Podcasts about pastor jan

In the episode, we cover some chapters from Pastor Jan's book as we speak about the power and impact of prophecy.We cover areas like the role of love in prophecy, being sensitive to the spirit, and receiving God's love through Prophecy.To connect with Pastor Jan:https://jancoverstone.com/To connect with G'Ade:https://linktr.ee/theunfilteredbygade

  The post Audacious Faith – Pastor Jan – Women's Ministry Day appeared first on Marion Oaks Assembly of God.

Pastor Jan spoke at both morning services about seeing the WOW in the things around us daily.__________________________________________We would love to meet you!

This is a special Sunday, we are celebrating everything God has done in our Church community over the last year! ___________________________________________ We would love to meet you!

Pastor Jan elaborates on how both a lie and the Truth can manifest in our lives.

The church of Antioch had a profound impact with regards to sharing the Gospel. Pastor Jan gives the background on this event, and the impact the movement had on Christianity

Pastor Jan describes how a deep personal revelation of Christ leads to a laid-down life of sacrifice and obedience to His Word.

Pastor Jan shares the love and compassion that Jesus has for the unreached people of the world.

Pastor Jan shares seven mindsets the Church aught to have and practice.

Pastor Jan details how a corporate mindset can effect the works of the Lord.

And so today, given the passage, I cannot jump into every detail of the passage, but what I do want to do is take a broad sweep of the passage and bring out the primary thrust of what Jesus wants us to take away as we discuss the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the end of times, his second coming. And just want to say this comes in between ... We have community groups that meet every week. They discuss the sermons. And we do know when the end of times get brought up as people gather over the word, there's often confusion, disagreement. And so I'm trying to bring us to a simple, clear understanding of this chapter after maybe some people are coming out of last week with a little bit of confusion. I say Pasture Jan's presentation on those verses, I was chewing on it all week, was masterful from my studied perspective as someone who somehow had the blessing to go to seminary and read books for three years. But yeah, we're trying to bring clarity on this topic and bring out the main thrust.Let me read God's word. Mark 13 verses 24 to 27 to start us off. Mark 13 verses 24 through 37. "But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light and the stars will be falling from heaven and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. From the fig tree, learn its lesson. As soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near at the very gates. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away."But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven nor the son, but only the father. Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge each with his work and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. Therefore, stay awake. For you do not know when the master of the house will come. In the evening or at midnight or when the rooster crows or in the morning. Lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you, I say to all. Stay awake. The grass withers and the flower fades but the word of the Lord remains forever."Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we come to you today living in a world full of wars and rumors of wars. Full of much conflict and confusion. Today we come to you with thanksgiving, that you have given us your word, the rock, the one, the only true place that a person can firmly stand. We pray that as we open your word, that it would bring courage to our hearts and strength to our feeble bodies. That we would go from this place renewed and invigorated to serve you and to face whatever may come in our lives with hope that you are behind it and that you will be with us through it. Grant us your peace and steadfastness for the journey to come. We come to you in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.It's been a really special year with my middle child. My daughter, Clara. She's been three years old. She'll be four in a couple of months. And what's been really fun to experience with Clara in the season of life at three and a half is her engagement with holidays. Moving from age two to three throughout the past year now and closer to four, she started to remember her celebration of holidays in the past and to start look forward to celebrating them again in the future. And so with Christmas last year, six months out, five, four, three, two, one months out from Christmas, she was talking about Christmas all the time. She was asking, "Is Christmas today?" Just waking up and asking that several months out, multiple days a week. Asking how soon it will come. And she was planning to receive presents of course. And thankfully she was planning to give presents, not just receive. And because we couldn't celebrate it at the time, she was wrapping presents and giving them to her stuffies well in advance of the day.And Clara's excitement for the day was contagious. But more than that, her excitement and expectations around that day gave her a superpower. It gave her a willingness to endure anything that came her way until Christmas Day came. What was most amazing prior to Christmas occurred on Christmas Eve. And if you remember that Christmas Eve, it was a Sunday this year and so we had one service here at Mosaic and after service we packed up my Honda Odyssey. And I don't call it a minivan. It's just that great. It's an Odyssey. A very special vehicle. Minivan, Odyssey life is not as bad as its rep gets sometimes. But we packed up our Odyssey. And the miracle of the day that Clara's expectation around Christmas brought her through was that she endured a seven and a half hour ride from Boston to my parents' place outside of Philadelphia without a stop. And she was perfectly peaceful, perfectly content because she knew what was about to come. She knew that Christmas was tomorrow. She knew that she was going to celebrate Jesus' birthday. She knew that she was going to receive presents as part of that celebration. She knew that she was going to give presents. She was going to spend the day with her loved ones. We don't get to see my parents, my siblings that much. She knew that there was going to be a feast.And so Clara was ready to endure anything. So seven and a half hours. Even if it was just the five-hour trip, which is the fastest time you can get between here and Philadelphia, if she stayed peaceful for that amount of time, that would've been the Christmas miracle and the expression of her superpower. And Clara's fascination with the end and the reward that came with it helped her through her present situations. It gave her resilience to face anything as her hopes and expectations where she knew what was about to come as we formed them, as she reflected on her experiences that we gave her at Christmas in the past.And so I've thought about this. What's refreshed my mind had me thinking about this in recent weeks really the past couple months is her birthday's in a couple of months. And so since Christmas there's been a lot of waking up, "Daddy, is my birthday today?" And just a repeat. So she's been blowing out fake cakes and giving presents to her stuffies in preparation as she waits that day. I discussed Clara's typical childish fascination with Christmas and her birthday as an illustration. I bring it up for a couple of reasons. First, I mentioned this fascination to point out her childlike faith. We are going to speak in a specific topic on Christ's return and the end of times. But before we do that, I want to remind us of a broader principle of the kingdom of God that Jesus mentioned earlier on in Mark. What Clara exhibits around the day of Christmas, the expectations and hopes around it that we formed and set for her, she exhibits childlike faith. It's a sure fact that it's going to be as good as she thinks it is. And we need to have such faith as we walk through life and the kingdom.Mark 10: 14 and 15 says, "Let the children come to me. Do not hinder them. For to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it." So Clara expects us to deliver on Christmas and her birthday, and that gives her superpowers to endure what is to come. And we as Christians, the Lord tells us of a specific day like the end of times and Christ's return as the same day. And we need to let him form our expectations around that topic. And there are going to be details that are not going to be perfectly clear. There are going to be questions around that day. And we can get lost in the pursuit of those answers. We can rest upon what the Lord has made clear in setting the expectations for us around that day. We can have childlike faith that our heavenly father has told us what we need to know as the day of the Lord comes. So we need to have childlike faith as we open up this topic a little bit more.But further, I want to just say Clara's fascination with Christmas ... We're in a topic today that there's a lot of fascination as we discuss the end of times. And while Clara's experienced her fascination with Christmas and her hopes and expectations around it, it's something that gives her joy, it gives her stamina, it gives her hope to face the present as she waits that day. Unfortunately, this topic on the day of Christ's return, it's something that really breeds the opposite response in us. A lot of times we naturally as Christians, we're interested in this day. For surely we await the benefits that come with the moment of Christ's return. We can't wait to be free. See this creation, see our flesh free from the power and influence of Satan. Free from the power of influence of sin. We can't wait to see an end natural disasters and wars. But we tend to take up this topic as a church and it really breeds a lot of anxiety and paranoia. It's because we're trying to go beyond what the Lord has told us and as he set our expectations in scripture.And so without a doubt, there's a fascination within the church about the end of time and when it will come and the manner in which it will come. It rarely leads to any good. And if anyone has been in the church for a while, I just want to elaborate on this. A lot of people, if you're in a church for a month or a year, you know the tendency for Christians. At a Christian gathering, people might be talking about faith, repentance, belief, obedience to Jesus Christ, how to apply just God's word to day-to-day life. But the end of times gets brought up and one little detail, one little hint of it, and it can derail the whole discussion. Everybody knows if you've been in a church with small groups ... We have community group here at Mosaic where we discuss the sermons together, God's word together. Everyone knows that experience of like, oh no, someone ... Conversation's been going, been fruitful, vibrant. Someone just brought it up. They did it. Maybe at that point, a couple of people in that conversation who have very passionate views on the end of times and the timing of it, they dominate conversation and it really becomes this a draining discussion and that everybody leaves more confused and really just too drained to go honor Jesus for the rest of the evening or the next day.And all people in the church know this tendency. And we Christians, we know that debates and conversations, they lead to real division normally. The talk on these topics can lead brothers and sisters to separate from brothers and sisters instead of continuing to gather as the people of God. And most Christians, they do know someone who got obsessed with figuring out the details about Christ's return. Who started losing their grip with reality. Who lost focus on working out their salvation with fear and trembling one day at a time. And in the end, maybe they just stumbled for an extended season or in the end they lost their faith altogether as they got lost in these details.Furthermore, we know there are whole in the Christian world ... And maybe some of you don't know this stuff. But as pastors we do engage a lot of these instances in our ministry. We know that there are whole churches and conferences and gatherings of supposed believers who meet not to praise God, not to preach his gospel, but to promote specific teachings, primarily promote specific teachings on the end of times. That's what they're gathering around. I've heard of several people giving large chunks of money to ... Or essentially their whole retirement savings saved for decades to supposed prophets who claim to elucidate the details of the timing and manner of Christ's return. In our day anybody can start teaching and give their take on YouTube, on social media. There's a tendency in the church today, there's people who will listen to these teachers at the cost of heeding the words of their pastors, their brothers and sisters in Christ and who they're gathering with in day-to-day real life.I've spoken to a few Christians who you dig into the details of their lives and they profess faith in Christ, but they have not read the gospels or most of the New Testament aside from the book of Revelation because they're reading the apocalyptic literature and verses of the Old Testament prophets and Revelation primarily. And this stuff happens. In a city like Boston who could get lost in that stuff? No. These are common tendencies.And so at Mosaic, if you've only been with us for two weeks, we've talked about ... We'll now take up this topic two weeks in a row. And you might think we have an unhealthy fixation on this topic, but I assure you we're taking it up as it naturally has come up in our scripture as we are going verse by verse through Mark. But before I go through it, I want to say at our church a little commentary, we generally are not guilty of unhealthy fixation on the end of times across our membership. We're not marked by neglect of coverage on the topic. We're facing it today. It's easier to skip over these chapters. As a pastor, we're here to face it as it's been brought up in our history in the text. We're not marked necessarily by widespread anxiety and paranoia that comes with fixation. If anything, at Mosaic, we're guilty of a tendency to think that the end is near because something bad happened in our personal lives or in society as a whole. And it leads to a distractedness that tends to decrease our level of day-to-day faithfulness a little bit. So 2020 Ukraine-Russia, Israel-Palestine death and health scares, cultural and political tensions. These tend to lead us to say nonchalantly and perhaps ignorantly that things are getting worse. It's clear. The end is near. And may we say that just a little naively or truly ignorantly.We continue to just carry forth our day-to-day responsibilities with some faithfulness. But I think even beneath that a tendency in our body is more of a hopeless spirit of resignation. When we face calamity, hardship in our lives, trials personally or internationally and nationally, we can assume a hopeless spirit of resignation that, oh, there's so much brokenness around us. Who am I as an individual to bring Jesus' light and redemption through my day-to-day faithfulness? And we still do the thing, do what we think God is calling to us but not with belief that he can use us to redeem brokenness in the world around us, in the relationships, in society through our small efforts. And so today you'll see that Christ has a word for engaging such circumstances for us as the natural disasters, the trials of society. And so yeah, we're going to see what that word is.And there's no question that this fascination with the end of times, it doesn't stop at the church. The world has wrestled with it. Again, everything I've mentioned from 2020 to 2024 I think it's safe to say we all have seen a lot more headlines talking about is this the end of society as a whole? Are things getting worse? Is America facing its doomsday? Is the current banking system a potential collapse? What's that going to lead to? There's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of worry. There's always an ancient calendar. In 2012, the Mayan calendar ended. I remember articles around that. You think of year 2000 going into the new millennium, there's a lot of, is the world going to end? It just gets brought up whether there is seeming reason to appeal to or not. So there is a widespread fascination with the end. And really it normally leads to anxiety, fear, and paranoia and faithlessness. Especially when we start mining the details of what the Bible has a say about it.So Jesus today as we open up chapter 13 again, he speaks to the disciples about the end. And I want to say very clearly he has one easy message in this chapter that we want to focus on primarily as we study it. Stay awake and be ready. The theme sentence of this chapter, Christian lives shall be marked by steadiness and readiness as they await Christ's return. Christian lives shall be marked by steadiness and readiness as they await Christ's return. This message, you can find it just by appealing to the specifics of a few verses. Verse 33 Jesus says, "Be on guard, keep awake." Or perhaps I can claim that this is the theme of the chapter as the chapter ends in verse 37 by saying, "And what I say to you, I say to all. Stay awake." All of this chapter, it's pointing to the call for Christians to exhibit a steadiness, a coolness, a calmness as they face challenges, trials, conflicts, natural disasters in this life and readiness as they ponder the end of times. And so he declares, "Don't waste your time reading into all the things that could deceive you or prevent you from faithfulness to him in the things of God in day-to-day life." So stay awake and be ready.Verse 31 says, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away." The world is going to fall down around us. We shouldn't be shocked when it happens. It's been happening throughout history. The Roman Empire, it did fall. Imagine how people fell when that truly fell. It's going to happen around us. It's happened throughout history. It'll keep happening. Everything will pass away but what will remain are Jesus' words and his assurances. And I want to pause right here. Think about the things. If they passed away, what are those things whose passing would shake you? In me It's honestly like news of what's happening in my small suburban town outside of Philadelphia. When I see the culture shaking, the schools shifting in my heart, it really stirs me to the point of almost hopelessness or God, what's happening here? When we think about America, are there major societal shifts? Are we heading in a bad direction? When we face political tensions. We've gotten upcoming election this year. When we face potential shifts in our country, does it stir us? Do we begin to question God's faithfulness to us in such moments? Jesus says we need to trust him.I was at the Inter Miami verse New England Revolution soccer game last night to see Lionel Messi and a couple of his former Barcelona players. It was my first time at Gillette Stadium. And part of it is to show my son, wow, look at this man who has used what God has given him and mastered it. But part of it is to say to my son, "Look, this man, he is going to die one day. I hope he doesn't have a great spiritual moral failure before all of us. I hope he professes his imperfections and faith in Jesus at some point and I do pray for him." But Messi's going to pass away and Gillette Stadium is going to pass away or they're going to blow it up. And I want them to so that they get rid of the turf field and put in a grass field because professional sports should be played on grass.But these figures of society, these people, these institutions, they're all going to fall. And how will that move you? What will your response be? Jesus says the only thing we place our faith in is his word. Everything will pass, but we are to trust his assurances. And so verse 13 in our chapter, the one who endures to the end will be saved. We place our hope in Jesus and his works and his promises. That's where our hope lies. So Jesus is saying broadly in this chapter, be ready for the end to come right now. Be ready for the end every moment of every day. Don't misuse your time getting lost in the meaningless things of the world. Don't misuse your time obsessing over predictions, dates, the left behind stuff, the book series, the movie series. Jesus comes when you don't know. So be ready. At every moment of your life be steady and be ready.And so I'm going to draw this point out as I try to speed through the chapter today. Chapter 13. I'll revisit some of the verses from one through 23 and glean over them. But it's all to remind you this point. Christian lives shall be marked by steadiness and readiness as they await Christ's return. I'm not going to necessarily pull out specifics of where I get that theme. You're going to have to come with me as I just keep emphasizing it. And I think it's important. This is a topic that's been convoluted, confused throughout church history, even within our own body. And we have to just get what is primary. And this is where we build our foundation and thinking on the end of times going forward. So chapter 13, we have Jesus falling of the temple, Jerusalem, the sign of the fig tree, a call to be ready. Let's try to explain it. What's Jesus talking about here? How do I come to this emphasis on steadiness and readiness?So let's step into this situation with the disciples. The day is still Tuesday. On that Friday, Jesus is going to be crucified. Jesus and his disciples have been in the temple most of the day. It's probably late afternoon. Jesus decides it's time to go. It's very likely this is Jesus' last time in the temple. And while they're walking away from the temple, one of his disciples is overcome with awe. They were admiring the size, the glory, the structure of the temple. And it really was a sight to behold. It was gargantuan and grandiose, huge and intimidating in its size and in its extravagance and ancient wonder of the world. And King Herod put a ton of money into it for several decades. We're talking in the billions of our current dollars. And so this temple, it's huge. It's ornate. The temple grounds and courts, they covered about one-sixth of the city of Jerusalem at the time. The individual stones that were used to build the temple were gigantic.Josephus, one of the historians of the day wrote down the size of the stones that they were about 45 feet by 15 feet by 18 inches thick. One stone. You could go and look at a stone that size and just be in awe. So these stones are massive. Ornately decorated. The text begins with a disciple saying, "Teacher, look at the size of these stones. Look at the majesty of the temple of Jerusalem. The whole city. Isn't this amazing?" Jesus says, "You see this giant beautiful building. You see this city. You see these massive stones. Not one stone will be left standing upon one another. This whole city is going to be destroyed."And this would've been a shocking statement. Definitely awkward silence afterwards. And it's shocking, especially when you consider the sides of these stones, saying not one will be left standing on another. And then they walk. Jesus says this, and they walk through the city of Jerusalem, they walk to the Mount of Olives to an elevated area where they sat down and they have another great view of the city. And as they thought about Jesus' pronouncement of the destruction of the temple, its complete devastation, the devastation of the city, they begin to naturally ask some questions. One asked in verse four, "Tell us when will these things be and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?" And so there's a lot more behind this question than first appears. The disciples regard this temple as a fixed structure. They look at it, they think this thing could last forever.They couldn't imagine its destruction. And so immediately they're tying the destruction of this temple with the end of the world. For surely that's the only way and time that it could be destroyed. And so with the question in verse four, they're not just asking when is the temple going to be destroyed, but how do we know that the end is near? This is affirmed in Matthew chapter 24 verse three where they ask in a parallel passage, "Tell us when will these things be and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?" So they're asking, when will the temple be destroyed? When will Jerusalem be destroyed? That's one question. When will we know it's time for your return? When will the end come? That's what the disciples are asking in Mark as greater clarified in Matthew. They're seeking answers.And Jesus in response, he gives them a long, seemingly complicated answer. And the first part of his answer is a warning to not be led astray. Verse five, Jesus says, "See that no one leads you astray." In the NIV translation, "Watch out that no one deceives you." The disciples are assuming all of this is going to happen very soon based on Jesus's words. So they're eager. They're eager for the end to come. And as a result they're going to be tempted into reading into every little sign. So Jesus is anticipating that and he's given them some instructions to not be led astray. So in verse six he says, "Many will come in my name saying I am he and they will lead many astray." So he's saying, "There is definitely going to be a time where a lot of people say that they're sent by me or come in my name or bring greater revelation, greater word of God beyond what I've said."He says, "Don't be surprised. Don't follow them. Don't put your trust in them." And in the first century, history is captured. There's a lot of ... And scripture captures some of it. There are a number of false messiahs who appeared and they had followings, but in time they proved to be false prophets and the false prophets that they were. And it still happens today. It's happened all throughout history and it still happens today. Joseph Smith, a relatively recent false teacher, he started Mormonism. He said that Jesus appeared to him in 1820 in his backyard and he told him that all existing churches had turned from the gospel. And after that an angel of God appeared to him and essentially gave him a new source of revelation, a new word for man, true followers of Christ, the Lord to follow. And Jesus, which conflicts with our Bible, the 66 books of the Bible, Jesus is telling us, don't follow this kind of guy.More recently, I grew up in 90s public school hearing about David Koresh and the Branch Davidians who in the 80s and 90s said that he was one who was going to establish the Davidic kingdom. And so these figures keep appearing throughout history and we can't be so eager for the end to come that we follow anyone who is essentially pronouncing Jesus' return or new age in Christ. Jesus warns us about these men. Don't follow them. And then he goes on to warn them about something else. Next, he talks about disasters and wars. He says in verse seven, "And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. This must take place but the end is not yet." So he's saying, don't be deceived by natural disasters and wars. Don't be so eager for the end to come that you read into all these things.When you hear of hurricanes, tsunamis, wars, rumors of wars, don't claim this is the end. Don't just bluntly ignorantly claim things are getting worse. Verse eight says, "For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places. There will be famines. These are but the beginning of the birth pains." So we shouldn't be shocked by such events. We shouldn't be distracted by these events and drop faithfulness in day-to-day life. So many people read into these events and conclude that the end is near but these things have been happening since the beginning. These are but the beginning of the birth pains. We think we're so unique as a generation, but like a lot of these things ... Not like. A lot of these things have been happening throughout history. Nothing new under the sun is happening in 2024. Even with Russia and Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, as I've mentioned earlier, nothing new is happening in 2020. Is what we've experienced recently more dramatic and traumatic than what has been dishonoring to God throughout history, through previous societal collapses, wars and earthly disasters.Just pausing about World War I, World War II is what we're facing right now really worse than that? The societal and cultural drama, severe natural phenomena, they've always been occurring. And it is. We should be heartbroken when we see it, but we shouldn't jump to conclusions that this means that the end is near and imminent. We lament the occurrence of these events. We long for Jesus to come back to put an end to them. But we don't get obsessed with finding specific meaning in them as they relate to the end of times. Third thing that Jesus warns us about is in verses nine through 13. I don't think I put them up on the slides, I'm going to skim through them. He says, "Don't be deceived by the persecution that you faced. The people of God are going to suffer. Just because you're persecuted doesn't mean that the end is near." Jesus tells them plainly that they're going to be flogged and judged by governors and authorities. They'll be hated as the gospel goes forth. The gospel divides. It has two effects. It draws people in as you stand on it, preach it and stand on it and it draws people away. It's a stench that they reject. They don't want to hear it. They harden their hearts against God.It divides even families. In verses 12 to 13, he elaborates that man will kill his own brother over Christianity, a father a child. Children will kill their parents. Christians will be killed by their own family members, but they are not specific signs that the end is near. These things have been happening, they'll continue to happen. So this fascination with the end should not cause us to look upon these three categories of just travesty as false teachers, natural events, wars and killing within families.They should not cause us to say immediately the world is coming to end. And Jesus is telling when these things happen, when people believe them, when people start taking others and saying, this is the end, a lot of people are led astray. We should not be led astray. And so we engage it. We engage it with a steadiness. We're not shocked by their occurrence. Verse 10, he's saying, "We live in the period of last days." But before the Lord returns, what we focus on is one thing. Verse 10. And the gospel must be first proclaimed to all nations. So this is going to take some time. It's taken 2000 or so years so far and we're not done yet. If you really want the world to come to an end, don't focus on reading into all of the events. Instead, focus yourself on applying the gospel to your own heart in a deeper way each day. Then when you do that, think about and pray about how the Lord could use you to transform your neighbor's heart. Then think about how he can use you to transform every country, every culture, every community, tribe, person, and do this work with much patience, humility, sobriety and self-control as things of the world are rising and falling around you.Jesus is saying, be steady, be ready. Be ready for a long race. Don't follow the likes of Joseph Smith, Joe Schmo who says he comes in the name of the Lord in desperation. Don't read into all the current events. Don't expend all your energy on that. There's an opportunity cost to spending time on this stuff at the cost of faithfulness to Jesus and loving God and loving your neighbor day-to-day. Focus on right now. That's what Christians are called to do. How can I be salt and light where the Lord has placed me right now with every relationship I have with every office he's called me to as a single, as a married, as a parent, as a worker, as a neighbor. How do I run faithfully and steady? Stay awake. This is what Christians are called to.And so I emphasize that. We're called to be steady. Called to be ready. The second part of Jesus' answer goes to verses 14 to 23. This section is the direct answer to the disciples question about the destruction of the temple. So Jesus before prophesying about anything that will happen in the future in this section, he's making a statement about the destruction of the temple. Remember the disciples asked him, when will the destruction of Jerusalem occur? And so he's given an answer. Jesus begins verse 14 with a cryptic statement. It's using terminology from the book of Daniel. He says, "But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not to be ..." Another translation says when you see the desolating, sacrilege, when something holy or sacred is profaned. When you see that you know the end is near. And so he's talking about the end of Jerusalem here first and foremost.Pastor Jan on in his second half of his sermon, he talked about there is a two-fold nature to prophecy that we see in scripture where first and foremost, a prophetic statement typically has that prophetic statement in the day. And that's what I'm saying. These verses 14 to 23 are talking specifically about the near the fall of Jerusalem in the near term, short term. Pastor Jan did open up the topic a little further to say there's abomination of desolation statement. Is this a statement for the future? And he talked primarily about what continues as a spirit. We are not saying history captures. There's a couple of points in time where we saw Gentiles in 168 B.C. Antiochus Epiphanes, a Roman general captured Jerusalem. He went to the temple and he profaned it by offering sacrifices to Roman false gods in the temple. And so a lot of people that is an abomination of desolation.Furthermore, history talks about after the Romans in this siege of 70 A.D. that I'm going to talk about in detail in a little bit. After they conquered Jerusalem and the temple, they did offer sacrifices to their gods in what remained of the temple space. But one of the things that Pastor Jan on really tried to focus us on is that the greatest travesty, the greatest abomination of desolation that ever occurred in history was done by those who were supposed to be the chosen people of God. The Jewish authorities, the Sanhedrin, the high priest rejected Jesus Christ, the anointed one, the son of God who showed who he was through his miracles, through his word, through his faithfulness and sacrifice and obedience. They rejected him. And for 40 years, what did they do? They rejected him so much to the point, the very presence of God, the word incarnate, they rejected him to the point that they conspired with their enemies, the Romans to send him to the cross. And so this destruction of Jerusalem that happened in 70 A.D. four decades after Christ, for four decades, they stood with hardness of heart against their standing on Jesus Christ. They desolated the perfect spotless land of God and the rejection of him.And what perhaps the continuation of that is anyone who claims that he was wrong. He was not who he said he was. In the local church, in authorities, religious authorities, those who reject Christ are in a way profaning what is holy in rejecting Jesus. And so this abomination of desolation ... Pasture Jan on goes in more detail. But specifically these verses, let me take us back, they're talking about the destruction of Jerusalem.When the holy temple is desecrated Luke chapter 20 verses 20 to 21 also adds to this phrase, when you see the city surrounded by armies flee. So when you see the temple being desecrated and you see the city of Jerusalem surrounded by armies, run as fast as you can run. This is verses 14 23. Don't pack up your belongings. There isn't any time. When you see these things run. Hopefully you're not pregnant. Hopefully it's not winter because that'll make the flee harder. Jesus is speaking very directly here about the destruction of the temple and he's warning his disciples about ... He's given warnings about how it'll happen. Mark verse 19 talks about it's a calamity tribulation that the world has never seen before. So 40 years after this discussion between Jesus and the disciples on the Mount of Olives again in year 70, the Romans completely demolished Jerusalem. The temple and Jerusalem. Josephus, the Jewish historian, recorded details of this event.He tells us that in response to a Jewish uprising in year 66, the Roman army laid siege to the city of Jerusalem. Romans built a high wall around the city. Almost every tree within miles of the city was cut down to build the wall, transforming the landscape of Jerusalem into a desert. And the Romans dug a deep trench all around the city. No one could get in, no one could get out, no food or water could be brought in. Any Jews who tried to flee Jerusalem were captured and crucified and placed on top of the wall for everyone to see. After four years of this, tens of thousands of Jews, sometimes 500 plus a day, who tried to escape were crucified on the wall. Just absolutely horrific. And the people who were left inside that were dying of starvation. Eventually the Roman army did breach the walls of Jerusalem and they slaughtered the surviving Jews and burned the entire city, including the temple.Josephus estimated that during the Roman siege of Jerusalem, over 1.1 million people were killed, mainly Jews, and that another 97,000 were captured and enslaved. And the temple, there's a lot of theories about why was every stone broken down. There's a theory that there was just such animosity through this long conflict that the Romans just with vehemence just wanted to sack the Jews. Sack the city. So in their anger, they destroyed every last stone. There's also theories that the gold all over the temple and perhaps in the homes there's gold in the walls, that they were seeking the treasure. There's a theory that they did burn the temple as part of the process and some of the gold melted into the cracks between the rocks. So perhaps that drove them to destroy each stone. But we do find history shows us that Christ's prophecy in verse one, verse two, "Do you see these great stone buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down." That happened. So think about the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Greece. The Romans didn't destroy it. We can still see it today. But the Romans actually, they initially wanted to preserve the temple, but they found they're just losing too many soldiers. So that's when they set fire to it. But not one stone was left upon another just as Jesus said. Even the foundation was taken up.So this verse 13, chapter 13, the first section is about warning to not be deceived, be steady as you face deception. This section, it talks about the destruction of the temple before anything else. The third section of Jesus' answer starts in verse 24, and this is our primary text for the day, and I'm going to try my best to speed through. He's transitioning from what is going to happen in the temple to discussion on the end of time and the coming of the son of man. So Jesus is answering the disciples questions about the timing of Jesus' return. When are you going to return? When's the last day coming? This is where Jesus answers that."But in those days," verse 24 to 27, "after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened and then the moon will not give its light and the stars will be falling from heaven and the powers in the heavens will be shaken and they'll see the sun of men coming in clouds with great power and glory. And then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven." So all of this ... This is crucial to understand the passage. All of these verses here in the third section of the chapter state that God's power will be seen in an unmistakable way at the end of times. It will be very distinct from what we see upon war and travesty in our current times.An earthquake, a tsunami, a hurricane. Don't think those are things that will usher in the end. Those are small compared to what's going to happen in the end. He says you're going to see stars fall from the sky, the sun go dark. Jesus, the son of man will come in the clouds with power and glory. Angels probably visibly will be gathering the Lord's people. When you see God's power coming like it never did before in an unmistakable manner, that is the sign that the end is here. The end is imminent. That's what we watch for the end. And in the middle of this display of power, he's going to, as the skies break down, natural disasters that we've never seen before, the sun of man, in a split second, he'll appear. He'll come in the clouds and everyone is going to see him and they're going to know it's him. There's not going to be a question, who is this guy? Is this him? Should I follow him? Maybe I can keep eating right now. No. It's like we're going to know it's him.Christ is going to return and the fullness of his glory and he will complete the work that he began. He'll send his angels to gather all of his people, all the elect. Those who have received him by grace through faith. We as Christians can look forward ... As we understand this, as he returns and he is going to gather in his elect, we can look forward to this day if it happens in our lifetime. Like my daughter Clara looks forward to Christmas and her birthday, we can look forward to it. It'll be a good day for us. If we're dead, when that day happens, our sleeping bodies will rise and be united with our resurrected souls for ever. This is the great hope of the people of God, the elect. For those who are in Jesus Christ. This is the end of the present time, the current order of creation before Jesus makes all things new unblemished by sin and the enemy.So in the first section, don't be deceived. In the second section, temple will be destroyed very soon. The third section, Christ will return in glory in the midst of an unmistakable display of God's power. And now the last section, this section is a little different than the first three. The first three are primarily predictions. Jesus is telling the disciples when these things will occur in response to his questions. This is more prescriptive. Jesus is telling them what to do.The first part of this section, it's verses 28 to 31. It said ... This is very important to understand this passage. It said specifically with regard to the destruction of the temple, not the end of times. So he tells them, learn the lesson from the fig tree, verse 28. "From the fig tree, learn its lesson. As soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves you know that summer is near. So also when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near at the very gates." When you see these things happening, army surrounding Jerusalem, the temple desecrated, you know that destruction of the temple and Jerusalem is right around the corner. It will happen. As sure as you know, summer will happen when the fig tree puts out its leaves. So in an agricultural society, they would've understood when the fig tree is putting out its leaves, summer is coming. When these things happen, be assured the temple Jerusalem is going to be destroyed. That's verse 28 to 31. Be ready. And Jesus assures them that this destruction of Jerusalem will happen before this generation passes away. In verse 31, he says, "Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place."So those who are alive right now, right then at the moment that Jesus is teaching, some of them will still be alive. That generation will be alive to witness the destruction of Jerusalem. He's given them the prescriptive order to be steady, be ready, flee when that time comes. They'll experience it or witness it. They need to be ready for it. And so this is crucial to the understanding of the text. And then in verse 32, he transitions to talk about the end of time again. His return. He says, "But concerning that day or that hour ..." Verse 32 literally begins, "But concerning that day or that hour ..." Another period of time, another moment in time. We're now speaking about the end of time Jesus second coming. He assures them, no one knows when that day or hour will come. Verse 32. "But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven nor the son, but only the father." No one knows when the end will come. Nobody knows when the day or hour will come. Nobody will be able to predict it or narrow it down to a time or a day. Nobody knows.Jesus even says that only the father knows when Christ will return. Not even the angels. Not even himself. And I don't know how that can be. This is a big question of the Trinity and just the recesses of how the Father, the son, the spirit relate. And we can't really answer that question right now. We take Jesus' word for it as the word of God, but we take now practical application. If Jesus doesn't know, then why are we in the church, in the world spending so much time trying to figure the timing and specific manner of this day out? If Jesus doesn't know, we're not going to figure it out. If we don't know the time, but Jesus gives orders ... We don't know the time, but Jesus, he gives us orders of prescription, a command for followers to await the last day, the day of his return by being steady and being ready. And that's what verses 33 to 37, that's how he closed the chapter."Be on guard. Keep awake for you. Do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey when he leaves his home and puts his servants in charge each with his work and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. Therefore stay awake For you do not know when the master of the house will come. In the evening or at midnight or when the rooster crows or in the morning. Lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you, I say to all, stay awake." So when you see that unmistakable display of God's power, you will know that the end is upon us. Jesus is saying, be ready for it. Don't be found sleeping. We need to expect and anticipate that moment without getting fixated upon the details of when it will be. The timing of it. When the end comes, when he does return, what does he want to see? He wants to see us awake and faithful. He needs to find us focused living by faith following him. Be ready for Christ's return by running the race steadily and faithfully. We don't chase the buzz about the end of time. We don't speculate about dates and predictions. We don't over-read into current events. Instead be ready. That's Christ's orders. That's his prescription. And what do we do day-to-day? We do what God is called us to do. We're about that task.He may return in a day or 10,000 years. Whenever he does, we need to be found ready. And so we live by faith, have our eyes fixed on Jesus, the only savior, our only king, the true prophet. We don't get drawn into the temptations of the world thinking, I can do this stuff and before I die or Christ comes, I can repent. We don't function like that. It could be today. We need to be ready. Furthermore, a lot of Christians are so obsessed with the end of times because they think that it'll wake people up to start living for Christ. That's why people have the signs out on the streets. They're trying to essentially scare people. Hey, the end is about to come. Repent. It's not all out of bad motives. They think if we know it's near, then it'll make us start living in the right way.But I asked if you knew that the end was in a year, would that change the way you live the next year? If you're a Christian in Christ today, it really shouldn't. You should be living this day, this moment, this year as if Christ is going to return in the very next moment. We're always being ready. We're always awake. We're not going to get focused on not getting caught sleeping, not scrolling around through TikTok shorts, YouTube media shorts, living just slovenly, slothful lives. We focus on the work that he's called us to. We say, "Lord, what would you have me do today?" And we seek faithfulness to and the power and blessing of his spirit as we try to do it for his glory. The return of Christ, it means both judgment and salvation. For those who are spiritually sleeping, those who are not following Christ, it will be a time of judgment and his wrath will crush you worse than the destruction of Jerusalem. And it's a destruction that you will not be able to flee. It will be worse than anything you could imagine.The good news is that what's amazing is that all you need to do to avoid such wrath is trust that Christ went to the cross to pay the penalty for your sin, your rebellion against him. The crucifixion scene of Mark in chapter 15 states that Christ faced darkness, an unnatural supernatural darkness in the middle of the day for three hours on the cross. Three hours of supernatural darkness as he drank the cup of God's wrath for all of the elect. After he drank that cup, drank the full wrath, the full punishment deserved, he shouted in victory and breathed his last.If you believe that he did that for you, you can be a saved and avoid the wrath of God at the last day. For those whose eyes and hearts are already fixed on Christ, who trust in him for the forgiveness of their sins, who follow him as Lord and Savior, this day will be a day of joyful salvation. It'll be like a great holiday, a holy day, the holiest of holy days that we look forward to where we will be gathered into the fullness of his glorified presence. Perhaps I dare say we should look forward to it like a small child looks forward to Christmas or a birthday for it will be, in a sense, a new birthday where we're gifted with our resurrected eternal bodies free from the influence of Satan and power of sin. If we pause like Clara to revel and meditate on the and gifts to come that's ahead on that day that are mentioned in Scripture, we would be willing to endure any hardship to get to that day. And so I ask, what kind of day is it going to be for you? Are you ready? Are you awake? Is your life marked by steadiness or steadfastness of faith that when Jesus does appear in an unmistakable fashion that you know have assurance that you'll be gathered by the angels or do you face death, darkness, wrath?Our world, even the church, it's guilty of speculating over the end of times, but Jesus says don't get caught up in it. Jesus says, "Watch, be steady, be ready. And in the meantime, may God, may he be glorified in all that you do." And I haven't talked too much about what that means practically speaking. What does it mean that God may be glorified as we're steady and ready one day at a time trusting him, awaiting his return with patience and self-control? I'm going to close by reading 12: 9 through 21 as this makes our daily tasks clear. This is what Christians do as we await Jesus's return.Romans 12: 9 through 21. "Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful and zeal but fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in tribulation. Be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own say. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink for by doing, you'll heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."Let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we just come to you with humility to say that in our impatience, in our faithlessness, in our fear of man, fear of physical pain, fear of death, Lord, we confuse and conflate your promises about your presence with us through trials, through tribulations. We confuse and conflate just the joy, the reward that's ahead of us with Christ's return. Lord, we just pray forgive us and Jesus and help us to leave here steadfast in faith, knowing that you will be with us, whatever is to come in this life individually in our lives or as greater society rises and falls. Lord, give us faith that when we step out to honor you, that you can use us to bring redemption. Bring your grace, bring your mercy to the brokenness around us. Let us never grow weary of doing good for your glory. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

Tyler Burns:Thank you. Thank you, Pastor.Wow, thank you. I've never had so many nice things said about me before. I don't know how to respond to that, but thank you. Thank you. As Pastor Andy mentioned, my name is Tyler. It's the first time that I'm up here without a job title at Mosaic to introduce myself with, so I guess I will just introduce myself as I'm a church planter in Salem, Massachusetts. And whenever I get to preach the word, it is always my honor and my privilege to be able to deliver God's word for all of us today.And before we get started, I have a confession. Even though I am 25% Irish, and even though my son's name is Killian and it's as Irish as it can be, I don't like St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Paddy's day by the way. I don't like St. Patrick's day, but I do like and I love the man, St. Patrick. And the reason why I don't like the day is because it kind of goes against who the man was. Many of us know who St. Patrick is as the patron saint of Ireland, which is true. But what many people don't know about St. Patrick is that how he was brought to Ireland was that he was actually kidnapped and brought into slavery and forced to be a shepherd there in slavery and was while in slavery that he found his faith in God and decided, "I am going to pursue preaching the gospel in this nation that does not know Jesus." And that took him hostage and captive. And he ultimately succeeded in his goal of bringing about cultural change in a society that kidnapped him and brought him into slavery.It's the kind of change that at the time would've seemed completely inconceivable beyond even a thought. How could a man love this nation so much that he would seek to bring about that kind of change? And that's the story we're going to be looking at today. We're going to be seeing a story in the Gospel of Mark of inconceivable change, change that no one could even think would ever happen. And so we are continuing in the book of Mark in chapter 11 through this series that we've entitled Kingdom Come. And we call it that because it's all about Jesus coming to establish His kingdom here on earth and calling us to be partners with Him in the establishment of his kingdom.We have a lot of texts to get through so we're going to jump in, we're going to go through and we're going to break it down section by section. We'll read a section, we will discuss it and then we'll continue going through. But before I begin, will you pray with me over the preaching of God's word?Heavenly Father, Lord, you are good and you are powerful. You have authority over all of creation and over all things. So Lord, we ask that you bring about change, you bring about change in our lives to be more and more like you. We ask that you bring about change in our city and in our world and in our culture to become a city and a place that loves you, that is known and characterized by our faith and trust in you. Use this time, use your word to teach us, to encourage us and to convict us where we need to be convicted, to go forth and walk in your authority as we usher in your kingdom here on earth. In Jesus' name, amen.So we'll be spending our time looking at three ideas in our section. We'll be in Mark chapter 11 verses 12 through 33. And the three ideas we're going to be looking at is first, deeply rooted in rebellion, now deeply rooted in faith, to walk in authority. So the first idea we're going to look at is deeply rooted in rebellion. This is Mark chapter 11, starting in verse 12 it says this, "On the following day when they came from Bethany, he, Jesus, was hungry. And seeing in the distance of fig tree and leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, 'May no one ever eat fruit from you again.' And the disciples heard it."We'll stop there for a second. If you're like me, you're like, "What are you doing, Jesus?" This is not what we think of when we think of Jesus, right? We don't think of him cursing a tree and saying, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And if you're like me, you're like, "Well, it says he was hungry." So he was probably just a little hangry. He probably was this word that my wife is not allowed to call me, cranky, when you haven't eaten in a little while. Is Jesus hangry? Is he cranky? Well, what's going on? The context is that he's coming from Bethany. Where is Bethany? It's just outside the city of Jerusalem. And Jesus was staying there for the high holidays.Last week, Pastor Jan preached on the verses in this chapter that came before that, it was the triumphal entry. It was Jesus riding in on a donkey. Palm leaves, people saying, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." And he gets into Jerusalem, and it took so long for him to get there that it was night by the time he gets there. So he goes back out to Bethany and he says, "I'm going to go in early now." So he leaves early, likely before breakfast, before time to eat. And so he's traveling and walking to Jerusalem and he comes across a tree with leaves and he goes and sees if there's any fruit. It says there's none because it's not the season for figs.One of the things that they don't teach you in seminary is that you have to understand how plants work. This is an unqualified area, but that is extremely necessary for pastors because what happens with fig trees is that they start by budding these little fruits, but they're really tiny, they're hard, but they are edible and they're actually a delicacy because they're so much smaller than a fig that you have to be lavish to be willing to eat them and not be patient to wait for larger fruit where you could get more. And how fig trees grow is that they first bud these small, tiny, hard fruits. Then the leaves come in at the same time that the full fruits come in.Well, there's leaves, but it says it's not time for figs. What's happening? This tree stood out to Jesus because it was likely the only tree with leaves on it. It was a fig tree masquerading as one with fruit. It was sending all signals to anyone who knew anything about fig trees. "There are fruit on this tree." Fruit for fig trees gathered August through October. This is the week of Passover, so it's roughly March, April. It's extremely early. There shouldn't be leaves, there shouldn't be figs. But the tree itself is saying, "I have leaves, therefore I have fruit." So Jesus has every right to expect that there is fruit on this tree. So he goes to this tree looking for fruit and he sees there is none and he curses it.Well, what we will quickly find out is that this fig tree, it's not actually the fig tree, it's a symbol for Jerusalem. It's a symbol for the people of God. Historically throughout scripture and the Jewish culture, fig trees were a symbol of the people of Israel. But one of the things that I love about the book of Mark is that the structure makes it completely clear. When you think of the fig tree, think of Jerusalem, think of the people of God.Again, the beginning of this chapter, Mark 1 through 11, Jesus is going into Jerusalem.Then we have our text of the fig tree. The next text we're about to see is Jesus in Jerusalem. Then the next text after that is Jesus with the fig tree again. And then after that, it's back with Jesus in Jerusalem. Jerusalem, fig tree. Jerusalem, fig tree. Jerusalem. When you think of the fig tree, think of God's people and Jerusalem.So what is the issue that is going on with Jerusalem that Jesus is showing through this example of the fig tree? We see it in Mark 11, verse 15. It says this, "And they came to Jerusalem and he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple. And he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons and would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And he was teaching them and saying to them, 'Is it not written my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations?' But you have made it a den of robbers. And the chief priests and scribes heard it and they were seeking a way to destroy him for they feared Him because all the crowd was astonished at His teaching. And when evening came, they went out of the city."So what is the issue we see here in Jerusalem? I would summarize it as they are deeply rooted in rebellion. As the fig tree was masquerading as one with fruit showing off its leaves saying, "Look, there's fruit here," and there was none, Jerusalem was doing the same. The people of God were doing the same. There were thousands of people in the city there to worship, there to sacrifice offerings to the Lord. For Passover. They ushered Jesus in on a donkey saying "Praise him." In verses 9 and 10, it says, "And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, 'Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our Father David. Hosanna in the highest!'." It seemed like they were worshiping Jesus. They masqueraded as having fruit. But upon closer expectation, there was no fruit at all. This house that was made to be a house of prayer, Jesus calls a den of robbers, it's a house of extortion.What is going on here? It talks about the money changes. Jesus overthrowing the tables of the money changers. Well, according to Jewish law, the people of Israel had to pay a tax to the temple. And so at the high holidays, they would collect this tax because it was the time for people to come from all over the world. And so they were like, "Now's a great time to collect the tax from people." But what is unclear in the text, but it was culturally clear, was that the money changers were like the exchange rate people. You travel abroad, you go to another nation, you need to exchange money to be able to pay the fees. And foreign coins were not accepted in the temple, so they would do an exchange, say, "Hey, you give me however much of your money that equals this much of ours" and you'll pay your tax.But the money changers were the ones who were responsible for establishing that exchange rate. Well, what does that mean? It means that they had all the power to extort people, said, "Oh sure, it's really 10 of this coin for one of ours. Well, we'll say it's a hundred and we'll make 10 times the money and we'll keep the profit for ourselves." It's in conjunction with those who sold pigeons, it says. Well, what is that? Pigeons were the offering of the poor. And so they're extorting specifically the poor as well. What they would do is they'd say, "Oh, the pigeon you brought, that's not clean enough. We have a pigeon for you that is clean enough. Here, we'll buy your pigeon and you can buy one of ours for 10 times the cost." And then they would turn around and sell that same pigeon to the next person in line and make a profit off of this.So Jesus prevents them from carrying anything in because they are making the House of God a marketplace of extortion. They were rebelling against the authority of Jesus, but they were rebelling against even the very nature of the temple itself, which is why Jesus calls him out saying, "This is supposed to be a house of prayer for all nations. All the nations are coming here now to worship, and you're using it for your own game. You're using it for selfish ambition."Even more than that, this was just the norm. This is not something that people were concerned about or worried about in any manner. See, what is the historical context of this is that this is the second building of the temple. This building of the temple was built about 50 years before these events of Jesus by a man named Herod the Great. What Herod the Great Biblically is most famous for is seeking to kill Jesus when the wise men are coming looking for him. That's Herod the Great.And historically, Historian Flavius Josephus has written the history of the Jewish people in Rome and he says that Herod built the temple for making his name great. He put his name on the building of the temple so that when the people from all over the world came to worship God at the temple, it was not just God's temple, it was Herod the Great's temple for God. He was great at marketing for building up his own name. But what it shows is again, they were rebelling against the authority of God and seeking their own benefit.And this way the money changers are working by charging more and exchanging rate, that's built after and modeled after the Roman tax collectors. The Roman tax collectors would do the same. They would say, "Oh, we need to bring in this much money for taxes. We'll charge you a little bit more and we could keep the profits for ourselves." And the people of Israel had been under Roman rule for about 90 years at this point. So what's happening is the people of God, the leaders of the temple said, "These Romans got it pretty good. They're successful. They're the ones with power. They're the ones with money. Maybe we should model this place of worship after them."And so the entire time that this temple has been built, the only temple that the people of God had known in their lifetime, this was how it functioned, this rebellion, this sin was so deeply rooted within their culture, they never knew anything but this level of extortion. It was just normal. It was expected. It was not an issue.Well, the question then comes how can change come when there is that level of rebellion against God? When it is so deeply rooted, how can there be change? Well, change is hard. I want to point out that this is actually even more crazy because this is the second time Jesus cleansed the temple. Jesus, many people know, the first... Does anyone know the first miracle that Jesus did the first thing he did to start his ministry? Shout it out. Water into wine. Everyone's favorite. Jesus threw a great party. He turned water into wine, kept the party going.The second thing Jesus did in his ministry, he cleansed the temple. What Jesus was setting his ministry on is he's like, "I'm going to celebrate things that are good and I'm going to change the way we worship God back to how it's supposed to be." And so the second thing that Jesus does in his ministry is cleansing the temple. And three years later, in the last week of his life before his crucifixion, he cleanses the temple again. And in the middle, there's this really important parable about a fig tree. It's interesting.In Luke 13 verses 6 through 9 it says this, "And he, Jesus, told this parable. 'A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, 'Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?' And he answered him, 'Sir, let it alone this year also until I dig it, dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good. But if not, you can cut it down'."See, Jesus went into the temple at the beginning and saw no fruit and cleansed it and said, "I want to establish. I'm teaching and preaching the way we are to worship God. It's not about money, it's not about wealth. It's not about individual prosperity. It's about submission to the authority of God and praying and worshiping Him." Three years later, patiently waiting for change, teaching, proclaiming the gospel, doing miracles. And while he's doing miracles, the people welcome him. "Great. Jesus, yes, come. Come into Jerusalem." When they think he's going to be a messiah that overthrows Rome, "Welcome. Come on Jesus. Come on into Jerusalem." And then when he reiterates, "No, the issue is worship. How are you worshiping God?" And he cleanses the temple again, the people are like, "Whoa, wait, wait, Jesus. This isn't what we thought you were going to do" because it was so deeply rooted in them, they didn't even realize they needed change.And so how does change come when we are deeply rooted in rebellion? It comes through faith. Maybe you're here today, maybe you're not a Christian and you're saying, "I am here to tell you that if you're not a Christian, you have been in rebellion from God. You have been rejecting the authority of God over your life." And I'm also here to tell you that you can change. Change can happen through faith in Jesus Christ. And I call and I urge you to change because the faith and trust in Jesus Christ is the only thing that allows us to have a life that is fruitful, a life that is meaningful, a life that is valuable, and because it brings greater honor and worship to him.And so we are called to change from that deep-seated rebellion into a deep-rooted faith. And this is verse 20 of our text. Verse 20 says this, "As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. And Peter remembered and said to him, 'Rabbi, look, the fig tree that you cursed has withered.' And Jesus answered him, 'Have faith in God. Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain be taken up and thrown into the sea and does not doubt in his heart, but believes what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours. And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone so that your father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses'."So they go back out to Bethany, they're headed back into Jerusalem and they see the tree and Peter's like, "Look, Jesus, you cursed it. I thought just there probably wouldn't be fruit anymore, but it's actually withering away to the roots" What is showing is that Jesus has the power to bring about complete change, not just change to the exterior, change to the facade, but change to the deepest of the roots of the tree, deepest to the roots of the problem. And Jesus' response is, "|How did that change happen? Have faith in God."In other parallel gospels, texts telling the same story as this, it talks about having the faith the size of a mustard seed, the smallest seed, the smallest amount of faith. This is not a statement about the magnitude of our faith. It's a statement about the genuineness of our faith. Jesus does encourage us to grow in faith. We are encouraged to grow in faith, but this is not him saying become more faithful. This is him saying, "Purify that faith. Make it a true faith, one that is not filled with doubt but of true belief." So much so that you could say to this mountain, "Be cast into the sea" and it will.Now, this section contains two of the most taken out of context verses in scripture, the casting of the mountain into the sea. And the, "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe you have received it and it will be yours." These two verses are so often taken out of context. The second one, I didn't realize this, but I have a Bible software that I do my studying and note-taking on. There was a dotted line under that verse. I was like, "I've never seen that before. What is that?" And it tells you how many people that have this software highlight that verse. I've never noticed it before, but that was one of the most highlighted verses in all of scripture by people using the software. It just shows how prominent of a verse it is, but also how much it is taken out of context. Because when Jesus says, say to this mountain, he's not making a statement that we are called to make mountains change so we can move landscapes.If you path the trajectory of their journey from Bethany to Jerusalem, the only mountain within view is the mount of Jerusalem itself. So when Jesus says, "You could say to this mountain, be cast into the sea," he's not talking about physical earthly changes. He's saying, "You can say to this deep-rooted systemic rebellion against the worship of God and you could say, cast it into the sea and it will be done." Move the rebellion, the rejection, the lack of worship of God and cast it out and it will be done if you believe that it will be done. And don't doubt.And verse 25 is not a clause that's required, but it's a clarification about how we are to pray when it says, "And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone so that your father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses." This idea is saying that it's when you're in the right frame of heart, the right posture of hear., it's not that, "Okay, I forgive people so therefore I can ask for what I want and I get what I want." No, it's not about asking for what we want, telling God to move what we want. No. It's about having a frame of heart that is focused on forgiveness, that is focused on forgiveness of others, grace and mercy towards others, and being forgiven yourself, seeking for forgiveness for your own sins, having the humility to recognize our own faults and saying, "God, I'm trying to align my will with yours, align my will with yours. Help me know what you desire and that's what I'm going to ask for." And no matter how crazy that seems, God is able to do it.So I have to ask, where are you in rebellion to Jesus? Again, I already said, if you're not a Christian, you are in rebellion. If you have not accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are in rebellion to Him. And I urge you to come to Him. Have faith in Him. Ask him to move that mountain of rebellion in your life and trust in him because He willingly, lovingly and joyfully went to the cross for you, to die to pay that penalty of sins for you, to forgive you of your rebellion. Maybe you're a Christian here that is still in rebellion. You have a stronghold, a sin that has been permeating within you, that is in rebellion to God. Are you willing to go to Jesus? Ask Him to move that mountain of rebellion, forgive you and heal you of your sins.Sometimes there's sin in our lives that you might be saying, "Tyler, you don't know how long this has been there. You don't know how long I have been under the oppression of the sin. And every time temptation comes, I try, but I fail." Do you go to Jesus and ask him and believe without a doubt that He has power over that sin, has power to save you from that you are not bound to that sin anymore? Roman 6:12 says this, "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as an instrument for unrighteousness, but present yourself to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness, for sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law, but under grace."Don't let sin reign in your mortal body, Christian. Don't let sin exist there. So I know none of us are perfect. There's always grace, there's always forgiveness. Sure. But we are called to live like Christ who was perfect. We are given authority over sin because it has no dominion. We can refuse temptation. Do you actually believe that when temptation comes, you can say to it, "No, you have no authority over me. You have no power here"? And it's not a sheepish fear of when is temptation going to come next, but it's a confident boldness saying, "Jesus has defeated you, sin. Jesus has already paid my penalty for you." I can say no. I can refuse to sin and live a life of holy worship and submission to God.Wherever that sin is in your life, I urge you say to it, "move." Say to it, "Mountain, be gone, because Jesus has paid the penalty for you on the cross. You have no authority over me. And it says, "And then live in it. Believe it will be done for you." Live in that assurance that Jesus has forgiven you and Jesus has paid the penalty and freed you from that sin. It has no power over you anymore.But why this text is my favorite in Mark... One of my favorites in Mark. I love the book of Mark. Mark's my favorite book of the New Testament. But why I love this text so much in particular, it's because Jesus isn't just talking about individuals. Jesus is addressing societal rebellion as well. Yes, society is made up of individuals. And in order to change a society, individuals must change. Sure. But Jesus is primarily talking about a change that affects an entire culture saying Jerusalem, this establishment, this city where rebellion is so deep-rooted, you don't even think to ask questions. That can be changed.So I ask you, church, do you believe the systematic rebellion of Boston, of Brookline can change? I believe without a doubt that God seeks and desires and will establish his kingdom here in Brookline, here in Boston. And that is not a lofty hope of one day in the future most likely after Jesus's second coming. No. It's a reality that I believe is possible now.I know Pastor Jan, I know Pastor Andy feel that calling, feel that assurance, but I'm asking church, do you believe that? Is that even a goal within your mind? I know it seems hard. We look at the world around us and it is broken. It is fallen. It's hard to imagine a city that loves Jesus, is characterized by faith in Jesus Christ, but that should be one of our goals. That should be our aim. Why? Because Jesus came to establish his kingdom and has called us to be deeply rooted in that faith in Him and to live in that faith.But part of why I'm up here today is because I also believe that God is going to change the nature of Salem. Now, Pastor Andy mentioned briefly about Salem and I want to dig into it just very quickly. Salem is known first and foremost for witchcraft. Not for cute little pointed hats, Halloween witches, but for actual practice of casting spells and curses and witchcraft. The international headquarters for witches is in Salem. I didn't realize this. Pastor Jan mentioned that he met missionaries or heard of missionaries from Brazil who said the witches in Brazil are sent to Salem, Massachusetts for training and then they go back to Brazil to do their evil work.The other thing Salem is known for is for the international headquarters of the temple of Satan. Oh, boy. Fun place, yeah. It's where they have brought in the worship of not just witchcraft but of Satan himself and said, "This is what we are establishing our identity on." They have built their tourism, they have built their finances like the Pharisees, selfishly, on wrongful worship, on worship of witchcraft and of Satan. It's a place that is known for old church buildings with no one in them.But I am here to tell you, I know God's going to change that. And that's the call he has put on my heart and on my life and that's why I'm here today. And I can tell you it's not because of me, it's because of Him. And it's a work that he is already doing in the city independent of me.There's a church, a First Baptist Church of Salem. Pray for them. Pray for Pastor Stephen and his wife Sarah. They're doing faithful work there. They're having three baptisms this Thursday. Praise God for that. The church is growing from three years ago, from 20 people to now about 50 people by conversion. Not by Christians coming and moving from other areas, but by people hearing the gospel and being saved and their lives being changed. And it's people that never thought it was possible. It's people that have been practicing witchcraft their whole life and then said, "I just knew it wasn't good. I needed a way out." And they come to church for the first time in their lives and they commit their lives to Christ. It's people that have been in jail their entire lives coming to Him. It's people that have never walked in a church and said, "I need something different. I'm going in" and God changes them.It's on my heart to also mention pray for a woman named Lauren. She's practicing witchcraft for 20 years. She reached out to Pastor Stephen and said, "Pray for me. I need to get out. I don't know how. I'm trying." She's been trying for a month to come to church, but there are spiritual barriers preventing her from coming. And as they've been meeting and praying for her, they're tearing down those barriers one by one. And now family's coming in and saying, "You don't need church. You need therapy." Therapy is good. There's a purpose and a place for therapy. Nothing against therapy. If you need it, praise God, it's a tool to use. But the answer is God. The answer that she needs is Jesus to save her from her sin. And so pray for Lauren. Pray that God will bring her to saving faith in Him.This coming Thursday, the same day as the baptism, we're tearing down a satanic altar in someone's home. Not like a cute little toy, like something that they actually offer sacrifice. This is the culture of Salem. The school mascots are witches. The school logos are witches. No one can imagine a city without witchcraft and Satan in it. But I can.Something I didn't mention about First Baptist Church, they were the first church to send missionaries from the United States. They were the first church to establish in 1804 that sent missionaries abroad. I can see a city back with that. I can see a city established built on faith, trusting in God, submitting to his authority, being characterized by a love and trust of Jesus Christ. And it's not because of anything in me, it's because I'm called to walk in the authority of Jesus Christ. And that's the last idea here.We are called to walk in authority of Jesus. And this is in verse 27 it says, "And they came again to Jerusalem. As he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and elders came to him and they said to him, 'By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?' Jesus said to them, 'I will ask you one question, answer me and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? Answer me.' And they discussed it with one another saying, 'If we say from heaven,' he will say, 'Why then did you not believe him? But shall we say from man?' They were afraid of the people for they all held that John really was a prophet. So they answered Jesus, 'We do not know.' And Jesus said to them, 'Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things'."See, it was so clear that the Pharisees knew. Their first response was, "Are we supposed to say from heaven? He's going to challenge our authority. Our reputation will be at stake if we say that Jesus and John's authority was of God and was of heaven. But we can't say it was from man either because we know that's wrong and we're fearful of people." See, they were seeking their own authority.Don't walk in your own authority. Don't walk in your own power or your own might. Walk in the authority of Jesus who went back to Jerusalem when it said that they were seeking a way to destroy Him. Jesus knew walking back to Jerusalem very well would mean his death, even his death on a cross. He knew it. But he also knew the authority he was walking in, and he was not afraid to do it. And he did it willingly and joyfully.I have two more verses I just want to share with us in Zechariah chapter 4 verse 6 Let me see if I... I didn't mark it. Let me see if I could find it. There it is. Zechariah chapter 4 verse 6, prophecy about the building of the temple. So very relevant to our text here today. It says, "Then he said to me, 'This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel. Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit,' says the Lord of hosts. 'Who are you, oh great mountain? Before Zerubbabel, you shall become a plain. And he shall bring forward the top stone among shouts of 'Grace! Grace to it!'."They're seeking to build the temple. They're wondering how is it going to be possible? And God says to them, "It's not by power. It's not by might. It's by my spirit that this will be done." And when we say to walk in authority, I'm not saying to walk in power. I'm not saying to walk in might. I'm saying to walk by the spirit of the living God, knowing that wherever you go, wherever you walk, if you are a faithful Christian, you are bringing the spirit of God with you with his authority, with his power that can bring about real lasting change.And lastly, the last thing I would like to read is Matthew 28:18 through 20, the great commission. Many of us know this. It says, "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 am with you always to the end of the age'."Jesus has all authority over everything. And what does he do without authority? He tells us to go. He tells us to go in his authority to bring the gospel to all nations, baptize, make disciples and teaching them to observe His commandments, to show what true worship of the one living God really is.I urge you, church, today, be rooted in faith. Know that change is possible and walk in the authority of Jesus Christ bringing His spirit with you wherever you go. Let's pray.Heavenly Father, Lord, we love you. We know you and we trust you. Lord, give us faith to know that you will change us. You will remove sin from our lives and sanctify us, make us more like you. But help us to also know and believe that you are bringing your kingdom here, you are establishing your ways on earth. Give us faith and help our unbelief Lord. Help us to walk in authority, have eyes to see your will and know what you are calling us to do, how we can each be a part of your kingdom, whether in Brookline, whether in Salem, whether in any other part of the world. Give us clear directives, give us clear calling to walk in your might and establish your kingdom here. In Jesus' name, amen.

