, that you need to take responsibility? You know those days where you do not want to work out, it's the last thing... Instead of working out, you just want a large cheese pizza. And at those moments you got to remind yourself... Once in a while you got to take a break. But as a pattern rhythm of life, we have to take dominion of our bodies. I will tell my body what to do. Take dominion of your health. Take dominion of your mind, as much as you can, take dominion of your soul. Now I started thinking about just even house chores like this. I see trash and I'm like, "Ah, got to take dominion. That's my job, those dishes to do. I'm taking dominion of these dishes." But if you start thinking like that, I'm like, "Huh, all right, where in my life is life out of control? Where do I need dominion? Holy Spirit, give me strength." So take good care of what God has given you. Take good care of your possessions, of your finances. Take good care of your relationships and desire greater influence. Desire greater dominion. Seek to expand your domain of dominion. First Chronicles 4:10, there's a gentleman named Jabez and he prayed the following, "Jabez called upon the God of Israel saying, oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my border and that your hand might be with me and that you would keep me from harm so that it might not bring me pain. And God granted what he asked." Do you ask God, "Lord enlarge my borders, Lord, give me more influence. Give me more of a domain to take dominion of?" Adam was given the charge to do this, the great mission, but he was given the charge of the perfect world. Therefore, his job was a gardener in the perfect world where everything was perfect. He didn't need a house in the garden of Eden, they lived outside. They didn't need air conditioning. Everything... The temperature was perfect. For Adam, it was 67. For Eve, it was around 73. God kept everyone... But everything was perfect. And God gave Adam a job. In Genesis 2:15, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it, work it and guard it." So Adam's task was given to him before the fall. Before the curse, there were no weeds. He didn't have to toil by the sweat of his brow. Pregnancy or childbirth did not come with pains. Yeah they lived in a different world. There was no need to build shelter to survive in a harsh environment. And Adam did not do his job even in the perfect environment. He did not take dominion. He abdicated his responsibility. When Satan came and tempted Eve and him, he did not fight Satan, and therefore dominion of the world of the created order moved from Adam to Satan. That's why Jesus, when he came, three times in John 12, John 14, John 16, calls Satan the ruler of this world. This was supposed to be man's role, but Adam's willful sin led to him forfeiting the dominion. And then Jesus Christ comes and he comes to destroy the works of the evil one. And I find it fascinating, how did Jesus take dominion up until age 30? Jesus started his ministry at age 30. That's when he started teaching the word of God, telling everyone the kingdom's at hand, repentant and believe. But Jesus Christ, in crucial years of his youth, what did he do as vocation? He was a carpenter. He was a builder. Adam lived in a perfect world. He didn't have to build houses. Everything was perfect. Jesus Christ comes in the fallen world. How is he taking dominion? He is building. He's building structures in the real world to house real families. And that was part of God's blueprint. How do you expand the kingdom of God? By building, in order to house, to house families and house people and house the church. So now we are tasked with the same work, take dominion, in a fallen world, and we take it from Satan, we take ground for Jesus Christ. And real estate is part of it. We, as a church, we do have a vision of taking dominion... Yes, I want to take Boston. This is the reason why I moved here in 2009. My pitch to everybody was, we are taking Boston and we're going to proclaim the gospel of God until we fill Fenway Park with converts. Everyone in Fenway Park is going to get saved. Everybody. That's the vision. We want to take this city. But part of taking the city is taking dominion, getting rooted, getting real estate. And just one example of where I see this in scripture, Jeremiah 29, God sends the prophet Jeremiah as a prophet to proclaim to the people of God in captivity. They were taken from the promised land to Babylon. And he says, this is God's plan for how you are going to build the kingdom in Babylon. Everyone knows Jeremiah 29:11, it's on every Christian mug that you find. "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare, not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." But the plans are actually outlined in the same chapter. That's why I'm like, you can't just pick and choose verse. He gives us the plan. He gives us the plan in verse four and seven, Jeremiah 29:4, "Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters and take wives through your sons and give your daughters in marriage that you may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there and do not decrease, but seek the welfare of the city where I've sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf for in its welfare you will find your welfare." So we do pray for the Lord to give you a vision, to be rooted here, to think about, "Okay, what's it going to take?" And I will tell you, I've been trying to do this 14 years in Boston. Trying to take dominion in Boston, you know how people say if you make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. If you make it in Boston and take dominion here as a believer, you can do it anywhere. You know real estate prices, and I know how hard it is to be fruitful and multiply and have children. You know what that takes. But the vision is still before us. And then whatever gap we have in our resources, we say, "Holy Spirit, we need you to supernaturally provide." And the Lord does that over and over. One way, if you are single or if you don't have children, if you have a love for children, one way that you can take part in this great commission here at Mosaic is joining mini Mosaic, volunteering at Mini Mosaic. We don't take anyone, by the way, we only take the best. There is a Navy SEAL tryout process. But this is one of the ways that we build up the future generation of believers. And then also we do recognize, statistically, 90% of people who become believers become believers before the age of 18. So we are to build up the kingdom of God and we do that through the great commission without forgetting the great commandment. God gives his people a moral framework to navigate the entire breadth of life, and he does that in the 10 Commandments. Adam was put in the Garden of Eden to work it and guard it. And the word guard means keep evil out. And he failed, and evil entered the world. So God gives his law to his people to show them the ways of life and to guardrail against death. You ever hear of getting Storrowed You know what that is? It's when... Remember the 18-year old who was just given the U-Haul truck keys? It's when that 18 year old follows Google Maps instead of the huge signs right before you enter Storrow, and they're just driving, they hit through the sign, and then they get stuck under a bridge. I view that as that's why God gave us the 10 Commandments. God doesn't want you to get Storrowed. If you break the commandments, the commandments end up breaking you. And yes, in the faith there are moral obligations. The 10 Commandments are still in force. This is how God wants us to frame our lives. Next week we're starting a very new sermon series through the Gospel of Mark. We're calling it Kingdom Come. It's going to be a tremendous series. But I write my sermons a week ahead, so next week's sermons already written, it was written on Friday. And last time I preached through Mark was in 2012, and I still got all the word docs. And I went back and I read my sermon from 2012. The introduction was great. It was like what's the best news you ever heard? And I had my classic joke in there. It's a girl, it's a girl, it's a girl and it's a girl, because I have four. But then I got to this point where I wrote this, and I got to confess because it's terrible. I said, "Jesus doesn't teach on morality in the Gospel of Mark. The point of the faith isn't morality, it's not morality, it's just about relationship. It's not religion, it's a relationship." Jesus Christ was Jewish and he was a Jewish Rabbi, he's the son of God who became the son of man. He said, I didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, to ratify, to show you what the point of the law is. Jesus Christ lived his life perfectly under the 10 commandments, offers his life as a sacrifice for our lawbreaking of the commandments. He gives us grace, saves us and empowers us in the Holy Spirit, to then live a life of obedience of faith according to the commandments. And then Jesus comes and he summarizes. He says, the first four commandments are all about loving God. And the next six are all about loving neighbors. So God defines what it means to love. Deuteronomy five gives us 10 commandments. "And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, hear O Israel, the statutes and the rules that I speak in your hearing today, and you shall learn them and be careful to do them. The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb, not with our fathers, did the Lord make this covenant but with us, who are all of us here alive today. The Lord spoke with you face-to-face at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire. And while I stood between the Lord and you at that time to declare to you the word of the Lord for you were afraid because of the fire and you did not go up into the mountain. He said, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain, observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath, honor your father and your mother as the Lord your God commanded you that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. And you shall not covet your neighbor's wife. And you shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field or his male servant or his female servant, his ox or his donkey or anything that is your neighbor's." The Sabbath here is a commandment given and is a commandment that transcends time. The Sabbath is a reminder that the purpose of life transcends work. The Sabbath is the only element of the creation that's explicitly marked as holy. The Sabbath belongs to God. Stress and burnout are hazards for driven people and the Sabbath is the best antidote. And God gives us the Sabbath that's still enforced. We do not Sabbath on a Saturday. We Sabbath on a Sunday. Why? Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is... This is one of the great proofs for the resurrection of Christ. What would it take for Jewish people who for thousands of years were taught the Sabbath is on a Saturday, the Sabbath is the seventh day, the Sabbath is on a Saturday. This is the day that you commit to the Lord. And then all of a sudden these same people are now taking the Sabbath on a Sunday. Why? Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. God built it in to the calendar. Religious people added hundreds of manmade rules to the 10 commandments, to the law of God. And they obfuscated the whole point. The whole point was this is how we love God. This is how we love people. And when Jesus came, he reminded us that the whole point of the law is love. Matthew 22:34, "But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law. And he said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets." So what do we do here on Sundays? We gather to worship God. Why do we worship God? Why do we sing to him? Because we love him. Why do we hear from His word? Because we love him and we love what he said. And then we pray together and we celebrate Holy Communion. These are essential practices of the means of grace and the life of a believer. All of our service follow the basic pattern of meeting together that's traced back to the early church. We sing, we pray, we teach from scripture and we respond by taking communion. And our goal isn't to manufacture particular feeling or experience. We want you to meet Jesus Christ. And when you meet Jesus Christ, that changes everything, and that leads to transformation. We're passionate about the person and the work of Jesus Christ. We long to see the message of the gospel, that Jesus Christ lived the life that we were supposed to live in obedience to God's commandments. And then Jesus dies the death that we deserve to die for our lawbreaking, and he goes to the cross, bears the wrath of God, takes the curse upon himself in order to extend mercy and the blessing of obedience to us. Every single one of us, we've broken at least one of the commandments. Not one of us has truly loved God from the heart or neighbor as self. We deserve eternal damnation. We deserve to be banished from the presence of God. But Jesus fulfilled all the commandments from the heart perfectly and then offers himself as a sacrifice to pay the penalty for our sins. When you look to the cross and you see Christ dying on behalf of you, on behalf of your sins, to redeem you, your soul, your body, your heart is filled with love, love for God, and then your heart is filled with love for neighbor. And we do practice loving neighbor as self here, beginning with believers, beginning with Christians. The way that we practice community is in our community groups. We have 20 plus community groups that meet different places, different homes around the week. What do we do in the groups? We open scripture, usually the passages that were associated and read on Sunday. We study the scriptures, we have conversation about the scriptures, and then we pray for one another. We do take membership seriously. At Mosaic membership, we hold in high regard. What's membership? It's a commitment, a mutual commitment. When a church commits to take responsibility for a person and a person commits to take responsibility for the church. And membership is a commitment and a covenant to further the mission, the vision, and the life of the church. How do we become members at Mosaic? The first step is to take a membership class. We will have the dates of the next one advertised soon. If you are new to the faith, perhaps you haven't been baptized as a believer, we practice baptism as believers, because Jesus Christ was baptized as an adult and we follow his example. And what is baptism? It's a public symbol of the spiritual death and resurrection of the believer who's died to their sin and resurrected to new life and Christ. If you have not been baptized as a believer, as an adult, we'd love to have a conversation with you about that. And then if you truly love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, you love your neighbor as yourself, what do you want to do? You want to share the gospel with those who don't know the Lord yet. And this is the great commission, Matthew 28, Jesus before his ascension, verse 16, it says, "Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshiped him. But some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age." So we're not only supposed to take dominion over the physical realm, but we're also to take dominion over the spiritual realm as well. And we do that by proclaiming the word of God, proclaiming the gospel, and making disciples of all nations, spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. Baptism is done in the name, that's singular. And then we're given three names. In the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit to show us that there's unity in the Godhead, although there are three different persons. And in this charge where we see that God is community. In the very beginning when God created everything he said, let us make man in our image. The God who is community, the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit and perfect love, creates humanity for