Tyler Burns:Thank you. Thank you, Pastor.Wow, thank you. I've never had so many nice things said about me before. I don't know how to respond to that, but thank you. Thank you. As Pastor Andy mentioned, my name is Tyler. It's the first time that I'm up here without a job title at Mosaic to introduce myself with, so I guess I will just introduce myself as I'm a church planter in Salem, Massachusetts. And whenever I get to preach the word, it is always my honor and my privilege to be able to deliver God's word for all of us today.And before we get started, I have a confession. Even though I am 25% Irish, and even though my son's name is Killian and it's as Irish as it can be, I don't like St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Paddy's day by the way. I don't like St. Patrick's day, but I do like and I love the man, St. Patrick. And the reason why I don't like the day is because it kind of goes against who the man was. Many of us know who St. Patrick is as the patron saint of Ireland, which is true. But what many people don't know about St. Patrick is that how he was brought to Ireland was that he was actually kidnapped and brought into slavery and forced to be a shepherd there in slavery and was while in slavery that he found his faith in God and decided, "I am going to pursue preaching the gospel in this nation that does not know Jesus." And that took him hostage and captive. And he ultimately succeeded in his goal of bringing about cultural change in a society that kidnapped him and brought him into slavery.It's the kind of change that at the time would've seemed completely inconceivable beyond even a thought. How could a man love this nation so much that he would seek to bring about that kind of change? And that's the story we're going to be looking at today. We're going to be seeing a story in the Gospel of Mark of inconceivable change, change that no one could even think would ever happen. And so we are continuing in the book of Mark in chapter 11 through this series that we've entitled Kingdom Come. And we call it that because it's all about Jesus coming to establish His kingdom here on earth and calling us to be partners with Him in the establishment of his kingdom.We have a lot of texts to get through so we're going to jump in, we're going to go through and we're going to break it down section by section. We'll read a section, we will discuss it and then we'll continue going through. But before I begin, will you pray with me over the preaching of God's word?Heavenly Father, Lord, you are good and you are powerful. You have authority over all of creation and over all things. So Lord, we ask that you bring about change, you bring about change in our lives to be more and more like you. We ask that you bring about change in our city and in our world and in our culture to become a city and a place that loves you, that is known and characterized by our faith and trust in you. Use this time, use your word to teach us, to encourage us and to convict us where we need to be convicted, to go forth and walk in your authority as we usher in your kingdom here on earth. In Jesus' name, amen.So we'll be spending our time looking at three ideas in our section. We'll be in Mark chapter 11 verses 12 through 33. And the three ideas we're going to be looking at is first, deeply rooted in rebellion, now deeply rooted in faith, to walk in authority. So the first idea we're going to look at is deeply rooted in rebellion. This is Mark chapter 11, starting in verse 12 it says this, "On the following day when they came from Bethany, he, Jesus, was hungry. And seeing in the distance of fig tree and leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, 'May no one ever eat fruit from you again.' And the disciples heard it."We'll stop there for a second. If you're like me, you're like, "What are you doing, Jesus?" This is not what we think of when we think of Jesus, right? We don't think of him cursing a tree and saying, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And if you're like me, you're like, "Well, it says he was hungry." So he was probably just a little hangry. He probably was this word that my wife is not allowed to call me, cranky, when you haven't eaten in a little while. Is Jesus hangry? Is he cranky? Well, what's going on? The context is that he's coming from Bethany. Where is Bethany? It's just outside the city of Jerusalem. And Jesus was staying there for the high holidays.Last week, Pastor Jan preached on the verses in this chapter that came before that, it was the triumphal entry. It was Jesus riding in on a donkey. Palm leaves, people saying, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." And he gets into Jerusalem, and it took so long for him to get there that it was night by the time he gets there. So he goes back out to Bethany and he says, "I'm going to go in early now." So he leaves early, likely before breakfast, before time to eat. And so he's traveling and walking to Jerusalem and he comes across a tree with leaves and he goes and sees if there's any fruit. It says there's none because it's not the season for figs.One of the things that they don't teach you in seminary is that you have to understand how plants work. This is an unqualified area, but that is extremely necessary for pastors because what happens with fig trees is that they start by budding these little fruits, but they're really tiny, they're hard, but they are edible and they're actually a delicacy because they're so much smaller than a fig that you have to be lavish to be willing to eat them and not be patient to wait for larger fruit where you could get more. And how fig trees grow is that they first bud these small, tiny, hard fruits. Then the leaves come in at the same time that the full fruits come in.Well, there's leaves, but it says it's not time for figs. What's happening? This tree stood out to Jesus because it was likely the only tree with leaves on it. It was a fig tree masquerading as one with fruit. It was sending all signals to anyone who knew anything about fig trees. "There are fruit on this tree." Fruit for fig trees gathered August through October. This is the week of Passover, so it's roughly March, April. It's extremely early. There shouldn't be leaves, there shouldn't be figs. But the tree itself is saying, "I have leaves, therefore I have fruit." So Jesus has every right to expect that there is fruit on this tree. So he goes to this tree looking for fruit and he sees there is none and he curses it.Well, what we will quickly find out is that this fig tree, it's not actually the fig tree, it's a symbol for Jerusalem. It's a symbol for the people of God. Historically throughout scripture and the Jewish culture, fig trees were a symbol of the people of Israel. But one of the things that I love about the book of Mark is that the structure makes it completely clear. When you think of the fig tree, think of Jerusalem, think of the people of God.Again, the beginning of this chapter, Mark 1 through 11, Jesus is going into Jerusalem.Then we have our text of the fig tree. The next text we're about to see is Jesus in Jerusalem. Then the next text after that is Jesus with the fig tree again. And then after that, it's back with Jesus in Jerusalem. Jerusalem, fig tree. Jerusalem, fig tree. Jerusalem. When you think of the fig tree, think of God's people and Jerusalem.So what is the issue that is going on with Jerusalem that Jesus is showing through this example of the fig tree? We see it in Mark 11, verse 15. It says this, "And they came to Jerusalem and he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple. And he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons and would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And he was teaching them and saying to them, 'Is it not written my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations?' But you have made it a den of robbers. And the chief priests and scribes heard it and they were seeking a way to destroy him for they feared Him because all the crowd was astonished at His teaching. And when evening came, they went out of the city."So what is the issue we see here in Jerusalem? I would summarize it as they are deeply rooted in rebellion. As the fig tree was masquerading as one with fruit showing off its leaves saying, "Look, there's fruit here," and there was none, Jerusalem was doing the same. The people of God were doing the same. There were thousands of people in the city there to worship, there to sacrifice offerings to the Lord. For Passover. They ushered Jesus in on a donkey saying "Praise him." In verses 9 and 10, it says, "And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, 'Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our Father David. Hosanna in the highest!'." It seemed like they were worshiping Jesus. They masqueraded as having fruit. But upon closer expectation, there was no fruit at all. This house that was made to be a house of prayer, Jesus calls a den of robbers, it's a house of extortion.What is going on here? It talks about the money changes. Jesus overthrowing the tables of the money changers. Well, according to Jewish law, the people of Israel had to pay a tax to the temple. And so at the high holidays, they would collect this tax because it was the time for people to come from all over the world. And so they were like, "Now's a great time to collect the tax from people." But what is unclear in the text, but it was culturally clear, was that the money changers were like the exchange rate people. You travel abroad, you go to another nation, you need to exchange money to be able to pay the fees. And foreign coins were not accepted in the temple, so they would do an exchange, say, "Hey, you give me however much of your money that equals this much of ours" and you'll pay your tax.But the money changers were the ones who were responsible for establishing that exchange rate. Well, what does that mean? It means that they had all the power to extort people, said, "Oh sure, it's really 10 of this coin for one of ours. Well, we'll say it's a hundred and we'll make 10 times the money and we'll keep the profit for ourselves." It's in conjunction with those who sold pigeons, it says. Well, what is that? Pigeons were the offering of the poor. And so they're extorting specifically the poor as well. What they would do is they'd say, "Oh, the pigeon you brought, that's not clean enough. We have a pigeon for you that is clean enough. Here, we'll buy your pigeon and you can buy one of ours for 10 times the cost." And then they would turn around and sell that same pigeon to the next person in line and make a profit off of this.So Jesus prevents them from carrying anything in because they are making the House of God a marketplace of extortion. They were rebelling against the authority of Jesus, but they were rebelling against even the very nature of the temple itself, which is why Jesus calls him out saying, "This is supposed to be a house of prayer for all nations. All the nations are coming here now to worship, and you're using it for your own game. You're using it for selfish ambition."Even more than that, this was just the norm. This is not something that people were concerned about or worried about in any manner. See, what is the historical context of this is that this is the second building of the temple. This building of the temple was built about 50 years before these events of Jesus by a man named Herod the Great. What Herod the Great Biblically is most famous for is seeking to kill Jesus when the wise men are coming looking for him. That's Herod the Great.And historically, Historian Flavius Josephus has written the history of the Jewish people in Rome and he says that Herod built the temple for making his name great. He put his name on the building of the temple so that when the people from all over the world came to worship God at the temple, it was not just God's temple, it was Herod the Great's temple for God. He was great at marketing for building up his own name. But what it shows is again, they were rebelling against the authority of God and seeking their own benefit.And this way the money changers are working by charging more and exchanging rate, that's built after and modeled after the Roman tax collectors. The Roman tax collectors would do the same. They would say, "Oh, we need to bring in this much money for taxes. We'll charge you a little bit more and we could keep the profits for ourselves." And the people of Israel had been under Roman rule for about 90 years at this point. So what's happening is the people of God, the leaders of the temple said, "These Romans got it pretty good. They're successful. They're the ones with power. They're the ones with money. Maybe we should model this place of worship after them."And so the entire time that this temple has been built, the only temple that the people of God had known in their lifetime, this was how it functioned, this rebellion, this sin was so deeply rooted within their culture, they never knew anything but this level of extortion. It was just normal. It was expected. It was not an issue.Well, the question then comes how can change come when there is that level of rebellion against God? When it is so deeply rooted, how can there be change? Well, change is hard. I want to point out that this is actually even more crazy because this is the second time Jesus cleansed the temple. Jesus, many people know, the first... Does anyone know the first miracle that Jesus did the first thing he did to start his ministry? Shout it out. Water into wine. Everyone's favorite. Jesus threw a great party. He turned water into wine, kept the party going.The second thing Jesus did in his ministry, he cleansed the temple. What Jesus was setting his ministry on is he's like, "I'm going to celebrate things that are good and I'm going to change the way we worship God back to how it's supposed to be." And so the second thing that Jesus does in his ministry is cleansing the temple. And three years later, in the last week of his life before his crucifixion, he cleanses the temple again. And in the middle, there's this really important parable about a fig tree. It's interesting.In Luke 13 verses 6 through 9 it says this, "And he, Jesus, told this parable. 'A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, 'Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?' And he answered him, 'Sir, let it alone this year also until I dig it, dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good. But if not, you can cut it down'."See, Jesus went into the temple at the beginning and saw no fruit and cleansed it and said, "I want to establish. I'm teaching and preaching the way we are to worship God. It's not about money, it's not about wealth. It's not about individual prosperity. It's about submission to the authority of God and praying and worshiping Him." Three years later, patiently waiting for change, teaching, proclaiming the gospel, doing miracles. And while he's doing miracles, the people welcome him. "Great. Jesus, yes, come. Come into Jerusalem." When they think he's going to be a messiah that overthrows Rome, "Welcome. Come on Jesus. Come on into Jerusalem." And then when he reiterates, "No, the issue is worship. How are you worshiping God?" And he cleanses the temple again, the people are like, "Whoa, wait, wait, Jesus. This isn't what we thought you were going to do" because it was so deeply rooted in them, they didn't even realize they needed change.And so how does change come when we are deeply rooted in rebellion? It comes through faith. Maybe you're here today, maybe you're not a Christian and you're saying, "I am here to tell you that if you're not a Christian, you have been in rebellion from God. You have been rejecting the authority of God over your life." And I'm also here to tell you that you can change. Change can happen through faith in Jesus Christ. And I call and I urge you to change because the faith and trust in Jesus Christ is the only thing that allows us to have a life that is fruitful, a life that is meaningful, a life that is valuable, and because it brings greater honor and worship to him.And so we are called to change from that deep-seated rebellion into a deep-rooted faith. And this is verse 20 of our text. Verse 20 says this, "As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. And Peter remembered and said to him, 'Rabbi, look, the fig tree that you cursed has withered.' And Jesus answered him, 'Have faith in God. Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain be taken up and thrown into the sea and does not doubt in his heart, but believes what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours. And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone so that your father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses'."So they go back out to Bethany, they're headed back into Jerusalem and they see the tree and Peter's like, "Look, Jesus, you cursed it. I thought just there probably wouldn't be fruit anymore, but it's actually withering away to the roots" What is showing is that Jesus has the power to bring about complete change, not just change to the exterior, change to the facade, but change to the deepest of the roots of the tree, deepest to the roots of the problem. And Jesus' response is, "|How did that change happen? Have faith in God."In other parallel gospels, texts telling the same story as this, it talks about having the faith the size of a mustard seed, the smallest seed, the smallest amount of faith. This is not a statement about the magnitude of our faith. It's a statement about the genuineness of our faith. Jesus does encourage us to grow in faith. We are encouraged to grow in faith, but this is not him saying become more faithful. This is him saying, "Purify that faith. Make it a true faith, one that is not filled with doubt but of true belief." So much so that you could say to this mountain, "Be cast into the sea" and it will.Now, this section contains two of the most taken out of context verses in scripture, the casting of the mountain into the sea. And the, "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe you have received it and it will be yours." These two verses are so often taken out of context. The second one, I didn't realize this, but I have a Bible software that I do my studying and note-taking on. There was a dotted line under that verse. I was like, "I've never seen that before. What is that?" And it tells you how many people that have this software highlight that verse. I've never noticed it before, but that was one of the most highlighted verses in all of scripture by people using the software. It just shows how prominent of a verse it is, but also how much it is taken out of context. Because when Jesus says, say to this mountain, he's not making a statement that we are called to make mountains change so we can move landscapes.If you path the trajectory of their journey from Bethany to Jerusalem, the only mountain within view is the mount of Jerusalem itself. So when Jesus says, "You could say to this mountain, be cast into the sea," he's not talking about physical earthly changes. He's saying, "You can say to this deep-rooted systemic rebellion against the worship of God and you could say, cast it into the sea and it will be done." Move the rebellion, the rejection, the lack of worship of God and cast it out and it will be done if you believe that it will be done. And don't doubt.And verse 25 is not a clause that's required, but it's a clarification about how we are to pray when it says, "And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone so that your father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses." This idea is saying that it's when you're in the right frame of heart, the right posture of hear., it's not that, "Okay, I forgive people so therefore I can ask for what I want and I get what I want." No, it's not about asking for what we want, telling God to move what we want. No. It's about having a frame of heart that is focused on forgiveness, that is focused on forgiveness of others, grace and mercy towards others, and being forgiven yourself, seeking for forgiveness for your own sins, having the humility to recognize our own faults and saying, "God, I'm trying to align my will with yours, align my will with yours. Help me know what you desire and that's what I'm going to ask for." And no matter how crazy that seems, God is able to do it.So I have to ask, where are you in rebellion to Jesus? Again, I already said, if you're not a Christian, you are in rebellion. If you have not accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are in rebellion to Him. And I urge you to come to Him. Have faith in Him. Ask him to move that mountain of rebellion in your life and trust in him because He willingly, lovingly and joyfully went to the cross for you, to die to pay that penalty of sins for you, to forgive you of your rebellion. Maybe you're a Christian here that is still in rebellion. You have a stronghold, a sin that has been permeating within you, that is in rebellion to God. Are you willing to go to Jesus? Ask Him to move that mountain of rebellion, forgive you and heal you of your sins.Sometimes there's sin in our lives that you might be saying, "Tyler, you don't know how long this has been there. You don't know how long I have been under the oppression of the sin. And every time temptation comes, I try, but I fail." Do you go to Jesus and ask him and believe without a doubt that He has power over that sin, has power to save you from that you are not bound to that sin anymore? Roman 6:12 says this, "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as an instrument for unrighteousness, but present yourself to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness, for sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law, but under grace."Don't let sin reign in your mortal body, Christian. Don't let sin exist there. So I know none of us are perfect. There's always grace, there's always forgiveness. Sure. But we are called to live like Christ who was perfect. We are given authority over sin because it has no dominion. We can refuse temptation. Do you actually believe that when temptation comes, you can say to it, "No, you have no authority over me. You have no power here"? And it's not a sheepish fear of when is temptation going to come next, but it's a confident boldness saying, "Jesus has defeated you, sin. Jesus has already paid my penalty for you." I can say no. I can refuse to sin and live a life of holy worship and submission to God.Wherever that sin is in your life, I urge you say to it, "move." Say to it, "Mountain, be gone, because Jesus has paid the penalty for you on the cross. You have no authority over me. And it says, "And then live in it. Believe it will be done for you." Live in that assurance that Jesus has forgiven you and Jesus has paid the penalty and freed you from that sin. It has no power over you anymore.But why this text is my favorite in Mark... One of my favorites in Mark. I love the book of Mark. Mark's my favorite book of the New Testament. But why I love this text so much in particular, it's because Jesus isn't just talking about individuals. Jesus is addressing societal rebellion as well. Yes, society is made up of individuals. And in order to change a society, individuals must change. Sure. But Jesus is primarily talking about a change that affects an entire culture saying Jerusalem, this establishment, this city where rebellion is so deep-rooted, you don't even think to ask questions. That can be changed.So I ask you, church, do you believe the systematic rebellion of Boston, of Brookline can change? I believe without a doubt that God seeks and desires and will establish his kingdom here in Brookline, here in Boston. And that is not a lofty hope of one day in the future most likely after Jesus's second coming. No. It's a reality that I believe is possible now.I know Pastor Jan, I know Pastor Andy feel that calling, feel that assurance, but I'm asking church, do you believe that? Is that even a goal within your mind? I know it seems hard. We look at the world around us and it is broken. It is fallen. It's hard to imagine a city that loves Jesus, is characterized by faith in Jesus Christ, but that should be one of our goals. That should be our aim. Why? Because Jesus came to establish his kingdom and has called us to be deeply rooted in that faith in Him and to live in that faith.But part of why I'm up here today is because I also believe that God is going to change the nature of Salem. Now, Pastor Andy mentioned briefly about Salem and I want to dig into it just very quickly. Salem is known first and foremost for witchcraft. Not for cute little pointed hats, Halloween witches, but for actual practice of casting spells and curses and witchcraft. The international headquarters for witches is in Salem. I didn't realize this. Pastor Jan mentioned that he met missionaries or heard of missionaries from Brazil who said the witches in Brazil are sent to Salem, Massachusetts for training and then they go back to Brazil to do their evil work.The other thing Salem is known for is for the international headquarters of the temple of Satan. Oh, boy. Fun place, yeah. It's where they have brought in the worship of not just witchcraft but of Satan himself and said, "This is what we are establishing our identity on." They have built their tourism, they have built their finances like the Pharisees, selfishly, on wrongful worship, on worship of witchcraft and of Satan. It's a place that is known for old church buildings with no one in them.But I am here to tell you, I know God's going to change that. And that's the call he has put on my heart and on my life and that's why I'm here today. And I can tell you it's not because of me, it's because of Him. And it's a work that he is already doing in the city independent of me.There's a church, a First Baptist Church of Salem. Pray for them. Pray for Pastor Stephen and his wife Sarah. They're doing faithful work there. They're having three baptisms this Thursday. Praise God for that. The church is growing from three years ago, from 20 people to now about 50 people by conversion. Not by Christians coming and moving from other areas, but by people hearing the gospel and being saved and their lives being changed. And it's people that never thought it was possible. It's people that have been practicing witchcraft their whole life and then said, "I just knew it wasn't good. I needed a way out." And they come to church for the first time in their lives and they commit their lives to Christ. It's people that have been in jail their entire lives coming to Him. It's people that have never walked in a church and said, "I need something different. I'm going in" and God changes them.It's on my heart to also mention pray for a woman named Lauren. She's practicing witchcraft for 20 years. She reached out to Pastor Stephen and said, "Pray for me. I need to get out. I don't know how. I'm trying." She's been trying for a month to come to church, but there are spiritual barriers preventing her from coming. And as they've been meeting and praying for her, they're tearing down those barriers one by one. And now family's coming in and saying, "You don't need church. You need therapy." Therapy is good. There's a purpose and a place for therapy. Nothing against therapy. If you need it, praise God, it's a tool to use. But the answer is God. The answer that she needs is Jesus to save her from her sin. And so pray for Lauren. Pray that God will bring her to saving faith in Him.This coming Thursday, the same day as the baptism, we're tearing down a satanic altar in someone's home. Not like a cute little toy, like something that they actually offer sacrifice. This is the culture of Salem. The school mascots are witches. The school logos are witches. No one can imagine a city without witchcraft and Satan in it. But I can.Something I didn't mention about First Baptist Church, they were the first church to send missionaries from the United States. They were the first church to establish in 1804 that sent missionaries abroad. I can see a city back with that. I can see a city established built on faith, trusting in God, submitting to his authority, being characterized by a love and trust of Jesus Christ. And it's not because of anything in me, it's because I'm called to walk in the authority of Jesus Christ. And that's the last idea here.We are called to walk in authority of Jesus. And this is in verse 27 it says, "And they came again to Jerusalem. As he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and elders came to him and they said to him, 'By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?' Jesus said to them, 'I will ask you one question, answer me and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? Answer me.' And they discussed it with one another saying, 'If we say from heaven,' he will say, 'Why then did you not believe him? But shall we say from man?' They were afraid of the people for they all held that John really was a prophet. So they answered Jesus, 'We do not know.' And Jesus said to them, 'Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things'."See, it was so clear that the Pharisees knew. Their first response was, "Are we supposed to say from heaven? He's going to challenge our authority. Our reputation will be at stake if we say that Jesus and John's authority was of God and was of heaven. But we can't say it was from man either because we know that's wrong and we're fearful of people." See, they were seeking their own authority.Don't walk in your own authority. Don't walk in your own power or your own might. Walk in the authority of Jesus who went back to Jerusalem when it said that they were seeking a way to destroy Him. Jesus knew walking back to Jerusalem very well would mean his death, even his death on a cross. He knew it. But he also knew the authority he was walking in, and he was not afraid to do it. And he did it willingly and joyfully.I have two more verses I just want to share with us in Zechariah chapter 4 verse 6 Let me see if I... I didn't mark it. Let me see if I could find it. There it is. Zechariah chapter 4 verse 6, prophecy about the building of the temple. So very relevant to our text here today. It says, "Then he said to me, 'This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel. Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit,' says the Lord of hosts. 'Who are you, oh great mountain? Before Zerubbabel, you shall become a plain. And he shall bring forward the top stone among shouts of 'Grace! Grace to it!'."They're seeking to build the temple. They're wondering how is it going to be possible? And God says to them, "It's not by power. It's not by might. It's by my spirit that this will be done." And when we say to walk in authority, I'm not saying to walk in power. I'm not saying to walk in might. I'm saying to walk by the spirit of the living God, knowing that wherever you go, wherever you walk, if you are a faithful Christian, you are bringing the spirit of God with you with his authority, with his power that can bring about real lasting change.And lastly, the last thing I would like to read is Matthew 28:18 through 20, the great commission. Many of us know this. It says, "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 am with you always to the end of the age'."Jesus has all authority over everything. And what does he do without authority? He tells us to go. He tells us to go in his authority to bring the gospel to all nations, baptize, make disciples and teaching them to observe His commandments, to show what true worship of the one living God really is.I urge you, church, today, be rooted in faith. Know that change is possible and walk in the authority of Jesus Christ bringing His spirit with you wherever you go. Let's pray.Heavenly Father, Lord, we love you. We know you and we trust you. Lord, give us faith to know that you will change us. You will remove sin from our lives and sanctify us, make us more like you. But help us to also know and believe that you are bringing your kingdom here, you are establishing your ways on earth. Give us faith and help our unbelief Lord. Help us to walk in authority, have eyes to see your will and know what you are calling us to do, how we can each be a part of your kingdom, whether in Brookline, whether in Salem, whether in any other part of the world. Give us clear directives, give us clear calling to walk in your might and establish your kingdom here. In Jesus' name, amen.

Speaker 1:This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.comPastor Andy:Today, we are, if you have not been with us, we are continuing in our service in our series Kingdom Come, The Gospel of Mark and The Secrets of God's Kingdom. Today, I'm giving Pastor Jan a preaching break, and just want to just take up this text with you right now. We are in Mark 10:17-31, the gospel of Mark 10:17-31. Follow along in your bibles or on the screen as I read. This is the Word of our Lord. "And as He was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before Him and asked Him, 'Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?' and Jesus said to him, 'Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments. Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother,' and he said to Him, 'Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth,' and Jesus looking at him, loved him and said to him, 'You lack one thing. Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor and you have treasure in heaven and come follow Me.' Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions. And Jesus looked around and said to His disciples, 'How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God," and the disciples were amazed at His words, but Jesus said to them again, 'Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.' And they were exceedingly astonished and said to Him, 'Then who can be saved?'Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man, it is impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God.' Peter began to say to Him, 'See, we have left everything and followed you.' Jesus said, 'Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for My sake and for the gospel who will not receive a hundred fold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life, but many who are first will be last and the last first.'" This is the word of our Lord.Let me pray before I start my sermon. Heavenly Father, we praise You for creating this day. God, You are the creator of all of the heavens and the earth. You pulled from abundance of authority and power and made all that we see. You have made us in Your image and Your creation is glorious, but, Lord, we as people, this creation is tainted by sin, Lord, for we can see Your majesty in all of creation, but we do not turn and worship You, Lord.Further, You show us Your goodness and offering the gospel to us. You sent your Son to communicate Your glory and Your love to us, yet we do not receive it. Lord, we choose just idols, things to worship, things that we think will satisfy us, broken cisterns that never satisfy at the cost of honoring You and putting You in the proper position as lead in our life. Holy Spirit, show us all now just what is gripping our heart, what is trying to pull us away from You, and Lord, just give us the strength and power to follow You, to choose the better portion in Jesus. I pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. To start, I want to direct our attention to the famous verses in this text. I feel like most verses could be, you could say about that, but verses Mark 10:23-25, "And Jesus looked around and said to His disciples, 'How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God,' and the disciples were amazed at His words, but Jesus said to them again, 'Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.'"It's hard to not get distracted by the talk of a camel going through the eye of a needle, but these words here contain a talk of the biggest theme of the New Testament. Here in the Lord's famous comments on the case of the rich young ruler who had just turned his back against him and had gone away from him grieved and sorrowful, in these verses, we concentrate, actually, not on the camel going through the eye of the needle or on wealth and possessions primarily, but we are forced to draw our attention to the theme that's really at the heart of all of the New Testament in Mark, the theme of the kingdom of God, the theme of Christ's kingdom, the kingdom of heaven put in other parts of scripture. Our series is called Kingdom Come, The Gospel of Mark and the Secrets of God's Kingdom. All of the message we've been going through, whether we've blatantly discussed this theme and described the kingdom or just talked about specific teachings and aspects in it, they're all about this theme. For Jesus, He Himself told us entry into this kingdom is the most important thing we should seek in this life.Matthew 6:33 says, "Seek you first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you." Jesus said these verses in the midst of a larger comment in Matthew 6:25-34. "Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you'll eat or what you'll drink nor about your body, what you'll put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about your clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon and all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.But if God so closed the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore, do not be anxious saying, 'What shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear?' for the Gentiles seek after all these things and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all, but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."You see, to Jesus, to us here at Mosaic, the world is in trouble. Men and women are in trouble. The impacts of sin, corruption, folly, and death reign at large despite of all mankind's wisest innovations. We have all that we need and more. In our passage, we talk about in ancient, rich, young ruler. Realistically, all of us probably live better than the ancient rich young ruler, yet we are still unhappy and we're looking for a relief. We're seeking solutions and we're troubled and we're worried and constantly anxious about will we be satisfied in this life. To sum our solution to this constant fight with dissatisfaction and worry, it's a matter of diet, it's a matter of clothing, it's a matter of having the right relationship, it's a matter of technology easing things for us, it's a matter of obtaining more knowledge, it's a matter of going to space to tap its resources, and so on, but what the Lord says, this shall not be. It's all wrong. He's the creator. We're not to live in a state of worry and anxiety or fear of what we'll have today or tomorrow. Jesus says, "But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all of these things will be added unto you." Jesus came specifically to tell us that nothing is more important than entering the kingdom, and that entry into the kingdom is possible.In Mark 1:15, perhaps the theme sentence of the whole book, Jesus says, "The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel." It's the repentance of faith turning from rebellious sin, turning from idolatry and things that we think will satisfy us apart from God and believing that Jesus will. That's how we can be saved, but as we have seen through Jesus' message and His engagement throughout Mark, the men and women of His own times of His own age and generation, they struggled over this. You would've thought that with such a messenger, that with such miracles that He paired with His message to show His authority, to show that they could trust Him, that everybody would've listened and believed, and that they've gone just running, running into the kingdom of God saying, "Lord, how can I serve You?" but they didn't.They stumbled in Jesus. They questioned, they argued, and the same is today. We are blessed people who get to look back at history and say this happened. There's a reason why history is marked by this Man's coming, the God Man's coming, and we can trust Him. He is on the throne today, especially after He's gone to the cross risen and ascended into heaven. So the lesson behind of what I'm saying so far is that mankind, by nature, we struggle to trust God. As a result of sin, altogether our approach to life is entirely wrong in all its ideas and all of its thinking and the way that we pursue satisfaction, the way that we pursue peace, the way we engage the creation that God wanted us to enjoy and cultivate in communion with Him, and it's because this problem happened in Jesus' time, and today, we have to focus our attention on the matter. Jesus is talking about how can one enter the kingdom of God. That's the question He is answering in Mark. He's talking again about entry in one of the last passages while He's on His path to Jerusalem going to the cross. This is of utmost important to Jesus.What we've been talking about throughout Mark is the kingdom of God, a common element that comes out is that it's always surprising. Jesus, one of the things about the kingdom of God is that you can't really describe it in terms that, one, a fallen believer who because of his sin doesn't have ears to hear, can't really understand it. You have to be in the kingdom to really start understanding what Jesus is talking about. He has to describe, but no single word can describe the joy of salvation. No single word can describe the process and experience of sanctification in a believer's life, the growth and maturity and holiness in the faith. So Jesus has to keep coming up with parables and stories to get us to understand entry into the kingdom and life in the kingdom. Today, our text tells us a tragic story. This is a story about the greatest of natural non-believing men. We have a good man, the rich young ruler, the best of his time, the best of Boston just engaging with Jesus Christ. The result, the start is amazing, the ending of the narrative, ultra depressing. We see that this kingdom of God, it's upside down, it's inside out. It just destroys, bursts our expectations. So this first point, it's surprising, it's shocking. I'm going to break up this topic today talking about when you come to Jesus, when you seek entry into the kingdom of God, get ready to be shocked, searched, and blessed or grieved. When you come to Jesus, when you seek entry into the kingdom of God, get ready to be shocked, searched, and blessed or grieved. I intentionally have very simple language here in the outline because the people who really want very complex outlines and creative outlines and a lot of alliteration, the lofty thinkers, they're the ones who need to be humbled and be brought. You can't see because you're looking for those lofty things in everything the church does. So we're going to make it challenge your senses and humble you as we go through this. You need to be shocked by Jesus, searched and blessed, and you will be blessed or grieved after that happens. So let me go on.When you come to Jesus Christ, get ready to be shocked. By shocked I mean you're going to be surprised. Many of your expectations when you truly come to Jesus and have an encounter with Him, with His word, your expectations of who God is, who Christ is, how you enter the kingdom, how you grow in the kingdom and how you're rewarded for life in the kingdom are going to burst, and you're going to be shocked in the sense that oftentimes what you learn about entry and life in the kingdom, it's going to go against your natural sensitivities and preferences. It's going to insult you and get you angry at times. I emphasize this point because this text, there's a whole lot of shock within it. In specific verses, we have very clearly the Lord just broadly, He's using shocking language just through that intro verse, "It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to go enter the kingdom of God." That's a sign. He's trying to get us ready to really be surprised, but specific verses beyond that, verse 23, "And Jesus looked around and said to His disciples, 'How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God,' and the disciples were amazed at His words." These guys who have been walking on missions trips with Him, sitting at His feet, living with Him at the end of His ministry before He gets to Jerusalem, they're shocked by His words and teachings here. Furthermore in verse 26, Jesus repeats Himself, "How difficult it will be for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God," and they were exceedingly astonished and said to Him, "Then who can be saved?" They were exceedingly astonished. They're floored. Further, they asked the question, "Then who can be saved?" This isn't a question. This is an exclamation of Jesus, "This guy is better than me. If He can't get in, how can we get in?" This is offensive. This is absurd. So specifically, these verses mention it, the last verse though, and this verse 31 could be a whole sermon on its own, "But many who are first will be last and the last first." This is Jesus trying to just stir our sensitivity, stir our senses to say, "Things are going to be different. I've established this kingdom through My life, through My faithfulness, through My death, through My resurrection. That's where I'm going and be prepared. It's a call that those who are lowly and humble and deny themselves in this life in My way will be exalted by Me in eternity." This is just to think like this. Those who are last will be first and first last. It's completely contradictory how man thinks, how traditional religion thinks. Only the strong survive. God helps those who help themselves. In the Jewish system, Jewish thought was if you climb a ladder, your goal as a Jew of that day was if you were blessed to get more formal education and training, you became a synagogue ruler, you became a scribe or Pharisee, you made it. So Jesus prepares us with specific shock in these verses, but just broadly, the whole story of the rich young ruler, it's really to shock us, to startle us and get us concerned about our candidacy for entry in the kingdom of God. The tragedy, what the Lord is trying to teach us is a shocking lesson that goodness is not enough to enter the kingdom of God. Goodness, riches, wealth, these things that the world says are indicators of righteousness are at that time they're not good enough. So what do we do? How do you get in? Yes, for us it's easy for believers and non-believers to say bad people shouldn't get in. Those who blatantly rebel, they commit murder, they do heinous, perverted crimes, very clearly, if God's real, if He's good, very clearly they're not getting in. Christian, non-Christian, it's easy to get unity on that. This text, it brings out that not badness, not that badness is wrong, but even goodness is not enough. We can exclude ourselves from badness, but when we hear that goodness is not enough, it's offensive because we're good people. We generally do more good than bad. We try to give more than we receive. When we mess up, we try to correct ourselves, we recycle, we buy local, we try to help our neighbor, we go to church, we give to nonprofits, but the tragedy of the rich young ruler confronts this thinking, for we're to read this passage and see that this guy at the start of the passage, he's presented to be better than us, but he's not good enough to enter.So look at him, look at how well he starts. Verse 17, "And as he was setting out on his journey, a man came up and knelt before Him and asked Him, 'Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?'" This is just an astounding engagement. First of all, the text says a man. There's two parallel passages that tell the same story, Luke 18, Matthew 19, and he's just called a man here. Later on in the text it says he had great wealth, but we find out he's young in one of the other parallel passages. He's labeled as a ruler in one of the others. So he's wealthy, he's young. In that day, youth as in our day, youth, who doesn't want a nice charismatic young man saying, "Lord, what must I do to serve you?" How happy are we when we see young people taking an initiative in the community, taking initiative in the church slash synagogue, which is our exact situation now? How often are we excited to see young people, let alone wealthy? This guy would've been the perfect man to run a $5 million campaign to get a church building. This guy was perfect just with these broad descriptions, but looking at the text, look at how he comes to the Lord. All of Mark, we've been dealing with situations where even Jesus, His own disciples are not recognizing Him as Lord. They are essentially questioning His authority or not willing to trust in Him over and over again. It's really only the Gentiles, the people outside of the promises of God who are approaching Jesus with humility and trust and a heart to receive His kingdom and follow Him, but look at His approach. The man, he comes running up to Jesus as Jesus is leaving after a speaking and service engagement. If this man really was a ruler in his day, he was breaking custom here. First of all, it's really hot there, but no, rich man, wealthy man, man of honor did not run. When the visiting teacher came in that society, the leaders of the synagogue weren't going down just running straight to Him. That would've brought some shame and maybe people would've questioned their authority and integrity. Furthermore, it says he ran up and knelt before Him. He gets on his knees. That's just incredible. That is over the top and, again, not something that a man of honor does. Then what's even more notable is that this is a man who sees his need. He's willing to face potential public shame from his esteemed position because he says, "It's Jesus, this teacher, I've been hearing about this." The guy just thought, "He's talking about something that I don't have, eternal life." How many people do you share the gospel with, bring to church and they're like, "Yeah, I don't think I have that," but then they just never come back? They're content to just sit not knowing how to address that need, at least this guy's doing something. Furthermore, he's showing Jesus respect through the running, through the bowing. He's saying, "I see you're a good teacher. I see you've got something." He eagerly wants to hear what Jesus has to say. Then his question, it's not perfect, and I'll get to that later, but he asks a question. He's interested in eternal life. So this guy, he's a very good, exceptional, young man who cares about spiritual matters, and he is approaching Jesus with great eagerness, great zeal to find out the truth. I just want to say, as Christians, we pray for opportunities to share the gospel. We know God's love. We want everyone in our lives to have it if you really know it, and you're praying, "Lord, give me opportunities to share the gospel." How many of you, how thrilled would you be if someone at the lunch table at work said to you, "Andy, I know you're Christian. What must I do to inherit eternal life?" That'd be amazing. We dream for these opportunities. Most of the time we feel like a nag in the sharing and proclamation in public or in relationship. I was flying a couple weeks ago. I like to sit with my Bible open on the airplanes like, "Maybe this person will ask me a question. Lord, Lord, just prepare me and just humble this person. Let them see that I might have an answer for them." I was literally thinking like that reading my Bible on the plane, but it didn't happen, unfortunately, but we pray for these situations. So this guy's approach, it's good. There's something honorable and respectable about him, and you could not imagine anything more from a natural man, a non-believer. This is your friend who works at the biotech company in Boston saying, "There's something in your life that I don't have. What do I do to get it?" So Jesus, He's exposed this need. The man tries to find out how to address this thing that he's lacking and to get it. This is as good as a start as anybody could have. To the disciples of his day, they would've thought that this guy would've walked right into the kingdom of God. That's why they're so amazed that the story ends differently. So can you imagine a better start, but that is not the story. This is not the way the engagement goes. He doesn't walk right into the kingdom. Verse 22 says, "Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions."We're just forced to ask the question, "Why? What's the matter with this young man? What's the matter with his approach? Why did he go away? Why did he not enter the kingdom? Why is he left grieving and despondent, grieving in heart? What's the trouble?" The one phrase answer is this man went away because of his profound misunderstanding of the kingdom of God. That's why the Lord makes the comment in verse 23, "How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God." He says it again, "Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God."It's impossible for a righteous man seemingly perfect on the outside by his own works, by his own volition to enter the kingdom of God, but with God all things are possible. So this grace, we can only be saved by grace. So that's part of goodness does not matter, it's God's grace, but to focus on the shock, Jesus, He shocks with specific verses in this and Jesus shocks broadly with this tragedy. When people draw nears to Jesus, He shocks them. If you really have an encounter with Jesus, if you dig into scripture, if you hear a truly biblical, faithful sermon, if you come to Jesus with a heart and say, "Show me. I want to know who You are. I want to know what Your call on my life is," it's going to be a drastic engagement. There's only one of two directions. If you feel like you've never really been shocked by Jesus, you probably have not gotten close to Him. You're not really understanding the heart of His message. You're not really understanding the impossibility of entering His kingdom and the call to follow Him. So Jesus, He shocks those who draw near to him and He contends that their views of Him need to change, as well as their views of the kingdom need to be shaken up. So a lot of people, they talk about Jesus only as if He was a good man of history. Just like the man in our story, He's a good man. He was a great teacher, a great voice for the poor, great among the philosophers, a great social revolutionary. This is how I used to talk about Jesus when I was insecure to identify as a Christian at my liberal arts college. Perhaps they say He was a prophet among the great prophets, Buddha, Confucius. They say He was one of the greatest the world has ever seen. They think when you talk about Jesus in these ways but don't call Him the Lord, the Savior of man who came to die on the cross to bear the wrath for their sin and rise that they might have resurrection life and joyful, abundant life in eternity.When they say these comparisons, it's really an insult. They're really showing that they don't know who He really is. Jesus is not just any good teacher. He's the Son of God and Son of Man, the living God, the omnipotent God taken on flesh. He can't be categorized in the same genre as fallen man. We need to view Him this way because that's how He viewed Himself. So He's shown us that here a little bit in this text, but He wants us to confront our views of the kingdom of God.A lot of people come to Christianity think that it's just an add-on to what they're already doing in life. This is exactly what the rich young ruler was guilty of. He says, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? What must I do?" This is a man who wants to be doing something. He wants to keep doing what he's already doing, but maybe add a little bit more by his own effort to attain eternal life. We can see right away his approach. He seems flawless, but in his words, there's this pride saying, "I want to be a part of my own salvation. I want to be a part of my entry." He isn't coming as a child. He's not helpless and needy and humble. He is presenting himself as someone who's capable. He's successful in business. He's got good financial capital, not just cash, he's got capital. That's what possessions means later on in the text. He's socially respected in the community. He's got religious success. He wants Jesus to give him what is lacking and maintain the status quo of his life, and that's just not how the kingdom of God works. Jesus says to him, "You lack one thing. Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor and you have treasure in heaven. Come follow me." He's saying, "I'm here to uphold, just overturn your whole life. I'm here to cause upheaval," and it's not really on the outside first, it's on the inside first. Now, I'll elaborate more on that later, but Christianity, it's not an add-on. Jesus said, Mark 2:21-22, "No one sows a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old and a worst tear is made, and no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins and the wine is destroyed and so are the skins, but new wine is fresh for wineskins." Jesus is the fresh wine. If you put Him into an old wineskin, it's going to burst. When you enter the kingdom of God, it's not just like any other habit or study that you take up casually or leisurely or see, "What more could it bring to my life?" He wants to make you entirely new. He is not content to play second fiddle to anything in your life. This is really important because a lot of people, I know people in my life who have engaged Christianity for decades and they're just approaching it as if it's just any old study of history. It's just like any other philosophy, "Let me see what more it can add to my repertoire."No. Jesus says, "I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except by me." When you enter into the kingdom by this great gift of faith, you should expect your life to some change, some transformation. The rich young ruler knew that what Jesus called him to was so much more than he wanted to do. He thought, "It's just a little bit of sprinkle, a little bit of Jesus into my life and I'll just keep going with everything else."So Jesus, this is all under the point of when you come to Jesus, expect to be shocked. This is when you come to Jesus, expect to be shocked and, really, as you continue in life, expect to be shocked. He's going to keep pushing you toward greater levels of holiness, greater levels of maturity. A lot of people, they don't understand how far, how serious He is about holiness. When you're saved, praise God, you've probably left something, probably a sin that gripped the surface of your life and heart, but He just keeps digging and digging deeper and deeper. A lot of people are shocked how the Lord through marriage puts two people with complimentary parts together, and as iron sharpens iron, they see the endless, endless way that the Lord is just calling them to greater holiness by one day at a time not lashing out at their spouse. When you're a member of a church and you're called to in sickness and in health, stay faithful, continue to gather with one another, continue to love one another as Jesus has loved you and you find out these people are sinners, these leaders are flawed, the Lord is not just calling them to repent and trying to train everybody, He's calling you to greater levels of holiness in the way that you engage the tensions.It's shocking at how far the Lord digs into our identity to get us to grow in the faith, but when you're coming to the faith, when the Lord is shocking you when you're in the faith, how do you respond to that? This text, I think the response is you let Jesus search you. When you come to Jesus, get ready to be searched. By search I mean that Jesus probes your entire being and He looks for defilement, He looks for impurities on the surface of your life and at the heart, and He has perfect vision and He's going to reveal what He sees. If you look at the text, three times in the text it said that Jesus looked at someone. Verse 21, "Jesus looked at him and loved him." Verse 23, "Jesus looked around at His disciples and said ..." Again in verse 27, "Jesus looked at them and said ..." Three times there's this idea of Jesus looking, and I don't think that this is there as an accident. This is one of the unique elements of this presentation, of this story that is not in the other two gospel presentations of it.What we have here in this text is that Jesus, when He's looking at the young man, when He's looking at his disciples, it's a sense of He's giving a holy gaze. It's the Almighty God looking right at us and right through us. In Revelation 1, Jesus is depicted in radiant glory. We just think of a refining fire and having eyes of blazing fire. The apostle John said, the one who had the vision, the Holy Spirit gave the vision to for the Book of Revelation, he says, "When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead." You're just exposed when Jesus looks at your life and you realize you can't stand before Him in His holiness.In the next two chapters of Revelation after chapter one, Revelation 2 and 3, Jesus, He looks at seven churches and it seems as if He looks right through them. He understands what's happening. He calls them out for their sin, for their grievances for Him, and it seems like He's speaking into the minds and hearts of the individuals of the body. We think of Jesus telling Nathaniel when He's gathering His disciples, "Nathaniel, I saw you under the tree," and Nathaniel's shaken. The Lord has a special vision. In today's account, we see Jesus as looking, searching the rich young ruler, perceiving what his genuine spiritual sickness was, probing the core of his corruption, and it's amazing. I think his vision, it's just incisive. Within a few lines in an instant, Jesus just shatters this man's identity, reveals his greatest heart issues. So He sees this first and the man approaches Him. He finds one little mistake in his presentation when he says, "What must I do to inherit eternal life? What must I do?" Jesus takes that clue, which suggests that this man thinks he deserves entry into the kingdom based on his own righteousness that he's billed out by his works, by his observance of God's law, and He immediately questions the man's understanding for why he thinks he's a good candidate about the law. He says, "You know the commandments, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother," and he said to Him, "Teacher, all these I've kept for my youth." The man's answer affirms Jesus' suspicion that he thinks he can enter the kingdom upon his own merit, but you see, Jesus' wisdom, His genius in these verses were in the list of commandments that He mentioned, he's only acknowledging the second table of the law that is summarized by love your neighbor as yourself. He's not bringing up any of the first four commandments that talk about love of God. So this man thinks that he's one who should garner entry based on his good status in the community, based on his upholding of the commandments. Jesus, He sees that and He looks at him. He loves him, "There's almost something like something really likable about you. It's cute how you're presenting yourself to me, but you are so unobservant of yourself," and He looks at him and He asks him about one of the heart commandments, "What's the first commandment? You shall have no other god before Me." Jesus, He asks him this, He doesn't ask him this, He just puts His finger on the dot of where his idolatry when he says ... "And Jesus looked at him, loved him, and said to him, 'You lack one thing. Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor and you'll have treasure in heaven. Come follow me.'"He's pressing right on the center of the target, that thing that the man is holding onto that is preventing him from full submission to Christ's lordship, repentance and faith before him. This is what Jesus does. Further, the man says, it says, "Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions." So Jesus, like a surgeon, incisively reveals that this man who's perfect on the outside, he's an idolator. He does not love God first and foremost above everything in his life. He does not think that he was made to worship God and be satisfied by life of communion with Him, and so much so, his grasp on his money, his wealth, and perhaps all the things that it brought was so great that God is standing there right before him inviting him to follow Him, to care for Him, promising him riches in heaven and he wouldn't let go of it.So God, He just searches this man, Christ searches this man super quickly and nothing. This is what he does with all of us. Regardless of whatever good appearances or law-abiding appearances that we can conjure up, Christ can see what our heart truly longs for, and if it's not Him, He's going to expose it. In the case of the rich young ruler, it was his grip on his money. Jesus, He's not revealing that money is an inherently bad thing. There are great saints of history who have had money in scripture. We have Job, we have Joseph of Arimathea, the man who donated his tomb upon Christ's crucifixion. We think of Zacchaeus, who in his repentance used his wealth for God's glory, but money is not evil, but the text shows us that money is something so powerful that it can blind us to its control over us. It's money, there's something specific in Christ bringing this out in this passage. There's a special authority that it can have to us. This man clearly had no self-awareness, but everybody is tempted to clinging to something in this life for satisfaction that is not Jesus. Jesus wants to reveal that to us and root it out. I remember hearing about a story where there were monkey hunters in a jungle somewhere, and the monkeys were so ... What they did was, the hunters, they basically just had to put nuts in a jar and essentially fasten the container to where they put it. The monkeys were so greedy about getting the nuts. Their desire was so set on the nuts that when the hunters would arrive, they just kept their hand and stood there even though it led to their capture, their demise. We are just like the monkeys. People today, we hear the gospel go out, we hear it, we feel its call. We see the peel of a life with Christ, the joy of salvation, but we're unwilling to come when Christ calls us because we won't let go of our grasp around that thing that our heart is in love with. We tend to make, and it's not just rebellious sin, it's often good things that we put in the place of God. So what is it for you? What are you holding onto? If Christ came and He just looked at you, He didn't have to play around with the man with talk of goodness, He says, "You want to talk goodness? God is good. Let's not confuse categories here. Let's not talk about goodness. Your sense of goodness, you don't see it, but it's decided by your culture, your preferences. You want to talk about the law? Okay. I'm going to use the law to try to show your own blindness. That clearly doesn't work. Then we'll look at you and put it, bring you right to your idol." Christ, He could just look at us and call it out.So if He was here today, what would be that thing that you were thinking, that thing, that relationship, that experience, that lifestyle that you think could satisfy you more than Him? He's going to search us and probe us and try to get us to relinquish our grip on such things. Notice the text says, "Jesus looked at him and loved him," when he brought out the man's idolatrous relationship with his wealth, with his possessions. The text says this is loving, this act by Jesus is loving. It's tough love. This is Jesus with the holy gaze trying to help someone come out of their blindness, come out of the slavery to that thing that is dominating their life, that thing that they structure all of their life around to keeping, to retaining, that thing that's preventing them from worshiping Him, and He's trying to free them to come receive forgiveness for their sin, enjoy a life of freedom, a life entrusting Christ to provide for you one day at a time, and it's what is He calling you to let go of.I think we all have those things. Is it a relationship? Is it wealth and the control of your life that it could bring? Is it having a child? Is it your children? What is it? How do we ask? We ask, "Jesus Lord, search me and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there'll be any grievous way in me." If anyone has walked closely to me, you know that was my verse of 2023. The Christian, you get frightened by this searching at the start of faith because you see what Jesus is going to call you to leave to come and follow Him, but actually, you see the goodness of it and you grow in your profession. You grow in this prayer, "Lord, search me because if there's anything in me that is going to separate, tempt me to leave You, stop following You, if there's anything in me that's going to get in the way of this relationship that I have with You, just root it out, and please be gentle, but if You have to be painful and I'm that blind, just do it." We should grow to appreciate this searching. The Christian should grow, but the thing that happens when you feel the Lord, He's shocking you, He's searching you, it's offensive because our flesh, until Jesus returns, is going to fight and resist. It's going to want to look back and be tempted to cling to those idols. So when we come to Jesus, you should get ready to be blessed or grieved. This is when Jesus is shocking you, He's searching you, you've got two directions to go. We see in this text, these two results. With verse 22, we see the grief in the reaction of the ruler, "Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions." The word for grief used here, it's the word used in the gospels to describe the same grief that Jesus felt on the cross when the Father with whom He dwelt in perfect communion, loving, eternal communion, turns His face away, does not respond to His cries of, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me on the cross?" That same word for grief that talks about just a grief that we cannot fathom, that is the same word used to describe the grief that this rich young ruler felt when he's walking away from Jesus, when Jesus is pressing on that idol. The irony is, this is after he's walking away, he feels this grief. Jesus is actually letting him have what he wants, yet he's walking away despondent, in despair. He's clinging with a vice grip to that idol. It's tearing him apart, yet he's still holding onto it. We don't know. The text says, "Jesus looked at him and loved him." The only way Jesus can actually look at a sinner and idolator and love him is by grace. A lot of people say, "This guy definitely was not saved." The prayer is, hopefully, he saw the folly of his ways, and what did he have to do? He had to repent, go to Jesus, confess his sin of idolatry, of thinking that his wealth could satisfy him more than Jesus, and by confessing his sin, he could have been saved. That's the same with all of us if we catch ourselves in such idolatry. Then when we do that, whether it's in the initial first time that the Lord is searching us or later on perhaps, hopefully in the way that the ruler did, we can experience God's blessing. We see God's blessing, Mark 10:26-31, "And they were exceedingly astonished," the disciples, "and said to Him after the rich young ruler goes away, 'Then who can be saved?' Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man it is impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God.' Peter began to say to Him, 'See, we have left everything and followed you.' Jesus said, 'Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for My sake and for the gospel who will not receive a hundred fold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life, but many who are first will be last and the last first.'" For the person who has been searched by Jesus, who repents of their grip on the idols of their heart and follows Him and trusts His position in this life and eternity with Him, these are the most encouraging words. This is not prosperity gospel. These are Jesus' words. We read them at face value. As you engage the shock of just the difficulty of leaving stuff to enter into the kingdom as Jesus instructs you, when you engage Jesus' probing, when you relinquish your grip on these things that keep you away from following Him, He promises to reward you. These verses give us assurance that He sees your sacrifice. He sees your effort to leave, to say goodbye to the old man and live in a resurrected new way when you follow Him.Further, He says, He's not just going to honor in eternity, He's going to honor it in this life. What we're called by Christians upon the moment that we're saved is to follow Him, to trust Him that He will satisfy. We were made for worship for Him. That's what Adam and Eve, they're made to worship and dwell in the garden in perfect communion with the Lord, but they sinned against Him thinking that Satan said, "There's fruit of this world. Taste it. He's withholding something from you," but when we come to Christ and say, "No, God, I see You are enough," He promises to satisfy. Anyone who receives Jesus' call to follow Him and allows Him to stay in the position of Lord of their life and follows Him one day at a time, they know that actually a lot of these earthly things don't matter. The joy of salvation, the joy of peace, the peace that comes when you know that you're right before God, the Father through Jesus Christ, the perfect mediator, the knowledge that God loves you despite having full knowledge of your sin because of Jesus, you know that the joy of salvation is better. These extra benefits, these are just words and promises to give us hope to persevere until the end, but we can ask Him expectantly that He will offer them.There is an element, Mark says with persecutions. So it's not going to be perfect. Our hearts can be tempted towards sin. The creation is still crying out for Jesus' return. We're still in a fallen world, and these persecutions, they're means to test us, to grow us, and we're called to endure through them. I have had the pleasure in the past few weeks of having a rich young ruler of Boston of our congregation approach me and say, "Pastor Andy, I've had this relationship with you for five years, and just want to be honest with you. These whole five years I've checked in with you occasionally once a year, every year, year and a half, and what the Lord has shown me in the past couple months is I've been in grievous sin, just finding my satisfaction and building my kingdom, building my resume, grasping, having a vice grip on relationships that did not honor Him, and I see that that is sin. I see that I was committing idolatry, thinking these things could satisfy me more than God." What did he ask me? He set an appointment with me and he said, "How can I serve?" He knew that the work was finished in his life. He asked me, "How can I serve?" Then he told me he also went online. He heard about Mosaic's campaign for the building fund, and he said, "The Lord blessed me while I was in this period of sin and I just really want to serve Him with my life. I sold the stock that I had." I don't know what a lot meant to him. I don't know the specific amount, but he sold stock that he acquired over this period and he gave it toward the kingdom of God. So praise God, I got to see the Lord move. It's a miracle anytime the Lord does this in a person's life, but we need to trust that Jesus Christ, He is on His throne because He has lived, He has died, He has resurrected, He has ascended, He is in charge still, and He does save people. He gives people conviction by the Holy Spirit to repent of their idolatry, repent of their sin, repent of their self-dependence before Him and convinces them to repent and follow Him. So what was the rich young ruler called to? He was called to faith. It's confusing when you think Jesus has this perfect evangelistic opportunity and he's like, "Why didn't he just tell him to repent and believe?" Well, have faith in Christ. Well, Jesus, He's wiser than us. He knew the hard work that He needed to do on this guy, but we're basically called to be saved and trust Him and trust Him with our salvation and trust Him with provision to help us persevere to the end. When God saved Israel, He said, "People forget the preamble of the 10 Commandments." It's, "I am the Lord thy God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me." When we fully believe that God and Christ has met our deepest need, our guilt, our shame, our sin, our idolatry before Him, our hopelessness, our condemnation, that we are just walking towards apart from Him. When we see that God has met our deepest need through sending Christ to be the propitiation for our sins on the cross, we can trust Him with everything else.Israel was called to trust God after they're delivered from slavery. We are called to trust God when we realized He delivered us from the slavery to our sin. So we seek first His kingdom and all things will be added to us. Let me pray and close there.Heavenly Father, we praise You that You sent Your Son Jesus Christ for we know by Your word and by our personal experience of salvation and His provision as we've walked forward in faith, we know that He is the real rich, young ruler. Lord, we thank You for giving us the perspective to look upon this instance in history, the story, this tragedy, to learn more about how we may enter, to learn that we, by our own efforts, cannot enter, but through Christ, through His efforts, through faith in them we can, but Lord, please embolden our faith, grow our faith, grow our trust that You, as You have saved us, You will always provide for us. You see our effort today to honor You. We ask that You would bless us, preserve us, provide the comfort and strength and care we need to continue to honor You. Lord, we just ask, we pray, sustain us until we receive our reward in heaven. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. 

Speaker 1:This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.comPastor Andy:Today, we are, if you have not been with us, we are continuing in our service in our series Kingdom Come, The Gospel of Mark and The Secrets of God's Kingdom. Today, I'm giving Pastor Jan a preaching break, and just want to just take up this text with you right now. We are in Mark 10:17-31, the gospel of Mark 10:17-31. Follow along in your bibles or on the screen as I read. This is the Word of our Lord. "And as He was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before Him and asked Him, 'Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?' and Jesus said to him, 'Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments. Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother,' and he said to Him, 'Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth,' and Jesus looking at him, loved him and said to him, 'You lack one thing. Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor and you have treasure in heaven and come follow Me.' Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions. And Jesus looked around and said to His disciples, 'How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God," and the disciples were amazed at His words, but Jesus said to them again, 'Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.' And they were exceedingly astonished and said to Him, 'Then who can be saved?'Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man, it is impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God.' Peter began to say to Him, 'See, we have left everything and followed you.' Jesus said, 'Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for My sake and for the gospel who will not receive a hundred fold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life, but many who are first will be last and the last first.'" This is the word of our Lord.Let me pray before I start my sermon. Heavenly Father, we praise You for creating this day. God, You are the creator of all of the heavens and the earth. You pulled from abundance of authority and power and made all that we see. You have made us in Your image and Your creation is glorious, but, Lord, we as people, this creation is tainted by sin, Lord, for we can see Your majesty in all of creation, but we do not turn and worship You, Lord.Further, You show us Your goodness and offering the gospel to us. You sent your Son to communicate Your glory and Your love to us, yet we do not receive it. Lord, we choose just idols, things to worship, things that we think will satisfy us, broken cisterns that never satisfy at the cost of honoring You and putting You in the proper position as lead in our life. Holy Spirit, show us all now just what is gripping our heart, what is trying to pull us away from You, and Lord, just give us the strength and power to follow You, to choose the better portion in Jesus. I pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. To start, I want to direct our attention to the famous verses in this text. I feel like most verses could be, you could say about that, but verses Mark 10:23-25, "And Jesus looked around and said to His disciples, 'How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God,' and the disciples were amazed at His words, but Jesus said to them again, 'Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.'"It's hard to not get distracted by the talk of a camel going through the eye of a needle, but these words here contain a talk of the biggest theme of the New Testament. Here in the Lord's famous comments on the case of the rich young ruler who had just turned his back against him and had gone away from him grieved and sorrowful, in these verses, we concentrate, actually, not on the camel going through the eye of the needle or on wealth and possessions primarily, but we are forced to draw our attention to the theme that's really at the heart of all of the New Testament in Mark, the theme of the kingdom of God, the theme of Christ's kingdom, the kingdom of heaven put in other parts of scripture. Our series is called Kingdom Come, The Gospel of Mark and the Secrets of God's Kingdom. All of the message we've been going through, whether we've blatantly discussed this theme and described the kingdom or just talked about specific teachings and aspects in it, they're all about this theme. For Jesus, He Himself told us entry into this kingdom is the most important thing we should seek in this life.Matthew 6:33 says, "Seek you first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you." Jesus said these verses in the midst of a larger comment in Matthew 6:25-34. "Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you'll eat or what you'll drink nor about your body, what you'll put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about your clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon and all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.But if God so closed the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore, do not be anxious saying, 'What shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear?' for the Gentiles seek after all these things and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all, but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."You see, to Jesus, to us here at Mosaic, the world is in trouble. Men and women are in trouble. The impacts of sin, corruption, folly, and death reign at large despite of all mankind's wisest innovations. We have all that we need and more. In our passage, we talk about in ancient, rich, young ruler. Realistically, all of us probably live better than the ancient rich young ruler, yet we are still unhappy and we're looking for a relief. We're seeking solutions and we're troubled and we're worried and constantly anxious about will we be satisfied in this life. To sum our solution to this constant fight with dissatisfaction and worry, it's a matter of diet, it's a matter of clothing, it's a matter of having the right relationship, it's a matter of technology easing things for us, it's a matter of obtaining more knowledge, it's a matter of going to space to tap its resources, and so on, but what the Lord says, this shall not be. It's all wrong. He's the creator. We're not to live in a state of worry and anxiety or fear of what we'll have today or tomorrow. Jesus says, "But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all of these things will be added unto you." Jesus came specifically to tell us that nothing is more important than entering the kingdom, and that entry into the kingdom is possible.In Mark 1:15, perhaps the theme sentence of the whole book, Jesus says, "The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel." It's the repentance of faith turning from rebellious sin, turning from idolatry and things that we think will satisfy us apart from God and believing that Jesus will. That's how we can be saved, but as we have seen through Jesus' message and His engagement throughout Mark, the men and women of His own times of His own age and generation, they struggled over this. You would've thought that with such a messenger, that with such miracles that He paired with His message to show His authority, to show that they could trust Him, that everybody would've listened and believed, and that they've gone just running, running into the kingdom of God saying, "Lord, how can I serve You?" but they didn't.They stumbled in Jesus. They questioned, they argued, and the same is today. We are blessed people who get to look back at history and say this happened. There's a reason why history is marked by this Man's coming, the God Man's coming, and we can trust Him. He is on the throne today, especially after He's gone to the cross risen and ascended into heaven. So the lesson behind of what I'm saying so far is that mankind, by nature, we struggle to trust God. As a result of sin, altogether our approach to life is entirely wrong in all its ideas and all of its thinking and the way that we pursue satisfaction, the way that we pursue peace, the way we engage the creation that God wanted us to enjoy and cultivate in communion with Him, and it's because this problem happened in Jesus' time, and today, we have to focus our attention on the matter. Jesus is talking about how can one enter the kingdom of God. That's the question He is answering in Mark. He's talking again about entry in one of the last passages while He's on His path to Jerusalem going to the cross. This is of utmost important to Jesus.What we've been talking about throughout Mark is the kingdom of God, a common element that comes out is that it's always surprising. Jesus, one of the things about the kingdom of God is that you can't really describe it in terms that, one, a fallen believer who because of his sin doesn't have ears to hear, can't really understand it. You have to be in the kingdom to really start understanding what Jesus is talking about. He has to describe, but no single word can describe the joy of salvation. No single word can describe the process and experience of sanctification in a believer's life, the growth and maturity and holiness in the faith. So Jesus has to keep coming up with parables and stories to get us to understand entry into the kingdom and life in the kingdom. Today, our text tells us a tragic story. This is a story about the greatest of natural non-believing men. We have a good man, the rich young ruler, the best of his time, the best of Boston just engaging with Jesus Christ. The result, the start is amazing, the ending of the narrative, ultra depressing. We see that this kingdom of God, it's upside down, it's inside out. It just destroys, bursts our expectations. So this first point, it's surprising, it's shocking. I'm going to break up this topic today talking about when you come to Jesus, when you seek entry into the kingdom of God, get ready to be shocked, searched, and blessed or grieved. When you come to Jesus, when you seek entry into the kingdom of God, get ready to be shocked, searched, and blessed or grieved. I intentionally have very simple language here in the outline because the people who really want very complex outlines and creative outlines and a lot of alliteration, the lofty thinkers, they're the ones who need to be humbled and be brought. You can't see because you're looking for those lofty things in everything the church does. So we're going to make it challenge your senses and humble you as we go through this. You need to be shocked by Jesus, searched and blessed, and you will be blessed or grieved after that happens. So let me go on.When you come to Jesus Christ, get ready to be shocked. By shocked I mean you're going to be surprised. Many of your expectations when you truly come to Jesus and have an encounter with Him, with His word, your expectations of who God is, who Christ is, how you enter the kingdom, how you grow in the kingdom and how you're rewarded for life in the kingdom are going to burst, and you're going to be shocked in the sense that oftentimes what you learn about entry and life in the kingdom, it's going to go against your natural sensitivities and preferences. It's going to insult you and get you angry at times. I emphasize this point because this text, there's a whole lot of shock within it. In specific verses, we have very clearly the Lord just broadly, He's using shocking language just through that intro verse, "It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to go enter the kingdom of God." That's a sign. He's trying to get us ready to really be surprised, but specific verses beyond that, verse 23, "And Jesus looked around and said to His disciples, 'How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God,' and the disciples were amazed at His words." These guys who have been walking on missions trips with Him, sitting at His feet, living with Him at the end of His ministry before He gets to Jerusalem, they're shocked by His words and teachings here. Furthermore in verse 26, Jesus repeats Himself, "How difficult it will be for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God," and they were exceedingly astonished and said to Him, "Then who can be saved?" They were exceedingly astonished. They're floored. Further, they asked the question, "Then who can be saved?" This isn't a question. This is an exclamation of Jesus, "This guy is better than me. If He can't get in, how can we get in?" This is offensive. This is absurd. So specifically, these verses mention it, the last verse though, and this verse 31 could be a whole sermon on its own, "But many who are first will be last and the last first." This is Jesus trying to just stir our sensitivity, stir our senses to say, "Things are going to be different. I've established this kingdom through My life, through My faithfulness, through My death, through My resurrection. That's where I'm going and be prepared. It's a call that those who are lowly and humble and deny themselves in this life in My way will be exalted by Me in eternity." This is just to think like this. Those who are last will be first and first last. It's completely contradictory how man thinks, how traditional religion thinks. Only the strong survive. God helps those who help themselves. In the Jewish system, Jewish thought was if you climb a ladder, your goal as a Jew of that day was if you were blessed to get more formal education and training, you became a synagogue ruler, you became a scribe or Pharisee, you made it. So Jesus prepares us with specific shock in these verses, but just broadly, the whole story of the rich young ruler, it's really to shock us, to startle us and get us concerned about our candidacy for entry in the kingdom of God. The tragedy, what the Lord is trying to teach us is a shocking lesson that goodness is not enough to enter the kingdom of God. Goodness, riches, wealth, these things that the world says are indicators of righteousness are at that time they're not good enough. So what do we do? How do you get in? Yes, for us it's easy for believers and non-believers to say bad people shouldn't get in. Those who blatantly rebel, they commit murder, they do heinous, perverted crimes, very clearly, if God's real, if He's good, very clearly they're not getting in. Christian, non-Christian, it's easy to get unity on that. This text, it brings out that not badness, not that badness is wrong, but even goodness is not enough. We can exclude ourselves from badness, but when we hear that goodness is not enough, it's offensive because we're good people. We generally do more good than bad. We try to give more than we receive. When we mess up, we try to correct ourselves, we recycle, we buy local, we try to help our neighbor, we go to church, we give to nonprofits, but the tragedy of the rich young ruler confronts this thinking, for we're to read this passage and see that this guy at the start of the passage, he's presented to be better than us, but he's not good enough to enter.So look at him, look at how well he starts. Verse 17, "And as he was setting out on his journey, a man came up and knelt before Him and asked Him, 'Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?'" This is just an astounding engagement. First of all, the text says a man. There's two parallel passages that tell the same story, Luke 18, Matthew 19, and he's just called a man here. Later on in the text it says he had great wealth, but we find out he's young in one of the other parallel passages. He's labeled as a ruler in one of the others. So he's wealthy, he's young. In that day, youth as in our day, youth, who doesn't want a nice charismatic young man saying, "Lord, what must I do to serve you?" How happy are we when we see young people taking an initiative in the community, taking initiative in the church slash synagogue, which is our exact situation now? How often are we excited to see young people, let alone wealthy? This guy would've been the perfect man to run a $5 million campaign to get a church building. This guy was perfect just with these broad descriptions, but looking at the text, look at how he comes to the Lord. All of Mark, we've been dealing with situations where even Jesus, His own disciples are not recognizing Him as Lord. They are essentially questioning His authority or not willing to trust in Him over and over again. It's really only the Gentiles, the people outside of the promises of God who are approaching Jesus with humility and trust and a heart to receive His kingdom and follow Him, but look at His approach. The man, he comes running up to Jesus as Jesus is leaving after a speaking and service engagement. If this man really was a ruler in his day, he was breaking custom here. First of all, it's really hot there, but no, rich man, wealthy man, man of honor did not run. When the visiting teacher came in that society, the leaders of the synagogue weren't going down just running straight to Him. That would've brought some shame and maybe people would've questioned their authority and integrity. Furthermore, it says he ran up and knelt before Him. He gets on his knees. That's just incredible. That is over the top and, again, not something that a man of honor does. Then what's even more notable is that this is a man who sees his need. He's willing to face potential public shame from his esteemed position because he says, "It's Jesus, this teacher, I've been hearing about this." The guy just thought, "He's talking about something that I don't have, eternal life." How many people do you share the gospel with, bring to church and they're like, "Yeah, I don't think I have that," but then they just never come back? They're content to just sit not knowing how to address that need, at least this guy's doing something. Furthermore, he's showing Jesus respect through the running, through the bowing. He's saying, "I see you're a good teacher. I see you've got something." He eagerly wants to hear what Jesus has to say. Then his question, it's not perfect, and I'll get to that later, but he asks a question. He's interested in eternal life. So this guy, he's a very good, exceptional, young man who cares about spiritual matters, and he is approaching Jesus with great eagerness, great zeal to find out the truth. I just want to say, as Christians, we pray for opportunities to share the gospel. We know God's love. We want everyone in our lives to have it if you really know it, and you're praying, "Lord, give me opportunities to share the gospel." How many of you, how thrilled would you be if someone at the lunch table at work said to you, "Andy, I know you're Christian. What must I do to inherit eternal life?" That'd be amazing. We dream for these opportunities. Most of the time we feel like a nag in the sharing and proclamation in public or in relationship. I was flying a couple weeks ago. I like to sit with my Bible open on the airplanes like, "Maybe this person will ask me a question. Lord, Lord, just prepare me and just humble this person. Let them see that I might have an answer for them." I was literally thinking like that reading my Bible on the plane, but it didn't happen, unfortunately, but we pray for these situations. So this guy's approach, it's good. There's something honorable and respectable about him, and you could not imagine anything more from a natural man, a non-believer. This is your friend who works at the biotech company in Boston saying, "There's something in your life that I don't have. What do I do to get it?" So Jesus, He's exposed this need. The man tries to find out how to address this thing that he's lacking and to get it. This is as good as a start as anybody could have. To the disciples of his day, they would've thought that this guy would've walked right into the kingdom of God. That's why they're so amazed that the story ends differently. So can you imagine a better start, but that is not the story. This is not the way the engagement goes. He doesn't walk right into the kingdom. Verse 22 says, "Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions."We're just forced to ask the question, "Why? What's the matter with this young man? What's the matter with his approach? Why did he go away? Why did he not enter the kingdom? Why is he left grieving and despondent, grieving in heart? What's the trouble?" The one phrase answer is this man went away because of his profound misunderstanding of the kingdom of God. That's why the Lord makes the comment in verse 23, "How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God." He says it again, "Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God."It's impossible for a righteous man seemingly perfect on the outside by his own works, by his own volition to enter the kingdom of God, but with God all things are possible. So this grace, we can only be saved by grace. So that's part of goodness does not matter, it's God's grace, but to focus on the shock, Jesus, He shocks with specific verses in this and Jesus shocks broadly with this tragedy. When people draw nears to Jesus, He shocks them. If you really have an encounter with Jesus, if you dig into scripture, if you hear a truly biblical, faithful sermon, if you come to Jesus with a heart and say, "Show me. I want to know who You are. I want to know what Your call on my life is," it's going to be a drastic engagement. There's only one of two directions. If you feel like you've never really been shocked by Jesus, you probably have not gotten close to Him. You're not really understanding the heart of His message. You're not really understanding the impossibility of entering His kingdom and the call to follow Him. So Jesus, He shocks those who draw near to him and He contends that their views of Him need to change, as well as their views of the kingdom need to be shaken up. So a lot of people, they talk about Jesus only as if He was a good man of history. Just like the man in our story, He's a good man. He was a great teacher, a great voice for the poor, great among the philosophers, a great social revolutionary. This is how I used to talk about Jesus when I was insecure to identify as a Christian at my liberal arts college. Perhaps they say He was a prophet among the great prophets, Buddha, Confucius. They say He was one of the greatest the world has ever seen. They think when you talk about Jesus in these ways but don't call Him the Lord, the Savior of man who came to die on the cross to bear the wrath for their sin and rise that they might have resurrection life and joyful, abundant life in eternity.When they say these comparisons, it's really an insult. They're really showing that they don't know who He really is. Jesus is not just any good teacher. He's the Son of God and Son of Man, the living God, the omnipotent God taken on flesh. He can't be categorized in the same genre as fallen man. We need to view Him this way because that's how He viewed Himself. So He's shown us that here a little bit in this text, but He wants us to confront our views of the kingdom of God.A lot of people come to Christianity think that it's just an add-on to what they're already doing in life. This is exactly what the rich young ruler was guilty of. He says, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? What must I do?" This is a man who wants to be doing something. He wants to keep doing what he's already doing, but maybe add a little bit more by his own effort to attain eternal life. We can see right away his approach. He seems flawless, but in his words, there's this pride saying, "I want to be a part of my own salvation. I want to be a part of my entry." He isn't coming as a child. He's not helpless and needy and humble. He is presenting himself as someone who's capable. He's successful in business. He's got good financial capital, not just cash, he's got capital. That's what possessions means later on in the text. He's socially respected in the community. He's got religious success. He wants Jesus to give him what is lacking and maintain the status quo of his life, and that's just not how the kingdom of God works. Jesus says to him, "You lack one thing. Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor and you have treasure in heaven. Come follow me." He's saying, "I'm here to uphold, just overturn your whole life. I'm here to cause upheaval," and it's not really on the outside first, it's on the inside first. Now, I'll elaborate more on that later, but Christianity, it's not an add-on. Jesus said, Mark 2:21-22, "No one sows a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old and a worst tear is made, and no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins and the wine is destroyed and so are the skins, but new wine is fresh for wineskins." Jesus is the fresh wine. If you put Him into an old wineskin, it's going to burst. When you enter the kingdom of God, it's not just like any other habit or study that you take up casually or leisurely or see, "What more could it bring to my life?" He wants to make you entirely new. He is not content to play second fiddle to anything in your life. This is really important because a lot of people, I know people in my life who have engaged Christianity for decades and they're just approaching it as if it's just any old study of history. It's just like any other philosophy, "Let me see what more it can add to my repertoire."No. Jesus says, "I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except by me." When you enter into the kingdom by this great gift of faith, you should expect your life to some change, some transformation. The rich young ruler knew that what Jesus called him to was so much more than he wanted to do. He thought, "It's just a little bit of sprinkle, a little bit of Jesus into my life and I'll just keep going with everything else."So Jesus, this is all under the point of when you come to Jesus, expect to be shocked. This is when you come to Jesus, expect to be shocked and, really, as you continue in life, expect to be shocked. He's going to keep pushing you toward greater levels of holiness, greater levels of maturity. A lot of people, they don't understand how far, how serious He is about holiness. When you're saved, praise God, you've probably left something, probably a sin that gripped the surface of your life and heart, but He just keeps digging and digging deeper and deeper. A lot of people are shocked how the Lord through marriage puts two people with complimentary parts together, and as iron sharpens iron, they see the endless, endless way that the Lord is just calling them to greater holiness by one day at a time not lashing out at their spouse. When you're a member of a church and you're called to in sickness and in health, stay faithful, continue to gather with one another, continue to love one another as Jesus has loved you and you find out these people are sinners, these leaders are flawed, the Lord is not just calling them to repent and trying to train everybody, He's calling you to greater levels of holiness in the way that you engage the tensions.It's shocking at how far the Lord digs into our identity to get us to grow in the faith, but when you're coming to the faith, when the Lord is shocking you when you're in the faith, how do you respond to that? This text, I think the response is you let Jesus search you. When you come to Jesus, get ready to be searched. By search I mean that Jesus probes your entire being and He looks for defilement, He looks for impurities on the surface of your life and at the heart, and He has perfect vision and He's going to reveal what He sees. If you look at the text, three times in the text it said that Jesus looked at someone. Verse 21, "Jesus looked at him and loved him." Verse 23, "Jesus looked around at His disciples and said ..." Again in verse 27, "Jesus looked at them and said ..." Three times there's this idea of Jesus looking, and I don't think that this is there as an accident. This is one of the unique elements of this presentation, of this story that is not in the other two gospel presentations of it.What we have here in this text is that Jesus, when He's looking at the young man, when He's looking at his disciples, it's a sense of He's giving a holy gaze. It's the Almighty God looking right at us and right through us. In Revelation 1, Jesus is depicted in radiant glory. We just think of a refining fire and having eyes of blazing fire. The apostle John said, the one who had the vision, the Holy Spirit gave the vision to for the Book of Revelation, he says, "When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead." You're just exposed when Jesus looks at your life and you realize you can't stand before Him in His holiness.In the next two chapters of Revelation after chapter one, Revelation 2 and 3, Jesus, He looks at seven churches and it seems as if He looks right through them. He understands what's happening. He calls them out for their sin, for their grievances for Him, and it seems like He's speaking into the minds and hearts of the individuals of the body. We think of Jesus telling Nathaniel when He's gathering His disciples, "Nathaniel, I saw you under the tree," and Nathaniel's shaken. The Lord has a special vision. In today's account, we see Jesus as looking, searching the rich young ruler, perceiving what his genuine spiritual sickness was, probing the core of his corruption, and it's amazing. I think his vision, it's just incisive. Within a few lines in an instant, Jesus just shatters this man's identity, reveals his greatest heart issues. So He sees this first and the man approaches Him. He finds one little mistake in his presentation when he says, "What must I do to inherit eternal life? What must I do?" Jesus takes that clue, which suggests that this man thinks he deserves entry into the kingdom based on his own righteousness that he's billed out by his works, by his observance of God's law, and He immediately questions the man's understanding for why he thinks he's a good candidate about the law. He says, "You know the commandments, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother," and he said to Him, "Teacher, all these I've kept for my youth." The man's answer affirms Jesus' suspicion that he thinks he can enter the kingdom upon his own merit, but you see, Jesus' wisdom, His genius in these verses were in the list of commandments that He mentioned, he's only acknowledging the second table of the law that is summarized by love your neighbor as yourself. He's not bringing up any of the first four commandments that talk about love of God. So this man thinks that he's one who should garner entry based on his good status in the community, based on his upholding of the commandments. Jesus, He sees that and He looks at him. He loves him, "There's almost something like something really likable about you. It's cute how you're presenting yourself to me, but you are so unobservant of yourself," and He looks at him and He asks him about one of the heart commandments, "What's the first commandment? You shall have no other god before Me." Jesus, He asks him this, He doesn't ask him this, He just puts His finger on the dot of where his idolatry when he says ... "And Jesus looked at him, loved him, and said to him, 'You lack one thing. Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor and you'll have treasure in heaven. Come follow me.'"He's pressing right on the center of the target, that thing that the man is holding onto that is preventing him from full submission to Christ's lordship, repentance and faith before him. This is what Jesus does. Further, the man says, it says, "Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions." So Jesus, like a surgeon, incisively reveals that this man who's perfect on the outside, he's an idolator. He does not love God first and foremost above everything in his life. He does not think that he was made to worship God and be satisfied by life of communion with Him, and so much so, his grasp on his money, his wealth, and perhaps all the things that it brought was so great that God is standing there right before him inviting him to follow Him, to care for Him, promising him riches in heaven and he wouldn't let go of it.So God, He just searches this man, Christ searches this man super quickly and nothing. This is what he does with all of us. Regardless of whatever good appearances or law-abiding appearances that we can conjure up, Christ can see what our heart truly longs for, and if it's not Him, He's going to expose it. In the case of the rich young ruler, it was his grip on his money. Jesus, He's not revealing that money is an inherently bad thing. There are great saints of history who have had money in scripture. We have Job, we have Joseph of Arimathea, the man who donated his tomb upon Christ's crucifixion. We think of Zacchaeus, who in his repentance used his wealth for God's glory, but money is not evil, but the text shows us that money is something so powerful that it can blind us to its control over us. It's money, there's something specific in Christ bringing this out in this passage. There's a special authority that it can have to us. This man clearly had no self-awareness, but everybody is tempted to clinging to something in this life for satisfaction that is not Jesus. Jesus wants to reveal that to us and root it out. I remember hearing about a story where there were monkey hunters in a jungle somewhere, and the monkeys were so ... What they did was, the hunters, they basically just had to put nuts in a jar and essentially fasten the container to where they put it. The monkeys were so greedy about getting the nuts. Their desire was so set on the nuts that when the hunters would arrive, they just kept their hand and stood there even though it led to their capture, their demise. We are just like the monkeys. People today, we hear the gospel go out, we hear it, we feel its call. We see the peel of a life with Christ, the joy of salvation, but we're unwilling to come when Christ calls us because we won't let go of our grasp around that thing that our heart is in love with. We tend to make, and it's not just rebellious sin, it's often good things that we put in the place of God. So what is it for you? What are you holding onto? If Christ came and He just looked at you, He didn't have to play around with the man with talk of goodness, He says, "You want to talk goodness? God is good. Let's not confuse categories here. Let's not talk about goodness. Your sense of goodness, you don't see it, but it's decided by your culture, your preferences. You want to talk about the law? Okay. I'm going to use the law to try to show your own blindness. That clearly doesn't work. Then we'll look at you and put it, bring you right to your idol." Christ, He could just look at us and call it out.So if He was here today, what would be that thing that you were thinking, that thing, that relationship, that experience, that lifestyle that you think could satisfy you more than Him? He's going to search us and probe us and try to get us to relinquish our grip on such things. Notice the text says, "Jesus looked at him and loved him," when he brought out the man's idolatrous relationship with his wealth, with his possessions. The text says this is loving, this act by Jesus is loving. It's tough love. This is Jesus with the holy gaze trying to help someone come out of their blindness, come out of the slavery to that thing that is dominating their life, that thing that they structure all of their life around to keeping, to retaining, that thing that's preventing them from worshiping Him, and He's trying to free them to come receive forgiveness for their sin, enjoy a life of freedom, a life entrusting Christ to provide for you one day at a time, and it's what is He calling you to let go of.I think we all have those things. Is it a relationship? Is it wealth and the control of your life that it could bring? Is it having a child? Is it your children? What is it? How do we ask? We ask, "Jesus Lord, search me and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there'll be any grievous way in me." If anyone has walked closely to me, you know that was my verse of 2023. The Christian, you get frightened by this searching at the start of faith because you see what Jesus is going to call you to leave to come and follow Him, but actually, you see the goodness of it and you grow in your profession. You grow in this prayer, "Lord, search me because if there's anything in me that is going to separate, tempt me to leave You, stop following You, if there's anything in me that's going to get in the way of this relationship that I have with You, just root it out, and please be gentle, but if You have to be painful and I'm that blind, just do it." We should grow to appreciate this searching. The Christian should grow, but the thing that happens when you feel the Lord, He's shocking you, He's searching you, it's offensive because our flesh, until Jesus returns, is going to fight and resist. It's going to want to look back and be tempted to cling to those idols. So when we come to Jesus, you should get ready to be blessed or grieved. This is when Jesus is shocking you, He's searching you, you've got two directions to go. We see in this text, these two results. With verse 22, we see the grief in the reaction of the ruler, "Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions." The word for grief used here, it's the word used in the gospels to describe the same grief that Jesus felt on the cross when the Father with whom He dwelt in perfect communion, loving, eternal communion, turns His face away, does not respond to His cries of, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me on the cross?" That same word for grief that talks about just a grief that we cannot fathom, that is the same word used to describe the grief that this rich young ruler felt when he's walking away from Jesus, when Jesus is pressing on that idol. The irony is, this is after he's walking away, he feels this grief. Jesus is actually letting him have what he wants, yet he's walking away despondent, in despair. He's clinging with a vice grip to that idol. It's tearing him apart, yet he's still holding onto it. We don't know. The text says, "Jesus looked at him and loved him." The only way Jesus can actually look at a sinner and idolator and love him is by grace. A lot of people say, "This guy definitely was not saved." The prayer is, hopefully, he saw the folly of his ways, and what did he have to do? He had to repent, go to Jesus, confess his sin of idolatry, of thinking that his wealth could satisfy him more than Jesus, and by confessing his sin, he could have been saved. That's the same with all of us if we catch ourselves in such idolatry. Then when we do that, whether it's in the initial first time that the Lord is searching us or later on perhaps, hopefully in the way that the ruler did, we can experience God's blessing. We see God's blessing, Mark 10:26-31, "And they were exceedingly astonished," the disciples, "and said to Him after the rich young ruler goes away, 'Then who can be saved?' Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man it is impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God.' Peter began to say to Him, 'See, we have left everything and followed you.' Jesus said, 'Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for My sake and for the gospel who will not receive a hundred fold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life, but many who are first will be last and the last first.'" For the person who has been searched by Jesus, who repents of their grip on the idols of their heart and follows Him and trusts His position in this life and eternity with Him, these are the most encouraging words. This is not prosperity gospel. These are Jesus' words. We read them at face value. As you engage the shock of just the difficulty of leaving stuff to enter into the kingdom as Jesus instructs you, when you engage Jesus' probing, when you relinquish your grip on these things that keep you away from following Him, He promises to reward you. These verses give us assurance that He sees your sacrifice. He sees your effort to leave, to say goodbye to the old man and live in a resurrected new way when you follow Him.Further, He says, He's not just going to honor in eternity, He's going to honor it in this life. What we're called by Christians upon the moment that we're saved is to follow Him, to trust Him that He will satisfy. We were made for worship for Him. That's what Adam and Eve, they're made to worship and dwell in the garden in perfect communion with the Lord, but they sinned against Him thinking that Satan said, "There's fruit of this world. Taste it. He's withholding something from you," but when we come to Christ and say, "No, God, I see You are enough," He promises to satisfy. Anyone who receives Jesus' call to follow Him and allows Him to stay in the position of Lord of their life and follows Him one day at a time, they know that actually a lot of these earthly things don't matter. The joy of salvation, the joy of peace, the peace that comes when you know that you're right before God, the Father through Jesus Christ, the perfect mediator, the knowledge that God loves you despite having full knowledge of your sin because of Jesus, you know that the joy of salvation is better. These extra benefits, these are just words and promises to give us hope to persevere until the end, but we can ask Him expectantly that He will offer them.There is an element, Mark says with persecutions. So it's not going to be perfect. Our hearts can be tempted towards sin. The creation is still crying out for Jesus' return. We're still in a fallen world, and these persecutions, they're means to test us, to grow us, and we're called to endure through them. I have had the pleasure in the past few weeks of having a rich young ruler of Boston of our congregation approach me and say, "Pastor Andy, I've had this relationship with you for five years, and just want to be honest with you. These whole five years I've checked in with you occasionally once a year, every year, year and a half, and what the Lord has shown me in the past couple months is I've been in grievous sin, just finding my satisfaction and building my kingdom, building my resume, grasping, having a vice grip on relationships that did not honor Him, and I see that that is sin. I see that I was committing idolatry, thinking these things could satisfy me more than God." What did he ask me? He set an appointment with me and he said, "How can I serve?" He knew that the work was finished in his life. He asked me, "How can I serve?" Then he told me he also went online. He heard about Mosaic's campaign for the building fund, and he said, "The Lord blessed me while I was in this period of sin and I just really want to serve Him with my life. I sold the stock that I had." I don't know what a lot meant to him. I don't know the specific amount, but he sold stock that he acquired over this period and he gave it toward the kingdom of God. So praise God, I got to see the Lord move. It's a miracle anytime the Lord does this in a person's life, but we need to trust that Jesus Christ, He is on His throne because He has lived, He has died, He has resurrected, He has ascended, He is in charge still, and He does save people. He gives people conviction by the Holy Spirit to repent of their idolatry, repent of their sin, repent of their self-dependence before Him and convinces them to repent and follow Him. So what was the rich young ruler called to? He was called to faith. It's confusing when you think Jesus has this perfect evangelistic opportunity and he's like, "Why didn't he just tell him to repent and believe?" Well, have faith in Christ. Well, Jesus, He's wiser than us. He knew the hard work that He needed to do on this guy, but we're basically called to be saved and trust Him and trust Him with our salvation and trust Him with provision to help us persevere to the end. When God saved Israel, He said, "People forget the preamble of the 10 Commandments." It's, "I am the Lord thy God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me." When we fully believe that God and Christ has met our deepest need, our guilt, our shame, our sin, our idolatry before Him, our hopelessness, our condemnation, that we are just walking towards apart from Him. When we see that God has met our deepest need through sending Christ to be the propitiation for our sins on the cross, we can trust Him with everything else.Israel was called to trust God after they're delivered from slavery. We are called to trust God when we realized He delivered us from the slavery to our sin. So we seek first His kingdom and all things will be added to us. Let me pray and close there.Heavenly Father, we praise You that You sent Your Son Jesus Christ for we know by Your word and by our personal experience of salvation and His provision as we've walked forward in faith, we know that He is the real rich, young ruler. Lord, we thank You for giving us the perspective to look upon this instance in history, the story, this tragedy, to learn more about how we may enter, to learn that we, by our own efforts, cannot enter, but through Christ, through His efforts, through faith in them we can, but Lord, please embolden our faith, grow our faith, grow our trust that You, as You have saved us, You will always provide for us. You see our effort today to honor You. We ask that You would bless us, preserve us, provide the comfort and strength and care we need to continue to honor You. Lord, we just ask, we pray, sustain us until we receive our reward in heaven. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. 