community. So God who is community here is telling us, community of believers, to go and welcome new members into the community. I love on the outside of the temple, if you haven't seen it, you can see on the way out, it says "A house of prayer for all nations." I love that. I do pray that Mosaic continues to be a house of prayer for all nations, and for as long as you're here, I pray that you are blessed. And then we are to take the message of the gospel and the kingdom building word wherever we go. And then we are to make disciples. We are to preach the gospel. We are to teach people that there's only one way of salvation. There's only one name by which we are to be saved. And the task of evangelism is so important that Christ gives us the great commission five times, in each of the gospels and in the Book of Acts, Jesus commissions us to go and tell the world the message of salvation. That though we are at war with God, he is giving us pardon, he's giving us amnesty, he's offering us forgiveness. And then we're ushered into the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Jesus calls his followers to give their lives in service of others and to take the gospel to the ends of the earth and make disciples. And whether you've spent your whole life in church or if you're just beginning to investigate the claims of Jesus, there is a place for you here. You're welcome to join, to serve and to expand God's kingdom in Boston, beyond, into the ends of the earth. Mosaic Boston aspires to joyfully become a worldwide kingdom building force by proclaiming, believing and obeying the whole council of God, and thereby building men and women of God committed to the great mission, the great commandment and the great commission. Praise be to God. This time we're going to transition to celebrate holy communion. We do this the first Sunday of every month at Mosaic. For whom is holy communion? It's for followers of Jesus Christ who are living in humble repentance. So first, if you are not a believer in Jesus Christ, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service. Or if you are living in unrepentant sin, we ask that you refrain, instead just think about the gospel and spend some time in repentance. If you would like to partake and have not received the elements, please raise your hand, and one of the ushers will give them to you. And as they do that, I'll pray for our time in communion. Oh holy God, we thank you that though there was a chasm between us and you, that you sent your son Jesus Christ, the perfect lamb of God, the Passover lamb, and Jesus, you were slain, and from your wounds you bled. Your body was crucified, and the word tells us your body was broken. And the greatest pain that you experienced on the cross was not just the physical, excruciating anguish, but the greatest pain you felt was the separation from the loving Father. When you cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Lord, you went through that, you went through that experience of drinking the wrath of God, the whole cup. And you did that for us so that we wouldn't have to. And Lord, right now, as we remember your sufferings, we rejoice that you did that because you love us. You did that because of the joy that was set before you. So we thank you Lord and we pray that you deepen our love for you, even now, expand even our capacity to love you and to love neighbor, and as we meditate upon your suffering on the cross. Lord, we repent of all sin of folly. We repent of insubordination, we repent of building our own kingdoms. And Lord, we receive mercy, we receive grace. And we pray that you continue to fill us with the spirit, continue and empower us to do your will. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. If you're new, there's two lids. First lid up top, you open up gently, and that opens the cup. And then there's a lid at the bottom. And that's how you receive the bread. "On the night that Jesus Christ was betrayed, he took the bread, and after breaking it, he said, take, eat, and do this in remembrance of me. Then proceeded to take the cup and he said, this cup is the cup of the new covenant of my blood, which is poured out for the sins of many. Take, drink and do this in remembrance of me." Lord Jesus, we thank you for washing our souls with your blood. We thank you Jesus, that by your wounds and the wounds of your body, we can find healing, healing for our souls, healing for our minds, healing for our bodies. Pray Holy Spirit, now send us that healing. Send us your power, send us your anointing. And Lord I pray that you continue to fill our hearts with the fire of your Holy Spirit for the great mission that you have for us. And to all do it with love according to the great commandment, love for you and love for neighbor. And Lord then empower us to your witnesses and to fulfill the great commission by making disciples. Give us opportunities to share the gospel with friends, family, neighbors. And I pray, Lord, in this season, save many people and draw them to yourself, draw the elect, and continue to convert and continue to build up your kingdom. And I pray, Lord, that you give us all grace now as we continue to worship you because you are worthy of all worship. And we pray this in the name of the Father, of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Dr. Nate Magloughlin - 2 Samuel 4-5