One quick announcement. We are in the middle of a building campaign and we're trying to raise $5 million for space that the Lord has sent to us. We've signed a purchase and sale agreement on half of it, and we're trying to raise funds for the rest. So I say that because we need prayer. The church of God, if we ask you to pray for the Lord to send us a miracle, it's a miracle that we got here. We're praying for the second iteration of the miracle is like the blind man. If you remember, he got the first touch from Jesus and Jesus says, "Do you see?" And he says, "I see people walking like trees." And he needed a second miracle.So that's what we need. Our first miracle is the space is located, we know where it is. Down Kent Street, you take a left on Longwood, three towers, it's right there. So pray. And then also if the Lord brings anyone to mind, perhaps a rich uncle or something like that, and then connect us with them. With that said, would you please pray with us for the preaching of God's Holy word.Heavenly Father, we come to your word with fear and trepidation, knowing that you are holy and your commandments are holy. And we recognize that we are sinful, we are commandment breakers, we are covenant breakers, unfaithful. Lord, but we thank you for Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior who out of his great love for you and out of his great love for us went to a cross to shed blood for the covenant. The covenant that welcomes us in for whoever would repent of sin, of transgression, everyone can be forgiven, purified, sanctified, and filled with the spirit to live lives of obedience. Lord, as we consider the topics before us in the text on marriage and divorce and children, someone of the most intimate spheres of life, Lord, we ask that you send us the Holy Spirit that you minister to us, to our hearts. If there's hardness of heart, remove it. If there's brokenness, mend it and heal it. If there's a lack of zeal for your word, I pray, Lord, fire up our hearts and bless us in the Holy Word in our time together, amen.We are continuing our sermon series through the Gospel of Mark called Kingdom Come. And the idea is that Jesus has come, the king has inaugurated His kingdom, but then He teaches us to pray. Our Father who in heaven hallowed be your name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So the more God's will is done in our lives, the more of His kingdom we usher into the world. The title of the sermon today is Covenantal Love. I will never leave you nor forsake you. These are some of the most powerful words that you can hear and they're some of the most powerful words that you can speak. These are words of eternal love, a love that will never end.And who's the only one who can make that promise and we can completely trust Him to keep it always? Well, that's God of course, because God alone is eternal. God alone is perfectly faithful. And this love, this faithful love is a costly love. And that's why the conversation about marriage happens right after Jesus informed his disciples that there's a cost to following him. There's a cost to loving like Jesus loved. There's a cost to faithful love and that's denying self daily, dying to self daily, taking up the cross daily. The way of Christ is the way of love and that's how most of people in the world view Christ and God. God is love and we all know that. It's love for God and love for neighbor. But if you look at the way of Christ, how Christ lived, the way of Christ is the way of the cross, the way of self-sacrifice and service.Therefore, the way to love and the way of love is self-sacrifice. All of me for all of you. And that's what covenantal love is. You say, "I love you so much that I will die to self to serve you." And how was the greatest covenant ratified? The greatest promise of love? Well, with the blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus tells us, "Drink of it all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." What was Jesus saying on the cross? On the cross, He opened up his arms and He said, "I love you this much and I love you so much that I am willing to bleed for you." That's what covenantal love costs. And receiving God's covenantal love, well, it's transformative. It changes your very essence. It melts your heart, it melts the hardness and his love fills your heart with a supernatural love to love the way He loved you with blood, sweat, and tears.And when you realize that He loved you with that kind of love and promises to love you like that for all of eternity, despite your sin, despite your unfaithfulness, despite your idolatry, despite your adultery, it stretches your heart expanding it and then your heart's filled with his love, ready to fill the hearts of the closest people in your life, your closest neighbors, your family, your wife, your husband, your children. Today we're in Mark 10:1-16, would you look at the text with me? And He left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan and crowds gathered to Him again. Again as was His custom he taught them.And Pharisees came up and in order to test Him asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" He answered them. "What did Moses command you?" They said, "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away." Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart He wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."And in the house the disciples asked Him again about this matter and He said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." And they were bringing children to him that He might touch them and the disciples rebuked them. And when Jesus saw it, He was indignant and said to them, "Let the children come to me. Do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it." And He took them in His arms and blessed them, laying His hands on them.This is the reading of God's holy, inherent, and fallible authoritative word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. First marriage is being joined together by God. Second, adultery is breaching of the marital covenant. And third, God loves humanity, therefore Jesus loves children. First of all, marriage is being joined together by God. Before Jesus Christ embarks on His journey to Jerusalem, embarks on the way of the cross, the Via Dolorosa, He tells us and the disciples how to follow Him in some of the most important areas of life. The next part of the chapter is about money and wealth and how do we interact with how Jesus wants us to be faithful with finances? And later He'll talk about a relationship to work and faithfulness there.But here He says, "I'm going to teach you how to follow me in the relationship between a husband and a wife and the relationship between parents and children." Jesus wants to follow Him needs to impact every single area of life, specifically the most important areas of our lives. He's Lord of all. And today Jesus concentrates His teaching of what it means to be a disciple in the most fundamental areas of life, one's marriage, one's children. In verse one of chapter 10, it says, "He left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan and crowds gathered to Him again. And again as was His custom, He taught them." So Jesus has finished the private discourse with the 12 disciples and what it means to follow Him. And probably that took place in Peter's house in Capernaum.Now Jesus is leaving everything familiar and He's beginning His fateful journey toward Jerusalem. And one of the fascinating things is Jesus here in His final journey toward Jerusalem, passes directly through the same area where John the Baptist conducted his work in preparing the way for the one who is to come after him. So the crowds gather and the Pharisees seeing another opportunity to test Jesus Christ. And the phrase here for test Jesus, shows that the inquiry is hostile. They're seeking to trap Him, therefore they ask a question about divorce. They come to Him in verse two and they say, "Pharisees came up in order to test Him and asked, 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?'" They try to trip Jesus up with a loaded question designed to expose Jesus Christ as a lawbreaker. They had heard Jesus teaching on family, on marriage, on children.And Jesus has been emphasizing the fact that it's one man, one woman, one covenant, one lifetime, and there wasn't any talk about divorce. And they believe virtually everyone in the first century, Palestine, was in agreement that you could get a divorce. Husbands could be granted divorces for trivial things if the wife didn't please them, since the law of Moses allowed for divorce. If Jesus here says, "Moses allowed for it, but I go against Moses," then Jesus can be charged with being a lawbreaker. So that's the trick behind what they're doing. And Matthew 9:3, it's more explicit, the parallel passage, "The Pharisees came up to Him and they tested Him by asking, 'Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?'" So they saw that Moses allowed for divorce and we'll get into that text in just a little bit, but then they reinterpreted in their schools of thought as for any cause.And the question is about marriage. So we're not dealing with a ceremonial ordinance, but with the moral law. And Jesus already warned not to think that He had come to destroy the law or nullify it. He has come to teach it and fulfill it. Verse three, "He answered them, 'What did Moses command you?'" They ask a question, Jesus answers with a counter question. And some early Christian commentators interpret this question as Jesus way of playing Moses commandments off against God's. Moses commanded this, but God did not. And that's clearly an unsustainable path exegesis, because in Mark 7, Jesus clearly identifies the 10 commandments as God's law. He's going to do the same with the conversation about the rich young ruler. And Jesus affirmed the binding character of the 10 commandments, the decalogue, as the central part of the mosaic teaching. If you remember, He revealed himself on the Mount of Transfiguration.He went up there with Peter, James, and John and He met with Elijah and Moses. And one of the reasons why He met with Moses was because the law was given by Moses. Therefore, Jesus is affirming the law that was given by Moses. And Elijah was given the job to then go tell the people of Israel that they need to repent and turn back to the 10 commandments. Moses wrote the whole Pentateuch concluding the Genesis narrative that Jesus will quote. So verse four, "They said, 'Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.'" And some exegesis have found a key to the passage in the contrast between Jesus' question, which asked about what Moses commanded and the Pharisees that reply, which only talks about what he allowed, as if in Jesus' opinion God permits divorce as a concession, but He never commanded it.And again, this exegesis is unsustainable and the Pharisees here are merely using common terminology of what may or may not be done. And this question in reference to divorce comes from Deuteronomy 24. If you know about Jesus and the way He quotes scripture, go back and see how often He quotes the book of Deuteronomy. When He meets with Satan, when Satan comes to tempt Jesus in the wilderness, when He's fasting for 40 days, three times Jesus' response to Satan and all three times they're verses from Deuteronomy.Deuteronomy 24:1, "When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes, because he has found some indecency in her and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of the house and she departs out of his house, and if she goes and becomes another man's wife and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies who took her to be his wife, then her former husband who sent her away may not take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled. For that is an abomination before the Lord and you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance."So Deuteronomy 24 is a classic example of the Torah's casuistic or case law. The case law that interpreted the 10 commandments and occasions that would arise in real life. Here in this text there's no denunciation of the divorce. In fact, it's not the divorce that's being denunciation by taking a divorce wife back after she has subsequently married and divorced another man. In verse one it says, "If he finds some kind of indecency in her," another translation says, "Nakedness." Leviticus 18 uses this phrase 18 to 20 times. It has to do with illicit sexual activity. So when Deuteronomy 4:4 says that the woman has been defiled by her second marriage, it's because there was still the option of reconciliation before she actually had sexual relations with her second husband.On the one hand, the divorce of the wife was legitimate though not mandatory. On the other hand, her second marriage is categorized as defilement, which in this case must of necessity refer to adultery. And the second marriage is simultaneously categorized as both permissible and adultery at the same time. And you say how? Well the explanation is that the second marriage permanently and irrevocably severs the first one flesh marital union with her first husband, there can be no more reconciliation.It is in this sense an aspect of the second marriage constitutes adultery. And though this constitutes adultery and though the woman is set to be defiled, her defilement is in regard to her first husband. It's not defilement in regard to the second husband. It says he is to write her a certificate of divorce and send her away to make it official. So they quote Moses, Moses permitted, Moses allowed. In verse five it says, "Because of your hardness of heart," Jesus says, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment." In the parallel passage in Matthew 19:8, "He said to them, 'Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.'" And some people look at this text and they say, "Well, because God foresaw hardness of heart or sinfulness, He wrote into the law a concession to sin."And this of course cannot be the right interpretation, because God never writes into the law concession to sin, though He does write into the law consequences of sin. So the divorce writing in Deuteronomy 24 is not a concession to sin, but it's consequences of sin. If adultery is to happen in a marriage, there are consequences that can be taken. Consequence number one for adultery in marriage was execution. But the husband sometimes, because of grace toward his wife, didn't pursue the execution. Like Joseph, if you remember Joseph, when his wife Mary was found to be with child, Joseph didn't hear from the Holy Spirit yet, he didn't hear from the angel yet, and he quietly wanted to divorce her and then the Lord stopped that. So divorce sometimes was a lesser consequence that was pursued instead of execution.So what then does Jesus mean, "From the beginning it was not." What does he mean, "Because of your hardness of heart?" Well, quite simply that from the beginning when there was no sin, there was no provision for divorce, but man fell into sin and subsequently hardhearted men and women commit adultery. Divorce comes in on the heels of sin, because it is necessary to punish sin, which is what divorce is. It's a punishment or a sanction for sin. So divorce legislation is authorized or permitted in order to deal with this hard heartedness. Divorce is not presented as an inherent or absolute right, but as a remedy for sin and a right only ensuing upon sin.Verse six, "But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female." He goes to the very beginning. So in a sense, in the Garden of Eden, the Garden of Eden was ruled under God's will perfectly. And in a sense Jesus Christ comes in order to save us from our sins and He points to the 10 commandments, this is how we are to govern ourselves if we are to live a life that creates a semblance, a taste, a foretaste of heaven on earth. So He goes from the beginning, He goes to the very beginning and He says, "God made them male and female." The first service I almost passed out. I know what was happening. 15 years I've been doing this long enough and I know there are topics where you are just over the target. You put yourself over the target and in the spiritual realm there is war. And whoever was in the first service, you know exactly what was happening. My wife almost called 911. She said, "I had my phone ready," because I know where we're standing.We're standing in the demonic epicenter of ideologies, demonic ideologies that seek to pervert the design of God from the very beginning. We stand, this synagogue celebrated the fact that they had one of the first same sex marriages ever officiated in this country right here, right here in a place where the 10 commandments are right there. So people standing right with the 10 commandments, the law of God over them as they make a mockery of it. I also understand this moment in time that we're in. We are in a synagogue with the 10 commandments in back of me and the latest iteration of the pride flag outside, that's not our flag. And what is that flag? The new iteration is confusion on gender. Alistair Begg recently, he was a faithful expository for years, but he was asked recently, "Hey, my grandchild is having a same sex wedding, can I go to the wedding?" And his response was, "Not only should you go, but you should bring a present. In effect with your presence you're celebrating or you're partaking in the ceremony of the covenant that's being made."And I was blown away by that, because those are conversations that we were having a decade ago here. The conversations we're having now aren't about that. The conversations we're having now with people here, real people, we're asking can my child be friends with a trans child? Our kids go to school with parents that dress boys in girls clothing. That's where we are in this moment in time. So even to get up and say, "No, there's two genders, male and female, He created them. And He designed sexuality for the flourishing of humanity." Why is this topic so important to God? Because this is the topic that explains how we got here. We're talking about the act of creation itself.And what does Satan want to do above all else? He wants to murky the waters of the design of God so people say, "Is there a designer? Look at us." So Jesus goes and He says, "From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female." And the emphasis here is on the complimentary sexual equipment of the first couple designed for each other whose result in sexual union is part of an indelible marital bond created by God. The presupposition of this argument seems to be that sexual union creates a permanent ontological fusion of the individuals involved. That on a spiritual level something is happening that you can't even explain, a unifying experience. When one body enters or is entered by another, a transaction of eternal significance has taken place. One that in its merging of opposites and resolutions of contradictions. And in a culture in which sex is often trivialized and used merely as just fun, private gratification, we have to heed the words of Christ.Verse seven, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So they have no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate." Jesus doesn't use the word marriage here. He uses it later in the private discussion with the disciples, but clearly that's the subject at hand. And what is marriage? Marriage is a man and a woman becoming one in recognition that God has joined them together for life, therefore they vow not to separate. I remember as a young pastor freshly ordained out of seminary, I was really excited to move to Boston, plant a church 15 years ago. And I remember being asked to do my first wedding and people always say, "Pastor Jan, will you marry us?" And I always say, "No, I'm already married. Thank you."And what they mean is, "Will you officiate our ceremony?" And I remember sitting down and saying, "I just spent three years in seminary, which is like law school and not once was there not even one class on how to lead a wedding ceremony." I had to write some pastors, "What do you do?" And they're like, "Well, I cobbled this together from some other pastors. And you go back into history." And so you put in some kind of formula that looks like it works. You greet everybody, the bride comes down the aisle and you say, "Who gives this bride to marry this groom?" And the father says, "Her mother and I do." And then you get up and you say, "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the sight of God, in the face of this matrimony," you do that whole spiel.And we got that from the book of Common Prayer from England. I don't know why we use that. Then you read a little homily. And I realized that with a lot of weddings, you ask people, "How's the wedding?" And if they say it was good, it's only for two reasons. They're like, "Yeah, the wedding was great. Number one, the bride looked great. And then number two, the food. Oh, the food, the food was..." And what I tell people in the ceremony, I was like, "That's all good and well, that's not the most important part of the ceremony. The most important part of the ceremony is that this couple, this man, this woman are making a covenant, speaking with their eyes, with their mouth, sorry." And in the same way that Jesus Christ says, "You need to confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your heart that He rose from the dead."The speaking in some sense makes it a reality. And where do we get that idea, is because God spoke and His word has creative effect. So when the groom and the bride, they say I do, they make the vows. What are they doing? They're not just confessing past love and they're not professing current love, they're promising future love. That's the covenant. That's the most important part. But regarding engagements and wedding ceremonies, there's very little detail in the Bible. There are no prescriptive commands in the Bible whatsoever concerning ceremonial procedures, rituals, civil and ecclesiastical requirements, public oaths. And you say why? Why is the Bible silent on this issue? Oaths and vows and rituals and ceremonies are numerous in the Bible, but marriage oaths and ceremonies are conspicuous by their absence. Well, why?Because what is Jesus saying marriage is? He's saying the man shall leave his father and mother, leaving a household. I'm going to start my own family. And then you hold fast to your wife and two shall become one. So in a sense, sexual union is marriage properly defined. Betrothal or spousal is actually an agreement or covenant pertaining to the marriage, not marriage itself. Such agreements, however, are presented in the Bible in covenantal terms. So the sexual union to becoming one is the consummation of the covenant made with God and one another, what God has joined together. You're recognizing we are under the eyes of God. God before the foundation of the world has predestined us to come together. We're recognizing, we're making a covenant to God and we're making a covenant with one another before the eyes of God. The reason why we hold marriage ceremony in the church is for the church to come alongside of the couple and hold them accountable to the covenant made.Because why make the covenant? Because you are anticipating moments where you will be tempted to break the covenant, that's why you make it. And you need the church to come alongside you and say, "We were there, we were witnesses, we heard the vows. You are one and you are one for life." In Genesis 1:26-28, we find God creating man and woman and blessing them with the words, be fruitful and multiply. And this was in essence the betrothal of Adam and Eve by their father. And there was no question here of any ceremony or ritual to solemnized or authorize their union, only the authoritative command of God that you have been joined together. Moreover, the Apostle Paul in the New Testament explicitly interprets the phrase one flesh as sexual relations. And while many have rightly pointed out that the phrase is not restricted to sexual relations, but includes the whole personal relationship of man and wife, it's a very great error not to see that this is its core meaning and central focus.Look at 1 Corinthians 6:16, "Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, 'The two will become one flesh.'" So Paul uses Genesis 2:24 to argue for the permanence of the union created by sexual intercourse even with prostitutes. So meaning the commencement of sexual relations begins a marriage, because sex is a covenant making ceremony and covenant making and covenant renewal. And we live in a day and age where people just want to make the covenant, just act out the covenant and then never... I mean, not for the beginning. Think about what are we agreeing to? One regarding the building that we are purchasing, there's going to be a building plug in every sermon from now on until we raise $5 million or move into the building, and/or.I get the purchase and sale agreement from our lawyer and Adobe DocuSign, very tremendous. I get on my phone, I was actually at the gym getting into my truck right after working out and I was like, "Oh sweet, I get to sign a contract." I open it up, not reading a thing, not a thing. I mean, I kind of knew what was... The small letters I was not reading. And then it says, "Okay, there was a blue arrow, initial here, click and then you write the JV. And then sign here, I did the thing. And then you just go through a whole document and that part was so fun, it's so gratifying, so incredible. I'm just signing stuff. What am I signing? What am I signing? What am I agreeing to? There's a cost, obviously. I signed a contract. There's terms, there's an agreement, I know exactly the cost involved in this... And that's a contract. A contract is so much less important than a covenant. A covenant is before the watchful eyes of God.So when people are just going around doing it, what are you doing? What are you promising to the other person? And there is something happening on a spiritual level that you can't even make sense of. So if you are going to consummate the covenant, you just got to be really, really clear on what it is. So therefore sex is sacred and should be not treated as profane. And if we have not made a covenant with God that He has joined us together, then we must not join together.And in biblical scripture this is how they viewed marriage. If you think about Jacob and Leah, the story of Jacob and Leah. He married Rachel, worked a long time for her and then goes to sleep. And then there's that fateful verse and he wakes up in the morning and it wasn't Rachel, it was Leah. And does he go to Laban and say, "No, we didn't have a ceremony, therefore we're not married. You tricked me." No, he realized what happened. We're married, I'm married to her. And this is how scripture presents a marriage. A marriage is a covenant. Virtually every reference in the Bible to covenant shows them to be a weighty matter and that the evidence is overwhelming.In Genesis 2:24, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast his wife and they shall become one flesh." So this verse imputes a legal covenantal significance to their coming together physically. And this is actually how scripture talks about God's relationship with His people. Ezekiel 16:8, for example, God says, "When I pass by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I made my vow to you and entered into covenant with you, declares the Lord God and you became mine." So man shall leave his father and mother, he's leaving one family to start his own. And then with the wife, they're joined together and he says, "What therefore God joined together, let no man separate."For the idea that God brings man and wife together, it's an idea. The phrase here is yoke me. That God in a sense yokes mates together, puts a yoke on them and says, "You together now are going in this direction." And it displays the idea of mates predestined for each other from the beginning of the world. Someone recently asked me, "Do you believe that God predestined people to get married?" I say, "Yeah, of course, of course." If God predestined people to salvation before the foundation of the world, then he certainly predestines how they are created and by whom and through what means.When I met my wife, I met her in Philadelphia at church and I tell everyone was love at first sight. And that's the romantic way to look at it. The theological way is I knew she's the one that I was predestined to marry before the foundation of the world. How did I know? I knew. And so that's part of choosing a mate. You pray and you say, "God, whom have you predestined for me?" And what God has joined together we are not to separate. And so Christ is refuting divorce on demand. He's also refuting making covenants on demand without thinking about it.Point two, and this brings us to adultery. Adultery is breaching of the marital covenant. In the house, the disciples ask for clarification in verse 10, in the house of the disciples asked him again about this matter, meaning they were puzzled like the teaching of Jesus was so radical, it's almost like they've never heard it before. It's like how did you not hear this clear teaching of scripture? Because the teaching was presented by Pharisees who wanted the loophole of divorce on demand. So the teachings of scripture, which are normative, this is how things should be, weren't normal. They weren't normal at that time. And this was the pattern in all of Israel. When people would move away from the law, they moved away from what's normative. And then what was normal was just sin and consequences of a debased mind.So verse 11, "And he said to them, 'Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.'" And what word best describes the violation of the marital bond than adultery? And that's why Jesus uses the word for adultery to explain the breaking of that covenant. And Matthew 5, Jesus gives us more comments on this. Verse 31, "It was also said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery." Note what Jesus asserts, that such a man causes his wife to commit adultery. If he divorces her for non-biblical grounds for anything other than adultery, he causes her to commit adultery.Now note first what Jesus simply presupposes. He presupposes that the woman in question will remarry. Else there would be no adultery to speak of. And secondly, Jesus clearly places the guilt of the adultery upon the man who divorces his wife without valid grounds. And though the woman and her new husband commit the act, the guilt of the adultery, the violation of the one flesh bond is imputed to the divorcing husband. He, the divorcing husband, is declared to be the cause of adultery. And the wife who remarries in such a situation and the man who marries her are not imputed with the guilt of adultery. And the law of God always distinguishes between a perpetrator of sin and a victim of sin. A wife who is unjustly divorced by an unrepentant husband is a victim and would be permanently victimized and consigned to a life of singleness if she were required to remain unmarried. So Jesus clearly imputes to the divorcing husband as the causative agent of the adultery guilt thereof.In Matthew 19:9, in the parallel passage it says, "And I say to, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery." And the word for sexual immorality in the Greek is pornea. And what's happening here is this exception, this clause, sexual immorality, is the parallel to the indecency language in Deuteronomy 24. That for adultery, if a married woman commits adultery, that act of adultery, that word is used to describe the severing of the one covenant with her first husband.Adultery is the transgression of the seventh commandment and it is punishable by death. But sometimes divorce was the chosen path. If you remember like with Joseph, and this is how God speaks of his relationship with even Israel. That Israel deserved execution, capital punishment. God should have wiped them off the face of the earth, but God had mercy on them. So instead of execution for their spiritual adultery, idolatry, he gave Israel a certificate of divorce in Isaiah 50, "Thus says the Lord, 'Where is your mother's certificate of divorce, with which I sent her away? Or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold for your iniquities, you were sold and for your transgression your mother was sent away.'" And the conquest and exile of the northern kingdom of Israel by Assyria is allegorically characterized by God as a bill of divorcement. For what? For adultery.In Jeremiah 3:8 he makes that explicit, "She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she went and played the whore." So divorce in God's law is not just permitted, but sometimes it is a manifestation of God's holiness and wrath against sin. And since divorce is a manifestation of God's holiness and God calls his people to be holy for I am holy, it follows by good and necessary consequence from this that God's example of divorcing his wife for the cause of adultery was normative and the lawful basis and redress on a human level. And that was His grace. It was His grace. They deserved execution, He didn't give them that. Execution was not the only lawful means of dealing with adultery.So adultery is a breach of the marriage covenant and divorce is confirmation of that breach. It was allowed for God by God not as a concession but as a consequence for sin. Verse 12, "And she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." In Exodus it says that the failure to provide for the wife on the part of the man constitutes a breach of the one flesh covenant as well and by implication that includes extreme offenses such as physical abuse. But groundless divorce itself constitutes adultery, because adultery is the breaking of the covenant."Pastor Jan, we are seeking a divorce. What do you think?" I had this conversation recently. I said, "Why? What are the biblical grounds?" "Well, I think God wants us to be happy and we'll be happier apart from each other." God's primary will is not your happiness. It's not my happiness. God's primary will for you is your obedience and your obedience of faith. And with that obedience, God gives us the power of the Holy Spirit to be obedient and fills your heart with joy. Now the fact that we made the covenant husband and wife, made the covenant, your covenant together that no matter the season, no matter what happened, we're going to stay together, because it's God's will. This is God's will. We confirmed it's God's will and we made that vow.And then point three is, God loves humanity, therefore Jesus loves children. So marriage and heterosexual sex are inextricably linked with the divine gift of children. And indeed in Genesis 1:28, God's first blessing on humanity after he created the male and female is be fruitful and multiply. And it's no accident that our passage in which Jesus traces the institution of marriage back to the beginning of creation is immediately followed by His blessing of children. So having proclaimed the permanence of marriage, Jesus now turns to the related theme of children on natural progression.And this is partially why God has designed marriage the way He has and sex the way He has so that there's never any question on who's the father. One of the greatest epidemics in our culture and in the world in general is the epidemic of fatherlessness. Where children growing up not knowing who their father is or not having a father in the house. The reason why God designed it is so that children would not be brought up that way with so much pain. And Mark 10:13, "And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, 'Let the children come to me. Do not hinder them for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God, like a child shall not enter it.'"The main Old Testament background to the saying of entering the dominion of God is the image of the Israelites as they were poised on the brink of entering the Promised Land, but they didn't believe God. And then God tells them, "Your children who today do not know right from wrong, they shall enter there." And Jesus makes it an emphasis that the only way to enter the kingdom of God is to receive it. And in scripture, people frequently enter into action that was prepared for them by another. Others have labored and you have entered into their kingdom. So when He says enter the dominion of God, he's saying enter into the work of God. He's prepared the kingdom. And little children are the model of how people enter the kingdom.That God bestows the kingdom upon the low, upon the helpless, upon those who can do nothing to gain entrance. And entrance into the kingdom of God is not something which can be earned or gained, because of the basis of human merit. As one commentator aptly put it, to receive the kingdom is to allow oneself to be given it. We see Jesus revealing his heart. And that's the heart of a father, because he knows God the Father, he knows God the Father's heart. He welcomes the children, He takes them in His arms, He blesses them, He hugs them, and He loves them. In Malachi 2:13-16, all these themes are summarized by the following and the Lord God says, "And this second thing you do, you cover the Lord's altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because He no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand.""But you say, 'Why does he not?' Because the Lord was witnessed between you and the wife of your youth to whom you have been faithless. Though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. 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. 'For the man who does not love his wife, but divorces her,' says the Lord God of Israel, 'covers his garment with violence,' says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless." The Lord Jesus Christ knew what his teaching was doing as He was explicating the commandments of God. He knows exactly what was happening. That the straight edge of the sword of God's commandments was piercing the hearts of the listeners.And that's exactly what regeneration is. Regeneration is when you hear the word of God, when you hear the law of God and you feel in your heart how much you have transgressed the holy, pure law of God. It's like the commandment goes down into your heart, pierces it, and that's exactly what it's supposed to do. The more precise, the sharper the edge of the sword, the more clean the incision. And then what does God do? He gives us a heart transplant. He takes the hard heart of stone and He removes it and replaces it with a heart that's tender toward God, tender toward the people He calls us to love.Ezekiel 11:19, "And I will give them one heart and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them and they shall be my people and I will be their God. But as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads, declares the Lord God." So today, however you're feeling about this message or the subject matter, if you are feeling condemnation or shame or guilt, or if you are feeling the stirring of the Holy Spirit, calling you to repentance, calling you to ever greater levels of holiness, just know that's the Lord working in you.Here I want to read 1 Corinthians 6, and as Paul deals with this subject matter, I want to put the emphasis on the fact that he's speaking to Christians. He's speaking to people who were saved out of this worldly idea of what it means to be a man, a woman, sexuality, et cetera. And he says, "Such were some of you," were. Such were some of you.So 1 Corinthians 6:9, "Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything. Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy both one and the other.""The body is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will raise us up by His power. Do you not know that your are bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For as it is written, the two will become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body."As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ we're part of the church, the bride of Christ. That's why the new building is a ballroom. And I like that idea, because we're the bride of Christ and Jesus is going to... We're going to dance with Jesus following His lead. He's going to lead us. How did Jesus choose His bride? Did He choose His bride for her beauty? Did He choose us because of our purity and holiness? Did He choose us because we were lovely? Did He choose us for our godliness? No. God chose His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And we, the bride of Christ, we've all been unfaithful to the Lord.Therefore, in the covenant we make with Christ, it's now we who spill the blood of virginity, it's He who spills the blood to redeem us. And Jesus Christ loved the church, not because she was lovely, but because He is loving and He gave himself up for her to save her and to make her lovely. He forgives us and redeems us and makes a covenant with us. And then what does He do? He begins to sanctify the church.And in Ephesians 5 says that He does so by cleansing the church, cleansing His bride by the washing of water with the word. I love that picture. That's how I view my job. I view my job as I am here to wash you with the water of the word. And some texts feel like I've got a power washer. Have you ever seen those videos on power washing? They're very satisfying. I can watch those things for a long time. Power washing videos, all the mildew coming off the house. And I used to do that as a kid. I used to paint with my dad, he's got a painting business, and my job was the power washing, because it takes a lot of work. And I remember as a 13-year-old kid, I'm on the 40-foot ladder at the very top trying to hold the power wash. But it's so strong that it's blowing you off.That's what we need sometimes. That there's sin, that there's cobwebs, that there's mildew of sin in us. And the Lord has given us His word and He cleanses us by the washing of water with the word. Why? So that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish.So today, if you have felt the sharp edge of the commandment of God coming down upon you, because of commandment number seven or whatever commandment, and we've broken commandment seven, because we broke commandment number one. What's commandment number one? Thou shall have no other gods before me. If we have other gods before God, either ourselves or someone else, well of course we're going to shirk the other commandments. So if you felt the commandments of God coming down on you, revealing sin, revealing that we're all transgressors today, look to the cross of Christ.Look and see the covenantal love of Christ as His blood is pouring down in order to redeem us and save us. And as you repent of your sin, receive the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe that you have been forgiven, purified, sanctified, as pure as snow. And then receive this promise from the Lord Jesus Christ that He is speaking to you. And this promise will satisfy your soul with a love that you will never experience from another human being. Receive this promise. I will never leave you nor forsake you. He proved it on the cross. That's true. He's faithful. Then He calls us to follow him.Let us pray. Lord God, we thank you for this word and we thank you for this time together. We thank you Holy Spirit, that you are with us and you are ministering to us. Lord, if our hearts are broken, mend them. If our hearts are hardened, soften them. If our hearts have grown tepid toward you and toward your word today, Lord, set our hearts on fire so that we will be people of God seeking holiness in absolutely every area of life, including the most intimate ones. We pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.

One quick announcement. We are in the middle of a building campaign and we're trying to raise $5 million for space that the Lord has sent to us. We've signed a purchase and sale agreement on half of it, and we're trying to raise funds for the rest. So I say that because we need prayer. The church of God, if we ask you to pray for the Lord to send us a miracle, it's a miracle that we got here. We're praying for the second iteration of the miracle is like the blind man. If you remember, he got the first touch from Jesus and Jesus says, "Do you see?" And he says, "I see people walking like trees." And he needed a second miracle.So that's what we need. Our first miracle is the space is located, we know where it is. Down Kent Street, you take a left on Longwood, three towers, it's right there. So pray. And then also if the Lord brings anyone to mind, perhaps a rich uncle or something like that, and then connect us with them. With that said, would you please pray with us for the preaching of God's Holy word.Heavenly Father, we come to your word with fear and trepidation, knowing that you are holy and your commandments are holy. And we recognize that we are sinful, we are commandment breakers, we are covenant breakers, unfaithful. Lord, but we thank you for Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior who out of his great love for you and out of his great love for us went to a cross to shed blood for the covenant. The covenant that welcomes us in for whoever would repent of sin, of transgression, everyone can be forgiven, purified, sanctified, and filled with the spirit to live lives of obedience. Lord, as we consider the topics before us in the text on marriage and divorce and children, someone of the most intimate spheres of life, Lord, we ask that you send us the Holy Spirit that you minister to us, to our hearts. If there's hardness of heart, remove it. If there's brokenness, mend it and heal it. If there's a lack of zeal for your word, I pray, Lord, fire up our hearts and bless us in the Holy Word in our time together, amen.We are continuing our sermon series through the Gospel of Mark called Kingdom Come. And the idea is that Jesus has come, the king has inaugurated His kingdom, but then He teaches us to pray. Our Father who in heaven hallowed be your name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So the more God's will is done in our lives, the more of His kingdom we usher into the world. The title of the sermon today is Covenantal Love. I will never leave you nor forsake you. These are some of the most powerful words that you can hear and they're some of the most powerful words that you can speak. These are words of eternal love, a love that will never end.And who's the only one who can make that promise and we can completely trust Him to keep it always? Well, that's God of course, because God alone is eternal. God alone is perfectly faithful. And this love, this faithful love is a costly love. And that's why the conversation about marriage happens right after Jesus informed his disciples that there's a cost to following him. There's a cost to loving like Jesus loved. There's a cost to faithful love and that's denying self daily, dying to self daily, taking up the cross daily. The way of Christ is the way of love and that's how most of people in the world view Christ and God. God is love and we all know that. It's love for God and love for neighbor. But if you look at the way of Christ, how Christ lived, the way of Christ is the way of the cross, the way of self-sacrifice and service.Therefore, the way to love and the way of love is self-sacrifice. All of me for all of you. And that's what covenantal love is. You say, "I love you so much that I will die to self to serve you." And how was the greatest covenant ratified? The greatest promise of love? Well, with the blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus tells us, "Drink of it all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." What was Jesus saying on the cross? On the cross, He opened up his arms and He said, "I love you this much and I love you so much that I am willing to bleed for you." That's what covenantal love costs. And receiving God's covenantal love, well, it's transformative. It changes your very essence. It melts your heart, it melts the hardness and his love fills your heart with a supernatural love to love the way He loved you with blood, sweat, and tears.And when you realize that He loved you with that kind of love and promises to love you like that for all of eternity, despite your sin, despite your unfaithfulness, despite your idolatry, despite your adultery, it stretches your heart expanding it and then your heart's filled with his love, ready to fill the hearts of the closest people in your life, your closest neighbors, your family, your wife, your husband, your children. Today we're in Mark 10:1-16, would you look at the text with me? And He left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan and crowds gathered to Him again. Again as was His custom he taught them.And Pharisees came up and in order to test Him asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" He answered them. "What did Moses command you?" They said, "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away." Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart He wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."And in the house the disciples asked Him again about this matter and He said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." And they were bringing children to him that He might touch them and the disciples rebuked them. And when Jesus saw it, He was indignant and said to them, "Let the children come to me. Do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it." And He took them in His arms and blessed them, laying His hands on them.This is the reading of God's holy, inherent, and fallible authoritative word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. First marriage is being joined together by God. Second, adultery is breaching of the marital covenant. And third, God loves humanity, therefore Jesus loves children. First of all, marriage is being joined together by God. Before Jesus Christ embarks on His journey to Jerusalem, embarks on the way of the cross, the Via Dolorosa, He tells us and the disciples how to follow Him in some of the most important areas of life. The next part of the chapter is about money and wealth and how do we interact with how Jesus wants us to be faithful with finances? And later He'll talk about a relationship to work and faithfulness there.But here He says, "I'm going to teach you how to follow me in the relationship between a husband and a wife and the relationship between parents and children." Jesus wants to follow Him needs to impact every single area of life, specifically the most important areas of our lives. He's Lord of all. And today Jesus concentrates His teaching of what it means to be a disciple in the most fundamental areas of life, one's marriage, one's children. In verse one of chapter 10, it says, "He left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan and crowds gathered to Him again. And again as was His custom, He taught them." So Jesus has finished the private discourse with the 12 disciples and what it means to follow Him. And probably that took place in Peter's house in Capernaum.Now Jesus is leaving everything familiar and He's beginning His fateful journey toward Jerusalem. And one of the fascinating things is Jesus here in His final journey toward Jerusalem, passes directly through the same area where John the Baptist conducted his work in preparing the way for the one who is to come after him. So the crowds gather and the Pharisees seeing another opportunity to test Jesus Christ. And the phrase here for test Jesus, shows that the inquiry is hostile. They're seeking to trap Him, therefore they ask a question about divorce. They come to Him in verse two and they say, "Pharisees came up in order to test Him and asked, 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?'" They try to trip Jesus up with a loaded question designed to expose Jesus Christ as a lawbreaker. They had heard Jesus teaching on family, on marriage, on children.And Jesus has been emphasizing the fact that it's one man, one woman, one covenant, one lifetime, and there wasn't any talk about divorce. And they believe virtually everyone in the first century, Palestine, was in agreement that you could get a divorce. Husbands could be granted divorces for trivial things if the wife didn't please them, since the law of Moses allowed for divorce. If Jesus here says, "Moses allowed for it, but I go against Moses," then Jesus can be charged with being a lawbreaker. So that's the trick behind what they're doing. And Matthew 9:3, it's more explicit, the parallel passage, "The Pharisees came up to Him and they tested Him by asking, 'Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?'" So they saw that Moses allowed for divorce and we'll get into that text in just a little bit, but then they reinterpreted in their schools of thought as for any cause.And the question is about marriage. So we're not dealing with a ceremonial ordinance, but with the moral law. And Jesus already warned not to think that He had come to destroy the law or nullify it. He has come to teach it and fulfill it. Verse three, "He answered them, 'What did Moses command you?'" They ask a question, Jesus answers with a counter question. And some early Christian commentators interpret this question as Jesus way of playing Moses commandments off against God's. Moses commanded this, but God did not. And that's clearly an unsustainable path exegesis, because in Mark 7, Jesus clearly identifies the 10 commandments as God's law. He's going to do the same with the conversation about the rich young ruler. And Jesus affirmed the binding character of the 10 commandments, the decalogue, as the central part of the mosaic teaching. If you remember, He revealed himself on the Mount of Transfiguration.He went up there with Peter, James, and John and He met with Elijah and Moses. And one of the reasons why He met with Moses was because the law was given by Moses. Therefore, Jesus is affirming the law that was given by Moses. And Elijah was given the job to then go tell the people of Israel that they need to repent and turn back to the 10 commandments. Moses wrote the whole Pentateuch concluding the Genesis narrative that Jesus will quote. So verse four, "They said, 'Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.'" And some exegesis have found a key to the passage in the contrast between Jesus' question, which asked about what Moses commanded and the Pharisees that reply, which only talks about what he allowed, as if in Jesus' opinion God permits divorce as a concession, but He never commanded it.And again, this exegesis is unsustainable and the Pharisees here are merely using common terminology of what may or may not be done. And this question in reference to divorce comes from Deuteronomy 24. If you know about Jesus and the way He quotes scripture, go back and see how often He quotes the book of Deuteronomy. When He meets with Satan, when Satan comes to tempt Jesus in the wilderness, when He's fasting for 40 days, three times Jesus' response to Satan and all three times they're verses from Deuteronomy.Deuteronomy 24:1, "When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes, because he has found some indecency in her and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of the house and she departs out of his house, and if she goes and becomes another man's wife and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies who took her to be his wife, then her former husband who sent her away may not take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled. For that is an abomination before the Lord and you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance."So Deuteronomy 24 is a classic example of the Torah's casuistic or case law. The case law that interpreted the 10 commandments and occasions that would arise in real life. Here in this text there's no denunciation of the divorce. In fact, it's not the divorce that's being denunciation by taking a divorce wife back after she has subsequently married and divorced another man. In verse one it says, "If he finds some kind of indecency in her," another translation says, "Nakedness." Leviticus 18 uses this phrase 18 to 20 times. It has to do with illicit sexual activity. So when Deuteronomy 4:4 says that the woman has been defiled by her second marriage, it's because there was still the option of reconciliation before she actually had sexual relations with her second husband.On the one hand, the divorce of the wife was legitimate though not mandatory. On the other hand, her second marriage is categorized as defilement, which in this case must of necessity refer to adultery. And the second marriage is simultaneously categorized as both permissible and adultery at the same time. And you say how? Well the explanation is that the second marriage permanently and irrevocably severs the first one flesh marital union with her first husband, there can be no more reconciliation.It is in this sense an aspect of the second marriage constitutes adultery. And though this constitutes adultery and though the woman is set to be defiled, her defilement is in regard to her first husband. It's not defilement in regard to the second husband. It says he is to write her a certificate of divorce and send her away to make it official. So they quote Moses, Moses permitted, Moses allowed. In verse five it says, "Because of your hardness of heart," Jesus says, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment." In the parallel passage in Matthew 19:8, "He said to them, 'Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.'" And some people look at this text and they say, "Well, because God foresaw hardness of heart or sinfulness, He wrote into the law a concession to sin."And this of course cannot be the right interpretation, because God never writes into the law concession to sin, though He does write into the law consequences of sin. So the divorce writing in Deuteronomy 24 is not a concession to sin, but it's consequences of sin. If adultery is to happen in a marriage, there are consequences that can be taken. Consequence number one for adultery in marriage was execution. But the husband sometimes, because of grace toward his wife, didn't pursue the execution. Like Joseph, if you remember Joseph, when his wife Mary was found to be with child, Joseph didn't hear from the Holy Spirit yet, he didn't hear from the angel yet, and he quietly wanted to divorce her and then the Lord stopped that. So divorce sometimes was a lesser consequence that was pursued instead of execution.So what then does Jesus mean, "From the beginning it was not." What does he mean, "Because of your hardness of heart?" Well, quite simply that from the beginning when there was no sin, there was no provision for divorce, but man fell into sin and subsequently hardhearted men and women commit adultery. Divorce comes in on the heels of sin, because it is necessary to punish sin, which is what divorce is. It's a punishment or a sanction for sin. So divorce legislation is authorized or permitted in order to deal with this hard heartedness. Divorce is not presented as an inherent or absolute right, but as a remedy for sin and a right only ensuing upon sin.Verse six, "But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female." He goes to the very beginning. So in a sense, in the Garden of Eden, the Garden of Eden was ruled under God's will perfectly. And in a sense Jesus Christ comes in order to save us from our sins and He points to the 10 commandments, this is how we are to govern ourselves if we are to live a life that creates a semblance, a taste, a foretaste of heaven on earth. So He goes from the beginning, He goes to the very beginning and He says, "God made them male and female." The first service I almost passed out. I know what was happening. 15 years I've been doing this long enough and I know there are topics where you are just over the target. You put yourself over the target and in the spiritual realm there is war. And whoever was in the first service, you know exactly what was happening. My wife almost called 911. She said, "I had my phone ready," because I know where we're standing.We're standing in the demonic epicenter of ideologies, demonic ideologies that seek to pervert the design of God from the very beginning. We stand, this synagogue celebrated the fact that they had one of the first same sex marriages ever officiated in this country right here, right here in a place where the 10 commandments are right there. So people standing right with the 10 commandments, the law of God over them as they make a mockery of it. I also understand this moment in time that we're in. We are in a synagogue with the 10 commandments in back of me and the latest iteration of the pride flag outside, that's not our flag. And what is that flag? The new iteration is confusion on gender. Alistair Begg recently, he was a faithful expository for years, but he was asked recently, "Hey, my grandchild is having a same sex wedding, can I go to the wedding?" And his response was, "Not only should you go, but you should bring a present. In effect with your presence you're celebrating or you're partaking in the ceremony of the covenant that's being made."And I was blown away by that, because those are conversations that we were having a decade ago here. The conversations we're having now aren't about that. The conversations we're having now with people here, real people, we're asking can my child be friends with a trans child? Our kids go to school with parents that dress boys in girls clothing. That's where we are in this moment in time. So even to get up and say, "No, there's two genders, male and female, He created them. And He designed sexuality for the flourishing of humanity." Why is this topic so important to God? Because this is the topic that explains how we got here. We're talking about the act of creation itself.And what does Satan want to do above all else? He wants to murky the waters of the design of God so people say, "Is there a designer? Look at us." So Jesus goes and He says, "From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female." And the emphasis here is on the complimentary sexual equipment of the first couple designed for each other whose result in sexual union is part of an indelible marital bond created by God. The presupposition of this argument seems to be that sexual union creates a permanent ontological fusion of the individuals involved. That on a spiritual level something is happening that you can't even explain, a unifying experience. When one body enters or is entered by another, a transaction of eternal significance has taken place. One that in its merging of opposites and resolutions of contradictions. And in a culture in which sex is often trivialized and used merely as just fun, private gratification, we have to heed the words of Christ.Verse seven, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So they have no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate." Jesus doesn't use the word marriage here. He uses it later in the private discussion with the disciples, but clearly that's the subject at hand. And what is marriage? Marriage is a man and a woman becoming one in recognition that God has joined them together for life, therefore they vow not to separate. I remember as a young pastor freshly ordained out of seminary, I was really excited to move to Boston, plant a church 15 years ago. And I remember being asked to do my first wedding and people always say, "Pastor Jan, will you marry us?" And I always say, "No, I'm already married. Thank you."And what they mean is, "Will you officiate our ceremony?" And I remember sitting down and saying, "I just spent three years in seminary, which is like law school and not once was there not even one class on how to lead a wedding ceremony." I had to write some pastors, "What do you do?" And they're like, "Well, I cobbled this together from some other pastors. And you go back into history." And so you put in some kind of formula that looks like it works. You greet everybody, the bride comes down the aisle and you say, "Who gives this bride to marry this groom?" And the father says, "Her mother and I do." And then you get up and you say, "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the sight of God, in the face of this matrimony," you do that whole spiel.And we got that from the book of Common Prayer from England. I don't know why we use that. Then you read a little homily. And I realized that with a lot of weddings, you ask people, "How's the wedding?" And if they say it was good, it's only for two reasons. They're like, "Yeah, the wedding was great. Number one, the bride looked great. And then number two, the food. Oh, the food, the food was..." And what I tell people in the ceremony, I was like, "That's all good and well, that's not the most important part of the ceremony. The most important part of the ceremony is that this couple, this man, this woman are making a covenant, speaking with their eyes, with their mouth, sorry." And in the same way that Jesus Christ says, "You need to confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your heart that He rose from the dead."The speaking in some sense makes it a reality. And where do we get that idea, is because God spoke and His word has creative effect. So when the groom and the bride, they say I do, they make the vows. What are they doing? They're not just confessing past love and they're not professing current love, they're promising future love. That's the covenant. That's the most important part. But regarding engagements and wedding ceremonies, there's very little detail in the Bible. There are no prescriptive commands in the Bible whatsoever concerning ceremonial procedures, rituals, civil and ecclesiastical requirements, public oaths. And you say why? Why is the Bible silent on this issue? Oaths and vows and rituals and ceremonies are numerous in the Bible, but marriage oaths and ceremonies are conspicuous by their absence. Well, why?Because what is Jesus saying marriage is? He's saying the man shall leave his father and mother, leaving a household. I'm going to start my own family. And then you hold fast to your wife and two shall become one. So in a sense, sexual union is marriage properly defined. Betrothal or spousal is actually an agreement or covenant pertaining to the marriage, not marriage itself. Such agreements, however, are presented in the Bible in covenantal terms. So the sexual union to becoming one is the consummation of the covenant made with God and one another, what God has joined together. You're recognizing we are under the eyes of God. God before the foundation of the world has predestined us to come together. We're recognizing, we're making a covenant to God and we're making a covenant with one another before the eyes of God. The reason why we hold marriage ceremony in the church is for the church to come alongside of the couple and hold them accountable to the covenant made.Because why make the covenant? Because you are anticipating moments where you will be tempted to break the covenant, that's why you make it. And you need the church to come alongside you and say, "We were there, we were witnesses, we heard the vows. You are one and you are one for life." In Genesis 1:26-28, we find God creating man and woman and blessing them with the words, be fruitful and multiply. And this was in essence the betrothal of Adam and Eve by their father. And there was no question here of any ceremony or ritual to solemnized or authorize their union, only the authoritative command of God that you have been joined together. Moreover, the Apostle Paul in the New Testament explicitly interprets the phrase one flesh as sexual relations. And while many have rightly pointed out that the phrase is not restricted to sexual relations, but includes the whole personal relationship of man and wife, it's a very great error not to see that this is its core meaning and central focus.Look at 1 Corinthians 6:16, "Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, 'The two will become one flesh.'" So Paul uses Genesis 2:24 to argue for the permanence of the union created by sexual intercourse even with prostitutes. So meaning the commencement of sexual relations begins a marriage, because sex is a covenant making ceremony and covenant making and covenant renewal. And we live in a day and age where people just want to make the covenant, just act out the covenant and then never... I mean, not for the beginning. Think about what are we agreeing to? One regarding the building that we are purchasing, there's going to be a building plug in every sermon from now on until we raise $5 million or move into the building, and/or.I get the purchase and sale agreement from our lawyer and Adobe DocuSign, very tremendous. I get on my phone, I was actually at the gym getting into my truck right after working out and I was like, "Oh sweet, I get to sign a contract." I open it up, not reading a thing, not a thing. I mean, I kind of knew what was... The small letters I was not reading. And then it says, "Okay, there was a blue arrow, initial here, click and then you write the JV. And then sign here, I did the thing. And then you just go through a whole document and that part was so fun, it's so gratifying, so incredible. I'm just signing stuff. What am I signing? What am I signing? What am I agreeing to? There's a cost, obviously. I signed a contract. There's terms, there's an agreement, I know exactly the cost involved in this... And that's a contract. A contract is so much less important than a covenant. A covenant is before the watchful eyes of God.So when people are just going around doing it, what are you doing? What are you promising to the other person? And there is something happening on a spiritual level that you can't even make sense of. So if you are going to consummate the covenant, you just got to be really, really clear on what it is. So therefore sex is sacred and should be not treated as profane. And if we have not made a covenant with God that He has joined us together, then we must not join together.And in biblical scripture this is how they viewed marriage. If you think about Jacob and Leah, the story of Jacob and Leah. He married Rachel, worked a long time for her and then goes to sleep. And then there's that fateful verse and he wakes up in the morning and it wasn't Rachel, it was Leah. And does he go to Laban and say, "No, we didn't have a ceremony, therefore we're not married. You tricked me." No, he realized what happened. We're married, I'm married to her. And this is how scripture presents a marriage. A marriage is a covenant. Virtually every reference in the Bible to covenant shows them to be a weighty matter and that the evidence is overwhelming.In Genesis 2:24, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast his wife and they shall become one flesh." So this verse imputes a legal covenantal significance to their coming together physically. And this is actually how scripture talks about God's relationship with His people. Ezekiel 16:8, for example, God says, "When I pass by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I made my vow to you and entered into covenant with you, declares the Lord God and you became mine." So man shall leave his father and mother, he's leaving one family to start his own. And then with the wife, they're joined together and he says, "What therefore God joined together, let no man separate."For the idea that God brings man and wife together, it's an idea. The phrase here is yoke me. That God in a sense yokes mates together, puts a yoke on them and says, "You together now are going in this direction." And it displays the idea of mates predestined for each other from the beginning of the world. Someone recently asked me, "Do you believe that God predestined people to get married?" I say, "Yeah, of course, of course." If God predestined people to salvation before the foundation of the world, then he certainly predestines how they are created and by whom and through what means.When I met my wife, I met her in Philadelphia at church and I tell everyone was love at first sight. And that's the romantic way to look at it. The theological way is I knew she's the one that I was predestined to marry before the foundation of the world. How did I know? I knew. And so that's part of choosing a mate. You pray and you say, "God, whom have you predestined for me?" And what God has joined together we are not to separate. And so Christ is refuting divorce on demand. He's also refuting making covenants on demand without thinking about it.Point two, and this brings us to adultery. Adultery is breaching of the marital covenant. In the house, the disciples ask for clarification in verse 10, in the house of the disciples asked him again about this matter, meaning they were puzzled like the teaching of Jesus was so radical, it's almost like they've never heard it before. It's like how did you not hear this clear teaching of scripture? Because the teaching was presented by Pharisees who wanted the loophole of divorce on demand. So the teachings of scripture, which are normative, this is how things should be, weren't normal. They weren't normal at that time. And this was the pattern in all of Israel. When people would move away from the law, they moved away from what's normative. And then what was normal was just sin and consequences of a debased mind.So verse 11, "And he said to them, 'Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.'" And what word best describes the violation of the marital bond than adultery? And that's why Jesus uses the word for adultery to explain the breaking of that covenant. And Matthew 5, Jesus gives us more comments on this. Verse 31, "It was also said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery." Note what Jesus asserts, that such a man causes his wife to commit adultery. If he divorces her for non-biblical grounds for anything other than adultery, he causes her to commit adultery.Now note first what Jesus simply presupposes. He presupposes that the woman in question will remarry. Else there would be no adultery to speak of. And secondly, Jesus clearly places the guilt of the adultery upon the man who divorces his wife without valid grounds. And though the woman and her new husband commit the act, the guilt of the adultery, the violation of the one flesh bond is imputed to the divorcing husband. He, the divorcing husband, is declared to be the cause of adultery. And the wife who remarries in such a situation and the man who marries her are not imputed with the guilt of adultery. And the law of God always distinguishes between a perpetrator of sin and a victim of sin. A wife who is unjustly divorced by an unrepentant husband is a victim and would be permanently victimized and consigned to a life of singleness if she were required to remain unmarried. So Jesus clearly imputes to the divorcing husband as the causative agent of the adultery guilt thereof.In Matthew 19:9, in the parallel passage it says, "And I say to, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery." And the word for sexual immorality in the Greek is pornea. And what's happening here is this exception, this clause, sexual immorality, is the parallel to the indecency language in Deuteronomy 24. That for adultery, if a married woman commits adultery, that act of adultery, that word is used to describe the severing of the one covenant with her first husband.Adultery is the transgression of the seventh commandment and it is punishable by death. But sometimes divorce was the chosen path. If you remember like with Joseph, and this is how God speaks of his relationship with even Israel. That Israel deserved execution, capital punishment. God should have wiped them off the face of the earth, but God had mercy on them. So instead of execution for their spiritual adultery, idolatry, he gave Israel a certificate of divorce in Isaiah 50, "Thus says the Lord, 'Where is your mother's certificate of divorce, with which I sent her away? Or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold for your iniquities, you were sold and for your transgression your mother was sent away.'" And the conquest and exile of the northern kingdom of Israel by Assyria is allegorically characterized by God as a bill of divorcement. For what? For adultery.In Jeremiah 3:8 he makes that explicit, "She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she went and played the whore." So divorce in God's law is not just permitted, but sometimes it is a manifestation of God's holiness and wrath against sin. And since divorce is a manifestation of God's holiness and God calls his people to be holy for I am holy, it follows by good and necessary consequence from this that God's example of divorcing his wife for the cause of adultery was normative and the lawful basis and redress on a human level. And that was His grace. It was His grace. They deserved execution, He didn't give them that. Execution was not the only lawful means of dealing with adultery.So adultery is a breach of the marriage covenant and divorce is confirmation of that breach. It was allowed for God by God not as a concession but as a consequence for sin. Verse 12, "And she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." In Exodus it says that the failure to provide for the wife on the part of the man constitutes a breach of the one flesh covenant as well and by implication that includes extreme offenses such as physical abuse. But groundless divorce itself constitutes adultery, because adultery is the breaking of the covenant."Pastor Jan, we are seeking a divorce. What do you think?" I had this conversation recently. I said, "Why? What are the biblical grounds?" "Well, I think God wants us to be happy and we'll be happier apart from each other." God's primary will is not your happiness. It's not my happiness. God's primary will for you is your obedience and your obedience of faith. And with that obedience, God gives us the power of the Holy Spirit to be obedient and fills your heart with joy. Now the fact that we made the covenant husband and wife, made the covenant, your covenant together that no matter the season, no matter what happened, we're going to stay together, because it's God's will. This is God's will. We confirmed it's God's will and we made that vow.And then point three is, God loves humanity, therefore Jesus loves children. So marriage and heterosexual sex are inextricably linked with the divine gift of children. And indeed in Genesis 1:28, God's first blessing on humanity after he created the male and female is be fruitful and multiply. And it's no accident that our passage in which Jesus traces the institution of marriage back to the beginning of creation is immediately followed by His blessing of children. So having proclaimed the permanence of marriage, Jesus now turns to the related theme of children on natural progression.And this is partially why God has designed marriage the way He has and sex the way He has so that there's never any question on who's the father. One of the greatest epidemics in our culture and in the world in general is the epidemic of fatherlessness. Where children growing up not knowing who their father is or not having a father in the house. The reason why God designed it is so that children would not be brought up that way with so much pain. And Mark 10:13, "And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, 'Let the children come to me. Do not hinder them for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God, like a child shall not enter it.'"The main Old Testament background to the saying of entering the dominion of God is the image of the Israelites as they were poised on the brink of entering the Promised Land, but they didn't believe God. And then God tells them, "Your children who today do not know right from wrong, they shall enter there." And Jesus makes it an emphasis that the only way to enter the kingdom of God is to receive it. And in scripture, people frequently enter into action that was prepared for them by another. Others have labored and you have entered into their kingdom. So when He says enter the dominion of God, he's saying enter into the work of God. He's prepared the kingdom. And little children are the model of how people enter the kingdom.That God bestows the kingdom upon the low, upon the helpless, upon those who can do nothing to gain entrance. And entrance into the kingdom of God is not something which can be earned or gained, because of the basis of human merit. As one commentator aptly put it, to receive the kingdom is to allow oneself to be given it. We see Jesus revealing his heart. And that's the heart of a father, because he knows God the Father, he knows God the Father's heart. He welcomes the children, He takes them in His arms, He blesses them, He hugs them, and He loves them. In Malachi 2:13-16, all these themes are summarized by the following and the Lord God says, "And this second thing you do, you cover the Lord's altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because He no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand.""But you say, 'Why does he not?' Because the Lord was witnessed between you and the wife of your youth to whom you have been faithless. Though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. 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. 'For the man who does not love his wife, but divorces her,' says the Lord God of Israel, 'covers his garment with violence,' says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless." The Lord Jesus Christ knew what his teaching was doing as He was explicating the commandments of God. He knows exactly what was happening. That the straight edge of the sword of God's commandments was piercing the hearts of the listeners.And that's exactly what regeneration is. Regeneration is when you hear the word of God, when you hear the law of God and you feel in your heart how much you have transgressed the holy, pure law of God. It's like the commandment goes down into your heart, pierces it, and that's exactly what it's supposed to do. The more precise, the sharper the edge of the sword, the more clean the incision. And then what does God do? He gives us a heart transplant. He takes the hard heart of stone and He removes it and replaces it with a heart that's tender toward God, tender toward the people He calls us to love.Ezekiel 11:19, "And I will give them one heart and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them and they shall be my people and I will be their God. But as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads, declares the Lord God." So today, however you're feeling about this message or the subject matter, if you are feeling condemnation or shame or guilt, or if you are feeling the stirring of the Holy Spirit, calling you to repentance, calling you to ever greater levels of holiness, just know that's the Lord working in you.Here I want to read 1 Corinthians 6, and as Paul deals with this subject matter, I want to put the emphasis on the fact that he's speaking to Christians. He's speaking to people who were saved out of this worldly idea of what it means to be a man, a woman, sexuality, et cetera. And he says, "Such were some of you," were. Such were some of you.So 1 Corinthians 6:9, "Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything. Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy both one and the other.""The body is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will raise us up by His power. Do you not know that your are bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For as it is written, the two will become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body."As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ we're part of the church, the bride of Christ. That's why the new building is a ballroom. And I like that idea, because we're the bride of Christ and Jesus is going to... We're going to dance with Jesus following His lead. He's going to lead us. How did Jesus choose His bride? Did He choose His bride for her beauty? Did He choose us because of our purity and holiness? Did He choose us because we were lovely? Did He choose us for our godliness? No. God chose His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And we, the bride of Christ, we've all been unfaithful to the Lord.Therefore, in the covenant we make with Christ, it's now we who spill the blood of virginity, it's He who spills the blood to redeem us. And Jesus Christ loved the church, not because she was lovely, but because He is loving and He gave himself up for her to save her and to make her lovely. He forgives us and redeems us and makes a covenant with us. And then what does He do? He begins to sanctify the church.And in Ephesians 5 says that He does so by cleansing the church, cleansing His bride by the washing of water with the word. I love that picture. That's how I view my job. I view my job as I am here to wash you with the water of the word. And some texts feel like I've got a power washer. Have you ever seen those videos on power washing? They're very satisfying. I can watch those things for a long time. Power washing videos, all the mildew coming off the house. And I used to do that as a kid. I used to paint with my dad, he's got a painting business, and my job was the power washing, because it takes a lot of work. And I remember as a 13-year-old kid, I'm on the 40-foot ladder at the very top trying to hold the power wash. But it's so strong that it's blowing you off.That's what we need sometimes. That there's sin, that there's cobwebs, that there's mildew of sin in us. And the Lord has given us His word and He cleanses us by the washing of water with the word. Why? So that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish.So today, if you have felt the sharp edge of the commandment of God coming down upon you, because of commandment number seven or whatever commandment, and we've broken commandment seven, because we broke commandment number one. What's commandment number one? Thou shall have no other gods before me. If we have other gods before God, either ourselves or someone else, well of course we're going to shirk the other commandments. So if you felt the commandments of God coming down on you, revealing sin, revealing that we're all transgressors today, look to the cross of Christ.Look and see the covenantal love of Christ as His blood is pouring down in order to redeem us and save us. And as you repent of your sin, receive the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe that you have been forgiven, purified, sanctified, as pure as snow. And then receive this promise from the Lord Jesus Christ that He is speaking to you. And this promise will satisfy your soul with a love that you will never experience from another human being. Receive this promise. I will never leave you nor forsake you. He proved it on the cross. That's true. He's faithful. Then He calls us to follow him.Let us pray. Lord God, we thank you for this word and we thank you for this time together. We thank you Holy Spirit, that you are with us and you are ministering to us. Lord, if our hearts are broken, mend them. If our hearts are hardened, soften them. If our hearts have grown tepid toward you and toward your word today, Lord, set our hearts on fire so that we will be people of God seeking holiness in absolutely every area of life, including the most intimate ones. We pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.

One quick announcement, an update on the life of the church. The Lord has led us, as a church, to take a step of faith to purchase, to acquire, a worship space, a 24/7 location that we can use to build the glory of God. In the history of Mosaic, 12 and a half years, we have never had our own location. We only rent this space just on Sundays. So the Lord has... Miracle of miracles that we're even in this position. Praise be to God. If you know anything about real estate in Austin, the property is right down the street on Kent Street. If you take a right here and a left on Longwood, you'll see three towers on a hill, and within the hill there's the entrance to the lobby and then there's a left wing and a right wing. We signed the purchase and sale agreement on the left wing, and as a step of faith, we are praying for the Lord to send resources for the right wing as well.We are closing in September. We have seven months to raise $5 million and it's a lot of money, but we learned from the Gospel of Mark that even crumbs from the King's table are more than enough. So Lord, we need some crumbs. So we're asking you to pray, pray with faith, pray boldly, audaciously on a daily basis for the Lord to send the funds. From now on until the funds come in, if anyone asks, "Pastor Jan, what's your prayer request?" This is it. This is the only one to the glory of God. So pray for the Lord to send the funds. Second, pray how the Lord might use you in raising the funds or giving and then pray as well. If you know any connections for the Lord to bring to mind, maybe a great uncle who wants to invest in the kingdom of God. Our church, a home, church, foundations, etc, please connect us with them.And we do believe the Lord will provide. I'll share one story. My wife and her family immigrated here over 20 years ago from Ukraine. The parents had six children. They come here and they worked hard and they said, "The Lord is leading us to buy a house." It was a town home and they were missing $5,000 to close on the deal. And they prayed, "Lord, send us $5,000. Lord send us $5,000." And then Tanya's mom went for a walk on the street, comes up to garbage containers, and next to it is something wrapped in newspaper. And she kicks it and it's hard and she opens it up little by little, layer by layer and it's a nugget of gold. Yeah, true story. And then they go to the place where you can sell nuggets of gold, and the guy said "$5,000." And then they end up purchasing the house and Tanya's sister still lives there. Praise be to God.So I am praying that the Lord sends you nuggets. I am praying that in your fishing endeavors, so to speak, you catch one fish, you open it up and there's a gold coin inside. That's how I'm praying. So it's a very exciting season of the church, a lot of faith. We need a lot of prayer, a lot of hard work. So we are going to pray and believe for the Lord to raise the funding and for the next season of the church's life. With that said, would you at least pray with me over this need and for the preaching of God's holy word.Heavenly Father, we're so thankful that you have saved us. What a great gift. This is the greatest gift, that you give yourself to us on account of your son Jesus Christ. And Lord Jesus, we thank you that because of your great love for us, you lay down your life. And we thank you that you didn't stay on the cross, you didn't stay dead, that you rose on the third day vanquishing Satan, sin, and death. And we thank you that you give us the power of the Holy Spirit. And when you call us to yourself, you call us to life of service to the kingdom. And Lord, we as a church, we long to continue serving you.And we thank you for providing every step of the way these 12 and a half years. And we thank you for leading us to this juncture. And we do pray, Lord, that you provide the necessary resources to acquire both the spaces, the left and the right wing from which we pray the truth of your Holy word will be proclaimed to the nations. And I pray, Lord, that you do send us people that understand the importance of a church like Mosaic being rooted and grounded and planted in a place like Boston. Lord, we do believe that Boston is of incredible importance to your kingdom work.This is a city of ideas and many of the ideas are evil. So we are countering those demonic ideas with the truth of your word. Boston is pound for pound, the most influential city in the world. We are at the intersection of the nations and we pray, Lord, continue to establish your kingdom here, continue build up this church. And we pray, Lord, that you provide the resources. We thank you in advance for how you're going to do that. And we pray that you anoint those spaces even now with your Holy Spirit. We pray that thousands and tens of thousands hear your word there, are converted follow Jesus. We pray lives are transformed, pray families are formed. We pray children are born and raised in the faith, and we pray all this for the glory of your holy name and use us in the process. And we thank you in advance. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.We're continue our sermon series through the Gospel of Mark. Today, the sermon is entitled God or Hell. And over the years I've found that truth is always simple. And the most honest people speak with the greatest clarity. There's no obfuscation, there's no word salads, there's nothing to hide. And when God speaks, it's true, and you know it's true because of how clear it is. God speaks and Satan obfuscates. Satan questions. Satan undermines the truth. God speaks and Satan complicates, and he does it with lies. And the worst lies are half-truths. Thanks be to God, Jesus Christ did not speak in half-truths. He spoke the truth, the full truth. He told people that there are only two options. There's only two ways. There's only two paths. There's only two destinies, God or Hell. You either choose God and spend eternity in His glory or you choose hell and spend eternity in His wrath.And we're so fortunate to be alive today here and now and still have a chance to choose. We're so blessed to even be offered the choice. Many don't make the choice or don't think about the choice because we don't understand the gravity, the importance of the choice that eternity is at stake. Many people today plan their vacation destinations with more detail than they think about their eternal destination. We all deserve God's wrath. He created us, He designed us. He gave us laws by which to glorify Him and enjoy His glory here on earth. And that's what Eden was. It was heaven on earth. He designed life to be lived like heaven on earth. And that's what the kingdom of God is. You begin to experience the glory of God here by living for His glory, by glorifying Him with your obedience of faith. But we all rebelled, every single one of us. We all rejected His law, we transgressed it. We became outlaws. We became sinners.And in rejecting God's law, we rejected God Himself. Well, what is the absence of God's glory? It's hell. By rejecting God, we choose hell here on earth and we start living that out. And what does that create? More hell on earth. Therefore, Jesus came to rescue us from hell and to destine us for heaven here on earth. Eternal life begins here and now. He came to rescue you from the hell inside your soul, to plant the seeds of the kingdom in your soul, to give you a taste of heaven. And this radically changes the course of your life. Now you're not your own. You exist to glorify God, to live for His name, to serve Him, love Him, fear and praise Him. And this kind of life of obeying God, submitting to Him, it's a life that demands sacrifice. Why? Because when you really start fighting hell on earth, when you really start fighting the sin within mortifying it, well what happens?You're bound to feel the flames of hell. You're bound to get burned. So what do we do? We keep fighting. We fight the lies of the enemy with the truth by knowing the truth, loving it, living it and speaking it. And that's what Jesus is talking about today. We're in Mark 9:30-50. Would you look at the text with me? "They went on from there and passed through Galilee and He did not want anyone to know, for He was teaching His disciples saying to them, 'The son of man is going to be delivered into the hands of men and they will kill him. And when he is killed after three days he will rise.' But they did not understand the saying and were afraid to ask him. And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, 'What were you discussing on the way?'But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. And He sat down and called the 12 and He said to them, 'If anyone would be put first, he must be last of all and servant of all.' And he took a child and put him in the midst of them and taking him in his arms, he said to them, 'Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives not me but Him who sent me.' John said to him, 'Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.' But Jesus said, 'Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For the one who is not against us is for us. For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water or drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward.Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It's better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.' For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another."This is the reading of God's holy and errant, fallible, authoritative word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Four points to frame up our time. First life through death. Second, greatness through service. Third, power through loyalty. And fourth, God or hell.First, life through death. In the first half of chapter nine, King Jesus takes his big three disciples, Peter, James and John to the top of a mountain. And there He transfigured himself. He revealed His divine glory and they bask in it. They were satisfied with it, mesmerized by the glorious king. So much so that Peter said, "No, no, no." Excuse me, I get excited about the glory of God. He said, "We're not going down. We're not going down the mountain. We're not descending. This is too good. We're staying here forever."And no, they had to leave. Descend, they must, down from the glorious mountaintop experience after they have tasted heaven on earth. Why do they have to go down? Well, why did Jesus come down? Jesus Christ came down from heaven to earth and he does it to save people from hell, from eternal damnation. The kingdom of God must be established. And to do this, the King must first take on Satan's sin and death. After vanquishing the stubborn demon that his disciples were unable to conquer, Jesus continues to instruct his disciples. Chapter 8, chapter 9, and chapter 10 are about discipleship. This is what it means to follow Jesus Christ. And Jesus spends significant time with them before embarking on His mission. In verse 30, it says, "They went on from there and passed through Galilee and He did not want anyone to know."The phrases like this, we see often where Jesus is sovereign over the truth. He's sovereign in regulating the truth. He reveals the truth to whomever He chooses. Who gets how much revelation? Well, who decides this? Does the seeker himself decide? No, because scripture clearly teaches that no one searches after God not on their own. So if you are searching for God, if you're asking questions about God, if you're interested in God, in the divine and eternity in Holy Scripture, well friend, let me tell you, that's already a sign of the Holy Spirit working on you and working in your heart.Look at Romans 3:9, "What then, are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks are under sin. As it is written, no one is righteous. No not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. In their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There's no fear of God before their eyes."Well, the disciples were just like this. The disciples were chosen by Jesus. Jesus chooses to reveal to His disciples the truth and the truths of God's kingdom. How does one become a disciple of Jesus Christ? Well, Jesus is the one that approached them and Jesus is the one that told them, "Follow me.: And then he communicates to them in John 15:16, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, He may give it to you."Are you a disciple of Jesus Christ? Are you a follower of Christ? Well, if you are, praise be to God. It's because He chose you. Salvation is bestowed on you. It's never earned. He appointed you and for what? For work, for service, for sacrifice. Bearing fruit comes through, bearing a cross and bearing it daily. And He promises to resource you. He says, "Ask whatever you will in my name to become more fruitful." But this usually includes a heavier cross and a steeper more narrow path to climb. My third daughter turned nine recently and I told her, I said, "Nine is, I think that's the perfect age. It's just what are your worries in life? You're in third grade," and I didn't want to say it's all downhill from here because that's kind of a terrible thing to say to a nine-year-old. So I said the opposite. I said, "It's all uphill from here," and I don't think that's much better.But that's kind of what Christianity is. If you want to level up, if you want to grow in faithfulness, if you want to grow in obedience, if you want to grow in fruitfulness, it's all uphill from here. But that's what we were chosen for. We were chosen for service, for sacrifice because we were chosen by the one who came to sacrifice Himself. He says, "The son of man is going to be delivered." That's the conversation turned over, handed over, betrayed. And part of the background to this prophecy lies in Isaiah 53. The same terminology is used in Isaiah 53 as in our text, the language of being turned over, handed over, betrayed. And Isaiah 53 was written centuries before Jesus Christ was even born. The Lord promised in Isaiah 53 that the Messiah would come as a suffering servant. Jews to this day reject the clear true reading of Isaiah 53.But the ones who read Isaiah 53 with open hearts are converted to Christ immediately. And that's who the early church was. Jews who read Isaiah 53 and said, "We witnessed it happen. We watched it happen. He predicted that He was going to die. He predicted that He was going to be betrayed. He predicted that He's going to be crucified and He predicted that He would come back from the dead. We saw Christ crucified and He did that for us." That was the testimony of the earliest church and He did it to save us from hell on earth and from hell for all of eternity. And even more than that, He did it to save us from our sins. So now the chasm between us and God will be removed. So He offers himself to us for eternity. I'm going to read Isaiah 53, and as I read, just think about the fact centuries before Christ was born, this was written.It's as if Isaiah is sitting at the foot of the cross watching it being done. "Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And as one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed Him, stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with His wounds we are healed.All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not his mouth like a lamb that is led to the slaughter. And like a sheep that before its sheers is silent. So He opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment, He was taken away. And as for His generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. And they made His grave with the wicked and with a rich man and his death, although He had done no violence and there was no deceit in His mouth. Yet, it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put Him to grief. When His soul makes an offering for guilt, He will see his offspring. He will prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.Out of the anguish of His soul, He shall see and be satisfied. By His knowledge, shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will divide Him a portion with the many and He shall divide the spoil with the strong because he poured out His soul to death. And was numbered with the transgressors. Yet He bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressions."Mark 9:31, "For he was teaching His disciples saying to them, ''The son of man is going to be delivered into the hands of men and they will kill Him. And when He is killed, after three days He will rise.' But they did not understand the saying and were afraid to ask Him." Well, of course they didn't understand. Jesus had already proven that He's God. They have believed him that He's God. Well, you're God. You've come to take over everything. You've come to take the place back from Satan. You've come to destroy the kingdom of Satan. So Jesus, do it, die. What happens to our cause if you die? Why would you need to rise again? How's this for an idea? Let's not die. Let's use the powers that you have. We know you God, you changed the weather, we watched you. You've walked through hostile crowds before we know you've done it. What do you mean you're going to be delivered? As in you're going to give yourself over, you're going to let them take you.And Jesus' answer of course is, "Yes. I didn't come just to save you from hell on earth. I didn't come just to save you from the hell of the Romans, or the hell of the Pharisees, or even the hell of your own sin-infected bodies. I've come to save your soul from eternal hell. And I've come to offer eternal life," which only comes through the death of the eternal son of God who chose to become son of man. So yes, life comes only through death and eternal life comes only through the death of the eternal one, Jesus Christ.And since life comes through death, of course, point two, greatness comes through service. The disciples didn't get this yet. How could they? It's so counterintuitive. Greatness is through rank, and greatness is through degrees and greatness is through accomplishments, and greatness is through a position. What do you mean greatness is through service? It's counterintuitive. Well, it's counterintuitive because our intuition is clouded with sin and we need washing with the word. In verse 33, they came to Capernaum and when He was in the house He asked them, "What were you discussing?" Capernaum is the Galilean village from which Peter James and John came.And whenever Jesus was in Capernaum, he would stay at Peter's house. Peter had a home there. He was married, he had a mother-in-law and perhaps he even had children. And perhaps that's the child that Jesus puts front and center. And Jesus in His outward ministry, He had encounters with over enemies, the scribes and the Pharisees. But now he's engaged with the enemy inside the hearts of his own disciples, the enemy that will rear its ugly head throughout church history. It's this desire to jostle for greatness. That's what they're doing. He asked them, "What were you arguing about?" And verse 34, "They kept silent for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest." As soon as Jesus asks the question, they realize just with the question, "Oh, we were way off. They don't even want to share. They don't want talk about what are... They're embarrassed.They realize just a question from Jesus reveals how embarrassing this is to talk about who's the greatest. They argued with one... who's the greatest. This was after Jesus just talked about self-denial, the hard-hitting instruction of taking up your cross and following Him daily. And here they're having a senseless argument about their relative greatness, and they've confused greatness because they don't really understand what Jesus is coming to do. They don't understand that how humble you have to be. They saw a glimpse of His glory and then He veils that glory and then He descends, but they don't really understand the distance between the glory of heaven and the humiliation of the cross. And these two are interconnected. If you don't understand the vast difference between Jesus glory and His humiliation, you'll never understand how much He had to humble Himself in order to save us. And this was part of the process of transforming and saving humanity.Why? Because Jesus did not just come to deal with the consequences of sin. He came to deal with the very root itself. And what is the root of all sin? It's pride. Pride is the fuel that fires all of hell. Pride is what made Satan Satan, where Satan goes out of his rank and says, "No God, I am greater than you are, therefore you serve me. You worship me. Therefore, the way..." And that inclination's in every single heart, that pride. The pride of, "No, I don't want to submit to God." The pride of, "Who is God to tell me what to do." The pride that starts the rebellion of us against God.Look at Philippians 2:1-10 and see this distance, this humility as the way that Jesus saves us from our pride. Philippians 2:1, "So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father."In verse 35, "He sat down and He called the 12." This is how Jesus often taught. He would sit down, but here perhaps He's exasperated and He wants to draw their attention, sits down. And He said to them, "If anyone would be first, He must be last of all and servant of all." Matthew 23:11, the parallel passage, "The greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." First, I want to point out what Jesus does not say. He does not say there is no greatness in the kingdom of God. Jesus' view of the kingdom of God is not just some egalitarian view where everyone is of the same greatness, of the same rank, of the same hierarchy. No, that's not what He's saying. He's assuming that there is a hierarchy, there is a path to greatness.There is a path to greater usefulness and fruitfulness, but that path to greatness is counter to the path of greatness in the world. The path of greatness in the world is make your name great. The path of greatness in the kingdom of God is seek first the name of Jesus Christ to exalt him. And the way that you grow in greatness is service, humble service to the King, and to his servants, and to people. So we can rack up stats, so to speak in the kingdom of God, and we do it through service. And the greatest disciple is the greatest servant and the one who sacrifices the most is the greatest in the kingdom of God. That's the one that serves the most. The more you sacrifice, the more you serve, the more you are like your master who is great. Humility is the best policy. Jesus is teaching.Self aggrandizement always leads to humiliation. But what is humility? The opposite of humility is pride. And the first encounter of pride we see is with Satan, where Satan is not content with his place. Humility is knowing your place. It's knowing your role. It's knowing what God has called you to do and what God has called you to be. As we serve the Lord, as we grow in the faith, there are promotions, so to speak, but it's all for Him. He's the one that does it. All the talents that He gives us, all the opportunities that He gives us, the health and strength, it's all from Him and it's all for Him and service to Him. We're called to be servants. And here it's the Greek word diakonos from which the English word deacon comes from. And in Greek literature, it just means someone who's not afraid of the menial work, such as a waiter at a table, humble service. We're here.At Chick-fil-A, they say, "It's my pleasure." It's my pleasure to serve you. That should be the sentiment of every Christian. It's my pleasure to serve because that's my role. And that's really the heartbeat of humility. I know my role, I know my place, I know what God has called me to do. And sometimes things get hard and you start wondering if the sacrifice worth it. No one really notices or you don't get accolades in the world. But Luke 17 puts everything in its place. I love this passage. It's one of these passages very jarring as you read it for the first time. But as you walk in the faith, you realize this is exactly the posture of heart that the Lord calls us to.Luke 17:7, "Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, 'Come at once and recline at table?' Will he not rather say to him, 'Prepare supper for me and dress properly and serve me while I eat and drink. And afterward you'll eat and drink.' Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you are commanded, say, 'We are unworthy servants. We have only done what was our duty.'"And that's really the posture of heart, that He's the master, He's the Lord. We're the servants. He saves us, he saves us for service. So of course we're going to do it. It is our duty. Mark 9:36, "Jesus took a child and put him in the midst of them and taking him in His arms, He said to them, 'Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. And whoever receives me receives not me but Him who sent me.'" This word for child can refer anywhere from a newborn infant to an older child. Perhaps this is Peter's child. We know that Peter was married, he had a mother-in-law, and perhaps it was his son or daughter. And Jesus takes the child, embraces the child, hugs the child, and reveals that He loves the child. I love this image that Jesus loves children.In chapter 10, Jesus loves children. Jesus, the God, man loves kids. He's hugging kids, blessing kids, praying for kids. Why does Jesus love children? Because God, Jesus loves humanity and He cares about the next generation. So we as believers, we are to be people marked by a love for children. John the Baptist who came in the spirit of Elijah, it says that He will come and one of His jobs is going to be turn the hearts of the fathers to their children. And yes, it assumes fathers who are already fathers, they love their children. We are to love our children. It also assumes those who are not yet fathers. And the Lord puts this fatherly desire in your heart and the world does not know of this.It's kind of popular not to like kids. It's kind of popular to complain about kids, especially on planes. I remember when my kids were little, I'd carry my kid into the plane with one of my kids and just look around at the unhappy faces. Come on, we were all this at some point, can everyone relax? And so why does Jesus take a child? He takes a child and He says, "This right here, you want the epitome of how you grow in greatness in the kingdom of God is through service. Service to whom those who need it the most." Why a child? Because it's the most helpless stage of being a human. Children need to be served. Kids are wonderful, praise be to God. And they are also a lot of work, a lot of time, energy, money, resources, lost sleep, REM cycles that you will never get back.And it's ministry. That's how you have to view children. It's ministry, it's service, it's service to the King in the name of Jesus Christ. And by serving kids in Jesus' name, you're not just serving the child, you're serving Jesus. So he says, "Receive children, receive them into your life. Serve them, and by serving them, you're serving the King." And he continues, "Whoever receives me receives not me, but Him who sent me." By receiving children in Jesus' name, you're receiving Jesus, you're receiving God the Father. And this is important because God, the Father loves children, especially... He loves His children, especially when they are children."Point three is power through loyalty. A service of course takes energy and it takes power. And where do we draw that power? From the source of power, and that's Jesus Christ. And the more loyal you are to Him, the more loyal you are to His cause, the more useful you are to Him, the more power He gives you.The disciples thought they were the only ones with access to the power of God because of their proximity to Jesus. So they're blown away by the fact that there's someone else casting out demons in Jesus' name, someone other than the 12. Verse 38, "John said to Him, 'Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name. And we tried to stop him because he was following, and he was not following us.'" He said, "Someone's casting out demons in your name, by the power of Jesus." They're invoking the power of Jesus by using His name. The would-be exorcist, pronounces Jesus name in order to bring His spiritual force to bear on demons, and the disciples don't like this. "The people aren't following us, Jesus," and that's really the emphasis. They don't say, "They're not following you." They say, "They're not following us." And Jesus' response in verse 39, "Do not stop him. For no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me."Says, "Don't stop him. Don't forbid this person. He's casting out demons in the name of Jesus, so don't worry about him. He's doing my work. Is he a disciple in the same exact way that you are the 12? No. So help the person grow as a disciple, but don't stop the fight against evil. Don't stop those who cast out demons differently than you do. It's all in the name of Christ."In Numbers 11, there's a similar passage where Moses chooses 70 elders and the Spirit descends upon them. And there's two gentlemen that weren't there during that ceremony. And then afterwards they get the Spirit too. And then the people come to Moses and says, "Stop them. They're not part of the 70." This Numbers 11:24. So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord and he gathered 70 men of the elders of the people and placed them around the tent.Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him and took some of the spirit that was on him and put down the 70 elders. And as soon as the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied, but they did not continue doing it. Now, two men who remained in the camp, one named Eldad and the other named Medad, and the Spirit rested on them. They were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent. And so they prophesied in the camp and a young man ran and told Moses, Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp. And Joshua, the son of Nun, the assistant of Moses from his youth said, My Lord, Moses, stop them." But Moses said to him, "Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord would put His Spirit on them?"And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp. Here, Moses said, "I wish everyone had the Holy Spirit. I wish everyone prophesied. I wish everyone proclaimed the word of the Lord." And Jesus here is saying something similar effect like, why would you be against someone casting out demons? We're against demons. He says, "No one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me." These outsiders are not like the scribes or the Pharisees who blasphemed against the Holy Spirit by attributing Jesus exorcisms to Satan. No, these people are people that are on the side of Jesus because they're against demons. And it seems like exorcism is a make-or-break issue. It's almost as this exorcism and one's attitude toward the demonic is a defining characteristic if you're inside or outside the dominion of God. Are you for demons or are you against them?Are you for demons or are you against them? Are you for Satan or are you against him? Are you for Christ or against Christ? Are you for hell on earth or are you against hell on earth? Well, if you're against hell on earth, you're against those who make hell on earth. And that's the demons. No, we're against hell, so we're for heaven. We're against demons, so we're for Christ.Verse 40, "For the one who is not against us is for us." Are they against Jesus? No, of course not. They're doing the same work. They're battling the same demons, fighting the same Satan and doing it all in the name of Christ.And fourth, God or Hell. And here Jesus turns to a conversation about reward and punishment in the afterlife. And what He reveals is God is keeping very close tabs on our service to Him. Every single little thing you do for Christ, for His glory will be rewarded with greater revelation of His glory starting this life and for eternity in heaven. Look at verse 41, "For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward."Even a cup of water. If you give someone a cup of water in the name of Jesus Christ saying Jesus is going to keep track of that. And what is that reward? The reward is more of God, more of His presence, more of His glory.Revelation 22:12-13, "Behold, I'm coming soon bringing my recompense with me to repay each one for what he has done. I'm the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, and the beginning and the end." And if the Lord keeps track of our work for Him so He knows how much to reward us as believers in Christ, well, the Lord also keeps track of the sin and iniquity of those who are not in Christ, as a way to mark how much condemnation they get in hell.Revelation 11:15-18, "Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet and there were loud voices in heaven saying, 'The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever.' And the 24 elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God saying, we give thanks to you Lord God, Almighty. Who is and who was for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The nations raged, but your wrath came and the time for the dead to be judged and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name both small and great and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.'" God is going to reward his prophets, the servants, and saints in the same way he's going to reward so to speak, or bring the deserved condemnation on the destroyers, it says.And here Jesus continues that thought of the destroyers of the faith. Verse 42, "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea." If anyone causes one of these little ones to sin, if anyone causes or scandalizes their faith, causes them to stumble, Jesus says, it's better that they would die here and die of very graphic death with a massive stone tied to their neck and thrown into the sea. Why? Because death is going to keep them from continuing to heap up condemnation for themselves, for eternity. And specifically he says, "Whoever causes one of these little ones, who believe in me, to sin,: who's the little ones? Commentators here say most likely He's talking about believers in general because the same word for little ones is used later where Jesus talks about, "Little flock, fear not."But Jesus had just been talking in context about a child. That the way to greatness is service, in particular service to the least of these, a little one. So if Jesus is talking about if anyone causes a Christian to sin, he is including Christians who are children. Anyone that destroys the faith of a child, destroys the innocent faith of a child, Jesus says that person is heaping up condemnation for themselves for all eternity in hell. And this is a very, very sobering verse. And if you look at what's happening in our culture where we're trying to remove any idea of innocence of children. Children are being tempted with sin in ways that centuries ago people wouldn't even comprehend. And this is happening left and right. And Jesus is saying, Be careful. Be careful that you're not heaping up condemnation for all of eternity causing believers in Christ to sin is a grave sin. And the penalty for this sin is unquenchable, hellfire, the conversation Jesus is about to embark upon.So what are we to do? We're to take these sobering words about the reality of heaven and hell, but the reality of reward or condemnation that continues for eternity. And we are to sit down and say, "Where am I? Am I on the side of demons or I'm on the side of Jesus, I'm on the side of hell or on the side of heaven, where am I?" And there is no neutrality. If you're not with Christ, you're against Him. If you're not against Him, you're with Him. Mark 9:43, "And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell to the unquenchable fire." This is hyperbolic language.He's not saying cut off your hand because if he meant physically, he would say both hands or both eyes or both feet. He's saying one. What he's saying is if there is a desire in your heart to sin, if there is a desire in your heart to do evil and to lead others into sin, at that, you need to stop and say, "Where is this desire leading me? Is this desire leading me to heaven or to hell? Is this desire from the kingdom of God or from the kingdom of Satan?" And you got to take radical action. You got to cut yourself off from anything that would even tempt you to sin. Make no provision for the flesh Scripture speaks. You're new creation in Christ, therefore put sin to death. You have died to sin, how can you continue living in it? So drastic action cut off your hand and he says, "Better for you to enter life crippled or maimed."And the presupposition here is that those who enter heaven get a glorified body. And the glorified resurrected body is a body without any bodily defects. So even if the hand is cut off in this life, it's going to be restored in the next. And He talks about hell here. And it's the word Gehenna. It's the most common name for the place of eternal punishment. And the name comes from the Valley of Hinnom in the Old Testament. And the Valley of Hinnom was a depression running south-southwest of the old city of Jerusalem. And it was at this place, the Valley of Hinnom, where according to the Scriptures, the covenant people of God, Israel and engaged in idolatrous worship of the Canaanite God, Molech. And Molech demanded that the people sacrifice their children. So this is where Israel at the altar of Molech at this place called Valley of Hinnom, we get the word of Gehenna or hell from it.They would sacrifice their children by fire. Therefore, when God sends kings like Josiah to bring reform, one of the things he did was destroy this place. 2 Kings 23:10, "And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech." Or Jeremiah 7:30, "For the sons of Judah have done evil in my sight, declares the Lord. They have set their detestable things in the house that is called by my name to defile it. And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind." Or Jeremiah 32:35, "They built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech. Though I did not command them, nor to enter my mind, that they should do this abomination to cause Judah to sin."Because of these sacrifices of the children, the valley came to be viewed as the gate to the underworld. And hell is named after this place. Hell is named after the place where children were sacrificed. So what is Jesus saying? He's saying, "Do you want a glimpse of hell on earth? Well, think about child sacrifice. Think about abortion. He's just said that the way to create heaven on earth is to sacrifice self for the most helpless." Therefore, the way to create hell on earth is to sacrifice the most helpless for self. And the prophet Jeremiah denounces the sacrifice, but continues to associate the valley with death and judgment. And Jesus here says that it's an unquenchable fire in this place called hell.Verse 45, "If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better for you to enter life than with two feet to be thrown into hell."Verse 47, "If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It's better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell."Verse 48, "Where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. The torment continues for eternity. The fire burns for eternity."Verse 49, "For everyone will be salted with fire."And this is a language that's used for judgment. Sodom and Gomorrah, fire and brimstone came from heaven engulfing the cities in fire. And it says in Deuteronomy 29:23, "All its soil burned out by sulfur and salt." It's a sign of complete destruction because judgment had come and judgment is going to come for each of us.Judgment day is going to come, and the question is, will we receive that judgment which we deserve, or has Christ already received it on our behalf on the cross?" Verse 50, "Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another." And here the Lord changes the metaphors. There, He said the salt would be a sign of judgment, but here he's saying the salt is a sign of your redemption. Salt as an influence against the decay in our culture, the decay of the evil in the world. And he said, That's our job. We are to be salt and light. Salt is good, but make sure we haven't lost our saltiness. Make sure that we are separate from the world, that we are influencing the world more than the world is influencing us. He says, "Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.And he closes this section with a comment about having salt in yourselves and being at peace. What's the connection? Well, in Acts 1:4, Jesus shares a meal with his disciples. And it was the same word that's used here. To share a meal with someone was to take salt together. If you go to a Russian village, they come out and they bring you bread, a loaf of bread, and they bring you salt. And what they're saying, "Come on in, welcome. There's peace." And what Jesus here is saying, "Make sure you continue to have fellowship with one another, love with one another, peace with one another." Why? Because when you battle the fires of hell and you do get burned, oftentimes you get so focused on the enemy that you start looking at everyone around you as an enemy. And He's saying, "Disciples, hold on. Make sure that doesn't happen. Have salt in yourselves, break bread together, have peace with one another."We as a church want to do this more often. Therefore, the bagels are back. Praise be to God. Break bagels together. A church that breaks bagels together stays together. And so praise be to God for that. And last week we had our first community lunch that we're doing to coincide with Communion Sunday. And it was a great success, a lot of people with a lot of joy. So we pray that the Lord continues to bless us to have salt in ourselves and to be at peace with one another.I'll close it with Matthew 11:16. And Matthew 11:16, the Lord said, "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.You are the salt of the earth. But if salt has lost its taste, how shall saltiness be restored? And it was no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. You know how Boston started, the city? John Winthrop and his group of believers in Jesus Christ gets off a ship in Boston, before it was Boston. And before he got off a ship, he preached a sermon on Matthew 5, and he said, "We are going to be a city set on a hill. We're going to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to the nations. And that lasted for a little bit." And then they lost their saltiness.And that's what we're here for. But that's what Mosaic is. We are to be a city set on a hill proclaiming the excellencies of our Lord and Savior. With that said, would you please pray with me to the Lord?Lord Jesus, we thank you for this word and we thank you for the reminder that sacrifices, no matter what you call us to, they're worth it. In the same way that you sacrificed all in order to save us for the joy that was set before you, I pray for the joy that is before us, the joy of obedience, the joy of your delight, the joy of glorifying you. I pray that you give us strength to overcome any sacrifice. And Lord, we pray that you continue to establish your church, continue to build it up and continue to use us as you build your kingdom. We pray save many souls, disciple many, draw many to yourself in and through the work of this church in and then through every single faithful church in the area. We pray that you do send revival, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit save many. Save many from eternal hell and save them for eternal life. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

One quick announcement, an update on the life of the church. The Lord has led us, as a church, to take a step of faith to purchase, to acquire, a worship space, a 24/7 location that we can use to build the glory of God. In the history of Mosaic, 12 and a half years, we have never had our own location. We only rent this space just on Sundays. So the Lord has... Miracle of miracles that we're even in this position. Praise be to God. If you know anything about real estate in Austin, the property is right down the street on Kent Street. If you take a right here and a left on Longwood, you'll see three towers on a hill, and within the hill there's the entrance to the lobby and then there's a left wing and a right wing. We signed the purchase and sale agreement on the left wing, and as a step of faith, we are praying for the Lord to send resources for the right wing as well.We are closing in September. We have seven months to raise $5 million and it's a lot of money, but we learned from the Gospel of Mark that even crumbs from the King's table are more than enough. So Lord, we need some crumbs. So we're asking you to pray, pray with faith, pray boldly, audaciously on a daily basis for the Lord to send the funds. From now on until the funds come in, if anyone asks, "Pastor Jan, what's your prayer request?" This is it. This is the only one to the glory of God. So pray for the Lord to send the funds. Second, pray how the Lord might use you in raising the funds or giving and then pray as well. If you know any connections for the Lord to bring to mind, maybe a great uncle who wants to invest in the kingdom of God. Our church, a home, church, foundations, etc, please connect us with them.And we do believe the Lord will provide. I'll share one story. My wife and her family immigrated here over 20 years ago from Ukraine. The parents had six children. They come here and they worked hard and they said, "The Lord is leading us to buy a house." It was a town home and they were missing $5,000 to close on the deal. And they prayed, "Lord, send us $5,000. Lord send us $5,000." And then Tanya's mom went for a walk on the street, comes up to garbage containers, and next to it is something wrapped in newspaper. And she kicks it and it's hard and she opens it up little by little, layer by layer and it's a nugget of gold. Yeah, true story. And then they go to the place where you can sell nuggets of gold, and the guy said "$5,000." And then they end up purchasing the house and Tanya's sister still lives there. Praise be to God.So I am praying that the Lord sends you nuggets. I am praying that in your fishing endeavors, so to speak, you catch one fish, you open it up and there's a gold coin inside. That's how I'm praying. So it's a very exciting season of the church, a lot of faith. We need a lot of prayer, a lot of hard work. So we are going to pray and believe for the Lord to raise the funding and for the next season of the church's life. With that said, would you at least pray with me over this need and for the preaching of God's holy word.Heavenly Father, we're so thankful that you have saved us. What a great gift. This is the greatest gift, that you give yourself to us on account of your son Jesus Christ. And Lord Jesus, we thank you that because of your great love for us, you lay down your life. And we thank you that you didn't stay on the cross, you didn't stay dead, that you rose on the third day vanquishing Satan, sin, and death. And we thank you that you give us the power of the Holy Spirit. And when you call us to yourself, you call us to life of service to the kingdom. And Lord, we as a church, we long to continue serving you.And we thank you for providing every step of the way these 12 and a half years. And we thank you for leading us to this juncture. And we do pray, Lord, that you provide the necessary resources to acquire both the spaces, the left and the right wing from which we pray the truth of your Holy word will be proclaimed to the nations. And I pray, Lord, that you do send us people that understand the importance of a church like Mosaic being rooted and grounded and planted in a place like Boston. Lord, we do believe that Boston is of incredible importance to your kingdom work.This is a city of ideas and many of the ideas are evil. So we are countering those demonic ideas with the truth of your word. Boston is pound for pound, the most influential city in the world. We are at the intersection of the nations and we pray, Lord, continue to establish your kingdom here, continue build up this church. And we pray, Lord, that you provide the resources. We thank you in advance for how you're going to do that. And we pray that you anoint those spaces even now with your Holy Spirit. We pray that thousands and tens of thousands hear your word there, are converted follow Jesus. We pray lives are transformed, pray families are formed. We pray children are born and raised in the faith, and we pray all this for the glory of your holy name and use us in the process. And we thank you in advance. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.We're continue our sermon series through the Gospel of Mark. Today, the sermon is entitled God or Hell. And over the years I've found that truth is always simple. And the most honest people speak with the greatest clarity. There's no obfuscation, there's no word salads, there's nothing to hide. And when God speaks, it's true, and you know it's true because of how clear it is. God speaks and Satan obfuscates. Satan questions. Satan undermines the truth. God speaks and Satan complicates, and he does it with lies. And the worst lies are half-truths. Thanks be to God, Jesus Christ did not speak in half-truths. He spoke the truth, the full truth. He told people that there are only two options. There's only two ways. There's only two paths. There's only two destinies, God or Hell. You either choose God and spend eternity in His glory or you choose hell and spend eternity in His wrath.And we're so fortunate to be alive today here and now and still have a chance to choose. We're so blessed to even be offered the choice. Many don't make the choice or don't think about the choice because we don't understand the gravity, the importance of the choice that eternity is at stake. Many people today plan their vacation destinations with more detail than they think about their eternal destination. We all deserve God's wrath. He created us, He designed us. He gave us laws by which to glorify Him and enjoy His glory here on earth. And that's what Eden was. It was heaven on earth. He designed life to be lived like heaven on earth. And that's what the kingdom of God is. You begin to experience the glory of God here by living for His glory, by glorifying Him with your obedience of faith. But we all rebelled, every single one of us. We all rejected His law, we transgressed it. We became outlaws. We became sinners.And in rejecting God's law, we rejected God Himself. Well, what is the absence of God's glory? It's hell. By rejecting God, we choose hell here on earth and we start living that out. And what does that create? More hell on earth. Therefore, Jesus came to rescue us from hell and to destine us for heaven here on earth. Eternal life begins here and now. He came to rescue you from the hell inside your soul, to plant the seeds of the kingdom in your soul, to give you a taste of heaven. And this radically changes the course of your life. Now you're not your own. You exist to glorify God, to live for His name, to serve Him, love Him, fear and praise Him. And this kind of life of obeying God, submitting to Him, it's a life that demands sacrifice. Why? Because when you really start fighting hell on earth, when you really start fighting the sin within mortifying it, well what happens?You're bound to feel the flames of hell. You're bound to get burned. So what do we do? We keep fighting. We fight the lies of the enemy with the truth by knowing the truth, loving it, living it and speaking it. And that's what Jesus is talking about today. We're in Mark 9:30-50. Would you look at the text with me? "They went on from there and passed through Galilee and He did not want anyone to know, for He was teaching His disciples saying to them, 'The son of man is going to be delivered into the hands of men and they will kill him. And when he is killed after three days he will rise.' But they did not understand the saying and were afraid to ask him. And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, 'What were you discussing on the way?'But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. And He sat down and called the 12 and He said to them, 'If anyone would be put first, he must be last of all and servant of all.' And he took a child and put him in the midst of them and taking him in his arms, he said to them, 'Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives not me but Him who sent me.' John said to him, 'Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.' But Jesus said, 'Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For the one who is not against us is for us. For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water or drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward.Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It's better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.' For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another."This is the reading of God's holy and errant, fallible, authoritative word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Four points to frame up our time. First life through death. Second, greatness through service. Third, power through loyalty. And fourth, God or hell.First, life through death. In the first half of chapter nine, King Jesus takes his big three disciples, Peter, James and John to the top of a mountain. And there He transfigured himself. He revealed His divine glory and they bask in it. They were satisfied with it, mesmerized by the glorious king. So much so that Peter said, "No, no, no." Excuse me, I get excited about the glory of God. He said, "We're not going down. We're not going down the mountain. We're not descending. This is too good. We're staying here forever."And no, they had to leave. Descend, they must, down from the glorious mountaintop experience after they have tasted heaven on earth. Why do they have to go down? Well, why did Jesus come down? Jesus Christ came down from heaven to earth and he does it to save people from hell, from eternal damnation. The kingdom of God must be established. And to do this, the King must first take on Satan's sin and death. After vanquishing the stubborn demon that his disciples were unable to conquer, Jesus continues to instruct his disciples. Chapter 8, chapter 9, and chapter 10 are about discipleship. This is what it means to follow Jesus Christ. And Jesus spends significant time with them before embarking on His mission. In verse 30, it says, "They went on from there and passed through Galilee and He did not want anyone to know."The phrases like this, we see often where Jesus is sovereign over the truth. He's sovereign in regulating the truth. He reveals the truth to whomever He chooses. Who gets how much revelation? Well, who decides this? Does the seeker himself decide? No, because scripture clearly teaches that no one searches after God not on their own. So if you are searching for God, if you're asking questions about God, if you're interested in God, in the divine and eternity in Holy Scripture, well friend, let me tell you, that's already a sign of the Holy Spirit working on you and working in your heart.Look at Romans 3:9, "What then, are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks are under sin. As it is written, no one is righteous. No not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. In their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There's no fear of God before their eyes."Well, the disciples were just like this. The disciples were chosen by Jesus. Jesus chooses to reveal to His disciples the truth and the truths of God's kingdom. How does one become a disciple of Jesus Christ? Well, Jesus is the one that approached them and Jesus is the one that told them, "Follow me.: And then he communicates to them in John 15:16, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, He may give it to you."Are you a disciple of Jesus Christ? Are you a follower of Christ? Well, if you are, praise be to God. It's because He chose you. Salvation is bestowed on you. It's never earned. He appointed you and for what? For work, for service, for sacrifice. Bearing fruit comes through, bearing a cross and bearing it daily. And He promises to resource you. He says, "Ask whatever you will in my name to become more fruitful." But this usually includes a heavier cross and a steeper more narrow path to climb. My third daughter turned nine recently and I told her, I said, "Nine is, I think that's the perfect age. It's just what are your worries in life? You're in third grade," and I didn't want to say it's all downhill from here because that's kind of a terrible thing to say to a nine-year-old. So I said the opposite. I said, "It's all uphill from here," and I don't think that's much better.But that's kind of what Christianity is. If you want to level up, if you want to grow in faithfulness, if you want to grow in obedience, if you want to grow in fruitfulness, it's all uphill from here. But that's what we were chosen for. We were chosen for service, for sacrifice because we were chosen by the one who came to sacrifice Himself. He says, "The son of man is going to be delivered." That's the conversation turned over, handed over, betrayed. And part of the background to this prophecy lies in Isaiah 53. The same terminology is used in Isaiah 53 as in our text, the language of being turned over, handed over, betrayed. And Isaiah 53 was written centuries before Jesus Christ was even born. The Lord promised in Isaiah 53 that the Messiah would come as a suffering servant. Jews to this day reject the clear true reading of Isaiah 53.But the ones who read Isaiah 53 with open hearts are converted to Christ immediately. And that's who the early church was. Jews who read Isaiah 53 and said, "We witnessed it happen. We watched it happen. He predicted that He was going to die. He predicted that He was going to be betrayed. He predicted that He's going to be crucified and He predicted that He would come back from the dead. We saw Christ crucified and He did that for us." That was the testimony of the earliest church and He did it to save us from hell on earth and from hell for all of eternity. And even more than that, He did it to save us from our sins. So now the chasm between us and God will be removed. So He offers himself to us for eternity. I'm going to read Isaiah 53, and as I read, just think about the fact centuries before Christ was born, this was written.It's as if Isaiah is sitting at the foot of the cross watching it being done. "Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And as one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed Him, stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with His wounds we are healed.All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not his mouth like a lamb that is led to the slaughter. And like a sheep that before its sheers is silent. So He opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment, He was taken away. And as for His generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. And they made His grave with the wicked and with a rich man and his death, although He had done no violence and there was no deceit in His mouth. Yet, it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put Him to grief. When His soul makes an offering for guilt, He will see his offspring. He will prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.Out of the anguish of His soul, He shall see and be satisfied. By His knowledge, shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will divide Him a portion with the many and He shall divide the spoil with the strong because he poured out His soul to death. And was numbered with the transgressors. Yet He bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressions."Mark 9:31, "For he was teaching His disciples saying to them, ''The son of man is going to be delivered into the hands of men and they will kill Him. And when He is killed, after three days He will rise.' But they did not understand the saying and were afraid to ask Him." Well, of course they didn't understand. Jesus had already proven that He's God. They have believed him that He's God. Well, you're God. You've come to take over everything. You've come to take the place back from Satan. You've come to destroy the kingdom of Satan. So Jesus, do it, die. What happens to our cause if you die? Why would you need to rise again? How's this for an idea? Let's not die. Let's use the powers that you have. We know you God, you changed the weather, we watched you. You've walked through hostile crowds before we know you've done it. What do you mean you're going to be delivered? As in you're going to give yourself over, you're going to let them take you.And Jesus' answer of course is, "Yes. I didn't come just to save you from hell on earth. I didn't come just to save you from the hell of the Romans, or the hell of the Pharisees, or even the hell of your own sin-infected bodies. I've come to save your soul from eternal hell. And I've come to offer eternal life," which only comes through the death of the eternal son of God who chose to become son of man. So yes, life comes only through death and eternal life comes only through the death of the eternal one, Jesus Christ.And since life comes through death, of course, point two, greatness comes through service. The disciples didn't get this yet. How could they? It's so counterintuitive. Greatness is through rank, and greatness is through degrees and greatness is through accomplishments, and greatness is through a position. What do you mean greatness is through service? It's counterintuitive. Well, it's counterintuitive because our intuition is clouded with sin and we need washing with the word. In verse 33, they came to Capernaum and when He was in the house He asked them, "What were you discussing?" Capernaum is the Galilean village from which Peter James and John came.And whenever Jesus was in Capernaum, he would stay at Peter's house. Peter had a home there. He was married, he had a mother-in-law and perhaps he even had children. And perhaps that's the child that Jesus puts front and center. And Jesus in His outward ministry, He had encounters with over enemies, the scribes and the Pharisees. But now he's engaged with the enemy inside the hearts of his own disciples, the enemy that will rear its ugly head throughout church history. It's this desire to jostle for greatness. That's what they're doing. He asked them, "What were you arguing about?" And verse 34, "They kept silent for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest." As soon as Jesus asks the question, they realize just with the question, "Oh, we were way off. They don't even want to share. They don't want talk about what are... They're embarrassed.They realize just a question from Jesus reveals how embarrassing this is to talk about who's the greatest. They argued with one... who's the greatest. This was after Jesus just talked about self-denial, the hard-hitting instruction of taking up your cross and following Him daily. And here they're having a senseless argument about their relative greatness, and they've confused greatness because they don't really understand what Jesus is coming to do. They don't understand that how humble you have to be. They saw a glimpse of His glory and then He veils that glory and then He descends, but they don't really understand the distance between the glory of heaven and the humiliation of the cross. And these two are interconnected. If you don't understand the vast difference between Jesus glory and His humiliation, you'll never understand how much He had to humble Himself in order to save us. And this was part of the process of transforming and saving humanity.Why? Because Jesus did not just come to deal with the consequences of sin. He came to deal with the very root itself. And what is the root of all sin? It's pride. Pride is the fuel that fires all of hell. Pride is what made Satan Satan, where Satan goes out of his rank and says, "No God, I am greater than you are, therefore you serve me. You worship me. Therefore, the way..." And that inclination's in every single heart, that pride. The pride of, "No, I don't want to submit to God." The pride of, "Who is God to tell me what to do." The pride that starts the rebellion of us against God.Look at Philippians 2:1-10 and see this distance, this humility as the way that Jesus saves us from our pride. Philippians 2:1, "So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father."In verse 35, "He sat down and He called the 12." This is how Jesus often taught. He would sit down, but here perhaps He's exasperated and He wants to draw their attention, sits down. And He said to them, "If anyone would be first, He must be last of all and servant of all." Matthew 23:11, the parallel passage, "The greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." First, I want to point out what Jesus does not say. He does not say there is no greatness in the kingdom of God. Jesus' view of the kingdom of God is not just some egalitarian view where everyone is of the same greatness, of the same rank, of the same hierarchy. No, that's not what He's saying. He's assuming that there is a hierarchy, there is a path to greatness.There is a path to greater usefulness and fruitfulness, but that path to greatness is counter to the path of greatness in the world. The path of greatness in the world is make your name great. The path of greatness in the kingdom of God is seek first the name of Jesus Christ to exalt him. And the way that you grow in greatness is service, humble service to the King, and to his servants, and to people. So we can rack up stats, so to speak in the kingdom of God, and we do it through service. And the greatest disciple is the greatest servant and the one who sacrifices the most is the greatest in the kingdom of God. That's the one that serves the most. The more you sacrifice, the more you serve, the more you are like your master who is great. Humility is the best policy. Jesus is teaching.Self aggrandizement always leads to humiliation. But what is humility? The opposite of humility is pride. And the first encounter of pride we see is with Satan, where Satan is not content with his place. Humility is knowing your place. It's knowing your role. It's knowing what God has called you to do and what God has called you to be. As we serve the Lord, as we grow in the faith, there are promotions, so to speak, but it's all for Him. He's the one that does it. All the talents that He gives us, all the opportunities that He gives us, the health and strength, it's all from Him and it's all for Him and service to Him. We're called to be servants. And here it's the Greek word diakonos from which the English word deacon comes from. And in Greek literature, it just means someone who's not afraid of the menial work, such as a waiter at a table, humble service. We're here.At Chick-fil-A, they say, "It's my pleasure." It's my pleasure to serve you. That should be the sentiment of every Christian. It's my pleasure to serve because that's my role. And that's really the heartbeat of humility. I know my role, I know my place, I know what God has called me to do. And sometimes things get hard and you start wondering if the sacrifice worth it. No one really notices or you don't get accolades in the world. But Luke 17 puts everything in its place. I love this passage. It's one of these passages very jarring as you read it for the first time. But as you walk in the faith, you realize this is exactly the posture of heart that the Lord calls us to.Luke 17:7, "Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, 'Come at once and recline at table?' Will he not rather say to him, 'Prepare supper for me and dress properly and serve me while I eat and drink. And afterward you'll eat and drink.' Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you are commanded, say, 'We are unworthy servants. We have only done what was our duty.'"And that's really the posture of heart, that He's the master, He's the Lord. We're the servants. He saves us, he saves us for service. So of course we're going to do it. It is our duty. Mark 9:36, "Jesus took a child and put him in the midst of them and taking him in His arms, He said to them, 'Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. And whoever receives me receives not me but Him who sent me.'" This word for child can refer anywhere from a newborn infant to an older child. Perhaps this is Peter's child. We know that Peter was married, he had a mother-in-law, and perhaps it was his son or daughter. And Jesus takes the child, embraces the child, hugs the child, and reveals that He loves the child. I love this image that Jesus loves children.In chapter 10, Jesus loves children. Jesus, the God, man loves kids. He's hugging kids, blessing kids, praying for kids. Why does Jesus love children? Because God, Jesus loves humanity and He cares about the next generation. So we as believers, we are to be people marked by a love for children. John the Baptist who came in the spirit of Elijah, it says that He will come and one of His jobs is going to be turn the hearts of the fathers to their children. And yes, it assumes fathers who are already fathers, they love their children. We are to love our children. It also assumes those who are not yet fathers. And the Lord puts this fatherly desire in your heart and the world does not know of this.It's kind of popular not to like kids. It's kind of popular to complain about kids, especially on planes. I remember when my kids were little, I'd carry my kid into the plane with one of my kids and just look around at the unhappy faces. Come on, we were all this at some point, can everyone relax? And so why does Jesus take a child? He takes a child and He says, "This right here, you want the epitome of how you grow in greatness in the kingdom of God is through service. Service to whom those who need it the most." Why a child? Because it's the most helpless stage of being a human. Children need to be served. Kids are wonderful, praise be to God. And they are also a lot of work, a lot of time, energy, money, resources, lost sleep, REM cycles that you will never get back.And it's ministry. That's how you have to view children. It's ministry, it's service, it's service to the King in the name of Jesus Christ. And by serving kids in Jesus' name, you're not just serving the child, you're serving Jesus. So he says, "Receive children, receive them into your life. Serve them, and by serving them, you're serving the King." And he continues, "Whoever receives me receives not me, but Him who sent me." By receiving children in Jesus' name, you're receiving Jesus, you're receiving God the Father. And this is important because God, the Father loves children, especially... He loves His children, especially when they are children."Point three is power through loyalty. A service of course takes energy and it takes power. And where do we draw that power? From the source of power, and that's Jesus Christ. And the more loyal you are to Him, the more loyal you are to His cause, the more useful you are to Him, the more power He gives you.The disciples thought they were the only ones with access to the power of God because of their proximity to Jesus. So they're blown away by the fact that there's someone else casting out demons in Jesus' name, someone other than the 12. Verse 38, "John said to Him, 'Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name. And we tried to stop him because he was following, and he was not following us.'" He said, "Someone's casting out demons in your name, by the power of Jesus." They're invoking the power of Jesus by using His name. The would-be exorcist, pronounces Jesus name in order to bring His spiritual force to bear on demons, and the disciples don't like this. "The people aren't following us, Jesus," and that's really the emphasis. They don't say, "They're not following you." They say, "They're not following us." And Jesus' response in verse 39, "Do not stop him. For no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me."Says, "Don't stop him. Don't forbid this person. He's casting out demons in the name of Jesus, so don't worry about him. He's doing my work. Is he a disciple in the same exact way that you are the 12? No. So help the person grow as a disciple, but don't stop the fight against evil. Don't stop those who cast out demons differently than you do. It's all in the name of Christ."In Numbers 11, there's a similar passage where Moses chooses 70 elders and the Spirit descends upon them. And there's two gentlemen that weren't there during that ceremony. And then afterwards they get the Spirit too. And then the people come to Moses and says, "Stop them. They're not part of the 70." This Numbers 11:24. So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord and he gathered 70 men of the elders of the people and placed them around the tent.Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him and took some of the spirit that was on him and put down the 70 elders. And as soon as the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied, but they did not continue doing it. Now, two men who remained in the camp, one named Eldad and the other named Medad, and the Spirit rested on them. They were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent. And so they prophesied in the camp and a young man ran and told Moses, Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp. And Joshua, the son of Nun, the assistant of Moses from his youth said, My Lord, Moses, stop them." But Moses said to him, "Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord would put His Spirit on them?"And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp. Here, Moses said, "I wish everyone had the Holy Spirit. I wish everyone prophesied. I wish everyone proclaimed the word of the Lord." And Jesus here is saying something similar effect like, why would you be against someone casting out demons? We're against demons. He says, "No one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me." These outsiders are not like the scribes or the Pharisees who blasphemed against the Holy Spirit by attributing Jesus exorcisms to Satan. No, these people are people that are on the side of Jesus because they're against demons. And it seems like exorcism is a make-or-break issue. It's almost as this exorcism and one's attitude toward the demonic is a defining characteristic if you're inside or outside the dominion of God. Are you for demons or are you against them?Are you for demons or are you against them? Are you for Satan or are you against him? Are you for Christ or against Christ? Are you for hell on earth or are you against hell on earth? Well, if you're against hell on earth, you're against those who make hell on earth. And that's the demons. No, we're against hell, so we're for heaven. We're against demons, so we're for Christ.Verse 40, "For the one who is not against us is for us." Are they against Jesus? No, of course not. They're doing the same work. They're battling the same demons, fighting the same Satan and doing it all in the name of Christ.And fourth, God or Hell. And here Jesus turns to a conversation about reward and punishment in the afterlife. And what He reveals is God is keeping very close tabs on our service to Him. Every single little thing you do for Christ, for His glory will be rewarded with greater revelation of His glory starting this life and for eternity in heaven. Look at verse 41, "For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward."Even a cup of water. If you give someone a cup of water in the name of Jesus Christ saying Jesus is going to keep track of that. And what is that reward? The reward is more of God, more of His presence, more of His glory.Revelation 22:12-13, "Behold, I'm coming soon bringing my recompense with me to repay each one for what he has done. I'm the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, and the beginning and the end." And if the Lord keeps track of our work for Him so He knows how much to reward us as believers in Christ, well, the Lord also keeps track of the sin and iniquity of those who are not in Christ, as a way to mark how much condemnation they get in hell.Revelation 11:15-18, "Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet and there were loud voices in heaven saying, 'The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever.' And the 24 elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God saying, we give thanks to you Lord God, Almighty. Who is and who was for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The nations raged, but your wrath came and the time for the dead to be judged and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name both small and great and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.'" God is going to reward his prophets, the servants, and saints in the same way he's going to reward so to speak, or bring the deserved condemnation on the destroyers, it says.And here Jesus continues that thought of the destroyers of the faith. Verse 42, "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea." If anyone causes one of these little ones to sin, if anyone causes or scandalizes their faith, causes them to stumble, Jesus says, it's better that they would die here and die of very graphic death with a massive stone tied to their neck and thrown into the sea. Why? Because death is going to keep them from continuing to heap up condemnation for themselves, for eternity. And specifically he says, "Whoever causes one of these little ones, who believe in me, to sin,: who's the little ones? Commentators here say most likely He's talking about believers in general because the same word for little ones is used later where Jesus talks about, "Little flock, fear not."But Jesus had just been talking in context about a child. That the way to greatness is service, in particular service to the least of these, a little one. So if Jesus is talking about if anyone causes a Christian to sin, he is including Christians who are children. Anyone that destroys the faith of a child, destroys the innocent faith of a child, Jesus says that person is heaping up condemnation for themselves for all eternity in hell. And this is a very, very sobering verse. And if you look at what's happening in our culture where we're trying to remove any idea of innocence of children. Children are being tempted with sin in ways that centuries ago people wouldn't even comprehend. And this is happening left and right. And Jesus is saying, Be careful. Be careful that you're not heaping up condemnation for all of eternity causing believers in Christ to sin is a grave sin. And the penalty for this sin is unquenchable, hellfire, the conversation Jesus is about to embark upon.So what are we to do? We're to take these sobering words about the reality of heaven and hell, but the reality of reward or condemnation that continues for eternity. And we are to sit down and say, "Where am I? Am I on the side of demons or I'm on the side of Jesus, I'm on the side of hell or on the side of heaven, where am I?" And there is no neutrality. If you're not with Christ, you're against Him. If you're not against Him, you're with Him. Mark 9:43, "And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell to the unquenchable fire." This is hyperbolic language.He's not saying cut off your hand because if he meant physically, he would say both hands or both eyes or both feet. He's saying one. What he's saying is if there is a desire in your heart to sin, if there is a desire in your heart to do evil and to lead others into sin, at that, you need to stop and say, "Where is this desire leading me? Is this desire leading me to heaven or to hell? Is this desire from the kingdom of God or from the kingdom of Satan?" And you got to take radical action. You got to cut yourself off from anything that would even tempt you to sin. Make no provision for the flesh Scripture speaks. You're new creation in Christ, therefore put sin to death. You have died to sin, how can you continue living in it? So drastic action cut off your hand and he says, "Better for you to enter life crippled or maimed."And the presupposition here is that those who enter heaven get a glorified body. And the glorified resurrected body is a body without any bodily defects. So even if the hand is cut off in this life, it's going to be restored in the next. And He talks about hell here. And it's the word Gehenna. It's the most common name for the place of eternal punishment. And the name comes from the Valley of Hinnom in the Old Testament. And the Valley of Hinnom was a depression running south-southwest of the old city of Jerusalem. And it was at this place, the Valley of Hinnom, where according to the Scriptures, the covenant people of God, Israel and engaged in idolatrous worship of the Canaanite God, Molech. And Molech demanded that the people sacrifice their children. So this is where Israel at the altar of Molech at this place called Valley of Hinnom, we get the word of Gehenna or hell from it.They would sacrifice their children by fire. Therefore, when God sends kings like Josiah to bring reform, one of the things he did was destroy this place. 2 Kings 23:10, "And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech." Or Jeremiah 7:30, "For the sons of Judah have done evil in my sight, declares the Lord. They have set their detestable things in the house that is called by my name to defile it. And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind." Or Jeremiah 32:35, "They built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech. Though I did not command them, nor to enter my mind, that they should do this abomination to cause Judah to sin."Because of these sacrifices of the children, the valley came to be viewed as the gate to the underworld. And hell is named after this place. Hell is named after the place where children were sacrificed. So what is Jesus saying? He's saying, "Do you want a glimpse of hell on earth? Well, think about child sacrifice. Think about abortion. He's just said that the way to create heaven on earth is to sacrifice self for the most helpless." Therefore, the way to create hell on earth is to sacrifice the most helpless for self. And the prophet Jeremiah denounces the sacrifice, but continues to associate the valley with death and judgment. And Jesus here says that it's an unquenchable fire in this place called hell.Verse 45, "If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better for you to enter life than with two feet to be thrown into hell."Verse 47, "If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It's better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell."Verse 48, "Where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. The torment continues for eternity. The fire burns for eternity."Verse 49, "For everyone will be salted with fire."And this is a language that's used for judgment. Sodom and Gomorrah, fire and brimstone came from heaven engulfing the cities in fire. And it says in Deuteronomy 29:23, "All its soil burned out by sulfur and salt." It's a sign of complete destruction because judgment had come and judgment is going to come for each of us.Judgment day is going to come, and the question is, will we receive that judgment which we deserve, or has Christ already received it on our behalf on the cross?" Verse 50, "Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another." And here the Lord changes the metaphors. There, He said the salt would be a sign of judgment, but here he's saying the salt is a sign of your redemption. Salt as an influence against the decay in our culture, the decay of the evil in the world. And he said, That's our job. We are to be salt and light. Salt is good, but make sure we haven't lost our saltiness. Make sure that we are separate from the world, that we are influencing the world more than the world is influencing us. He says, "Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.And he closes this section with a comment about having salt in yourselves and being at peace. What's the connection? Well, in Acts 1:4, Jesus shares a meal with his disciples. And it was the same word that's used here. To share a meal with someone was to take salt together. If you go to a Russian village, they come out and they bring you bread, a loaf of bread, and they bring you salt. And what they're saying, "Come on in, welcome. There's peace." And what Jesus here is saying, "Make sure you continue to have fellowship with one another, love with one another, peace with one another." Why? Because when you battle the fires of hell and you do get burned, oftentimes you get so focused on the enemy that you start looking at everyone around you as an enemy. And He's saying, "Disciples, hold on. Make sure that doesn't happen. Have salt in yourselves, break bread together, have peace with one another."We as a church want to do this more often. Therefore, the bagels are back. Praise be to God. Break bagels together. A church that breaks bagels together stays together. And so praise be to God for that. And last week we had our first community lunch that we're doing to coincide with Communion Sunday. And it was a great success, a lot of people with a lot of joy. So we pray that the Lord continues to bless us to have salt in ourselves and to be at peace with one another.I'll close it with Matthew 11:16. And Matthew 11:16, the Lord said, "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.You are the salt of the earth. But if salt has lost its taste, how shall saltiness be restored? And it was no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. You know how Boston started, the city? John Winthrop and his group of believers in Jesus Christ gets off a ship in Boston, before it was Boston. And before he got off a ship, he preached a sermon on Matthew 5, and he said, "We are going to be a city set on a hill. We're going to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to the nations. And that lasted for a little bit." And then they lost their saltiness.And that's what we're here for. But that's what Mosaic is. We are to be a city set on a hill proclaiming the excellencies of our Lord and Savior. With that said, would you please pray with me to the Lord?Lord Jesus, we thank you for this word and we thank you for the reminder that sacrifices, no matter what you call us to, they're worth it. In the same way that you sacrificed all in order to save us for the joy that was set before you, I pray for the joy that is before us, the joy of obedience, the joy of your delight, the joy of glorifying you. I pray that you give us strength to overcome any sacrifice. And Lord, we pray that you continue to establish your church, continue to build it up and continue to use us as you build your kingdom. We pray save many souls, disciple many, draw many to yourself in and through the work of this church in and then through every single faithful church in the area. We pray that you do send revival, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit save many. Save many from eternal hell and save them for eternal life. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Today, we are continuing in our series in the Gospel of Mark. It's called Kingdom Come, the Gospel of Mark and the Secrets of God's Kingdom. And I just want to say I get to preach about every five or six weeks. I'm here to give passing on a break, a week off from the pulpit this week. And I just pray that you have been blessed as I have been blessed, as we've gone through this book. I hope that that continues today. We thought we'd go through a little bit faster and maybe close to the end of Mark, but we're about halfway through. Given just the satisfaction, the refinement we're getting from it as individuals in a body, we're just happy to meditate on it again today.Today we are in Mark 8, chapter 8 of Mark verses 1 through 10. Open, with me, if you have a Bible and if you don't, you can follow along on the screen. So Mark 8 verses 1 through 10. This is the word of our Lord. "In those days when again, a great crowd had gathered and they had nothing to eat, he called his disciples to him and said to them, I have compassion on the crowd because they've been with me now three days and have nothing to eat and if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away. And his disciples answered him, how can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place? And he asked them, how many loaves do you have? They said seven.""And he directed the crowd to sit down on the ground and he took the seven loaves and having given thanks, he broke them and gave them to the disciples to set before the people and they set them before the crowd and they had a few small fish. And having blessed them, he said that these also should be set before them and they ate and were satisfied. And they took up the broken pieces, left over seven baskets full and there were about 4,000 people and he sent them away and immediately he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha." Let's pray. This is a word of our Lord. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you this day that we can come together as a people, as a multitude to learn about you, to hear from you, to hear the living word that we have in scripture.We thank you Lord that you have not left us in darkness, but those of us who know we are saved in Jesus are those who live in the light. And we thank you for the guide that your word is to us. We pray today that as you have been faithful to do throughout the course of Mosaic's history, we pray, bless us with a great sense of your presence. Enliven our hearts to just hear the lessons that you have for us, the comfort we need, the conviction, we need, the growth, the holiness that we need. Lord, open our eyes and just give us receptive hearts. We pray, Lord, that we would be satisfied, that we do pray that the thoughts and anxieties about the previous week, about the week to come would just leave our minds.And when you enable that Lord that you would fill us with gladness and joy in Jesus. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, the primary phrase in our text today comes from verse two and it says, "And Jesus said to them, I have compassion on the crowd." Jesus has compassion on the crowd and this is the primary theme of the text. I'll talk about Jesus' compassion. And as I enter into this, I want to admit to you that when I opened up the text this week just preparing, in preparation early on to preach this Sunday, I read this text, I saw the topic of compassion and I really wanted to avoid it. To be honest, my heart coming back from the holidays, I had a great time, got to see my parents, a couple siblings, my in-laws.I got to be in my hometown where I grew up, my wife's hometown. It was a great time, but in many ways it was ... I don't know if it's similar for you, but it was kind of a family missions trip and a catch-up time between me and the wife, me and the kids, and driving to Philly and DC, a lot of my week was spent on I-95 and Highway 15 in Connecticut and came back tired last Tuesday, getting back to work. And I've been a little bit on autopilot where my body has been going forward, but my soul just feeling a little dry and I saw this topic of compassion or really wanted to avoid it. I basically wrote three sermons as I was trying to justify Pastor Jan preached on this topic a little bit, thoroughly enough a few weeks ago when talking about the other feeding.The Lord just corrected me. And how did I ... when I identified I was avoiding this, I did spend time in prayer to really just get softened and be receptive to what the Lord wanted me to engage and what wanted all of us to engage through this text this week. And I'll just prepare you, it might not be stimulating to the brain, but just as important as Christians is, we need our heart engaged and this text certainly does it as we cover the topic of compassion and to really ... if you're not really with me on compassion, you're feeling a little cold today, I want to warm your heart a little bit, attempt to very quickly, by reading First Corinthians 13, one to seven, this famous passage that we often hear at weddings on love.For Jesus said, the sum of God's command is the love God and love our neighbor and talking about compassion, about practically meeting the needs of others, praying that God would use us to meet the spiritual needs of others in the process. Just want to pause and remind us, we can't do any of that without love in our hearts. And if we do so, what do we resemble? We resound noisy gongs, clanging symbols, people who talk a lot but hypocritically don't back that talk with action, with loving action. So let me just read First Corinthians 13:1-7 with the hopes that the Lord prepares you for the rest of the passage."If I speak in the tongues of men and angels but have not love, I'm a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, I'm nothing. If I give away all I have and if I deliver up my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." So I just really want to say we need to love and why ... the sum of Christianity is that we love, we extend compassion to the loss, to the needy around us because Jesus Christ has been loving and compassionate.And merciful and gracious to us in our needs and primarily in the way that he has met our need to engage our sin, the guilt and shame we carry before the Lord. He provides the means of peace with our father. And so we should go forward with love on our minds and engaging with people with compassionate love. So this morning engaging in the text as is obvious from the scripture I read, we're going to study the miraculous feeding of the 4,000. I think it's best to cover this text going through verse by verse. For those of you who like checkpoints in the sermon, I want to know three points. The compassion of Jesus will be my first section, the power of Jesus will be my second section and the satisfaction of Jesus will be my third.So for those of you who are very attentive listeners to Mosaic sermons, thank you. We're glad you're here and following. You've been with us the past couple of months in Mark. You'll notice that today's text is not very different than the text on the feeding of the 5,000 that we covered on December 10th in Mark, when we studied Mark 30 through 44, Pastor Jan preached an incredible sermon. You should listen to it. As we open up this text, if it sounds really similar, you're not experiencing deja vu, we haven't gone backwards. We are just going forward in the text trying to be faithful to the scripture that the Holy Spirit is bringing our body to today.Now, the stories are very similar between the feeding of the 5,000 and 4,000, the accounts, both accounts mentioned the compassion of Jesus on the crowd. Both accounts take place in a wilderness. In both accounts, Jesus inquires about how many loaves the disciples have. In both accounts, the people are asked to sit down. In both accounts, Jesus prays over the food and miraculously creates massive amounts of food. In both accounts, there's a distribution process where Jesus has the disciples, involves them in bringing the bread to the people. In both accounts, the people are very satisfied. In both accounts, Jesus dismisses the crowd before leaving on a boat on the Sea Galilee to continue his ministry with his disciples.Both accounts, there are only two chapters apart and because of these similarities, the text is often criticized by scholars and critics of scripture, those who criticize the deity, question the deity of Jesus Christ. They say that this repetition of these similar stories or many of them say this one story gives reason to believe that the book of Mark, it's just a messy work. The guy who wrote it, who edited it was really just trying to trick people into thinking that there were two separate accounts, two separate events in order to get his literary intentions through, to get the lessons that he wanted to get through forward.And essentially, he concocted the stories, he wove them together to build this myth of the deity of the God man, Jesus. So we say, just want to leave that battle because at Mosaic we believe in the inerrancy and in the infallibility and the divine inspiration of the scriptures. We're not troubled by this. There certainly are many similarities between the passages, but many differences as well. In the first account, there are 5,000 people running around the lake with Jesus and spending a day with him. In the second account, it's 4,000 in the wilderness of the Decapolis for three days. In this account, we find people who have been with him ... Sorry, three days instead of one, after one day in the first feeding, Jesus feeds the multitude.In the first account, there's five loaves and two fish. In this account, there's seven loaves and a few small fish, probably sardines. After the first feeding they picked up 12 small baskets of leftovers. In this account, they pick up seven large baskets. It's kind of frustrating because every time you read on this passage, every time you listen to a sermon, everybody has to spend like five minutes, as I just did, saying that there's a lot of debate here, but we rest in the authority of Scripture, the most important and conclusive evidence that these are two separate accounts as Mark shows us, comes from later in chapter 8 verses 19 and 20, when Jesus Christ himself says, "When I broke the five loaves for the 5,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?"They said to him, 12, and the seven for the 4,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? And they said to him, seven. So that's it. Case closed. Jesus himself refers to these events as two separate events. This is a separate feeding of a multitude of 4,000 taking place at a different time than the feeding of the 5,000 chronicled in Mark 6. So this account, it does teach some of the same lessons as the feeding of the 5,000, but there are unique details in this one and that's what we want to pull out because that is what differentiates some of the meaning between the two accounts. So I want to bring out these differences and the primary lessons that we see here in the text through these three main headings and first the compassion of Jesus.So we begin here at 8:1, chapter eight verse one. It says, "In those days, and I say ..." okay, we're through that required part that I was frustrated that I had to go through, but so come back, listen to me now. We begin now at chapter 8:1, "In those days when again, a great crowd had gathered. In those days." So what mark means is that there was not a great passing of time since that last feeding. Remember Jesus ... these are the days where Jesus, he has traveled recently to Capernaum, to Tyre, to Sidon and now, he is south in the Decapolis. Jesus in those days, it's these days where he is in this Gentile region more prominently Gentile, less Jewish region and he's met by many who are bringing to him throughout his travels, the sick and the needy.And he is healing a lot of them. He's teaching a lot of them. So Mark is saying, this is what is happening in the Decapolis. Many translations say a multitude has gathered. Verse nine tells us there are 4,000 people. The parallel account in Matthew mentions that ... of the same feeding, that it's 4,000 people not including women and children. So this easily could be a crowd of 10 to 12,000, 15,000, 20,000 would not be unreasonable estimates. A huge congregation has sought Jesus once again as has been the case over and over again to this point in Mark since Jesus started his ministry. So we have the 12 disciples. Jesus, a large crowd of people. And why did these crowds come? To be healed, to see miracles.Most of all, we expect they came to hear him preach the word in three days with him. It's pretty clear that he would've been teaching them. It was said, why was Jesus ... what was the appeal? John 7:46 has a Gentile say. It was said of Jesus that no man ever spoke like him. People said that he preached in a way that they'd never heard before. People would hear him speak and they're there hanging on to every word that he said. And what would they do? A lot of them ... what we'd see in Mark is they'd hear him speak and if he got up and traveled they would follow him. We see here that he's probably preaching in a single area and just they are camped out for three days.It's like a revival scene, and that is what seems to be taken here in the Decapolis. Verse two says, they've been with me now three days. In the Greek, the translation for these words, been with me, three words, it's actually one word. It can be translated more precisely that they've been strongly attached to me. They've been committed to me. The people hear Jesus preaching and they want to stay to him, as close to him as possible. They don't want to leave. They hear Jesus preach his message of the arrival of the kingdom of God and the mercy and grace and forgiveness and his call to repent and they'd never want to leave.It's as if time has stopped and all their needs are being met. Their soul is experiencing satisfaction that it's never encountered before. And all earthly concerns don't matter for three days. Do you know this feeling? I don't know it for three days. I wish I did, but I remember when I first arrived in Mosaic in August of 2011, a year out of college, I grew up in a church ... before I come to Mosaic, I grew up and attended a church where the pastor had a strict rule for himself that he went 18 minutes with his sermons. And I was one of those people that was counting down those 18 minutes. When I arrived at Mosaic and I really think I was saved in those initial weeks where for the first time, I finally saw I'm a sinner, God is holy, I have no access, no right to go into his presence by my own means.By my own actions, by my own record, but Jesus is perfect and I can have his record applied to me by faith. That's when I started hearing the word and when I heard it was if time stopped, a 45-minute to an hour long sermon, that was like nothing to me. Time felt like it flew by and when it was over I was sad. Do you know this? This is the experience really of every true believer is going to have a love and this kind of deep satisfaction in the word of God, and I would say I still feel it. I'm not saying I don't feel this right now. I love to come to church on Sunday. I want to get filled my soul during Christmas time.I went home and ate all my favorite takeout foods, Philadelphia hoagies and soft pretzels and lots of local spots and I just had to come back and fast because that ... a few days of that satisfaction that really didn't satisfy, I wanted the Lord. And when I come to church each Sunday, I feel this spiritual exhaustion and need to get filled up. And I elaborate on this to tell you what it was like when I first encountered it. Do you know this? If not, ask the Lord to just give you this experience. Have the humility to say that, "Lord I don't know this and please give it to me." And Pastor Jan and I we're trying to recreate this timeless experience for you each week as we preach the word.As you hear me speak so slowly, you're like, "I don't know if that's possible with you Andy," but I say, "Go home and list to me at two times speed. I've got the perfect voice for it. You won't miss a detail." My sermons are the same length and pages as Pastor Jan, he just speaks 1.5 times faster than me. Do you know this? Pray, Lord, I want to know and love your word and be satisfied like this. So, people, they were so astonished at the teaching of Christ, they feel such deep soul satisfaction that they seemingly ran out of food. Some of them probably had food. The existence of baskets there means, they probably ... some people probably brought some, but they probably ran out and there were probably others who went, "I'm just going to go hear you guys speak. I've got nothing."They still stayed and had an unplanned three-day fast. And I also have these experiences. When I first arrived at Mosaic ... and I'm saying this, if you feel like you have experienced this, when I'm not experiencing this, I go to a new believer in Mosaic and I hear them tell me of their experience of just the newness of the kingdom of God spreading and there's this old rain in their heart as they serve the Lord. When I was saved, first saved, when I was born again, it was go, I want to go serve. I want to want more people to know this word and have this peace, this joy from the Lord. I'm going to go serve. I'm going to go help us set up. I'm going to go worship and drink in that sermon, I'm going to sit in the front so that I'm not distracted at all.And well, naturally back seater, but then I'd spend my whole day just how do I help with tear down? How do I help with spending time with people? It's not to call attention to myself, it's to say again, "Can you get lost in this?" And I still have this experience, I still do it here basically in the building all day. It's now my job. So I do get paid for it. I still kind of get lost and I don't eat all day and then, I go home and I get in trouble with my wife because I'm starving and ask her where her food is. Do you know this wilderness, this satisfaction in the wilderness experience that these people in the Decapolis are experiencing when Christ is preaching to them for three days and we can believe it's the middle of summer.These people, they're experiencing ... they know what Peter 2 to 3 says ... it's talking about, it says like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. They're living out the fulfillment of man shalt not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God, Matthew 4:4. If you study world history, Christianity is not in existence because it was just propagated by people who maintained it over time. It's that, Christianity is the most popular religion in world history because believers have had this experience with the Lord through the engagement with him, through his word throughout history.It's real, it's satisfying, and we should pray. We should pray that if we don't know this, Lord, give me this experience. Give me this love and satisfaction of you and we should pray. Lord, help us to live in a day where we get to see masses of people, revival, people confessing sin, repenting of it, turning and receiving grace from God at a mass level. Have you read church history? Do you read it? I read it for fun because it's hard, we do live in a pretty desolate place. So I go to scripture, I go to church history to read real life accounts of people who not only we read in scripture of this multitude, this revival among the masses when Christ walked the earth, but over and over again in our nation.In almost every nation of the world, every region of the world, maybe not modern nation, you can learn about revivals where people are filled and satisfied by God's word and just give their lives to him. So we need to pray for this and God has not changed. He can still do it. His word, his power has not diminished since Jesus ascended into heaven. In fact, his spirit is now poured out on us in a uniquely powerful way and we can experience this today. One of my favorite stories is in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin, who would not identify as a Christian, when George Whitfield, a great faithful preacher of history, supposedly preached tens of thousands of sermons in his life just walking around Europe and Britain and the states.Benjamin Franklin at one point scientifically measured the radius of the crowd of people that came to hear George Whitfield speak in a day where they didn't have microphones to hear him preach and just Franklin was no believer, but he said he could feel this cleansing effect on his soul and he measured that it was probably 30,000 people gathering in a Philadelphia square open space to hear the word preach. And so we should long to have these experiences with the multitudes and pray that they come. So the people forget their needs, but Jesus hasn't forgotten, and this is the compassion of Jesus. So in verse two he says, "I have compassion on the crowd because they've been with me now three days and have nothing to eat."And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away. Jesus knows people have come a long way. They're in the wilderness. There isn't a Chipotle nearby, there isn't a new H Mart in the area. There's no DoorDash carts that are willing to travel as far as they are into the wilderness. He knows that if he sends the people home through after this long experience in the wilderness without food, that the people could faint along the way. This is the compassionate Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, the God of the universe, cares not just for the people's spiritual needs but for their physical needs as well.God, Christ, he caress for body and soul. We see this Christ's true concern and he gives us permission to care for our body and soul. And when he instructs us how to play with the Lord's prayer, we address spiritual needs. Our Father who is in heaven hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done all earth as it is in heaven. Skip a section, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others, lead us not in temptation but deliver us from evil. These are our spiritual needs that we should pray for, but then, he gives us ... he acknowledges that we should pray for our practical concerns. Give us this day our daily bread. God, Christ, he caress about them. Philippians 4, 6 and 7 says, do not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication, but thanks to him.Let your requests be made known to God. God wants us to ask for our spiritual needs and for our physical needs. I think a lot of reformed Bible believing Christians really struggle to enter that practical area to admit when they need God to provide one of their needs, food, clothing, health, a safe place to live, we can ask for that and actually so much more and that's kind of another sermon when we ask for things in Jesus' name. Through Jesus' concern for the physical needs, we get a deeper sense of his compassion, and when he says in verse two, I have compassion on the crowd, the word for compassion in the Greek.It's one that refers to feeling in his inner organs in the guts, this word, it's roots, talk about the guts. This feeling that arises in this guts out of sympathy, true empathy, true sincere concern for the condition of others. As he becomes aware of it. It's more than a feeling, but it's a feeling that makes him ... that moves him. It's not the kind of compassion that we show when we sign up for a 5K and pay $25 last minute on a Saturday morning just because that's what all of our friends are doing. It's not the kind of compassion that when we donate five or $10 for a friend for their Facebook birthday nonprofit drive, just because we're like, "Oh, well this person's finally into something good."I want to support this. No, the Lord's passion is so much deeper. It's the kind of compassion that says, I'm not going to leave here until I find out a solution. Disciples, do you have any food? Okay, I can work with this. Let's get moving. People sit down. Jesus has this gut wrench in compassion and has the Lord given you this gut wrench and compassion for anyone, for any cause lately? What are you doing about it? We have to pause and really ask ourselves that there are many instances in scripture where Jesus is marked with compassion for the multitude. Matthew 9, 14, Mark 6 and 8 here. What's a note in Mark's gospel is that he uses this word compassion. This compassion for surprising groups of people.And Mark Jesus who is Jewish is moved with compassion for people that an ordinary Jew would not have compassion for or any association with. He's moved for Gentiles, lepers, demon possessed, even his own disciples were not moved like Jesus. There are several instances where the disciples, they respond to someone who approaches Jesus, a needy person and quickly reacting by telling him to send them away. This is what they did last week when we studied the text with the Syrophoenician women, they essentially say, "Can't you just get rid of her, send her away?" In the feeding of the 5,000, what did they do at the end of the day? This is before the miracle, the feeding occurred. They say Jesus send them away to get food.And they're probably thinking about themselves because they want some food. They're not really compassionate. Even in the amount, this account of the feeding of the 4,000, the disciples don't seem to care too much for the people. At least after one day at the last feeding with the Jewish crowd, they actually approached Jesus and said, "Hey, nobody has any food." This is after three days in the wilderness with this Gentile crowd. They don't point out the crowd's need for food. Who does that? It's Jesus. So, the comparison between the reactions to the poor, the needy and of the disciples in Christ, it helps us through this appreciation, Christ compassion so much more.The disciples are very often attempting to send people away, seemingly showing cold self-focused hearts. Jesus is always open and concerned for the wellbeing of the people around him. As we reflect on this point, we really have to ask ourselves if we, the churc, as a body, as individuals, make the same mistakes as the disciples today, especially those of us, we are church. We really have dignity in the fact that we are rooted on the rock of Jesus Christ and his word. We're biblical. We are reformed. Part of this world, theological world, we say, we need to preach the word. The word is what matters. My church, yeah, preaches the word and we love that.We love the correct framing of the doctrine, but we need to really back our commitment to the word with deed and this is something that churches throughout history have really struggled with. I grew up in the United Methodist Church as biggest denomination in the country still, though it's breaking apart and I do miss my experience in the Methodist church sometimes because they were so good at deed, just very loving people. The problem was a long time ago they really left scripture and left its authority and they're being torn apart because a lot of what they're teaching resembles just what modern isms of the world modern trends are teaching.We as churches, we as individuals, we love the word, but we also love to commit good deeds that are inspired by our commitment to the word, out of thanksgiving for Christ's compassion and love and kindness to us. Just as a church passing on, I think Mark has really got our thoughts going. We've also had to think about the church budget for 2024, a lot in the past month, month and a half. And just a few things we're focusing on to try to correct ourselves a little bit, is we just want to pray over those in our body who are sick more. James 5:14 says, is anyone among you sick? Let them call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.If you're sick, we want to be faithful to this and we want to call for the Lord's help and just make sure people are not struggling out there without our knowledge. Furthermore, we have plans to offer meals. Pastor Jan mentioned for the first time last week, we're piloting lunches on the first week of every month and it's just open invite, if you can, RSVP ahead of time that get us ... help us estimate how much food we need to order, please do so, but this is a chance to just create a space where members, guests, people are starving for food, can come and sit and share a catered meal, provided by the giving of others and build the fellowship and really have greater opportunity to really get to know each other and get to understand each other's needs, where this is part of the heart, this heart of compassion.Furthermore, Jesus, he talks to his disciples about ... He does this miracle around bread and fish twice. So furthermore, we are going to add another form of food in the near future. We're bringing back bagels for the first time before services in the lobby, for the first time since COVID. We are trying to create a warm, loving, compassionate space and feel to match just the commitment to scripture that we have, and just ... I say all of this, meditate on the compassion of Jesus to hopefully get you to meditate on whether or not you're showing compassion to Christ here, Christ with your life here at our church. John 13 says, "The world will know you by your love for one another."Christ further instructs his disciples to serve one another by washing each other's feet and just that symbolic, it's where to go that far in your engagements in your personal life. Are you compassionate to others? Is there anyone that the Lord is asking you to serve? Any needs for any neighbors that the Lord is calling you to address? And I live in a building of ... here in Brookline of 30 something units and there's a lot of people three decades older than me and I know they've made me the president of the building to hand over maintenance and the board ... because I'm young. That's it. Hopefully, I've shown them a good neighbor.Yeah., I learned these needs and a guy just got a hip replacement on Friday. I forgot to pray for him. I know of all these ways where I can just show Christ's kindness and compassionate and I try to turn a blind eye from them sometimes, but I'm trying to faithfully step into those situations. And so what is that for you? We've got to focus on the word. That's true. That's what Jesus did here with the 4,000. He preached the word for three days, but he knows that he can't send them away in the condition that they're in. He sees the need to administer to their bodies as well as their souls. And Jesus is trying to ... he's doing this if ... there's two main focuses of Mark. It's Mark, the author, he's trying to present Christology.Who is Jesus the Messiah? What is this kingdom he's established and all throughout the book, but the second most important motive he has is to prepare his disciples throughout the book, for life without him. He wants his disciples to equally feel compassion in the way that he feels it and to equally act upon that feeling. He wants to grow their heart and love for others, especially those who are undeserving of them, who they think are undeserving of their compassion. And scripture gives us the example of the good Samaritan, the priest and Levi, those who have God's word in the parable, they walk by the person in need.And then, who addresses the person in need. So the religious people, they walk right by the person in need. The Good Samaritan, the man outside the covenant promises of God. He's the one. The good Samaritan takes care of those needs. We as a church, we can't do that. There are so many opportunities to show love and compassion to people as Christ has done for us in meeting our deepest spiritual needs on the cross. So often, just meeting our daily needs abundantly in this life. Just some scriptures that really hammer this. Philippians 2, 3, 4. "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests but also the interests of others."Second Corinthians one, three to four, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of all mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. Do you have a heart like Jesus? And yes, we want people to have compassion for the people in Africa, people in Asia, people in Eastern Europe, people in the Middle East, those areas where Christianity does not have a stronghold or the church does not have a large presence. More importantly, do you have compassion for the people right next to you?Jesus commands love God, love your neighbor. Are you blessing people, looking to bless people as you have been blessed by God? It's oftentimes what do you offer, your presence that goes a long way to a lot of hurting people. What do you have to offer? Prayer. That's even before presence. There's prayer. So many of us say, I'm going to pray for you but don't. And then, from your resources, what do you have? And I want to say extending compassion is art. I'm a pastor and a lot of my job is engaging people who are volunteering to admit their needs. There's a lot of people who quietly have needs but don't tell us. And you need to have humility to share them with people in the CG and the pastors in your community group.One of the things is we often ... when we try to extend compassion with people, sometimes we do it a little blindly. We do it without getting close to people. And that's really important. Sometimes we assume people have specific needs because we just see what their needs are on the surface, but because we're not getting close, we're not given the time, the attention that Jesus does to the multitude here, we really kind of go in and we try to act, we try to serve but we make things worse or we kind of offend the person. We need to really be willing to take time to hear people, to get to know their situation before we act.And then when we make mistakes, it's a learned, extending compassion, serving others. It takes time to learn how to do it well. And you can be a pastor for years and really still make mistakes. Sometimes we have to confess our mistakes to people and we have to learn from them, repent of them. So one thing I do want to say about Mosaic is it's a very generous body. One of the things as a pastor with a bird's eye view of what's going on across our membership and community groups is I find out often several months after the fact that people in our church have financially met the material needs of others. They've given money to people, hundreds, thousands of dollars. They're seeking clothing, shelter, care, legal support. We have members often paying for legal counsel for when there are others who need it.It is amazing. It is, just love Jesus simple. Our motto here at Mosaic being applied, what do we want happening as we preach the word, we want people to hear the word be changed from the inside out as the Holy Spirit just awakens people and softens their hearts. And we want people to organically see the needs of people and offer what they have, their loaves, few loaves and fish and try to meet them in faith. And our body is great in doing Matthew 6:3 to 4, "But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that your giving may be in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you." I hear about a lot of stuff that community groups and members do weeks or months after the fact and we need to keep doing this.I will say though, sometimes it's easy to just give money. We have to give people time and presence as we extend compassion. So let's keep this up. Last, to close out the thought, Galatians the section ... Galatians 6:9 to 10, "And let us not grow weary of doing good for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. So then as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone and especially to those who are of the household of faith." Jesus says, I have compassion on the crowd. We need to similarly extend compassion. Now, I move on to my next point. So if you've drifted for me, come back with me and my first point is a lot longer than the next two. So the power of Jesus. Jesus is about to meet the needs of people with his infinite power.And I want to just cover four points as we walk through this discussion of Jesus power. First, look at how Jesus brings out the human inadequacy of the disciples before he gives them the ... offers them the solution to the problem. In verse five, he asks, "How many loaves do you have?" He knows he's got, he knows the answer. He's asking because he's getting them to see their own inadequacy. He wants them to see how little they have to offer in this situation. Seven loaves, a few fish when they really spend time to see that fully, gather that, they see that they have nothing to offer to feed this multitude.Jesus, when he calls his disciples to do his work, part of the process is first showing them how utterly inadequate they are in and of themselves to carry out his mission. He brings them to the end of themselves, to the end of their strength, the end of their capacities, the end of their material resources. And he gets them, primes them, primes their hearts to get to this position where they know that they cannot go forward unless he blesses them, unless he gives them power, unless he steps in and offers the solution. This is how God works when he calls people to do anything for his kingdom. And this is kind of paradoxical, the sermon series, Kingdom Come the Gospel of Mark and Secrets of the Kingdom.We need to really understand this is one of the secrets. God functions in this way. The rest of the world tells you, promote your strengths, let them be made known. God says, I want you to work in weakness. The apostle Paul said of preaching the word, who is sufficient for these things. Preaching the word, doing the tasks of ministry. Christians are to work from the position of weakness. Paul knew this. Paul grew in this. Paul learned to really love this situation of I am brought to my limits, but I know that God is going to supply, he supplied grace to save me. He's going to supply grace I need to do this thing that he has called me to do.And he says, "But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my powers made perfect and weakness. Therefore, I'll boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I'm content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities for when I am weak, then I'm strong." And as a pastor, I know this is me. I do not bring anything to the table. Any part of my role, I am outside of my comfort zone. I really am not that gifted. I'm a good generalist, but I'm not that specifically gifted anywhere, but I'm learning to grow in this. This is us as pastors. This needs to be everybody in our church taking up calls and trusting that the Lord will supply our ability to carry out those missions that he's called us to.Those things, those people, those needs for which we have much compassion. So God uses those who he brings to their absolute inadequacy who are aware of it. Next, as we discuss the power of Christ, I want to think about Christ's power and how it requires ... I think a good framing and it's our receptive compliance, not just compliance, but receptive compliance. This is really part of a message that we have ... part of the message today that is for anyone who wants to be a Christian, you're thinking, how do I become a Christian? You need to allow Jesus to be lured of your life. You need to receive his commands with compliance.Verse six says, "And he directed the crowd to sit down on the ground." I want to emphasize the reception of his commands and compliance. In the feeding of the 5,000, the disciples are instructed to sit the people down, so in the last feeding. In this feeding account, Jesus directs the crowd to sit down. To receive Jesus's saving food. In this process, he is active, they are passive. The people aren't to do anything to receive this food that will save them. They're there to look for him ... look him for and receive it from him. So people might be saying today, "Will the Lord receive me? Can I be saved? You don't know what I've done. You don't know what ... I can't stop myself from doing." The Lord says ... yes, he's offering you, come and receive his command to come and sit at his feet.And let him offer you the food that saves. And so he says, look at the passage. He fed all these Gentile pagans, along with his prideful disciples, all these people who turned to him and all they had to do was receive the blessing of the saving bread that he offered in these conditions. They had to sit, wait and receive, not run up and claim they could help him in the process. The people relied completely on Jesus to supply the saving bread to them. And this connects to our salvation. There's nothing we can do. We simply look to Christ. He has finished the work that is necessary for salvation. We trust in him and rest upon his work on the cross.Next in this section, on the power of Christ, I want to consider Christ continual ... the continual sufficiency of his power. He saved us with his power, but then there is a supply that is never ending, verse six and he took the loaves, the seven loaves and haven't given thanks. He broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people. Jesus broke the bread and he gave, it was a continuous action. Jesus broke the bread, he gave it to the disciples, to a disciple, and he just kept giving. He gave one disciple a bread and another arrived. And then, he gave another disciple of bread and he gave, another arrived and he gave another disciple a bread and they went and served it, until all 15,000 or so people were fed and satisfied.And it doesn't matter how many people were there, there could have been 5,000, 10,000, a million more people, and there would've been enough bread. There is sufficiency ... Christ always has a provision for us that is sufficient. This is his infinite, continual sufficiency of his power. And what does this do? It teaches us that Jesus is God. This text shows us that Jesus is the same one as he's making these fish anew and making these loaves anew. In that moment, he shows us that he's the same one that was there at the beginning of creation. He spoke creation into existence. He said, be fruitful and multiply. He made a grown woman out of the rib of a grown man.This is the same God, Jesus here breaking loaves over and over and over in the Decapolis. The same God is alive and living today. And so this is a lesson that teaches that He is God, but it's also a lesson for the disciples as well. It's a lesson for us as well. They're going to live a life on ministry. They're called to be fruitful for the kingdom of God, to go and make disciples of all nations. And they're taking living water, living bread to people. Do they need to worry that Christ's supply of salvific power is ever going to run out? No. There's inexhaustible supply from Christ's power. So lastly, as we think about the power of Christ, think about the room that Jesus leaves for his disciples to be involved.The human involvement in his great saving work, verse six says, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people. So Jesus, he incorporates the disciples into the process of distributing the bread. He doesn't need them to do this. He could easily find a way to get the job done by himself in a much quicker manner, but in his grace, in his humility, he wants to give the disciples the opportunity to be a part of his work. The disciples weren't bringing anything to the table. They weren't bringing anything from themselves to the people. They're solely bringing what Jesus gave to them, what Jesus gave to them, to the people. That's all that we do as Christians.We don't have to come up with a new message. We don't have to come up with a new way to save people. Every time that there's a shift in the isms of academia, every time that there's a major challenge in world history. We continue to stand on the word, to preach the word, to trust that it is the power of God and to salvation to the Jew first and also the Greek. We deliver that to people with faith that God will keep using the same method that he always has. Praise God. Praise God. We don't have to come up with a new message, new way to get the word out. I look at churches that have left the word and I feel bad for those pastors who are in churches that are not standing on the word.And I'm actually kind of very impressed with anybody who can somehow come up with a new message to keep the interest of people week after week in such churches. I'm thankful to Mosaic. What decides what we say? The word, and that's what God uses to save people, to sustain his saints, to give them satisfaction and power for the work for him. And it's a blessing to administer the word, and that's not just for preachers, it's all of you. You're all ambassadors of a great king and you're called to go into the world and share the gospel with people, to deliver it with joy, to give a reason for the hope within you to tell people of your love for God and it's an honor. Do you feel honored to just extend such compassion to others, to see them in their deepest ... see their deepest speed.To be aware of it, to know it, and to have what satisfies them? Every Christian will know, will admit it's not my physical needs. It was the darkness, the depravity, the depression. I was in my sin that needed to be addressed. And then, someone shared the gospel with me. So do you feel honored? And so we get to the Lord works, shares his power, dispels it through us as we are faithful in the delivery. Now, to my final point, we've talked about the compassion of Jesus, the power of Jesus. Now we'll talk about the satisfaction of Jesus. The bread that Jesus brings gives full satisfaction, verse eight, "And they ate and we're satisfied." You can draw this lesson out from both miracles. In John 6, which is a parallel passage of the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus goes to the wilderness area.He feeds the people with bread. And this was to point, explains. To point people back to Moses. And Moses had done the same in the wilderness. Remember, God uses Moses to rescue people out of bondage from Egypt. And he parts the sea at the exodus for them to go into the wilderness. And God, during Moses ministry supplies manna, kind of a bread that reigns from heaven. And Mark has shown in these gospels ... the authors have shown that Jesus is the greater Moses who provides living bread. Even more, Jesus is himself the bread. He's the living bread that John talks about at the end of his account of the feeding of the 5,000.John 6:51 says ... Jesus says, "I'm the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I'll give for the life of the world is my flesh." So Jesus provides physical sustenance for people. He provides also spiritual sustenance for his people. Does he provide it for the Jews? Yes. If they'll have it, does he provide it for the Gentiles? Yes. If they'll have it. And one of the great themes of the Old Testament scriptures is that there's going to be a time in history where there's a great feast of Jew and Gentile where the Lord brings the Messiah, brings sustenance, life, bread for the Gentiles. Isaiah 55:1 to 3, the Lord gives a great invitation to this meal."Come everyone who thirsts, come to the waters and he who has no money, come buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me and eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food." I think other translations are fat foods. "Incline your ear and come to me. Hear that your soul may live and I will make you with you an everlasting covenant." So the rest of Isaiah 55 continues just inviting people to this feast banquet with Jews and Gentiles, Jews and people from the nations, gathering together. And Jesus at his first coming, he initiates this period and in heaven, in the new earth, we're going to be dining together, feasting together.Jew and Gentile in the presence of God. Remember last week we talked about the Syrophoenician woman and she goes hard to get the Lord's blessing to receive healing for her daughter. And there's this engagement where she says it's not right to give the children's bread to the dogs. He says, I've come to bring food but to bring it to the Jews first, they're my children. She said, "I know who you are, but even the dogs eat the crumbs of the children when they fall to the ground." The woman knows that at Christ table there's space for both Jew and Gentile. This is shown ... and that both Jew and Gentile will be satisfied. This is shown in that Jesus feeds the 5,000 in a largely Jewish area. They eat and are satisfied. This is shown in this narrative in the Decapolis, a largely Gentile area.The 4,000 eat his loaves and are satisfied. They're stuffed, is the proper translation. Engorged, because of the filling. On both occasions, the people either fill and in both occasions there are leftovers. In the instance of the leftovers, there are 12 baskets full of leftovers that they collect. 12, it's a number that represents fullness in the Jewish community. Think of the 12 tribes of Israel. It indicates that Jesus offers full satisfaction to the Jews who believe in him. And the instance of the leftovers with the Gentiles, there are seven baskets and it's a number of completeness. When before Moses brought the people ... before the people of Israel entered the promised land, there's a line in the scripture that talks about these seven nations.These seven Gentile nations will be driven out of the promised land. So this number seven, it indicates fullness of the Gentiles, and this verse shows that seven basketfuls of fragments being left over, there's space for the Gentiles. All of them can be satisfied in God's kingdom at his table. Jew or Gentile, Mark teaches us that ... Jesus teaches us that he is enough. He can abundantly, he can generously satisfy any need that you can have in this barren, empty spiritual wilderness, only Jesus can provide satisfaction for one's body and soul. In verse four, the disciples ask, "Where will we ever find anyone who can satisfy these people in a desolate place like this?" And that's answered in verse eight when it tells us, because Jesus fed them, they ate and were satisfied. Satisfied in verse four and ate, they're the same word.The disciples found their answer in Jesus. Jesus provides the loaves of fish he satisfies in this barren, empty place. In the Decapolis, Jesus is the only one who can provide satisfaction for the people. 2000 years later, Mark is saying, "In this barren, empty wilderness of the world, only Jesus can satisfy the needs of all the people." No one else can. No other religion can. No other form of spirituality, no money can, no chemical experience, food, foodie experience can satisfy like Jesus. You can have everything that the world has to offer, but it won't satisfy your soul. And when you have it, you'll even feel emptier, because when it doesn't deliver, you really feel the pain.Jesus is the living bread. He can satisfy your soul and continue to satisfy your soul. If you continue to feed on him, your desire and capacity to feed on him will grow. Think of Mark four, Jesus teaches the disciples about the kingdom of God. And he says that when it takes root in good soil, it grows 30 fold, 60 fold, 100 fold. When someone is satisfied by the word of God, it takes root in their heart. Their desire for it grows, their understanding of it grows and it grows exponentially. And your desire and capacity to feed on it, grows. Jesus can feed your soul to the point that there are leftovers. This pastor is a seven, basketfuls of leftovers. An interesting note that separates the two feedings again is that these are big baskets, seven big baskets for the feeding of the 5,000.There's 12 small hand baskets, lunch baskets, this large basket. It's the same size basket that the apostle, Paul was lowered down from a wall when he was fleeing a city in Acts 9. So the English word is the same in both accounts, but the word for basket is bigger. In the feedings of the 5,000, it's all to show Jesus provides super abundant provision for the Jews and super abundant provision for the Gentiles. All people can come to him and be satisfied. And I do want to say one note is that there's a special ... Jesus, Mark again, he has the first motive of showing us who Jesus is, as the Christ, as the Messiah in these verses. Those verses I mentioned from Mark 8:19 to 20, where Jesus asked, "Do you remember how many basketfuls of leftovers you had when I fed the 5,000? Yes. 12.""Do you remember how many basketfuls you had when I fed the 4,000? Yes. Seven." Jesus says, "Do you not yet understand?" He wants the disciples to think about the leftovers. And this is a lesson for those of us who are living a life on mission, those who are disciples and stretching themselves in service in the wilderness to people who are hard to serve. People who we often find are undeserving of God's mercy and grace, but we can keep serving them because we also are. He says, "Look at the leftovers. There a sign that I am always going to take care of those people. I'm going to satisfy them abundantly when they're stretching themselves on mission for you."So the Lord is always going to provide. And Jesus, this is why Isaiah extend the invitation to come to the Jews and Gentiles, we're all invited to come eat, delight our soul and fatness in Jesus the Messiah. That's everything we could need. So to close, I ask, do you have it? Do you have the living bread? Are you feeding on Jesus Christ, the bread sent down from heaven? If not, he is offering you himself this morning, and if you have fed on him before and you know you're saved in him, you have been satisfied in him, but you've gone off and eaten a lot of junk food of the world that's just intoxicated your mind and body.He's invited you, come back, feet on me, rest in me. Let me serve you and satisfy you. And all you need to do is obey, receive me and obey. And Jesus he sees your life. He sees the journey ahead of you. He sees that it's a long journey and he sees the difficulties ahead and he says, you need bread, you need sustenance. You need food. You need something that will keep satisfying you. And you don't just need bread. You need broken bread. If you want the bread to be good, to actually give you the power to keep going, you need it to be broken. He breaks the loaves in the feedings. That's what Jesus was on the cross. His body was broken in a desolate place on the cross so that he could invite us into a life of abundant satisfaction and feasting in him and the eternal feasting in his presence.Jesus, he bought our redemption. He earned our redemption. He purchased our pardon. He gives us peace, forgiveness, eternity in his presence. So that when we look to him by faith and feed upon him, it gives us life. It gives us strength. It gives us hope for the journey that we'll make for him the rest of our lives. Let's trust in him and extend compassion like him. Let me pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you for your compassion toward us. For we are like those in the crowd. We are those who are famished, those who have come or are at the end of our capacities, and we need your saving food. We need your bread. We need your loaves, and we need you physically to provide for us, but deep down, we need you to spiritually provide for us. Save us, satisfy us. Continue to give us your power as we walk this journey home to you.Lord, we just acknowledge that we often turn and consume things that are not good for us. Taste the fruit of the world that Satan tempts us with. And Lord, we just come back to you just trusting that you will satisfy. And Lord, we just pray as we turn to you and you politely involve us in your work. Just take our loaves, take these few loaves, take our little fish and use them, multiply them so that we might have an impact on a multitude of people. Please use us to save many in the rest on the rest of our journey. I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Today, we are continuing in our series in the Gospel of Mark. It's called Kingdom Come, the Gospel of Mark and the Secrets of God's Kingdom. And I just want to say I get to preach about every five or six weeks. I'm here to give passing on a break, a week off from the pulpit this week. And I just pray that you have been blessed as I have been blessed, as we've gone through this book. I hope that that continues today. We thought we'd go through a little bit faster and maybe close to the end of Mark, but we're about halfway through. Given just the satisfaction, the refinement we're getting from it as individuals in a body, we're just happy to meditate on it again today.Today we are in Mark 8, chapter 8 of Mark verses 1 through 10. Open, with me, if you have a Bible and if you don't, you can follow along on the screen. So Mark 8 verses 1 through 10. This is the word of our Lord. "In those days when again, a great crowd had gathered and they had nothing to eat, he called his disciples to him and said to them, I have compassion on the crowd because they've been with me now three days and have nothing to eat and if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away. And his disciples answered him, how can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place? And he asked them, how many loaves do you have? They said seven.""And he directed the crowd to sit down on the ground and he took the seven loaves and having given thanks, he broke them and gave them to the disciples to set before the people and they set them before the crowd and they had a few small fish. And having blessed them, he said that these also should be set before them and they ate and were satisfied. And they took up the broken pieces, left over seven baskets full and there were about 4,000 people and he sent them away and immediately he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha." Let's pray. This is a word of our Lord. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you this day that we can come together as a people, as a multitude to learn about you, to hear from you, to hear the living word that we have in scripture.We thank you Lord that you have not left us in darkness, but those of us who know we are saved in Jesus are those who live in the light. And we thank you for the guide that your word is to us. We pray today that as you have been faithful to do throughout the course of Mosaic's history, we pray, bless us with a great sense of your presence. Enliven our hearts to just hear the lessons that you have for us, the comfort we need, the conviction, we need, the growth, the holiness that we need. Lord, open our eyes and just give us receptive hearts. We pray, Lord, that we would be satisfied, that we do pray that the thoughts and anxieties about the previous week, about the week to come would just leave our minds.And when you enable that Lord that you would fill us with gladness and joy in Jesus. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, the primary phrase in our text today comes from verse two and it says, "And Jesus said to them, I have compassion on the crowd." Jesus has compassion on the crowd and this is the primary theme of the text. I'll talk about Jesus' compassion. And as I enter into this, I want to admit to you that when I opened up the text this week just preparing, in preparation early on to preach this Sunday, I read this text, I saw the topic of compassion and I really wanted to avoid it. To be honest, my heart coming back from the holidays, I had a great time, got to see my parents, a couple siblings, my in-laws.I got to be in my hometown where I grew up, my wife's hometown. It was a great time, but in many ways it was ... I don't know if it's similar for you, but it was kind of a family missions trip and a catch-up time between me and the wife, me and the kids, and driving to Philly and DC, a lot of my week was spent on I-95 and Highway 15 in Connecticut and came back tired last Tuesday, getting back to work. And I've been a little bit on autopilot where my body has been going forward, but my soul just feeling a little dry and I saw this topic of compassion or really wanted to avoid it. I basically wrote three sermons as I was trying to justify Pastor Jan preached on this topic a little bit, thoroughly enough a few weeks ago when talking about the other feeding.The Lord just corrected me. And how did I ... when I identified I was avoiding this, I did spend time in prayer to really just get softened and be receptive to what the Lord wanted me to engage and what wanted all of us to engage through this text this week. And I'll just prepare you, it might not be stimulating to the brain, but just as important as Christians is, we need our heart engaged and this text certainly does it as we cover the topic of compassion and to really ... if you're not really with me on compassion, you're feeling a little cold today, I want to warm your heart a little bit, attempt to very quickly, by reading First Corinthians 13, one to seven, this famous passage that we often hear at weddings on love.For Jesus said, the sum of God's command is the love God and love our neighbor and talking about compassion, about practically meeting the needs of others, praying that God would use us to meet the spiritual needs of others in the process. Just want to pause and remind us, we can't do any of that without love in our hearts. And if we do so, what do we resemble? We resound noisy gongs, clanging symbols, people who talk a lot but hypocritically don't back that talk with action, with loving action. So let me just read First Corinthians 13:1-7 with the hopes that the Lord prepares you for the rest of the passage."If I speak in the tongues of men and angels but have not love, I'm a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, I'm nothing. If I give away all I have and if I deliver up my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." So I just really want to say we need to love and why ... the sum of Christianity is that we love, we extend compassion to the loss, to the needy around us because Jesus Christ has been loving and compassionate.And merciful and gracious to us in our needs and primarily in the way that he has met our need to engage our sin, the guilt and shame we carry before the Lord. He provides the means of peace with our father. And so we should go forward with love on our minds and engaging with people with compassionate love. So this morning engaging in the text as is obvious from the scripture I read, we're going to study the miraculous feeding of the 4,000. I think it's best to cover this text going through verse by verse. For those of you who like checkpoints in the sermon, I want to know three points. The compassion of Jesus will be my first section, the power of Jesus will be my second section and the satisfaction of Jesus will be my third.So for those of you who are very attentive listeners to Mosaic sermons, thank you. We're glad you're here and following. You've been with us the past couple of months in Mark. You'll notice that today's text is not very different than the text on the feeding of the 5,000 that we covered on December 10th in Mark, when we studied Mark 30 through 44, Pastor Jan preached an incredible sermon. You should listen to it. As we open up this text, if it sounds really similar, you're not experiencing deja vu, we haven't gone backwards. We are just going forward in the text trying to be faithful to the scripture that the Holy Spirit is bringing our body to today.Now, the stories are very similar between the feeding of the 5,000 and 4,000, the accounts, both accounts mentioned the compassion of Jesus on the crowd. Both accounts take place in a wilderness. In both accounts, Jesus inquires about how many loaves the disciples have. In both accounts, the people are asked to sit down. In both accounts, Jesus prays over the food and miraculously creates massive amounts of food. In both accounts, there's a distribution process where Jesus has the disciples, involves them in bringing the bread to the people. In both accounts, the people are very satisfied. In both accounts, Jesus dismisses the crowd before leaving on a boat on the Sea Galilee to continue his ministry with his disciples.Both accounts, there are only two chapters apart and because of these similarities, the text is often criticized by scholars and critics of scripture, those who criticize the deity, question the deity of Jesus Christ. They say that this repetition of these similar stories or many of them say this one story gives reason to believe that the book of Mark, it's just a messy work. The guy who wrote it, who edited it was really just trying to trick people into thinking that there were two separate accounts, two separate events in order to get his literary intentions through, to get the lessons that he wanted to get through forward.And essentially, he concocted the stories, he wove them together to build this myth of the deity of the God man, Jesus. So we say, just want to leave that battle because at Mosaic we believe in the inerrancy and in the infallibility and the divine inspiration of the scriptures. We're not troubled by this. There certainly are many similarities between the passages, but many differences as well. In the first account, there are 5,000 people running around the lake with Jesus and spending a day with him. In the second account, it's 4,000 in the wilderness of the Decapolis for three days. In this account, we find people who have been with him ... Sorry, three days instead of one, after one day in the first feeding, Jesus feeds the multitude.In the first account, there's five loaves and two fish. In this account, there's seven loaves and a few small fish, probably sardines. After the first feeding they picked up 12 small baskets of leftovers. In this account, they pick up seven large baskets. It's kind of frustrating because every time you read on this passage, every time you listen to a sermon, everybody has to spend like five minutes, as I just did, saying that there's a lot of debate here, but we rest in the authority of Scripture, the most important and conclusive evidence that these are two separate accounts as Mark shows us, comes from later in chapter 8 verses 19 and 20, when Jesus Christ himself says, "When I broke the five loaves for the 5,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?"They said to him, 12, and the seven for the 4,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? And they said to him, seven. So that's it. Case closed. Jesus himself refers to these events as two separate events. This is a separate feeding of a multitude of 4,000 taking place at a different time than the feeding of the 5,000 chronicled in Mark 6. So this account, it does teach some of the same lessons as the feeding of the 5,000, but there are unique details in this one and that's what we want to pull out because that is what differentiates some of the meaning between the two accounts. So I want to bring out these differences and the primary lessons that we see here in the text through these three main headings and first the compassion of Jesus.So we begin here at 8:1, chapter eight verse one. It says, "In those days, and I say ..." okay, we're through that required part that I was frustrated that I had to go through, but so come back, listen to me now. We begin now at chapter 8:1, "In those days when again, a great crowd had gathered. In those days." So what mark means is that there was not a great passing of time since that last feeding. Remember Jesus ... these are the days where Jesus, he has traveled recently to Capernaum, to Tyre, to Sidon and now, he is south in the Decapolis. Jesus in those days, it's these days where he is in this Gentile region more prominently Gentile, less Jewish region and he's met by many who are bringing to him throughout his travels, the sick and the needy.And he is healing a lot of them. He's teaching a lot of them. So Mark is saying, this is what is happening in the Decapolis. Many translations say a multitude has gathered. Verse nine tells us there are 4,000 people. The parallel account in Matthew mentions that ... of the same feeding, that it's 4,000 people not including women and children. So this easily could be a crowd of 10 to 12,000, 15,000, 20,000 would not be unreasonable estimates. A huge congregation has sought Jesus once again as has been the case over and over again to this point in Mark since Jesus started his ministry. So we have the 12 disciples. Jesus, a large crowd of people. And why did these crowds come? To be healed, to see miracles.Most of all, we expect they came to hear him preach the word in three days with him. It's pretty clear that he would've been teaching them. It was said, why was Jesus ... what was the appeal? John 7:46 has a Gentile say. It was said of Jesus that no man ever spoke like him. People said that he preached in a way that they'd never heard before. People would hear him speak and they're there hanging on to every word that he said. And what would they do? A lot of them ... what we'd see in Mark is they'd hear him speak and if he got up and traveled they would follow him. We see here that he's probably preaching in a single area and just they are camped out for three days.It's like a revival scene, and that is what seems to be taken here in the Decapolis. Verse two says, they've been with me now three days. In the Greek, the translation for these words, been with me, three words, it's actually one word. It can be translated more precisely that they've been strongly attached to me. They've been committed to me. The people hear Jesus preaching and they want to stay to him, as close to him as possible. They don't want to leave. They hear Jesus preach his message of the arrival of the kingdom of God and the mercy and grace and forgiveness and his call to repent and they'd never want to leave.It's as if time has stopped and all their needs are being met. Their soul is experiencing satisfaction that it's never encountered before. And all earthly concerns don't matter for three days. Do you know this feeling? I don't know it for three days. I wish I did, but I remember when I first arrived in Mosaic in August of 2011, a year out of college, I grew up in a church ... before I come to Mosaic, I grew up and attended a church where the pastor had a strict rule for himself that he went 18 minutes with his sermons. And I was one of those people that was counting down those 18 minutes. When I arrived at Mosaic and I really think I was saved in those initial weeks where for the first time, I finally saw I'm a sinner, God is holy, I have no access, no right to go into his presence by my own means.By my own actions, by my own record, but Jesus is perfect and I can have his record applied to me by faith. That's when I started hearing the word and when I heard it was if time stopped, a 45-minute to an hour long sermon, that was like nothing to me. Time felt like it flew by and when it was over I was sad. Do you know this? This is the experience really of every true believer is going to have a love and this kind of deep satisfaction in the word of God, and I would say I still feel it. I'm not saying I don't feel this right now. I love to come to church on Sunday. I want to get filled my soul during Christmas time.I went home and ate all my favorite takeout foods, Philadelphia hoagies and soft pretzels and lots of local spots and I just had to come back and fast because that ... a few days of that satisfaction that really didn't satisfy, I wanted the Lord. And when I come to church each Sunday, I feel this spiritual exhaustion and need to get filled up. And I elaborate on this to tell you what it was like when I first encountered it. Do you know this? If not, ask the Lord to just give you this experience. Have the humility to say that, "Lord I don't know this and please give it to me." And Pastor Jan and I we're trying to recreate this timeless experience for you each week as we preach the word.As you hear me speak so slowly, you're like, "I don't know if that's possible with you Andy," but I say, "Go home and list to me at two times speed. I've got the perfect voice for it. You won't miss a detail." My sermons are the same length and pages as Pastor Jan, he just speaks 1.5 times faster than me. Do you know this? Pray, Lord, I want to know and love your word and be satisfied like this. So, people, they were so astonished at the teaching of Christ, they feel such deep soul satisfaction that they seemingly ran out of food. Some of them probably had food. The existence of baskets there means, they probably ... some people probably brought some, but they probably ran out and there were probably others who went, "I'm just going to go hear you guys speak. I've got nothing."They still stayed and had an unplanned three-day fast. And I also have these experiences. When I first arrived at Mosaic ... and I'm saying this, if you feel like you have experienced this, when I'm not experiencing this, I go to a new believer in Mosaic and I hear them tell me of their experience of just the newness of the kingdom of God spreading and there's this old rain in their heart as they serve the Lord. When I was saved, first saved, when I was born again, it was go, I want to go serve. I want to want more people to know this word and have this peace, this joy from the Lord. I'm going to go serve. I'm going to go help us set up. I'm going to go worship and drink in that sermon, I'm going to sit in the front so that I'm not distracted at all.And well, naturally back seater, but then I'd spend my whole day just how do I help with tear down? How do I help with spending time with people? It's not to call attention to myself, it's to say again, "Can you get lost in this?" And I still have this experience, I still do it here basically in the building all day. It's now my job. So I do get paid for it. I still kind of get lost and I don't eat all day and then, I go home and I get in trouble with my wife because I'm starving and ask her where her food is. Do you know this wilderness, this satisfaction in the wilderness experience that these people in the Decapolis are experiencing when Christ is preaching to them for three days and we can believe it's the middle of summer.These people, they're experiencing ... they know what Peter 2 to 3 says ... it's talking about, it says like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. They're living out the fulfillment of man shalt not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God, Matthew 4:4. If you study world history, Christianity is not in existence because it was just propagated by people who maintained it over time. It's that, Christianity is the most popular religion in world history because believers have had this experience with the Lord through the engagement with him, through his word throughout history.It's real, it's satisfying, and we should pray. We should pray that if we don't know this, Lord, give me this experience. Give me this love and satisfaction of you and we should pray. Lord, help us to live in a day where we get to see masses of people, revival, people confessing sin, repenting of it, turning and receiving grace from God at a mass level. Have you read church history? Do you read it? I read it for fun because it's hard, we do live in a pretty desolate place. So I go to scripture, I go to church history to read real life accounts of people who not only we read in scripture of this multitude, this revival among the masses when Christ walked the earth, but over and over again in our nation.In almost every nation of the world, every region of the world, maybe not modern nation, you can learn about revivals where people are filled and satisfied by God's word and just give their lives to him. So we need to pray for this and God has not changed. He can still do it. His word, his power has not diminished since Jesus ascended into heaven. In fact, his spirit is now poured out on us in a uniquely powerful way and we can experience this today. One of my favorite stories is in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin, who would not identify as a Christian, when George Whitfield, a great faithful preacher of history, supposedly preached tens of thousands of sermons in his life just walking around Europe and Britain and the states.Benjamin Franklin at one point scientifically measured the radius of the crowd of people that came to hear George Whitfield speak in a day where they didn't have microphones to hear him preach and just Franklin was no believer, but he said he could feel this cleansing effect on his soul and he measured that it was probably 30,000 people gathering in a Philadelphia square open space to hear the word preach. And so we should long to have these experiences with the multitudes and pray that they come. So the people forget their needs, but Jesus hasn't forgotten, and this is the compassion of Jesus. So in verse two he says, "I have compassion on the crowd because they've been with me now three days and have nothing to eat."And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away. Jesus knows people have come a long way. They're in the wilderness. There isn't a Chipotle nearby, there isn't a new H Mart in the area. There's no DoorDash carts that are willing to travel as far as they are into the wilderness. He knows that if he sends the people home through after this long experience in the wilderness without food, that the people could faint along the way. This is the compassionate Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, the God of the universe, cares not just for the people's spiritual needs but for their physical needs as well.God, Christ, he caress for body and soul. We see this Christ's true concern and he gives us permission to care for our body and soul. And when he instructs us how to play with the Lord's prayer, we address spiritual needs. Our Father who is in heaven hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done all earth as it is in heaven. Skip a section, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others, lead us not in temptation but deliver us from evil. These are our spiritual needs that we should pray for, but then, he gives us ... he acknowledges that we should pray for our practical concerns. Give us this day our daily bread. God, Christ, he caress about them. Philippians 4, 6 and 7 says, do not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication, but thanks to him.Let your requests be made known to God. God wants us to ask for our spiritual needs and for our physical needs. I think a lot of reformed Bible believing Christians really struggle to enter that practical area to admit when they need God to provide one of their needs, food, clothing, health, a safe place to live, we can ask for that and actually so much more and that's kind of another sermon when we ask for things in Jesus' name. Through Jesus' concern for the physical needs, we get a deeper sense of his compassion, and when he says in verse two, I have compassion on the crowd, the word for compassion in the Greek.It's one that refers to feeling in his inner organs in the guts, this word, it's roots, talk about the guts. This feeling that arises in this guts out of sympathy, true empathy, true sincere concern for the condition of others. As he becomes aware of it. It's more than a feeling, but it's a feeling that makes him ... that moves him. It's not the kind of compassion that we show when we sign up for a 5K and pay $25 last minute on a Saturday morning just because that's what all of our friends are doing. It's not the kind of compassion that when we donate five or $10 for a friend for their Facebook birthday nonprofit drive, just because we're like, "Oh, well this person's finally into something good."I want to support this. No, the Lord's passion is so much deeper. It's the kind of compassion that says, I'm not going to leave here until I find out a solution. Disciples, do you have any food? Okay, I can work with this. Let's get moving. People sit down. Jesus has this gut wrench in compassion and has the Lord given you this gut wrench and compassion for anyone, for any cause lately? What are you doing about it? We have to pause and really ask ourselves that there are many instances in scripture where Jesus is marked with compassion for the multitude. Matthew 9, 14, Mark 6 and 8 here. What's a note in Mark's gospel is that he uses this word compassion. This compassion for surprising groups of people.And Mark Jesus who is Jewish is moved with compassion for people that an ordinary Jew would not have compassion for or any association with. He's moved for Gentiles, lepers, demon possessed, even his own disciples were not moved like Jesus. There are several instances where the disciples, they respond to someone who approaches Jesus, a needy person and quickly reacting by telling him to send them away. This is what they did last week when we studied the text with the Syrophoenician women, they essentially say, "Can't you just get rid of her, send her away?" In the feeding of the 5,000, what did they do at the end of the day? This is before the miracle, the feeding occurred. They say Jesus send them away to get food.And they're probably thinking about themselves because they want some food. They're not really compassionate. Even in the amount, this account of the feeding of the 4,000, the disciples don't seem to care too much for the people. At least after one day at the last feeding with the Jewish crowd, they actually approached Jesus and said, "Hey, nobody has any food." This is after three days in the wilderness with this Gentile crowd. They don't point out the crowd's need for food. Who does that? It's Jesus. So, the comparison between the reactions to the poor, the needy and of the disciples in Christ, it helps us through this appreciation, Christ compassion so much more.The disciples are very often attempting to send people away, seemingly showing cold self-focused hearts. Jesus is always open and concerned for the wellbeing of the people around him. As we reflect on this point, we really have to ask ourselves if we, the churc, as a body, as individuals, make the same mistakes as the disciples today, especially those of us, we are church. We really have dignity in the fact that we are rooted on the rock of Jesus Christ and his word. We're biblical. We are reformed. Part of this world, theological world, we say, we need to preach the word. The word is what matters. My church, yeah, preaches the word and we love that.We love the correct framing of the doctrine, but we need to really back our commitment to the word with deed and this is something that churches throughout history have really struggled with. I grew up in the United Methodist Church as biggest denomination in the country still, though it's breaking apart and I do miss my experience in the Methodist church sometimes because they were so good at deed, just very loving people. The problem was a long time ago they really left scripture and left its authority and they're being torn apart because a lot of what they're teaching resembles just what modern isms of the world modern trends are teaching.We as churches, we as individuals, we love the word, but we also love to commit good deeds that are inspired by our commitment to the word, out of thanksgiving for Christ's compassion and love and kindness to us. Just as a church passing on, I think Mark has really got our thoughts going. We've also had to think about the church budget for 2024, a lot in the past month, month and a half. And just a few things we're focusing on to try to correct ourselves a little bit, is we just want to pray over those in our body who are sick more. James 5:14 says, is anyone among you sick? Let them call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.If you're sick, we want to be faithful to this and we want to call for the Lord's help and just make sure people are not struggling out there without our knowledge. Furthermore, we have plans to offer meals. Pastor Jan mentioned for the first time last week, we're piloting lunches on the first week of every month and it's just open invite, if you can, RSVP ahead of time that get us ... help us estimate how much food we need to order, please do so, but this is a chance to just create a space where members, guests, people are starving for food, can come and sit and share a catered meal, provided by the giving of others and build the fellowship and really have greater opportunity to really get to know each other and get to understand each other's needs, where this is part of the heart, this heart of compassion.Furthermore, Jesus, he talks to his disciples about ... He does this miracle around bread and fish twice. So furthermore, we are going to add another form of food in the near future. We're bringing back bagels for the first time before services in the lobby, for the first time since COVID. We are trying to create a warm, loving, compassionate space and feel to match just the commitment to scripture that we have, and just ... I say all of this, meditate on the compassion of Jesus to hopefully get you to meditate on whether or not you're showing compassion to Christ here, Christ with your life here at our church. John 13 says, "The world will know you by your love for one another."Christ further instructs his disciples to serve one another by washing each other's feet and just that symbolic, it's where to go that far in your engagements in your personal life. Are you compassionate to others? Is there anyone that the Lord is asking you to serve? Any needs for any neighbors that the Lord is calling you to address? And I live in a building of ... here in Brookline of 30 something units and there's a lot of people three decades older than me and I know they've made me the president of the building to hand over maintenance and the board ... because I'm young. That's it. Hopefully, I've shown them a good neighbor.Yeah., I learned these needs and a guy just got a hip replacement on Friday. I forgot to pray for him. I know of all these ways where I can just show Christ's kindness and compassionate and I try to turn a blind eye from them sometimes, but I'm trying to faithfully step into those situations. And so what is that for you? We've got to focus on the word. That's true. That's what Jesus did here with the 4,000. He preached the word for three days, but he knows that he can't send them away in the condition that they're in. He sees the need to administer to their bodies as well as their souls. And Jesus is trying to ... he's doing this if ... there's two main focuses of Mark. It's Mark, the author, he's trying to present Christology.Who is Jesus the Messiah? What is this kingdom he's established and all throughout the book, but the second most important motive he has is to prepare his disciples throughout the book, for life without him. He wants his disciples to equally feel compassion in the way that he feels it and to equally act upon that feeling. He wants to grow their heart and love for others, especially those who are undeserving of them, who they think are undeserving of their compassion. And scripture gives us the example of the good Samaritan, the priest and Levi, those who have God's word in the parable, they walk by the person in need.And then, who addresses the person in need. So the religious people, they walk right by the person in need. The Good Samaritan, the man outside the covenant promises of God. He's the one. The good Samaritan takes care of those needs. We as a church, we can't do that. There are so many opportunities to show love and compassion to people as Christ has done for us in meeting our deepest spiritual needs on the cross. So often, just meeting our daily needs abundantly in this life. Just some scriptures that really hammer this. Philippians 2, 3, 4. "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests but also the interests of others."Second Corinthians one, three to four, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of all mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. Do you have a heart like Jesus? And yes, we want people to have compassion for the people in Africa, people in Asia, people in Eastern Europe, people in the Middle East, those areas where Christianity does not have a stronghold or the church does not have a large presence. More importantly, do you have compassion for the people right next to you?Jesus commands love God, love your neighbor. Are you blessing people, looking to bless people as you have been blessed by God? It's oftentimes what do you offer, your presence that goes a long way to a lot of hurting people. What do you have to offer? Prayer. That's even before presence. There's prayer. So many of us say, I'm going to pray for you but don't. And then, from your resources, what do you have? And I want to say extending compassion is art. I'm a pastor and a lot of my job is engaging people who are volunteering to admit their needs. There's a lot of people who quietly have needs but don't tell us. And you need to have humility to share them with people in the CG and the pastors in your community group.One of the things is we often ... when we try to extend compassion with people, sometimes we do it a little blindly. We do it without getting close to people. And that's really important. Sometimes we assume people have specific needs because we just see what their needs are on the surface, but because we're not getting close, we're not given the time, the attention that Jesus does to the multitude here, we really kind of go in and we try to act, we try to serve but we make things worse or we kind of offend the person. We need to really be willing to take time to hear people, to get to know their situation before we act.And then when we make mistakes, it's a learned, extending compassion, serving others. It takes time to learn how to do it well. And you can be a pastor for years and really still make mistakes. Sometimes we have to confess our mistakes to people and we have to learn from them, repent of them. So one thing I do want to say about Mosaic is it's a very generous body. One of the things as a pastor with a bird's eye view of what's going on across our membership and community groups is I find out often several months after the fact that people in our church have financially met the material needs of others. They've given money to people, hundreds, thousands of dollars. They're seeking clothing, shelter, care, legal support. We have members often paying for legal counsel for when there are others who need it.It is amazing. It is, just love Jesus simple. Our motto here at Mosaic being applied, what do we want happening as we preach the word, we want people to hear the word be changed from the inside out as the Holy Spirit just awakens people and softens their hearts. And we want people to organically see the needs of people and offer what they have, their loaves, few loaves and fish and try to meet them in faith. And our body is great in doing Matthew 6:3 to 4, "But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that your giving may be in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you." I hear about a lot of stuff that community groups and members do weeks or months after the fact and we need to keep doing this.I will say though, sometimes it's easy to just give money. We have to give people time and presence as we extend compassion. So let's keep this up. Last, to close out the thought, Galatians the section ... Galatians 6:9 to 10, "And let us not grow weary of doing good for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. So then as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone and especially to those who are of the household of faith." Jesus says, I have compassion on the crowd. We need to similarly extend compassion. Now, I move on to my next point. So if you've drifted for me, come back with me and my first point is a lot longer than the next two. So the power of Jesus. Jesus is about to meet the needs of people with his infinite power.And I want to just cover four points as we walk through this discussion of Jesus power. First, look at how Jesus brings out the human inadequacy of the disciples before he gives them the ... offers them the solution to the problem. In verse five, he asks, "How many loaves do you have?" He knows he's got, he knows the answer. He's asking because he's getting them to see their own inadequacy. He wants them to see how little they have to offer in this situation. Seven loaves, a few fish when they really spend time to see that fully, gather that, they see that they have nothing to offer to feed this multitude.Jesus, when he calls his disciples to do his work, part of the process is first showing them how utterly inadequate they are in and of themselves to carry out his mission. He brings them to the end of themselves, to the end of their strength, the end of their capacities, the end of their material resources. And he gets them, primes them, primes their hearts to get to this position where they know that they cannot go forward unless he blesses them, unless he gives them power, unless he steps in and offers the solution. This is how God works when he calls people to do anything for his kingdom. And this is kind of paradoxical, the sermon series, Kingdom Come the Gospel of Mark and Secrets of the Kingdom.We need to really understand this is one of the secrets. God functions in this way. The rest of the world tells you, promote your strengths, let them be made known. God says, I want you to work in weakness. The apostle Paul said of preaching the word, who is sufficient for these things. Preaching the word, doing the tasks of ministry. Christians are to work from the position of weakness. Paul knew this. Paul grew in this. Paul learned to really love this situation of I am brought to my limits, but I know that God is going to supply, he supplied grace to save me. He's going to supply grace I need to do this thing that he has called me to do.And he says, "But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my powers made perfect and weakness. Therefore, I'll boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I'm content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities for when I am weak, then I'm strong." And as a pastor, I know this is me. I do not bring anything to the table. Any part of my role, I am outside of my comfort zone. I really am not that gifted. I'm a good generalist, but I'm not that specifically gifted anywhere, but I'm learning to grow in this. This is us as pastors. This needs to be everybody in our church taking up calls and trusting that the Lord will supply our ability to carry out those missions that he's called us to.Those things, those people, those needs for which we have much compassion. So God uses those who he brings to their absolute inadequacy who are aware of it. Next, as we discuss the power of Christ, I want to think about Christ's power and how it requires ... I think a good framing and it's our receptive compliance, not just compliance, but receptive compliance. This is really part of a message that we have ... part of the message today that is for anyone who wants to be a Christian, you're thinking, how do I become a Christian? You need to allow Jesus to be lured of your life. You need to receive his commands with compliance.Verse six says, "And he directed the crowd to sit down on the ground." I want to emphasize the reception of his commands and compliance. In the feeding of the 5,000, the disciples are instructed to sit the people down, so in the last feeding. In this feeding account, Jesus directs the crowd to sit down. To receive Jesus's saving food. In this process, he is active, they are passive. The people aren't to do anything to receive this food that will save them. They're there to look for him ... look him for and receive it from him. So people might be saying today, "Will the Lord receive me? Can I be saved? You don't know what I've done. You don't know what ... I can't stop myself from doing." The Lord says ... yes, he's offering you, come and receive his command to come and sit at his feet.And let him offer you the food that saves. And so he says, look at the passage. He fed all these Gentile pagans, along with his prideful disciples, all these people who turned to him and all they had to do was receive the blessing of the saving bread that he offered in these conditions. They had to sit, wait and receive, not run up and claim they could help him in the process. The people relied completely on Jesus to supply the saving bread to them. And this connects to our salvation. There's nothing we can do. We simply look to Christ. He has finished the work that is necessary for salvation. We trust in him and rest upon his work on the cross.Next in this section, on the power of Christ, I want to consider Christ continual ... the continual sufficiency of his power. He saved us with his power, but then there is a supply that is never ending, verse six and he took the loaves, the seven loaves and haven't given thanks. He broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people. Jesus broke the bread and he gave, it was a continuous action. Jesus broke the bread, he gave it to the disciples, to a disciple, and he just kept giving. He gave one disciple a bread and another arrived. And then, he gave another disciple of bread and he gave, another arrived and he gave another disciple a bread and they went and served it, until all 15,000 or so people were fed and satisfied.And it doesn't matter how many people were there, there could have been 5,000, 10,000, a million more people, and there would've been enough bread. There is sufficiency ... Christ always has a provision for us that is sufficient. This is his infinite, continual sufficiency of his power. And what does this do? It teaches us that Jesus is God. This text shows us that Jesus is the same one as he's making these fish anew and making these loaves anew. In that moment, he shows us that he's the same one that was there at the beginning of creation. He spoke creation into existence. He said, be fruitful and multiply. He made a grown woman out of the rib of a grown man.This is the same God, Jesus here breaking loaves over and over and over in the Decapolis. The same God is alive and living today. And so this is a lesson that teaches that He is God, but it's also a lesson for the disciples as well. It's a lesson for us as well. They're going to live a life on ministry. They're called to be fruitful for the kingdom of God, to go and make disciples of all nations. And they're taking living water, living bread to people. Do they need to worry that Christ's supply of salvific power is ever going to run out? No. There's inexhaustible supply from Christ's power. So lastly, as we think about the power of Christ, think about the room that Jesus leaves for his disciples to be involved.The human involvement in his great saving work, verse six says, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people. So Jesus, he incorporates the disciples into the process of distributing the bread. He doesn't need them to do this. He could easily find a way to get the job done by himself in a much quicker manner, but in his grace, in his humility, he wants to give the disciples the opportunity to be a part of his work. The disciples weren't bringing anything to the table. They weren't bringing anything from themselves to the people. They're solely bringing what Jesus gave to them, what Jesus gave to them, to the people. That's all that we do as Christians.We don't have to come up with a new message. We don't have to come up with a new way to save people. Every time that there's a shift in the isms of academia, every time that there's a major challenge in world history. We continue to stand on the word, to preach the word, to trust that it is the power of God and to salvation to the Jew first and also the Greek. We deliver that to people with faith that God will keep using the same method that he always has. Praise God. Praise God. We don't have to come up with a new message, new way to get the word out. I look at churches that have left the word and I feel bad for those pastors who are in churches that are not standing on the word.And I'm actually kind of very impressed with anybody who can somehow come up with a new message to keep the interest of people week after week in such churches. I'm thankful to Mosaic. What decides what we say? The word, and that's what God uses to save people, to sustain his saints, to give them satisfaction and power for the work for him. And it's a blessing to administer the word, and that's not just for preachers, it's all of you. You're all ambassadors of a great king and you're called to go into the world and share the gospel with people, to deliver it with joy, to give a reason for the hope within you to tell people of your love for God and it's an honor. Do you feel honored to just extend such compassion to others, to see them in their deepest ... see their deepest speed.To be aware of it, to know it, and to have what satisfies them? Every Christian will know, will admit it's not my physical needs. It was the darkness, the depravity, the depression. I was in my sin that needed to be addressed. And then, someone shared the gospel with me. So do you feel honored? And so we get to the Lord works, shares his power, dispels it through us as we are faithful in the delivery. Now, to my final point, we've talked about the compassion of Jesus, the power of Jesus. Now we'll talk about the satisfaction of Jesus. The bread that Jesus brings gives full satisfaction, verse eight, "And they ate and we're satisfied." You can draw this lesson out from both miracles. In John 6, which is a parallel passage of the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus goes to the wilderness area.He feeds the people with bread. And this was to point, explains. To point people back to Moses. And Moses had done the same in the wilderness. Remember, God uses Moses to rescue people out of bondage from Egypt. And he parts the sea at the exodus for them to go into the wilderness. And God, during Moses ministry supplies manna, kind of a bread that reigns from heaven. And Mark has shown in these gospels ... the authors have shown that Jesus is the greater Moses who provides living bread. Even more, Jesus is himself the bread. He's the living bread that John talks about at the end of his account of the feeding of the 5,000.John 6:51 says ... Jesus says, "I'm the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I'll give for the life of the world is my flesh." So Jesus provides physical sustenance for people. He provides also spiritual sustenance for his people. Does he provide it for the Jews? Yes. If they'll have it, does he provide it for the Gentiles? Yes. If they'll have it. And one of the great themes of the Old Testament scriptures is that there's going to be a time in history where there's a great feast of Jew and Gentile where the Lord brings the Messiah, brings sustenance, life, bread for the Gentiles. Isaiah 55:1 to 3, the Lord gives a great invitation to this meal."Come everyone who thirsts, come to the waters and he who has no money, come buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me and eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food." I think other translations are fat foods. "Incline your ear and come to me. Hear that your soul may live and I will make you with you an everlasting covenant." So the rest of Isaiah 55 continues just inviting people to this feast banquet with Jews and Gentiles, Jews and people from the nations, gathering together. And Jesus at his first coming, he initiates this period and in heaven, in the new earth, we're going to be dining together, feasting together.Jew and Gentile in the presence of God. Remember last week we talked about the Syrophoenician woman and she goes hard to get the Lord's blessing to receive healing for her daughter. And there's this engagement where she says it's not right to give the children's bread to the dogs. He says, I've come to bring food but to bring it to the Jews first, they're my children. She said, "I know who you are, but even the dogs eat the crumbs of the children when they fall to the ground." The woman knows that at Christ table there's space for both Jew and Gentile. This is shown ... and that both Jew and Gentile will be satisfied. This is shown in that Jesus feeds the 5,000 in a largely Jewish area. They eat and are satisfied. This is shown in this narrative in the Decapolis, a largely Gentile area.The 4,000 eat his loaves and are satisfied. They're stuffed, is the proper translation. Engorged, because of the filling. On both occasions, the people either fill and in both occasions there are leftovers. In the instance of the leftovers, there are 12 baskets full of leftovers that they collect. 12, it's a number that represents fullness in the Jewish community. Think of the 12 tribes of Israel. It indicates that Jesus offers full satisfaction to the Jews who believe in him. And the instance of the leftovers with the Gentiles, there are seven baskets and it's a number of completeness. When before Moses brought the people ... before the people of Israel entered the promised land, there's a line in the scripture that talks about these seven nations.These seven Gentile nations will be driven out of the promised land. So this number seven, it indicates fullness of the Gentiles, and this verse shows that seven basketfuls of fragments being left over, there's space for the Gentiles. All of them can be satisfied in God's kingdom at his table. Jew or Gentile, Mark teaches us that ... Jesus teaches us that he is enough. He can abundantly, he can generously satisfy any need that you can have in this barren, empty spiritual wilderness, only Jesus can provide satisfaction for one's body and soul. In verse four, the disciples ask, "Where will we ever find anyone who can satisfy these people in a desolate place like this?" And that's answered in verse eight when it tells us, because Jesus fed them, they ate and were satisfied. Satisfied in verse four and ate, they're the same word.The disciples found their answer in Jesus. Jesus provides the loaves of fish he satisfies in this barren, empty place. In the Decapolis, Jesus is the only one who can provide satisfaction for the people. 2000 years later, Mark is saying, "In this barren, empty wilderness of the world, only Jesus can satisfy the needs of all the people." No one else can. No other religion can. No other form of spirituality, no money can, no chemical experience, food, foodie experience can satisfy like Jesus. You can have everything that the world has to offer, but it won't satisfy your soul. And when you have it, you'll even feel emptier, because when it doesn't deliver, you really feel the pain.Jesus is the living bread. He can satisfy your soul and continue to satisfy your soul. If you continue to feed on him, your desire and capacity to feed on him will grow. Think of Mark four, Jesus teaches the disciples about the kingdom of God. And he says that when it takes root in good soil, it grows 30 fold, 60 fold, 100 fold. When someone is satisfied by the word of God, it takes root in their heart. Their desire for it grows, their understanding of it grows and it grows exponentially. And your desire and capacity to feed on it, grows. Jesus can feed your soul to the point that there are leftovers. This pastor is a seven, basketfuls of leftovers. An interesting note that separates the two feedings again is that these are big baskets, seven big baskets for the feeding of the 5,000.There's 12 small hand baskets, lunch baskets, this large basket. It's the same size basket that the apostle, Paul was lowered down from a wall when he was fleeing a city in Acts 9. So the English word is the same in both accounts, but the word for basket is bigger. In the feedings of the 5,000, it's all to show Jesus provides super abundant provision for the Jews and super abundant provision for the Gentiles. All people can come to him and be satisfied. And I do want to say one note is that there's a special ... Jesus, Mark again, he has the first motive of showing us who Jesus is, as the Christ, as the Messiah in these verses. Those verses I mentioned from Mark 8:19 to 20, where Jesus asked, "Do you remember how many basketfuls of leftovers you had when I fed the 5,000? Yes. 12.""Do you remember how many basketfuls you had when I fed the 4,000? Yes. Seven." Jesus says, "Do you not yet understand?" He wants the disciples to think about the leftovers. And this is a lesson for those of us who are living a life on mission, those who are disciples and stretching themselves in service in the wilderness to people who are hard to serve. People who we often find are undeserving of God's mercy and grace, but we can keep serving them because we also are. He says, "Look at the leftovers. There a sign that I am always going to take care of those people. I'm going to satisfy them abundantly when they're stretching themselves on mission for you."So the Lord is always going to provide. And Jesus, this is why Isaiah extend the invitation to come to the Jews and Gentiles, we're all invited to come eat, delight our soul and fatness in Jesus the Messiah. That's everything we could need. So to close, I ask, do you have it? Do you have the living bread? Are you feeding on Jesus Christ, the bread sent down from heaven? If not, he is offering you himself this morning, and if you have fed on him before and you know you're saved in him, you have been satisfied in him, but you've gone off and eaten a lot of junk food of the world that's just intoxicated your mind and body.He's invited you, come back, feet on me, rest in me. Let me serve you and satisfy you. And all you need to do is obey, receive me and obey. And Jesus he sees your life. He sees the journey ahead of you. He sees that it's a long journey and he sees the difficulties ahead and he says, you need bread, you need sustenance. You need food. You need something that will keep satisfying you. And you don't just need bread. You need broken bread. If you want the bread to be good, to actually give you the power to keep going, you need it to be broken. He breaks the loaves in the feedings. That's what Jesus was on the cross. His body was broken in a desolate place on the cross so that he could invite us into a life of abundant satisfaction and feasting in him and the eternal feasting in his presence.Jesus, he bought our redemption. He earned our redemption. He purchased our pardon. He gives us peace, forgiveness, eternity in his presence. So that when we look to him by faith and feed upon him, it gives us life. It gives us strength. It gives us hope for the journey that we'll make for him the rest of our lives. Let's trust in him and extend compassion like him. Let me pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you for your compassion toward us. For we are like those in the crowd. We are those who are famished, those who have come or are at the end of our capacities, and we need your saving food. We need your bread. We need your loaves, and we need you physically to provide for us, but deep down, we need you to spiritually provide for us. Save us, satisfy us. Continue to give us your power as we walk this journey home to you.Lord, we just acknowledge that we often turn and consume things that are not good for us. Taste the fruit of the world that Satan tempts us with. And Lord, we just come back to you just trusting that you will satisfy. And Lord, we just pray as we turn to you and you politely involve us in your work. Just take our loaves, take these few loaves, take our little fish and use them, multiply them so that we might have an impact on a multitude of people. Please use us to save many in the rest on the rest of our journey. I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. 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 are so thankful that you have chosen to make us yours. We are so thankful that you love us with a tender fatherly love. You are the absolute perfect Father, and we thank you for your loving kindness, and we thank you for your tenderness and, we thank you that you speak truth to us in love.You sent the word of God, truth himself, Jesus Christ. And Jesus, you came because you were moved by love. When you saw our desperate state, our sin-sick souls, and our sick bodies, oppressed by the demonic and the evil one, living in a fallen world, Lord Jesus, you were moved by love to come and deal with the root of the issue, which is our sin. You came to heal our souls, and in the process you reveal yourself to us. You give us faith and the gift of repentance, and you command us to exercise our faith.I pray today, strengthen our faith in who you are, and strengthen our faith in what you've said. And make us a people that believe no matter what. Even if things in our life occur that are against our will, make us a people that still cry out to you, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."Lord, as we look at this tremendous text, I pray that you reveal the truth to us and apply it to us. Most of all, I pray if anyone has not yet had a true saving salvific encounter with the living God, I pray they do so by meeting Jesus Christ, repenting of sin and turning to him. Lord, bless our time in the holy scriptures. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.The title of the sermon today is Eternal Misery or Eternal Joy. As many of you know, I've been dealing with a toothache this past month. I finally got it fixed this past Monday, praise be to God. As I was in the dental chair a couple of weeks ago, midway through the root canal, the dental assistant asks the endodontist, "Do you know why the next door dentist has been out the entire week?" She shook her head, and she said, "No." He responded. He said, "Because she had 10 family members who died in Palestine."The jarring juxtaposition of my temporary pain and this woman's lasting pain made an impression. My pain was temporary because I'm blessed to live in a time where healing is available just by going down the street, thanks be to God, by providing medical professionals. Her pain is lasting because the forces of evil are still alive and treacherous. Despite all of our advances in medicine, technology, people continue to destroy each other.Jesus Christ is the healing king who has come to heal our souls and restore our bodies. God loves life, and God loves people. He wants us as healthy as possible. But true health always begins at the level of the soul, and we've all come down with a terrible case of sin, and it's time to call Dr. Jesus.The main subject of our text today is the miraculous healing of a sick woman and the miraculous resurrection of a girl. The text reveals a tender side of Jesus. It reveals Jesus who is most attentive, most sympathetic to the most hurting. He's presented as gentle, approachable, the healer of the brokenhearted, a sanctuary and a refuge for the weak and helpless. He is the great comforter of the distressed even in the present midst of suffering.Sin makes our world a miserable place, and Jesus entered into this misery to save us from sin, to relieve the miserable consequences of sin in the world. And Jesus does bring a healing power, and we have access to his healing power by believing in him. When we believe in Christ, you have access to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enters your body, and your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Christians are the third temple of God, and God wants your temple, your body to be healthy, strong, resilient, and effective. Whenever we read a passage, like this healing passage before us, when we read passage like this in scripture, we are to be reminded that human health is important to God, therefore it should be important to us. And the Holy Spirit... us holistically healthy.With that said, would you look at our text today in Mark 5:21-43. Mark 5:21. "And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly saying, 'My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and alive.' He went with him."And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. There was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment, for she said, 'If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.' Immediately, the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease."Jesus perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, 'Who touched my garments?' His disciples said to him, 'You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, "Who touched me?" He looked around to see who had done it, but the woman knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. He said to her, 'Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.'"While he was still speaking there from the ruler's house, some who said, 'Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?' But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, 'Do not fear, only believe.' And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter, and James, and John the brother of James."They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he entered he said to them, 'Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.' They laughed at him, but he put them all outside and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. Taking her by the hand, he said to her, "Talitha cumi," which means, 'Little girl, I say to you, arise.' Immediately the girl got up and began walking, for she was 12 years of age, and they were immediately overcome with amazement. And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and he told them to give her something to eat."This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, fallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Jesus has presented the gospel of Mark as the king of all kings above all kings, king with ultimate authority. He has ultimate authority over God's word. He has authority over nature. He has authority over Satan and the demonic. And in our text today, reveals that he has absolute authority even over humanity's greatest enemy, death itself. He's not merely just a prophet or a miracle worker, he's the very son of God, the one promised through the pages of the Old Testament.Note the similarities between the two miracles. Both the petitioner here desires to be made well, and the word that's used in the Greek is salvation, to be saved. Both the petitioner falls at Jesus' feet, and both the person who is healed is called daughter.In the case of the daughter, the little girl had... In the case of the woman, she's been ill for 12 years, and the other, the girl, is 12 years old. The condition of the two female sufferers render them ceremonially unclean, the woman with her menstrual disorder and the other girl by death. In both cases, the uncleanness is boldly ignored, and in both cases, both the case of the woman who touches the garment of Jesus and when Jesus touches the girl's corpse, fear is mentioned in both and faith is a factor in both.Three points to frame up our time, or three sections. First, 12 years of misery end in eternal joy. Then, 12 years of joy end in temporary misery. Then, the question before us is eternal misery or eternal joy.First, 12 years of misery end in eternal joy. This is verse 21. "Jesus crossed again on the boat to the other side and a great crowd gathered about him. He was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name. And seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly saying, 'My little daughter's at the point of death. Come, lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live,' and he came with him."Jesus left the shores of Capernaum to escape the crowds. In the interval, he calmed a raging storm and delivered a man from the grasp of a legion of demons. That was last week. Now he returns, and the swarm is there to greet him. We meet Jairus, who's one of the rulers of the synagogue. It's an honorific type bestowed on someone who has been distinguished through their service to the synagogue. This is a person who is respectable, substantial, of good... prominent, and moral.We see that not all the Jewish authorities were opposed to Jesus. In his homeland, this person's one of the Jewish leaders, and he has particular insight in who Jesus is. He's heard of Jesus' miracles. He sees Jesus. But he's not here as a spiritual leader, he's here as a desperate father. He's heard that Jesus can heal, and he comes to Jesus asking for healing. He's interceding for his daughter.Despite his high rank and his prestige in the community, he falls humbly at Jesus' feet, prostrated before the king, acknowledging, "Jesus, I'm helpless. I don't have the power that I need. I need your authority, and authority and a power greater than mine." He's probably taken significant risk to his reputation, but his desperation brings him to his knees. There was no other option.C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain, his famous quote is... He says, "We can ignore even pleasure, but pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasure, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."His little daughter is quite ill, at death's door with an unspecified malady. The father here is the first of three parents in the Gospel of Mark coming to Jesus, begging and imploring for healing. In all three cases, the sick can't do it for themselves, and it's a parent that steps up. It's a parent that intercedes.This is a reminder for every parent. Parents, one of our main jobs is to intercede for our children, to stand on our knees before the Lord and beg for their souls, and beg for their bodies, beg for their minds and ask the Lord to protect and bless. Jesus here listens to Jairus's plea and immediately goes to heal the daughter. As he went, the excited crowd goes with him, surrounds him, making it hard to walk.Verse 24: "A great crowd followed him, and thronged about him. There was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for 12 years and who had suffered much under many physicians and spent all that she had and was no better but rather grew worse." Instead of alleviating her suffering, the doctors had only made it worse. It was a chronic bleeding that she experienced. Despite all of her most persistent efforts, she didn't get better. The illness became increasingly debilitating as she grew older and she spent all her money on a cure to know avail.Also, this illness makes her ceremonially unclean. She's in a perpetual state of uncleanness, meaning she is virtually ostracized from the community. She can't go to the temple. She can't go to the synagogue. Even being around her meant people were considered ceremonially unclean. It was a miserable condition.The secrecy with which she approaches Jesus shows that she knows that she shouldn't be out in public. She's violating a taboo. She too, like Jairus, believed that Jesus had the power to heal. And despite the crush of the crowd, she somehow manages to get close enough to reach out to him.I do want you to notice that the woman is at the opposite end of Jairus, as opposite as you can be, socially speaking, economically, religiously speaking. He's a male leader, she's a nameless woman. He's a synagogue official, she's ritually unclean and excluded from religious community. He has a family with a large household, she has spent all of her money trying to find a cure, impoverished by doctor's fees. How their fortune seemed to be suddenly reversed, his loss of time becomes her gain. The same crowd that slowed Jesus down toward his progress to Jairus's daughter gives her an opportunity to be healed.Verse 27, "She heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, 'If I touch even his garments, I will be made well." This moment of contact is grammatically highlighted here in the text. The verb "she touched" is the first finite verb after a series of seven participles. It's read, "And a woman being in a flow of blood for 12 years and having endured many treatments, having spent all her money on them, having not benefited but rather having gotten worse, having heard about Jesus," and then it says, "She touched his garment." The word touch here gains extraordinary intensity. This is the climax of the story.Although her uncleanliness was supposed to transfer to Jesus, the opposite here happens. His purity overpowers the disease. The idea of healing to be brought about by contact with a holy man's garments, we see this idea in the Old Testament. We see this even in the apostles, and the idea's presented all throughout scripture. In one instant, 12 years of pain just disappeared. 12 years of suffering disappeared. 12 years of humiliation, everything just changed in a second. She's healed.Verse 29, "Immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Jesus perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him immediately turned about in the crowd and said, 'Who touched my garments?'"We know from text like Philippians 2 that Jesus' eternal glory and power were veiled in his human flesh. He did his earthly ministry not from his own power but from the power of the Holy Spirit. He voluntarily set aside divine attributes when he took upon himself the form of a servant. But despite his voluntary limitations, Jesus knew that God's power had gone out from him. He felt that this healing cost him something. It cost him some kind of power, some kind of spiritual energy, which is one of the reasons why we see him often escaping after a season of intense ministry where he loses spiritual power. He goes and he spends significant time with God, the Father, to recuperate in prayer.At this crucial point in the narrative, the focus suddenly shifts from the human perception of Jesus to Jesus' perception of humans. It's a switch in perspective that's often used particularly in the Epistle Galatians 4:9. "But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God." From God's perspective, he does the knowing first.In Mark 5:31, "his disciples said to him, 'You see the crowd pressing around, and yet you say, "Who touched me?"'" Are the disciples being dense or sarcastic? I think they're just focused on the mission in front of him. "Jesus, we have to get to this girl. Jesus, you see how important it is that Jairus's daughter gets healed. We know that delay can be fatal. So why are you asking this seemingly silly question?" Since the crowd was so large and people thronged from all sides, the disciples here are perplexed by the question.But Jesus won't let the woman just touch him and leave. Here you have to pause and say why. She had great faith. She got the miracle that she needed. But Jesus pauses everything and in a very public way has her speak. He wants to speak with her, and he wants her to confess the power of God that she just experienced.It's not enough for a believer to just believe in your heart. There's no such thing as an anonymous Christian. If you believe that Jesus Christ is Lord in your heart, the next step is you have to confess that he's Lord with your mouth, and this is what Jesus is doing. He doesn't just want to heal her body, he wants to heal her soul, so he says, "Who touched my garments?" Whenever Jesus asks a question, he's not looking for information. He's looking to elicit a confession. He wants her to speak.In verse 32, "He looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth." She comes in fear and trembling. Her heart was throbbing. Her eyes are tearing up. Would he take the cure away? Will she be punished for breaking the ceremonial law? Would he be angry that she made him unclean or that she tried to steal healing?Jesus here, like a skillful doctor, wounds in order to heal, and he does it tenderly. This is a costly confession to her. That's why she comes with fear and trembling. To speak before a crowd above such personal matters would be incredibly humbling. But humility is an essential part of the kingdom of God.She tells him the whole truth, a phrase that's used in judicial proceedings to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. She's not ashamed to publicly testify that Jesus Christ did heal her.After her confession, Jesus turns to her in verse 34 and he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well go in peace and be healed of your disease." He calls her daughter. She's not related to him. Most likely we don't even know how much older he was than her, but he calls her daughter. He loves her with the heart of God, the Father.What he's communicating to Jairus, who's here, Jairus, who's enjoyed his daughter for 12 years, just 12 years of bliss, he says, "Jairus, in the same way that you have loved your daughter, cared for your daughter, in the same way that you are in pain because of your daughter's pain, I have felt the same over this woman. She is my daughter."The woman was healed because she touched Jesus with faith. She touched Jesus, believing that God could heal her, that this man wasn't just a man, that he was the son of God. For her, faith isn't just intellectual ascent. She knows that, "If I touch him, something will happen. I will be transformed."It's faith in Jesus or is it faith in God? Well, that's a false dichotomy. They come to Jesus, both Jairus and this woman, knowing that the power of God comes through Christ. He says, "Your faith has made you well. Your faith has saved you." The Greek says... It's a Greek word "sozo". Her bodily healing is a good picture of the healing of her soul, and that's why Jesus stopped her. Then he says to her, "Go in peace," which in the English peace is just the absence of strife or the absence of hostility. In the Hebrew, it comes from the word "shalom", which just means wholeness or soundness, holistic health. He says, "Go in this peace." After receiving the benediction, she does.The other reason why he has her publicly announced the healing is to welcome her back into the community. He announces this publicly so that the community knows she's no longer ceremonially unclean. She's been healed on a spiritual level, on a physical level. Now on a social level, he welcomes her back into the community.This story of the woman is our story. We have been, as believers, touched by the power of God, and we've been separated from the faithless crowd by our fearful and wonderful knowledge that Jesus Christ is God, Jesus Christ is Lord, and he has the power to save our souls.The second portion of our text is point two, 12 years of joy and in temporary misery. Verse 35, "And while he was still speaking, there came from the ruler's house some who said, "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?" This is the most absolute heart-wrenching news that a parent can hear. What parent has not sat 3:00 AM with a sick child begging the Lord, praying over them, "Lord, remove the fever"? What parent has not driven anxiously to the emergency room with a wounded or severely sick child?It's bad enough that she was sick, but now she's died. But knowing if Jesus had not been slowed down, he might've made it to the girl in time probably makes things worse. It seems like Jesus slowed down almost on purpose, almost like he did with Lazarus. He waited two days until Lazarus was surely dead before coming and resurrecting him. The time for emergency medical procedures passed. So why was Jesus wasting his time with this woman, having a conversation with her? Her illness wasn't life-threatening. Couldn't he just come back to her later as a sense of triage so amiss? Well, the answer to that is there's enough power of God to go around for all.My daughters were yesterday arguing, quibbling, quibbling is the word, over which holiday is the best. All three of the youngest landed on Christmas. Christmas is my favorite. Then they got an argument of like, "No, Christmas is my favorite. No, Christmas is my favorite." My response was, "It can be all of our favorites."This is access to the power of God. His power is not diminished by giving His power to one. It's not lessened to give it to another. Therefore, His timing is always contrary to our timing.Verse 36, but overhearing what they said, "Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, 'Do not fear, only believe.'" Jairus at this point must've been reeling. He must've been thinking, "Lord, take my life, not hers. Let me die instead of her." But Jairus had witnessed a miracle. He had witnessed the testimony of this woman. He witnessed how tender and compassionate Jesus was with her, and he had witnessed her faith, and that faith most likely inspired his faith.Jesus tells him, "Do not fear, only believe. Keep on believing." What he's saying is, "Ignore the reality that you're seeing. This isn't ultimate reality. This isn't all there is. What you see is not all there is. Ignore the |reality of death and clinging to Jesus' promise of resurrection."Jairus had believed that Jesus could heal his daughter. That's why he came to Jesus. But a resurrection, could Jesus really resurrect her? Jesus is calling Jairus to an even greater level of faith. Often, we do experience delays in life. It feels like when we ask for something from the Lord and it's just delay, delay, delay, sometimes it's easy to sit back and say, "I don't think the Lord loves me anymore." Jesus here is showing that his love is compatible with delays. His grace doesn't come on our timetable, therefore we're not supposed to impose our timetable on the Lord.For Jesus, there was no more problem to resurrect the girl than to cure the fever. Therefore, in times of delay, we are told to keep trusting. Do not fear, keep believing. We don't know all the facts. God does, therefore we are to trust him.2 Corinthians 4:17 says, "For this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."Teresa of Avila says, "From eternity, the most miserable life in the history of the earth will look like one night in a bad hotel." From God's perspective, 1,000 years is but a day.Verse 37, "And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John the brother of James." Jesus dismisses the crowds and instructs them to stay behind. He takes his three most important disciples. I'm calling them the big three from now. The big three are Peter, James, and John. He welcomes them in to see the resurrection. These three will be given a foretaste of Jesus' glory at the transfiguration. These three will be welcomed to pray with Jesus and share in his suffering at Gethsemane, so he welcomes them to go with him.Verse 38, "They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly, the families in shock." In Matthew's narrative, it's clear that professional mourners were hired and they were already brought in. In that context, you would hire mourners, wailers, and flute players who arrived. They communicated to the community of what had transpired.Verse 39, "When he had entered, he said to them, 'Why are you making commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.' They laughed at him, but he put them all outside and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was."The professional mourners, they know death. They're experts in death, therefore they laughed. "What are you talking about? Jesus, we know that she is dead." They laugh at Christ with derision. Jesus is using this metaphor of sleep to tell them that he is about to resurrect her. He is about to wake her up, so to speak. She's not dead but sleeping. Jesus is interpreting death from God's viewpoint.The purpose of this declaration is that death will not have the last word for God's people. God's people do not die. Physically, yes. But we, our soul, we continue living. Jesus puts all the scoffers outside and enters the room only with Jairus, his wife, and the three disciples, and the existence of a separate bedroom, for the girl is testimony to Jairus's wealth. Most Palestinian dwellings from this time were poor, one-room affairs.Verse 41, "In taking her by the ha nd, he said to her, "Talitha cumi," which means, 'Little girl, I say to you, arise.'" Jesus never hesitates to contract ritual defilement by touching a leper or touching a dead person. Why? Because he's holy, and his holiness is overpowering. It's more contagious. It's more transmitting than the sickness.He says to her, "Talitha cumi," He speaks to her in Aramaic. This is interesting because Aramaic seems to have been the usual speech in the Jewish home, especially in Galilee. Greek was certainly the literary and cultural language. Hebrew was the religious language. But at home, the heart language was Aramaic. Aramaic was Jesus' heart language.The command "ephphatha" given to the mute man or when Christ was on the cross, he says, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which is Aramaic, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He addresses God as Abba, father.The risen Lord spoke to Mary in her own language, in Aramaic, and that she turned and spoke to him in Aramaic, "raboni" , which means teacher. Jesus here speaks to this little girl in her heart language. "Talitha cumi." Little girl, wake up. Little girl, arise."Verse 42, "And immediately the girl got up and began walking, for she was 12 years of age, and they were immediately overcome with amazement. He strictly charged that no one should know this and told them to give her something to eat."Everyone was overcome with amazement. It was one thing for Jesus to calm the storm, it was something else for Jesus to cast out a legion of demons from the poor man in the text last week, but it's something altogether different for Jesus to resurrect this little girl. And he does so just by speaking. He's demonstrating that he is Lord of all, even death itself.I love this little detail at the end that he tells them, "Hey, feed her something," which for me shows... This is eyewitness account. Why in the world would you include that little detail that adds nothing to the progression of the narrative? Because it happened. Because Jesus doesn't even overlook, despite the commotion or practical need for food.That brings us to point three, eternal misery or eternal joy. Jesus here is more than a prophet. He's more than even Moses or Elijah. He's Lord of all creation. He speaks. He commands the winds and the seas. They all obey him. He is Lord even over Satan and his whole dominion. And now the people of Israel see that Jesus is Lord even over death. He is the one who has come to reverse, overturn the curse, undo the effects of the fall of Adam upon the human race.Jesus' mission wasn't just to come feed people, wasn't just to come teach people, wasn't just to come heal people. No. Jesus has come to deal with the root of all human suffering. He's doing things that the crowd does not understand. They're blinded by their immediate needs. They only see what Jesus can do for them.Jairus and the woman here are the exception. They approach Jesus not just with demands, but with faith, humble faith. They seek healing, but they also exercise faith in God. Jairus seeks help from Jesus. And when help does not come how he wants it to, he keeps trusting, he keeps believing. They come to him with faith that he is who he said he was.Even if the woman had not been healed, and even if Jairus' daughter had not been raised, they still would have believed that Jesus was sent by God and that God's will had been done even if the outcome was not what they wanted. This is the difference between faith and unbelief. Faith accepts the outcome regardless. Regardless of what happens, thy will be done, Lord.The great Bible teacher, G. Campbell Morgan, lost his firstborn daughter. Then 40 years later, preaching on the story of Jairus, he writes this: "I can hardly speak of this matter without becoming personal and reminiscent, remembering a time 40 years ago when my own first lassie lay at the point of death dying. I called for him then, and he came, and surely said to our troubled hearts, 'Fear not. Believe only.' He did not say she shall be made whole. She was not made whole on the earthly plane. She passed away into the life beyond."He did say to her, "Talitha cumi," little lamb, arise.' But in her case, that did not mean stay on the earth level. It meant that he needed her, and he took her to be with himself. She has been with him for all those years as we measure time here, and I've missed her every day. But his word, believe only, has been the strength of the passing years."Like Jairus and the woman who comes to Christ, we must also come to Christ in faith, faith that God is good and that God is loving, faith that he is the one whom God sent, Christ is. And he answers all of our prayers not necessarily according to our desires, and not necessarily according to our timing, but according to God's perfect and holy will.At times we may hear the glorious words, "The child is not dead," or we may hear the tragic words, "The child has died." But no matter what, faith accepts the will of God. Why? Because true saving, living faith understands that when Jesus raised Jairus' daughter from the dead, he's pointing ahead to the end of the age when Jesus himself will heal all of our diseases and raise all of God's people from the dead.What happened would soon become common knowledge, but Jesus strictly charges them not to tell anyone. He is managing the messianic expectations of the crowds. There was much yet for Christ to do, and we see that the raucous crowd was already interfering in some ways.The word here when Jesus says arise is the same word that Christ uses talk about his own death, that Jesus was buried, that Jesus was dead, and he did rise from the dead. This right here is one of the greatest truths about Christianity, that we will all die. And if the Lord should tarry, after that comes the judgment. And we need someone to raise us from the dead, and we need someone to bring us through the judgment that we deserve.This little girl, she died twice, as did Lazarus. Then what? Then comes the judgment. Then we stand before God. God at that moment is going to tell us either you go into eternal joy, eternal bliss, or into eternal punishment. This is Matthew 25:46: "And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." I wonder when's the last time you meditated on eternity. It just does not end. It's eternity. It's not a hundred years. It's not a thousand. It's not 10,000. It just does not end. It's either eternal life or eternal punishment.2 Thessalonians 1:5-10, "This is the evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are also suffering, since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us. When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed."Jesus Christ came because he understands that there is eternal suffering in the future of those who would turn from him. That's what every single one of us deserves. But Jesus came in order to provide salvation. He endured infinite misery to save us from eternal misery. Jesus doesn't suffer for all eternity because he is fully God with infinite glory and power. Jesus overcame eternal suffering by overpowering it with his infinite glory.Jesus, when the woman touched him, perceived that power had gone out from him. Well, that was a foretaste. It's a foreshadowing of what happened on the cross. The reason why this woman became clean and Jesus did not become unclean wasn't because the uncleanness disappeared in thin air. No, he took her uncleanness, and he took it upon himself to the cross. He bled like the woman. He came to become unclean in our place. He had to go into death like the girl so that she could be raised to life. He lost the father's hand on the cross. “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He lost the father's hand in order to be able to extend it to us.2 Corinthians 13:4, "For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God." With his humanity, Jesus endured the crucifixion. With his divinity, he endured eternal sufferings, our eternal sufferings, the eternal sufferings that we deserve."Jonathan Edwards in his 1729 sermon, The Sacrifice of Christ Acceptable, says this: "Though Christ's sufferings were but temporal, that is not eternal, yet they were equivalent to our eternal sufferings by reason of the infinite dignity of his person. Though it was not infinite suffering, yet it was equivalent to infinite suffering, for it was infinite expense. His blood which he spilled, his life, which he laid down was an infinite price because it was the blood of God, as it is expressly called."Acts 20:28, "The Church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. His life was the life of that person that was the eternal Son of God, though it was the life of the human nature. Now upon this account, the priced offered was equivalent to the demerit of the sins of all mankind, and his suffering's equivalent to the eternal sufferings of the whole world."Christ suffered infinite suffering to save you, to save me from eternal suffering. How do we get that salvation? How do we get eternal life? How do we get our sins forgiven, the condemnation removed? All you have to do is reach out to Christ in faith. In faith, reach out, and touch him. Have that encounter. Believe that as you reach your hand is there, his hand is there grasp onto yours, and then his coursing healing power goes through your being.Faith takes hold of the power of God, and faith takes hold of His transforming power. This is what saves us. It's faith in Christ. He says, "Don't be afraid, just believe." There is a purifying power in the blood of the lamb of God. No matter what we've done, no matter the uncleanness of our sin, the uncleanness of our lawbreaking, all you have to do is ask for the Lord to purify you, and He will, and He does. All you need is need. All you need is recognition of your need.How much faith do you have to have in Jesus? Just enough to come, just enough to cry out to Christ, just enough to say, "Lord Jesus, have pity on me." The Lord is so gracious. He doesn't refuse anyone that comes to him and says, "Lord, help me."Even if your faith isn't perfect, even if you're brand new to the faith... There's a guy in the scripture that says, "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief." Even that is enough. Even that is enough to come and to be safe. So, come to Christ wherever you are, doubts and all, and he will begin the process of healing.At this point, I'm going to welcome a brother from the congregation, Brother Robert. Round of applause as he comes up. He's going to testify to the incredible work of God in his life and in his family's life, and just a testimony that God's power is real and he's still working amongst us today. Thank you, Robert.Robert:Morning, everyone. I'm here to share a testimony on behalf of my wife Carissa, my daughter Caitlin, and my son Thomas. For those who don't know me, my name is Robert. When I'm not here playing keyboard, I'm actually working in a biotech company. In fact, I have medical training as a surgeon. This is relevant because two years ago, the weekend of Thanksgiving, my daughter became very sick.It started the weekend of Thanksgiving. She had a party with her friends on the Friday. Saturday, she was a little tired. We thought she was recovering from the party. And on Sunday morning, she refused to get out of bed. While that's normal for a lot of teenagers, it wasn't normal for her. She was highly irritable. She just wanted to curl up and sleep. We felt concerned enough that we manhandled her into the car, took her to the emergency room. And amongst other things, they put a needle into her spinal cord, take some fluid, and it was bad news. They found white blood cells in her cerebral spinal fluid, and these cells presumably were there because of an infection that was affecting her brain.Her ventral diagnosis was something called viral encephalitis. This is where a random virus just affects your brain. It's random enough that it could be one of myriad viruses, and oftentimes you don't even detect which one. The most common viruses that cause this are the ones that cause mouth ulcers and chickenpox. But even then, it's incredibly uncommon. Happens to about one in a million people.I had the experience of actually treating a patient early in my career who suffered from this. He was a 20-something-year-old PhD student. Came into the ER because he had a fever that was so high it was affecting his brain, something called malignant hypothermia. He was rushed to the ICU. The next thing I heard, two days later, he was dead. That was going through my head the entire time Caitlin was diagnosed.Viral encephalitis has a mortality rate of about 30%. Of those people who don't make it, these patients who present late like Caitlin, because she was already quite symptomatic, that statistic gets even worse. The patients who actually do push through, the vast majority have lasting serious neurological issues. All these things were running through my mind as we were going through this.She was rushed to the ICU, had a huge number of tubes and leads hooked up to her. She was comatose. She was looking a lot less like Caitlin, and her body and face were puffing up due to inflammation and fluid retention. I was also thinking, "Did I doom her because we brought her in too late from the hospital?"At some level, I always thought through my training that I could deal with any medical situation with professionalism and dispassion. I now know I'm not able to do this. I was a broken man, devastated that my daughter was being stolen from me right in front of me and I was powerless to do anything about it.Pastors Jan and Shane came quickly when we called them. I'm sure Pastor Jan has his own story about what happened. I distinctly remember them walking into the ICU with great gentleness, knowing how grave the situation was. They also told us they usually ask for God's will to be done, but this time their sense was to pray for God's miraculous healing. I don't remember everything that we prayed about, but I do remember a distinct feeling that God was in the room and in control regardless of the outcome.A couple of hours after they left, Caitlin started discharging fluid like crazy. It was so sudden and so intense, the doctors worried about additional medical complications that could cause fluid imbalance. But her face started returning back to normal, and she showed the smallest hints of improvement, such as moaning a little when they were drawing blood.There was one particular moment when we were changing her IV fluids, and she muttered something, and I shouted at her, "Caitlin, hi." Miraculously, she pried her eyes open and said back, "Hi." That was the sweetest greeting I've ever heard.She spent four days in the ICU, another four days in the hospital ward. She missed over three weeks of school, but managed to return and still somehow managed a 4.0 GPA. She's now attending college. She's coming home next Tuesday for Thanksgiving. That will be celebrating two years since we almost lost her.I don't know how much of this experience was medical versus spiritual, but I do know that every fiber of my being was that Pastors Jan and Shane were vessels of a true miracle that happened that day. In addition, there was an absolute army of people praying for her, our community group, many of you here, were praying for her. Friends, and family, and neighbors across the US, Asia, and Australia. Literally hundreds of people covering her in prayer 24 hours a day. Prayer is powerful. Her neurologist and infectious disease specialists said that her rapid and complete recovery were incompatible with her disease, and I call that a miracle.One more thing. Caitlin liked to spend time in her room with the door just slightly ajar. When she was in the hospital, her door was open all the way, which was because we dragged her out of bed and got her to hospital. I was forced to close that door, since the open door reminded me that she was terribly sick and that she may not be able to come back home. Maybe that's similar to when Mary Magdalene saw the empty tomb, that someone took Jesus' body, which was an additional insult beyond his crucifixion. Right now, her room is wide open, and that's okay not necessarily because she returned to health. Her open door should symbolize God working for our good regardless of outcome.Her open room door is also a reminder that as great as Caitlin's miracle was, and even greater miracle is the empty tomb, Caitlin's salvation is just a hint of Jesus' redeeming power dying for all our sins and the pain, sickness, and suffering which are consequences of that sin. And he rose again that we could have ultimate hope for our own deliverance.The lesson in this storm is not just to appreciate God's ability to miraculously heal. The lesson is that whatever happened, it brought our family and this army of prayer warriors back to the heart of worship, and it helped us focus on God's sovereignty, provision, and redeeming power. Thanks for listening.

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. 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 are so thankful that you have chosen to make us yours. We are so thankful that you love us with a tender fatherly love. You are the absolute perfect Father, and we thank you for your loving kindness, and we thank you for your tenderness and, we thank you that you speak truth to us in love.You sent the word of God, truth himself, Jesus Christ. And Jesus, you came because you were moved by love. When you saw our desperate state, our sin-sick souls, and our sick bodies, oppressed by the demonic and the evil one, living in a fallen world, Lord Jesus, you were moved by love to come and deal with the root of the issue, which is our sin. You came to heal our souls, and in the process you reveal yourself to us. You give us faith and the gift of repentance, and you command us to exercise our faith.I pray today, strengthen our faith in who you are, and strengthen our faith in what you've said. And make us a people that believe no matter what. Even if things in our life occur that are against our will, make us a people that still cry out to you, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."Lord, as we look at this tremendous text, I pray that you reveal the truth to us and apply it to us. Most of all, I pray if anyone has not yet had a true saving salvific encounter with the living God, I pray they do so by meeting Jesus Christ, repenting of sin and turning to him. Lord, bless our time in the holy scriptures. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.The title of the sermon today is Eternal Misery or Eternal Joy. As many of you know, I've been dealing with a toothache this past month. I finally got it fixed this past Monday, praise be to God. As I was in the dental chair a couple of weeks ago, midway through the root canal, the dental assistant asks the endodontist, "Do you know why the next door dentist has been out the entire week?" She shook her head, and she said, "No." He responded. He said, "Because she had 10 family members who died in Palestine."The jarring juxtaposition of my temporary pain and this woman's lasting pain made an impression. My pain was temporary because I'm blessed to live in a time where healing is available just by going down the street, thanks be to God, by providing medical professionals. Her pain is lasting because the forces of evil are still alive and treacherous. Despite all of our advances in medicine, technology, people continue to destroy each other.Jesus Christ is the healing king who has come to heal our souls and restore our bodies. God loves life, and God loves people. He wants us as healthy as possible. But true health always begins at the level of the soul, and we've all come down with a terrible case of sin, and it's time to call Dr. Jesus.The main subject of our text today is the miraculous healing of a sick woman and the miraculous resurrection of a girl. The text reveals a tender side of Jesus. It reveals Jesus who is most attentive, most sympathetic to the most hurting. He's presented as gentle, approachable, the healer of the brokenhearted, a sanctuary and a refuge for the weak and helpless. He is the great comforter of the distressed even in the present midst of suffering.Sin makes our world a miserable place, and Jesus entered into this misery to save us from sin, to relieve the miserable consequences of sin in the world. And Jesus does bring a healing power, and we have access to his healing power by believing in him. When we believe in Christ, you have access to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enters your body, and your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Christians are the third temple of God, and God wants your temple, your body to be healthy, strong, resilient, and effective. Whenever we read a passage, like this healing passage before us, when we read passage like this in scripture, we are to be reminded that human health is important to God, therefore it should be important to us. And the Holy Spirit... us holistically healthy.With that said, would you look at our text today in Mark 5:21-43. Mark 5:21. "And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly saying, 'My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and alive.' He went with him."And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. There was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment, for she said, 'If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.' Immediately, the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease."Jesus perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, 'Who touched my garments?' His disciples said to him, 'You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, "Who touched me?" He looked around to see who had done it, but the woman knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. He said to her, 'Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.'"While he was still speaking there from the ruler's house, some who said, 'Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?' But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, 'Do not fear, only believe.' And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter, and James, and John the brother of James."They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he entered he said to them, 'Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.' They laughed at him, but he put them all outside and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. Taking her by the hand, he said to her, "Talitha cumi," which means, 'Little girl, I say to you, arise.' Immediately the girl got up and began walking, for she was 12 years of age, and they were immediately overcome with amazement. And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and he told them to give her something to eat."This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, fallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Jesus has presented the gospel of Mark as the king of all kings above all kings, king with ultimate authority. He has ultimate authority over God's word. He has authority over nature. He has authority over Satan and the demonic. And in our text today, reveals that he has absolute authority even over humanity's greatest enemy, death itself. He's not merely just a prophet or a miracle worker, he's the very son of God, the one promised through the pages of the Old Testament.Note the similarities between the two miracles. Both the petitioner here desires to be made well, and the word that's used in the Greek is salvation, to be saved. Both the petitioner falls at Jesus' feet, and both the person who is healed is called daughter.In the case of the daughter, the little girl had... In the case of the woman, she's been ill for 12 years, and the other, the girl, is 12 years old. The condition of the two female sufferers render them ceremonially unclean, the woman with her menstrual disorder and the other girl by death. In both cases, the uncleanness is boldly ignored, and in both cases, both the case of the woman who touches the garment of Jesus and when Jesus touches the girl's corpse, fear is mentioned in both and faith is a factor in both.Three points to frame up our time, or three sections. First, 12 years of misery end in eternal joy. Then, 12 years of joy end in temporary misery. Then, the question before us is eternal misery or eternal joy.First, 12 years of misery end in eternal joy. This is verse 21. "Jesus crossed again on the boat to the other side and a great crowd gathered about him. He was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name. And seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly saying, 'My little daughter's at the point of death. Come, lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live,' and he came with him."Jesus left the shores of Capernaum to escape the crowds. In the interval, he calmed a raging storm and delivered a man from the grasp of a legion of demons. That was last week. Now he returns, and the swarm is there to greet him. We meet Jairus, who's one of the rulers of the synagogue. It's an honorific type bestowed on someone who has been distinguished through their service to the synagogue. This is a person who is respectable, substantial, of good... prominent, and moral.We see that not all the Jewish authorities were opposed to Jesus. In his homeland, this person's one of the Jewish leaders, and he has particular insight in who Jesus is. He's heard of Jesus' miracles. He sees Jesus. But he's not here as a spiritual leader, he's here as a desperate father. He's heard that Jesus can heal, and he comes to Jesus asking for healing. He's interceding for his daughter.Despite his high rank and his prestige in the community, he falls humbly at Jesus' feet, prostrated before the king, acknowledging, "Jesus, I'm helpless. I don't have the power that I need. I need your authority, and authority and a power greater than mine." He's probably taken significant risk to his reputation, but his desperation brings him to his knees. There was no other option.C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain, his famous quote is... He says, "We can ignore even pleasure, but pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasure, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."His little daughter is quite ill, at death's door with an unspecified malady. The father here is the first of three parents in the Gospel of Mark coming to Jesus, begging and imploring for healing. In all three cases, the sick can't do it for themselves, and it's a parent that steps up. It's a parent that intercedes.This is a reminder for every parent. Parents, one of our main jobs is to intercede for our children, to stand on our knees before the Lord and beg for their souls, and beg for their bodies, beg for their minds and ask the Lord to protect and bless. Jesus here listens to Jairus's plea and immediately goes to heal the daughter. As he went, the excited crowd goes with him, surrounds him, making it hard to walk.Verse 24: "A great crowd followed him, and thronged about him. There was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for 12 years and who had suffered much under many physicians and spent all that she had and was no better but rather grew worse." Instead of alleviating her suffering, the doctors had only made it worse. It was a chronic bleeding that she experienced. Despite all of her most persistent efforts, she didn't get better. The illness became increasingly debilitating as she grew older and she spent all her money on a cure to know avail.Also, this illness makes her ceremonially unclean. She's in a perpetual state of uncleanness, meaning she is virtually ostracized from the community. She can't go to the temple. She can't go to the synagogue. Even being around her meant people were considered ceremonially unclean. It was a miserable condition.The secrecy with which she approaches Jesus shows that she knows that she shouldn't be out in public. She's violating a taboo. She too, like Jairus, believed that Jesus had the power to heal. And despite the crush of the crowd, she somehow manages to get close enough to reach out to him.I do want you to notice that the woman is at the opposite end of Jairus, as opposite as you can be, socially speaking, economically, religiously speaking. He's a male leader, she's a nameless woman. He's a synagogue official, she's ritually unclean and excluded from religious community. He has a family with a large household, she has spent all of her money trying to find a cure, impoverished by doctor's fees. How their fortune seemed to be suddenly reversed, his loss of time becomes her gain. The same crowd that slowed Jesus down toward his progress to Jairus's daughter gives her an opportunity to be healed.Verse 27, "She heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, 'If I touch even his garments, I will be made well." This moment of contact is grammatically highlighted here in the text. The verb "she touched" is the first finite verb after a series of seven participles. It's read, "And a woman being in a flow of blood for 12 years and having endured many treatments, having spent all her money on them, having not benefited but rather having gotten worse, having heard about Jesus," and then it says, "She touched his garment." The word touch here gains extraordinary intensity. This is the climax of the story.Although her uncleanliness was supposed to transfer to Jesus, the opposite here happens. His purity overpowers the disease. The idea of healing to be brought about by contact with a holy man's garments, we see this idea in the Old Testament. We see this even in the apostles, and the idea's presented all throughout scripture. In one instant, 12 years of pain just disappeared. 12 years of suffering disappeared. 12 years of humiliation, everything just changed in a second. She's healed.Verse 29, "Immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Jesus perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him immediately turned about in the crowd and said, 'Who touched my garments?'"We know from text like Philippians 2 that Jesus' eternal glory and power were veiled in his human flesh. He did his earthly ministry not from his own power but from the power of the Holy Spirit. He voluntarily set aside divine attributes when he took upon himself the form of a servant. But despite his voluntary limitations, Jesus knew that God's power had gone out from him. He felt that this healing cost him something. It cost him some kind of power, some kind of spiritual energy, which is one of the reasons why we see him often escaping after a season of intense ministry where he loses spiritual power. He goes and he spends significant time with God, the Father, to recuperate in prayer.At this crucial point in the narrative, the focus suddenly shifts from the human perception of Jesus to Jesus' perception of humans. It's a switch in perspective that's often used particularly in the Epistle Galatians 4:9. "But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God." From God's perspective, he does the knowing first.In Mark 5:31, "his disciples said to him, 'You see the crowd pressing around, and yet you say, "Who touched me?"'" Are the disciples being dense or sarcastic? I think they're just focused on the mission in front of him. "Jesus, we have to get to this girl. Jesus, you see how important it is that Jairus's daughter gets healed. We know that delay can be fatal. So why are you asking this seemingly silly question?" Since the crowd was so large and people thronged from all sides, the disciples here are perplexed by the question.But Jesus won't let the woman just touch him and leave. Here you have to pause and say why. She had great faith. She got the miracle that she needed. But Jesus pauses everything and in a very public way has her speak. He wants to speak with her, and he wants her to confess the power of God that she just experienced.It's not enough for a believer to just believe in your heart. There's no such thing as an anonymous Christian. If you believe that Jesus Christ is Lord in your heart, the next step is you have to confess that he's Lord with your mouth, and this is what Jesus is doing. He doesn't just want to heal her body, he wants to heal her soul, so he says, "Who touched my garments?" Whenever Jesus asks a question, he's not looking for information. He's looking to elicit a confession. He wants her to speak.In verse 32, "He looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth." She comes in fear and trembling. Her heart was throbbing. Her eyes are tearing up. Would he take the cure away? Will she be punished for breaking the ceremonial law? Would he be angry that she made him unclean or that she tried to steal healing?Jesus here, like a skillful doctor, wounds in order to heal, and he does it tenderly. This is a costly confession to her. That's why she comes with fear and trembling. To speak before a crowd above such personal matters would be incredibly humbling. But humility is an essential part of the kingdom of God.She tells him the whole truth, a phrase that's used in judicial proceedings to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. She's not ashamed to publicly testify that Jesus Christ did heal her.After her confession, Jesus turns to her in verse 34 and he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well go in peace and be healed of your disease." He calls her daughter. She's not related to him. Most likely we don't even know how much older he was than her, but he calls her daughter. He loves her with the heart of God, the Father.What he's communicating to Jairus, who's here, Jairus, who's enjoyed his daughter for 12 years, just 12 years of bliss, he says, "Jairus, in the same way that you have loved your daughter, cared for your daughter, in the same way that you are in pain because of your daughter's pain, I have felt the same over this woman. She is my daughter."The woman was healed because she touched Jesus with faith. She touched Jesus, believing that God could heal her, that this man wasn't just a man, that he was the son of God. For her, faith isn't just intellectual ascent. She knows that, "If I touch him, something will happen. I will be transformed."It's faith in Jesus or is it faith in God? Well, that's a false dichotomy. They come to Jesus, both Jairus and this woman, knowing that the power of God comes through Christ. He says, "Your faith has made you well. Your faith has saved you." The Greek says... It's a Greek word "sozo". Her bodily healing is a good picture of the healing of her soul, and that's why Jesus stopped her. Then he says to her, "Go in peace," which in the English peace is just the absence of strife or the absence of hostility. In the Hebrew, it comes from the word "shalom", which just means wholeness or soundness, holistic health. He says, "Go in this peace." After receiving the benediction, she does.The other reason why he has her publicly announced the healing is to welcome her back into the community. He announces this publicly so that the community knows she's no longer ceremonially unclean. She's been healed on a spiritual level, on a physical level. Now on a social level, he welcomes her back into the community.This story of the woman is our story. We have been, as believers, touched by the power of God, and we've been separated from the faithless crowd by our fearful and wonderful knowledge that Jesus Christ is God, Jesus Christ is Lord, and he has the power to save our souls.The second portion of our text is point two, 12 years of joy and in temporary misery. Verse 35, "And while he was still speaking, there came from the ruler's house some who said, "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?" This is the most absolute heart-wrenching news that a parent can hear. What parent has not sat 3:00 AM with a sick child begging the Lord, praying over them, "Lord, remove the fever"? What parent has not driven anxiously to the emergency room with a wounded or severely sick child?It's bad enough that she was sick, but now she's died. But knowing if Jesus had not been slowed down, he might've made it to the girl in time probably makes things worse. It seems like Jesus slowed down almost on purpose, almost like he did with Lazarus. He waited two days until Lazarus was surely dead before coming and resurrecting him. The time for emergency medical procedures passed. So why was Jesus wasting his time with this woman, having a conversation with her? Her illness wasn't life-threatening. Couldn't he just come back to her later as a sense of triage so amiss? Well, the answer to that is there's enough power of God to go around for all.My daughters were yesterday arguing, quibbling, quibbling is the word, over which holiday is the best. All three of the youngest landed on Christmas. Christmas is my favorite. Then they got an argument of like, "No, Christmas is my favorite. No, Christmas is my favorite." My response was, "It can be all of our favorites."This is access to the power of God. His power is not diminished by giving His power to one. It's not lessened to give it to another. Therefore, His timing is always contrary to our timing.Verse 36, but overhearing what they said, "Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, 'Do not fear, only believe.'" Jairus at this point must've been reeling. He must've been thinking, "Lord, take my life, not hers. Let me die instead of her." But Jairus had witnessed a miracle. He had witnessed the testimony of this woman. He witnessed how tender and compassionate Jesus was with her, and he had witnessed her faith, and that faith most likely inspired his faith.Jesus tells him, "Do not fear, only believe. Keep on believing." What he's saying is, "Ignore the reality that you're seeing. This isn't ultimate reality. This isn't all there is. What you see is not all there is. Ignore the |reality of death and clinging to Jesus' promise of resurrection."Jairus had believed that Jesus could heal his daughter. That's why he came to Jesus. But a resurrection, could Jesus really resurrect her? Jesus is calling Jairus to an even greater level of faith. Often, we do experience delays in life. It feels like when we ask for something from the Lord and it's just delay, delay, delay, sometimes it's easy to sit back and say, "I don't think the Lord loves me anymore." Jesus here is showing that his love is compatible with delays. His grace doesn't come on our timetable, therefore we're not supposed to impose our timetable on the Lord.For Jesus, there was no more problem to resurrect the girl than to cure the fever. Therefore, in times of delay, we are told to keep trusting. Do not fear, keep believing. We don't know all the facts. God does, therefore we are to trust him.2 Corinthians 4:17 says, "For this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."Teresa of Avila says, "From eternity, the most miserable life in the history of the earth will look like one night in a bad hotel." From God's perspective, 1,000 years is but a day.Verse 37, "And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John the brother of James." Jesus dismisses the crowds and instructs them to stay behind. He takes his three most important disciples. I'm calling them the big three from now. The big three are Peter, James, and John. He welcomes them in to see the resurrection. These three will be given a foretaste of Jesus' glory at the transfiguration. These three will be welcomed to pray with Jesus and share in his suffering at Gethsemane, so he welcomes them to go with him.Verse 38, "They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly, the families in shock." In Matthew's narrative, it's clear that professional mourners were hired and they were already brought in. In that context, you would hire mourners, wailers, and flute players who arrived. They communicated to the community of what had transpired.Verse 39, "When he had entered, he said to them, 'Why are you making commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.' They laughed at him, but he put them all outside and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was."The professional mourners, they know death. They're experts in death, therefore they laughed. "What are you talking about? Jesus, we know that she is dead." They laugh at Christ with derision. Jesus is using this metaphor of sleep to tell them that he is about to resurrect her. He is about to wake her up, so to speak. She's not dead but sleeping. Jesus is interpreting death from God's viewpoint.The purpose of this declaration is that death will not have the last word for God's people. God's people do not die. Physically, yes. But we, our soul, we continue living. Jesus puts all the scoffers outside and enters the room only with Jairus, his wife, and the three disciples, and the existence of a separate bedroom, for the girl is testimony to Jairus's wealth. Most Palestinian dwellings from this time were poor, one-room affairs.Verse 41, "In taking her by the ha nd, he said to her, "Talitha cumi," which means, 'Little girl, I say to you, arise.'" Jesus never hesitates to contract ritual defilement by touching a leper or touching a dead person. Why? Because he's holy, and his holiness is overpowering. It's more contagious. It's more transmitting than the sickness.He says to her, "Talitha cumi," He speaks to her in Aramaic. This is interesting because Aramaic seems to have been the usual speech in the Jewish home, especially in Galilee. Greek was certainly the literary and cultural language. Hebrew was the religious language. But at home, the heart language was Aramaic. Aramaic was Jesus' heart language.The command "ephphatha" given to the mute man or when Christ was on the cross, he says, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which is Aramaic, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He addresses God as Abba, father.The risen Lord spoke to Mary in her own language, in Aramaic, and that she turned and spoke to him in Aramaic, "raboni" , which means teacher. Jesus here speaks to this little girl in her heart language. "Talitha cumi." Little girl, wake up. Little girl, arise."Verse 42, "And immediately the girl got up and began walking, for she was 12 years of age, and they were immediately overcome with amazement. He strictly charged that no one should know this and told them to give her something to eat."Everyone was overcome with amazement. It was one thing for Jesus to calm the storm, it was something else for Jesus to cast out a legion of demons from the poor man in the text last week, but it's something altogether different for Jesus to resurrect this little girl. And he does so just by speaking. He's demonstrating that he is Lord of all, even death itself.I love this little detail at the end that he tells them, "Hey, feed her something," which for me shows... This is eyewitness account. Why in the world would you include that little detail that adds nothing to the progression of the narrative? Because it happened. Because Jesus doesn't even overlook, despite the commotion or practical need for food.That brings us to point three, eternal misery or eternal joy. Jesus here is more than a prophet. He's more than even Moses or Elijah. He's Lord of all creation. He speaks. He commands the winds and the seas. They all obey him. He is Lord even over Satan and his whole dominion. And now the people of Israel see that Jesus is Lord even over death. He is the one who has come to reverse, overturn the curse, undo the effects of the fall of Adam upon the human race.Jesus' mission wasn't just to come feed people, wasn't just to come teach people, wasn't just to come heal people. No. Jesus has come to deal with the root of all human suffering. He's doing things that the crowd does not understand. They're blinded by their immediate needs. They only see what Jesus can do for them.Jairus and the woman here are the exception. They approach Jesus not just with demands, but with faith, humble faith. They seek healing, but they also exercise faith in God. Jairus seeks help from Jesus. And when help does not come how he wants it to, he keeps trusting, he keeps believing. They come to him with faith that he is who he said he was.Even if the woman had not been healed, and even if Jairus' daughter had not been raised, they still would have believed that Jesus was sent by God and that God's will had been done even if the outcome was not what they wanted. This is the difference between faith and unbelief. Faith accepts the outcome regardless. Regardless of what happens, thy will be done, Lord.The great Bible teacher, G. Campbell Morgan, lost his firstborn daughter. Then 40 years later, preaching on the story of Jairus, he writes this: "I can hardly speak of this matter without becoming personal and reminiscent, remembering a time 40 years ago when my own first lassie lay at the point of death dying. I called for him then, and he came, and surely said to our troubled hearts, 'Fear not. Believe only.' He did not say she shall be made whole. She was not made whole on the earthly plane. She passed away into the life beyond."He did say to her, "Talitha cumi," little lamb, arise.' But in her case, that did not mean stay on the earth level. It meant that he needed her, and he took her to be with himself. She has been with him for all those years as we measure time here, and I've missed her every day. But his word, believe only, has been the strength of the passing years."Like Jairus and the woman who comes to Christ, we must also come to Christ in faith, faith that God is good and that God is loving, faith that he is the one whom God sent, Christ is. And he answers all of our prayers not necessarily according to our desires, and not necessarily according to our timing, but according to God's perfect and holy will.At times we may hear the glorious words, "The child is not dead," or we may hear the tragic words, "The child has died." But no matter what, faith accepts the will of God. Why? Because true saving, living faith understands that when Jesus raised Jairus' daughter from the dead, he's pointing ahead to the end of the age when Jesus himself will heal all of our diseases and raise all of God's people from the dead.What happened would soon become common knowledge, but Jesus strictly charges them not to tell anyone. He is managing the messianic expectations of the crowds. There was much yet for Christ to do, and we see that the raucous crowd was already interfering in some ways.The word here when Jesus says arise is the same word that Christ uses talk about his own death, that Jesus was buried, that Jesus was dead, and he did rise from the dead. This right here is one of the greatest truths about Christianity, that we will all die. And if the Lord should tarry, after that comes the judgment. And we need someone to raise us from the dead, and we need someone to bring us through the judgment that we deserve.This little girl, she died twice, as did Lazarus. Then what? Then comes the judgment. Then we stand before God. God at that moment is going to tell us either you go into eternal joy, eternal bliss, or into eternal punishment. This is Matthew 25:46: "And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." I wonder when's the last time you meditated on eternity. It just does not end. It's eternity. It's not a hundred years. It's not a thousand. It's not 10,000. It just does not end. It's either eternal life or eternal punishment.2 Thessalonians 1:5-10, "This is the evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are also suffering, since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us. When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed."Jesus Christ came because he understands that there is eternal suffering in the future of those who would turn from him. That's what every single one of us deserves. But Jesus came in order to provide salvation. He endured infinite misery to save us from eternal misery. Jesus doesn't suffer for all eternity because he is fully God with infinite glory and power. Jesus overcame eternal suffering by overpowering it with his infinite glory.Jesus, when the woman touched him, perceived that power had gone out from him. Well, that was a foretaste. It's a foreshadowing of what happened on the cross. The reason why this woman became clean and Jesus did not become unclean wasn't because the uncleanness disappeared in thin air. No, he took her uncleanness, and he took it upon himself to the cross. He bled like the woman. He came to become unclean in our place. He had to go into death like the girl so that she could be raised to life. He lost the father's hand on the cross. “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He lost the father's hand in order to be able to extend it to us.2 Corinthians 13:4, "For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God." With his humanity, Jesus endured the crucifixion. With his divinity, he endured eternal sufferings, our eternal sufferings, the eternal sufferings that we deserve."Jonathan Edwards in his 1729 sermon, The Sacrifice of Christ Acceptable, says this: "Though Christ's sufferings were but temporal, that is not eternal, yet they were equivalent to our eternal sufferings by reason of the infinite dignity of his person. Though it was not infinite suffering, yet it was equivalent to infinite suffering, for it was infinite expense. His blood which he spilled, his life, which he laid down was an infinite price because it was the blood of God, as it is expressly called."Acts 20:28, "The Church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. His life was the life of that person that was the eternal Son of God, though it was the life of the human nature. Now upon this account, the priced offered was equivalent to the demerit of the sins of all mankind, and his suffering's equivalent to the eternal sufferings of the whole world."Christ suffered infinite suffering to save you, to save me from eternal suffering. How do we get that salvation? How do we get eternal life? How do we get our sins forgiven, the condemnation removed? All you have to do is reach out to Christ in faith. In faith, reach out, and touch him. Have that encounter. Believe that as you reach your hand is there, his hand is there grasp onto yours, and then his coursing healing power goes through your being.Faith takes hold of the power of God, and faith takes hold of His transforming power. This is what saves us. It's faith in Christ. He says, "Don't be afraid, just believe." There is a purifying power in the blood of the lamb of God. No matter what we've done, no matter the uncleanness of our sin, the uncleanness of our lawbreaking, all you have to do is ask for the Lord to purify you, and He will, and He does. All you need is need. All you need is recognition of your need.How much faith do you have to have in Jesus? Just enough to come, just enough to cry out to Christ, just enough to say, "Lord Jesus, have pity on me." The Lord is so gracious. He doesn't refuse anyone that comes to him and says, "Lord, help me."Even if your faith isn't perfect, even if you're brand new to the faith... There's a guy in the scripture that says, "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief." Even that is enough. Even that is enough to come and to be safe. So, come to Christ wherever you are, doubts and all, and he will begin the process of healing.At this point, I'm going to welcome a brother from the congregation, Brother Robert. Round of applause as he comes up. He's going to testify to the incredible work of God in his life and in his family's life, and just a testimony that God's power is real and he's still working amongst us today. Thank you, Robert.Robert:Morning, everyone. I'm here to share a testimony on behalf of my wife Carissa, my daughter Caitlin, and my son Thomas. For those who don't know me, my name is Robert. When I'm not here playing keyboard, I'm actually working in a biotech company. In fact, I have medical training as a surgeon. This is relevant because two years ago, the weekend of Thanksgiving, my daughter became very sick.It started the weekend of Thanksgiving. She had a party with her friends on the Friday. Saturday, she was a little tired. We thought she was recovering from the party. And on Sunday morning, she refused to get out of bed. While that's normal for a lot of teenagers, it wasn't normal for her. She was highly irritable. She just wanted to curl up and sleep. We felt concerned enough that we manhandled her into the car, took her to the emergency room. And amongst other things, they put a needle into her spinal cord, take some fluid, and it was bad news. They found white blood cells in her cerebral spinal fluid, and these cells presumably were there because of an infection that was affecting her brain.Her ventral diagnosis was something called viral encephalitis. This is where a random virus just affects your brain. It's random enough that it could be one of myriad viruses, and oftentimes you don't even detect which one. The most common viruses that cause this are the ones that cause mouth ulcers and chickenpox. But even then, it's incredibly uncommon. Happens to about one in a million people.I had the experience of actually treating a patient early in my career who suffered from this. He was a 20-something-year-old PhD student. Came into the ER because he had a fever that was so high it was affecting his brain, something called malignant hypothermia. He was rushed to the ICU. The next thing I heard, two days later, he was dead. That was going through my head the entire time Caitlin was diagnosed.Viral encephalitis has a mortality rate of about 30%. Of those people who don't make it, these patients who present late like Caitlin, because she was already quite symptomatic, that statistic gets even worse. The patients who actually do push through, the vast majority have lasting serious neurological issues. All these things were running through my mind as we were going through this.She was rushed to the ICU, had a huge number of tubes and leads hooked up to her. She was comatose. She was looking a lot less like Caitlin, and her body and face were puffing up due to inflammation and fluid retention. I was also thinking, "Did I doom her because we brought her in too late from the hospital?"At some level, I always thought through my training that I could deal with any medical situation with professionalism and dispassion. I now know I'm not able to do this. I was a broken man, devastated that my daughter was being stolen from me right in front of me and I was powerless to do anything about it.Pastors Jan and Shane came quickly when we called them. I'm sure Pastor Jan has his own story about what happened. I distinctly remember them walking into the ICU with great gentleness, knowing how grave the situation was. They also told us they usually ask for God's will to be done, but this time their sense was to pray for God's miraculous healing. I don't remember everything that we prayed about, but I do remember a distinct feeling that God was in the room and in control regardless of the outcome.A couple of hours after they left, Caitlin started discharging fluid like crazy. It was so sudden and so intense, the doctors worried about additional medical complications that could cause fluid imbalance. But her face started returning back to normal, and she showed the smallest hints of improvement, such as moaning a little when they were drawing blood.There was one particular moment when we were changing her IV fluids, and she muttered something, and I shouted at her, "Caitlin, hi." Miraculously, she pried her eyes open and said back, "Hi." That was the sweetest greeting I've ever heard.She spent four days in the ICU, another four days in the hospital ward. She missed over three weeks of school, but managed to return and still somehow managed a 4.0 GPA. She's now attending college. She's coming home next Tuesday for Thanksgiving. That will be celebrating two years since we almost lost her.I don't know how much of this experience was medical versus spiritual, but I do know that every fiber of my being was that Pastors Jan and Shane were vessels of a true miracle that happened that day. In addition, there was an absolute army of people praying for her, our community group, many of you here, were praying for her. Friends, and family, and neighbors across the US, Asia, and Australia. Literally hundreds of people covering her in prayer 24 hours a day. Prayer is powerful. Her neurologist and infectious disease specialists said that her rapid and complete recovery were incompatible with her disease, and I call that a miracle.One more thing. Caitlin liked to spend time in her room with the door just slightly ajar. When she was in the hospital, her door was open all the way, which was because we dragged her out of bed and got her to hospital. I was forced to close that door, since the open door reminded me that she was terribly sick and that she may not be able to come back home. Maybe that's similar to when Mary Magdalene saw the empty tomb, that someone took Jesus' body, which was an additional insult beyond his crucifixion. Right now, her room is wide open, and that's okay not necessarily because she returned to health. Her open door should symbolize God working for our good regardless of outcome.Her open room door is also a reminder that as great as Caitlin's miracle was, and even greater miracle is the empty tomb, Caitlin's salvation is just a hint of Jesus' redeeming power dying for all our sins and the pain, sickness, and suffering which are consequences of that sin. And he rose again that we could have ultimate hope for our own deliverance.The lesson in this storm is not just to appreciate God's ability to miraculously heal. The lesson is that whatever happened, it brought our family and this army of prayer warriors back to the heart of worship, and it helped us focus on God's sovereignty, provision, and redeeming power. Thanks for listening.

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 that You are God overall, and even over those who don't yet confess Jesus Christ as Lord, You are Lord over them as well. Lord, we thank You for regulating revelation of Your holy truth. By Your Spirit, you're the one that illumines the truth into our hearts, and we pray for more revelation in our church. We pray for more revelation given to us, not just so we can store it, or hold it, or keep it unto ourselves, but so that we can share it with others. As we get light, as we get knowledge and discernment and wisdom, I pray that You give us the unction of the Holy Spirit, the power of the Spirit to then share it with others.As we come to know who You are, let us be a people that wants to testify to the greatness of Your holy name. Lord, You are so holy, even Your name is holy, and we pray that Your name will be hollowed in our church, in our hearts, and our lives, and we pray that Your name will be hollowed and considered holy and revered in the city. Lord, there are many who don't yet follow You, don't yet even believe in You, and we pray for a revival. We pray for an awakening. We do believe that Your kingdom is unstoppable.You promised that there was nothing that is going to remain hidden, You will reveal all truth, and we pray, Lord, use us in the process of this harvest of drawn many to Yourself. Give us a zeal, a burning zeal in our hearts to do everything we possibly can to see people whom we love, come to faith, to receive eternal life, to receive the power of the Holy Spirit, and to receive forgiveness of sins and a relationship with You. Lord, we pray that You instill a hope in us, a hope that is unshakeable so people around us do realize there's something different about these people, they do believe, and they build their life on this hope. And we pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.We're continuing our sermon series to do with the incredible gospel of Mark. We've called it Kingdom Come, the Gospel of Mark and the Secret of God's Kingdom, and the title today is the Unstoppable Kingdom. Question, "What's one thing that grows the more you share it? The more you give it to others, the more you test it, the more you share, what is that one thing that grows?," and I would submit to you, it's your faith. The more you share your faith, the deeper your faith gets.The more you testify to the truth of God, the deeper your understanding of that truth is. Jesus Christ told us, "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men. I'll make you compel people to come into the kingdom. I'm saving you as an instrument of salvation for others." That's part of our purpose.1 Peter 3:15 says, "But in your hearts honor Christ, the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect." We should be such hope-filled people, that people around us are like mesmerized by this hope that we have no matter what the circumstances. No matter what the situation in the world, we have an unshakable hope. Why are you a follower of Jesus Christ? Well, it's because the Lord sent someone to you at some point to sow the seeds of God's word into your heart, and the fact that you're following Jesus today is evidence that the seed was planted into fertile soil.The seed goes deep and it germinates, and a root system goes deep into your heart, and that seed grows as it is nourished by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit bears fruit through us, and the fruit that the Holy Spirit bears has seeds, and that's the seed of God's word, and we are then to take those seeds and we are to sow those seeds into the heart soils of other people. Then, by the power of God, they too are saved. They're saved from God's judgment. They're saved for God's kingdom and His mission, and the intention is clear from these parables that the Lord is giving us today. We are not only to receive knowledge, but do everything we can to impart that knowledge to others, and this is how the kingdom of God grows in your life and in the world.Today, we're in Mark 4:21-34. Would you look at the text with me? "And He said to them, 'Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand? For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.'""And He said to them, 'Pay attention to what you hear, with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you. For to the one who has more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.' And He said, 'The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows. He knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear, but when the grain is ripe at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.'""And He said, 'With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which when sown on the ground is the smallest of the seeds on the earth, yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.' With many such parables He spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it. He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to His own disciples, He explained everything." This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word.May He write these truths on our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. First, love the light, hunger for truth, and share the gains, second, sow the seed, trust God for growth, harvest is coming, and third, there's room for all in the kingdom of God. First, love the light, hunger for truth, and share the gains. So Jesus, in the previous text, has interpreted the parable of the sower, and now, He gives us a few more parables, of the lamp, of the hidden in the manifest of having, and not having, and that the kingdom grows like seed.These parables, with their emphasis on revelation and the necessity of paying attention, extends the theme of the word and its hearers. Verse 21, "And He said to them, 'Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand?'" Jesus uses very similar phrasing in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5:14, Jesus said, "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.""In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." Now, the text in Matthew 5 is very clear. Don't hide your light. Be good witnesses to Jesus Christ, and this world do good works so people see the good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. It's tempting when you come across a text like ours to say, "Oh, there's a similar phrase that's used in a different text like Matthew 5," and just assume that Jesus means the same thing because He used the same phrase.Jesus, just like us, often uses the same expressions and different context to communicate different truths. So just because Jesus is using the same image, or the same expression, or the same phraseology doesn't automatically mean He's saying the same thing. We have to pay attention to the context. In Matthew 5:15, Jesus is urging us to do something. You shine your light to the world.Here, Jesus is promising us something wonderful. He's not just calling us to action, but He's giving us a promise, and the promise is about the destiny of the kingdom of God. The parable is teaching us that the future for the kingdom of God is bright, and I just want to point out a couple of things from the text. In our translation, the English standard, it just says a light. There's no definite article.The definite article is the. In the original Greek, there is a definite article before the word, lamp, so it's the lamp. A particular lamp is in view, and where the text says that the lamp is brought in, the Greek actually says, "Does the lamp come in?" It isn't brought in, it comes in all on its own. There's a personal agency ascribed to the lamp. Meaning, the lamp is a person.The lamp comes in. The lamp here is the Lord Jesus Christ, and this is what Jesus taught us about His identity in John 8:12. "Again, Jesus spoke to them saying, 'I, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.'" So probably, the best way to read verse 21 in our text is that the lamp is the revelation of God and His kingdom as has come in the person, the words, the works of Jesus Christ.It's a message, a revelation summarized in the message of the gospel. If the lamp is here and the gospel of the kingdom is here, Jesus is saying, "What's the intent?" It's here in order to be exposed. It's here in order to shine. This is what He's telling His disciples.He says, "Be patient. When it looks like the darkness in the world is oppressive, when it looks like there's so much darkness, that no light can penetrate that darkness, be patient. Continue to believe." Even with Christ, many were opposing Him. There was an antagonism that was growing amongst the Scribes and the Pharisees, and partially because they didn't want the light of God in their life.This is a lot of people, they want God's love, but they don't want God's light, but God is Love and He is Light, and you can't have one part of Him without all of Him. Many people love John 3:16, a verse that many have memorized even since Sunday school, but in the context about God loving the world, He does say like the world has rejected this love because they don't want the light, they want to continue living in darkness. Look at John 3:16-21, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.""And this is the judgment, the light has come into the world and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed, but whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God." He's saying the light has come and the light has come in the form of Jesus Christ, and people reject Him because people loved darkness. This is what the difference between a believer and non-believer. A believer has a brand new heart.You're regenerated. When you repent of your sin, you're given this brand new heart that longs for God's light. You want to love the light. You love standing in the light, living in the light. You love being a child of the Light, and you love God's word because God's word illuminates more of your life. It shows you more of the ways that you are to walk in and the ways that you are not to walk in light that shows the way to live.Psalm 119:105 says, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." So even in the short-term, God intends those outside even if He does intend that they misunderstand this word. It's not going to be hidden forever. The truth is here, and even if people suppress that truth, there will come a point where the suppression is no longer even possible. Mark 4:22, Jesus continues, says, "For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light."He did not come to have His light hidden away, and the whole point of His coming in this veiled form, often rejected form, was so that the light might shine, undim to the ends of the earth. He came in weakness and suffering. He came as a seed to be buried in the ground. Look at Isaiah 53, one of the most powerful, prophetic passages about the person of Christ. "Who has believed what He has heard from us and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?""For He grew up before Him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by man, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their faces. He was despised and we esteemed Him not." Just as in the past, nothing was hidden except in order to become manifest, so Jesus is saying this is true.Even now, in the present, all the hiddenness of the current age will ultimately serve the purpose of revelation. This is exactly what happened with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Jesus, who is God, the Son of God, King of kings, comes and He proclaims the word of the kingdom. "The kingdom is here. Repent and believe. Everyone who repents and believes is welcome."But the opponents of Jesus, they misunderstood His word, and they rejected it. The word didn't penetrate their hearts, it didn't transform them, but this rejection of the word led to Jesus' death, and as a result from the divine perspective, it led to ultimate revelation, more revelation. He was killed by those who refuse to believe His word, refuse to see His identity, but in this divinely will death, which is caused by their spiritual blindness, God ushers in a brand new age of revelation. After Good Friday and Easter Sunday, Jesus now is proclaimed as the Messiah, as the Son of God, and after the Holy Spirit falls on Pentecost. Now, when the message of the gospel was proclaimed, the Holy Spirit takes that message and transforms people.He saves people. The obscurity of the word ultimately serves to lead to greater revelation. The lamp of God's word has come into the room and is casting its light into every crevice for everyone who would welcome the light into their heart. 1 John 2:8-11, "At the same time, it is a new commandment that I'm writing to you, which is true in Him and in you because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him, there is no cause for stumbling, but whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes." At the same time, we look around the world and we say, "Well, if the light has come and the light is revealing the kingdom of God, why aren't more people Christians? Why aren't more people following the word of God?," and Jesus here says, "There will come a time when everything is revealed, and at that point, it will be too late." The kingdom will not remain hidden forever. It is seemingly hidden now, in that its full power is not evident, it's concealed in some way, but there will be a day when the kingdom is completely revealed because the light of function is to expose the darkness.The kingdom of God, the kingdom of Jesus Christ cannot stay hidden. Nothing can obscure it. No shadow can engulf it or eclipse it. Why are we believers? Because God shown His light into our heart so that the knowledge of the glory of Jesus Christ is understood.The light of the gospel is chasing away the shadows of unbelief, and the people who walked in darkness are beginning to see the light. And what's our job? Our job is to believe this promise, that the kingdom is unstoppable, that the gospel light will continue to shine and God will draw the elect, will draw His children to Himself. And what's our job in the process? We are to love the truth, hunger for the truth, and impart the truth for others. The light isn't just given to us so we enjoy our lives here on earth until we go to heaven.No. We have work to do to testify to Jesus Christ, that He alone is the Doctor of our souls, that He alone is the Way to salvation. There's no other name by which anyone will be saved. That day, the judgment day, or when Christ returns will reveal that to everybody, and for most people, will be too late then. I understand in a place like Boston, it's easy to lose your hope.You look around, you're like, "We are outnumbered. Big league, we are outnumbered. We are on the losing side," and that is a lie of the enemy. As soon as you begin to believe that lie, we lose the power. We are to believe that Jesus' kingdom is growing, will continue to grow, and sometimes it feels like our light just isn't enough.It feels like you're in Fenway Park, all the lights are out, you're by yourself, and you want to light up the night just a little bit. You take out your phone with a little flashlight, and you're like, "Yeah, the light of Jesus," and it looks pathetic, puny, flickering even. It seems like the darkness is absolute impenetrable. You say, "What can my little light do?," and then you realize, "It's not my light. It's not my light, it's not my lamp."The light is Jesus Christ Himself. The light is God. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. Do you believe this? Do you believe that there is no one beyond the reach of Jesus Christ? Do you believe that there is no heart so hard, that grace cannot soften it and change it forever?The light will pierce the darkness. We just need to proclaim that Jesus is the Light. He is the only Way of salvation. I'm confident of that because of the promise here, that the light came not to be hidden, it came to blaze forth and to give light to the world, and nothing can stop Jesus Christ. Nothing can stop the King.Last week, I shared that I had a toothache, and thank you for all your condolences. It was supposed to be solved on Tuesday. I woke up the happiest person to get a root canal ever. I even got a shirt, buttoned. I was like, "I'm ready to go."Did my hair. I'm like, "I'm ready to go to the endodontist." I show up, and they say, "Thank you for coming for your consultation." I was like, "What? No."So my dental appointment is on Tuesday. Tuesday is coming. Praise be to God. And so I was at a staff meeting. I came into the staff meeting on Thursday. We were praying for one another, and I shared about my toothpaste, and Raquel was praying for me, and Raquel starts praying, and it's just powerful, and then she's like, "Lord, you see the decay in Pastor Jan's tooth, just decay.""Decay. He's decaying. He's fallen apart. Decay, decay, decay." And that's all I heard.I'm like, "I am ... Yup." I said, "Amen." We are all decaying. I just want to just share that tremendous news. We are all mortal.We are all going to die. Time will be up for each one of us. The Lord knows when that is, but I'm telling you, dear soul, dear eternal soul, that moment will come, and you will stand before Jesus Christ, and you will stand before Him as forgiven, welcome into the presence of God, or He will stand before you like a judge. It's one or the other. This is what Jesus is saying, that the kingdom is inevitable.This is true. This is the greatest truth that there is. This is the truth underneath every single truth, that Jesus Christ is King, and the only way that we can be forgiven of our law-breaking, of our insubordination, of our rebellion against the King, is to fall on our knees and say, "Lord Jesus, please forgive me of all my sins. Lord Jesus, I repent," and Jesus Christ says, "The love of God will be poured into your heart. The light of God will be poured into your mind, and you will be transformed."This has to be real for every believer. When we meet friends who are not Christians, who are not followers of Christ, you need to believe that they are on their way to hell, eternal damnation apart from Jesus Christ, and this is why we proclaim the gospel, this is why we do what we do. This is the truth, and our job is to sow the seed of the gospel, and not to be afraid of it, not to be afraid of speaking the truth. There are proponents of other religions who are 10 times, 100 times more courageous than most Christians today. I watched the UFC.A lot of Muslim fighters are in there, and they're all, "Inshallah," and they're just saying, "Praise be to God. If God wills ..." They're just throwing in God in every ... I'm like, "Imagine if believers did that, just on a daily basis, speaking the name of Christ every opportunity that we get, no matter what cost." Why? Because that's how important it is.In Mark 4:23, He says, "If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear." He's saying that ears to hear this message are a gift from God. Repentance is a gift from God. Faith is a gift from God, but using the ears that God has given us, that's our responsibility. We are to say, "Lord, tune our ears to hear Your voice and give us grace to hear."In verse 24, "And He said to them, 'Pay attention to what you hear, with the measure you use, it will be measured to you and still more will be added to you." The wake-up call is repeated and reinforced, pay attention to what you hear. He's not saying that it's just hearing per se, you hear. No. It's hearing to understand.It's hearing with the commitment to obey no matter what it says. Also, he says, "See what you hear." That's the original. It's the sense of hearing doubled by the sense of sight, suggesting we're going to use all of our faculties to listen to the word of God, and significant in the wording, the call is to pay attention not just to how we hear, but to what we listen to. Be careful in the voices you'll allow into your life and to your heart in a world that is still, in some sense, Satan's house and his dominion.Not all voices who claim to be speaking on behalf of God really are. Many of the voices are deceitful, perhaps even satanic in claiming to be God's word. Later on in Mark 13, Jesus says that, "Satan does everything he can to lead astray if possible, even the elect." So we, as believers need to be careful, careful of the voices we allow. Listening sermons is important.You should listen to sermons, but I want you versed in the scriptures more than you are in sermons so that you can discern, "Is this truly the word of God or not?" On the other hand, when we listen to God's word with the intent to obey, God gives us more revelation, and as He does, He continues to draw us to the calling that He has for us to go and preach the gospel, to receive, and then also share the gains that we have. Romans 10:14, "How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed, and how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? How are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, 'How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news?,' but they have not all believed the gospel, for Isaiah says, 'Lord, who has believed what He has heard from us?'""So faith comes from hearing and hearing from the word of Christ." In Ephesians 1:13, "In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of His glory." He says, "With the measure you use, it will be measured to you and still more will be added to you." Mark here takes a phrase that was known in ancient literature, a phrase that had to do with giving. If you give to others, whatever you give will return to you, but here, he applies it to epistemology, knowledge of God, in particular.What He's saying is if you receive insight from the Lord, if you receive it with a welcome heart and a pure heart, you will get more insight, and the measure of our engagement with the word, the way we respond, our desire to grasp its message and digest its truth, no matter how hard to chew, will determine the measure of blessing we enjoy from it. Do you want more blessing? Of course we do. He says, "Pay closer attention." The word teaches clearly that if you come close to God, He will come close to you.He will draw near to you. If you take a tiny step toward God, God will more than match the movement. In verse 25, He says, "For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away." Now, Proverbs 13:4 says, "The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied." Diligence.Are you diligent about your faith? The Christians that I know, that I've seen them grow spiritually by leaps and bounds, and the ones that have grown in spiritual prosperity are those who are diligent, diligent in their study of scripture on a daily basis, diligent over private devotions and private prayer, diligent over attending worship services and community groups, in the same way that exercise and use of muscles are strengthened with exercise so that the soul is strengthened when we exercise the means of grace that God has given us, and we are to expend all energy to listen to the word and the promises that we will be proportionally rewarded. Those who heed the message get more understanding of the message, get more revelation, get more blessing. Those who do not heed the message end up with nothing, and the idea of the rich getting richer applies to truth, that God gives wisdom to the wise, and He gives grace to those who long for insight and knowledge. For example, Daniel 2:19-23, "Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night.""Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven. Daniel answered and said, 'Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, to whom belong wisdom and might. He changes times and seasons. He removes kings and sets up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.""He reveals deep and hidden things. He knows what is in the darkness and the light dwells with him. To You, O God, of my fathers that give thanks and praise, for You have given me wisdom and might and have now made known to me what we asked of you, for You have made known to us the kings matter." So we are to pay careful attention to how we listen, to what we listen in terms of the word of God, and let the measure of your response to the word be full, and complete, and heartfelt, and diligent, and real, and those who give themselves to the word like this, they gain much. What do you gain when you pay attention to the word?You gain eternal life. You gain a relationship with God. You gain energy and strength to persevere despite trials. You gain comforts that the world cannot even imagine and you gain a hope that no tragedy can touch, and you gain heaven itself. But to those who hear the word and do not respond like this, but respond with tepid indifference, "Oh, yeah, God," "Oh, yeah, God's word," "Oh, yeah, Christ dying on the cross, bleeding, crucifixion," "Oh, yeah, Jan, I've heard that before," well, Jesus says those who listen like that, even what they have will be taken away.So the word of God when proclaimed, no matter how familiar you are with the word, you can't ignore it. What a joy and peace we have in the word. In particular, watch for those texts in holy scripture where you are tempted to plug your ears with your fingers. "No, that's not for me. Yeah, they say that that's God's word, but that's not for me."Pay close attention to those texts. Some of you have been walking with Christ for years, and your relationship with the Lord has just grown cold. There's no obvious rebellion in your life, but it just feels like your faith is like stale bread, left out too long, dry, crusty, and moldy. The word used to come to you like fresh water from a rock in the desert, like manna from heaven, and now you just sit in services or you're reading scripture, and there's just nothing. There's no life, there's no interest.There's just boredom. At these moments, the Lord is speaking to you and say, "Pay attention. Pay attention to what you hear, how you hear because the stakes are that high," and Jesus today invites you to turn away from your lukewarmness and draw near to Him, and ask the, "Lord, send me this hunger. Send me a thirst for Your presence and for Your word, and give me this attentiveness, this desire to hear it no matter what and to obey," and the Lord will meet you there. Second, sow the seed, trust God for growth, and harvest is coming.Mark 4:26-27, "And He said, 'The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows, he knows not how." The emphasis in this parable is that God grows His kingdom, that God is the One that gives the growth. The farmer, all he does is plant the seed, and then how it grows eludes his comprehension. It's beyond his control.He can't control how it grows. All he does is cast the seed and weight, and the seed germinates and develops by itself even while he is sleeping. He has no idea how it grows, and the Lord here is saying, "I give the growth." This is from 1 Corinthians. Paul says, "I planted, Apollos watered it, but God gave the growth."Verse 28, "The Earth produces by itself, first, the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear, and when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle because the harvest has come." Our job is to preach the word. Our job is to sow the seed of God's word. What God does with His word is His business. It's only for us to make sure we're faithful in our sowing.This is our responsibility, but God is the One that gives the growth. The soil can't produce life apart from the seed, but why? Because humans are dead in sin. Life must come from the outside, and it comes from the word of God. He says, "First, the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear."The children of God are not born in perfect faith or perfect hope, or perfect knowledge or experience, but the moment you become a child of God, even the weakest child of God is a true child of God, and the true child of God is expected by God to grow. If God began the process of salvation, He's promised He's going to complete it, and the process of salvation includes maturity and growth. Philippians 1:6, "And I'm sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." He's the one that starts the work, and He will bring it to completion. What's our job?We are to grow ... In 1 Peter 3:18 says, "But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him, be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. This is how the reign of God grows in your life.You grow in grace, grow in grace by the means of grace, studying scripture, and praying, and worshiping the Lord. We receive grace when we recognize that we've sinned. "Lord, give me more grace and power me with that grace," and that's how maturity, that's how growth come. The real cause of agent of the words fruition isn't the farmer, it's the seed. It's God Himself.He says, "Keep sowing, keep sowing, keep sowing until the day of harvest comes." The day of harvest in scripture from Joel, from Revelation we see, the day of harvest is actually an image of judgment. A time when evil is judged and righteousness is vindicated. For example, Revelation 14:15, "And another angel came out of the temple calling with a loud voice to him who sat on the cloud, 'Out in your sickle and reap for the hour to reap has come for the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.'" The harvest is, in the Lord's parable, is a symbol of the end of the age, the last judgment, the consummation of history, and we have the same text in Joel 3:13, "Put in the stickle for the harvest is ripe.""Go in, tread, for the winepress is full. The vats overflow, for their evil is great." Jesus here is showing us a picture of the whole period of world history from the first coming of Christ to the second coming of Christ, from His first advent to the next, and Jesus is saying that, "Kingdom is growing. The kingdom is growing. The kingdom is growing.Sow the seed, the kingdom is growing, but a day will come when finally, it's time for reaping and the harvest." Our job is to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom. Were to sow the seed of the word of God. Our task is not to attempt to manipulate the seed, or force growth, or change the seed somehow. No, Jesus wants us to have complete confidence, that there's life in the seed itself, the word of God is living inactive, and the word of God is going to accomplish the work that God has for it.We are to trust in it, hope in it, and recognize that the kingdom of God is unstoppable, the kingdom of God is inevitable, and God is going to save all of the elect. Galatians 6:9, "Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season, we will reap if we do not give up." One of the reasons why this church even exists is because we believe this. We've believed this from the very beginning when we establish the church. We said, "What kind of church do we ..."We want to be a church that's faithful of God's word, and we want to do God's work God's way. Sometimes it does feel like the soil here isn't really soil, but it's kind of like concrete, and I remember a while back, I was walking my daughters to school, and I saw the pavement of a sidewalk with a little sprout growing. I was like, "Oh, that's cute," and I just walked by, and then a few weeks later, I'm walking ... I look at it, I'm like, "I can't believe it." It was a tomato plant, a tomato plant just out of the sidewalk with a little tomato, and I should have plucked it.I should have plucked it. I should have had it. I didn't plant it, though, and it was just an image of like, "No matter what, God's seeds can break through even the hardness of payment." Can God save people in Boston, Massachusetts? Of course He can, and He does, and we see it at this church, and we see it in the other gospel proclaiming ministries we support.The point of, and this is what Jesus closed it with, there's room for all in the kingdom of God. Mark 4:30, and He said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? How do we understand the kingdom of God?" Here, He's quoting from Isaiah, "To whom will we liken God or what likeness compare with Him?" Jesus is saying that the kingdom is a kingdom that's going to grow.It starts and it looks like a tiny, little seed, as tiny even as a mustard seed, but it's going to grow because God promised the. Previous parable is a call to patience. The seed's going to grow surely, slowly, but surely. This parable is a call to hope. It's not only going to grow, it's going to grow massively, so we can confidently sow and not grow weary and not grow discouraged, not lose heart.But remember, the promise that God said, "I will build my church and the gates of hell will not overcome it." We are to be content with the growth that God sends us, but we are never complacent. We are thankful for all the people that God saved here in and through this church, and sanctify, but we're not complacent. We do believe that God wants this church to grow. He wants the kingdom of God to grow.We are a kingdom building force, and how do we build the kingdom? By sowing the seed, and the seed can be even as small as a grain of mustard seed. Verse 31, "It's like a grain of mustard seed, which when sown on the ground is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth," and here, Jesus is hyperbolic. He's comparing something very tiny, mustard seed to something great, and that's the growth that comes from the mustard seed, over 700 mustard seeds to a gram, and the height of the bush or the tree can grow to 10 feet. What He's saying is that the kingdom of God grows like this.In the beginnings, there's small, paltry in appearance, but there's tremendous power, divine potency in the word of God. The mustard seed is chosen because of its commonness, and because of its smallness, but it grows into something vast and incredible. What is Jesus here saying? He's saying, "Well, look how the kingdom came into the world initially, and weakness." How did the King of kings, the King of the universe come into this world?He came as a baby, born in a manger, at Bethlehem, without riches, without armies, without attendance, without power. And who are the men that God chose to build His church? Who were the appointed apostles? Just average men. What was the last public act of Jesus' earthly ministry as the King of kings?Well, He was crucified between two criminals, between two thieves, and He was forsaken by His disciples, betrayed by one, denied by another. What was the doctrine that the first apostles, the first builders of the church ... What was the doctrine they preached? They preached Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and to Greeks. It was foolishness, but because of the Holy Spirit, when the Holy Spirit took that message, that we have all sinned, we have all transgressed the commandments of God, Jesus Christ lived a perfect life on our behalf, and then He died on a cross as our substitutionary atonement, and then He rose in the third day, and whoever believes in Christ has all of their sins blotted out, forgiven.It's as if God cast our sins as far from us, says the east is from the west. He chooses to not just forgive, but forget our sins. When that message was proclaimed and the Holy Spirit took and applied to people's hearts, lives were changed. The world was changed, in the same way that the gospel changed people's lives, then He does so today. In all this, the mind of man can only look at Christ, can only look at His disciples and see weakness and feebleness, but we, as believers, we understand that beyond the feebleness, beyond the weakness, is the power of God, a power that can truly save. Mark 4:32, "Yet, when it is sown, it grows up and it becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."Now, this phrase, birds of the air is used in Ezekiel 31 and Daniel 4. It's to represent the multitude of the nations, that the kingdom grows and it's going to grow in vastness, and then people of all nations are going to come and build nests within this tree. Ezekiel 17:23, "On the mountain height of Israel, will I plant it, that it may bear branches and produce fruit and become a noble cedar, and under it will dwell every kind of bird in the shadow of its branches, birds of every sort will nest." Every time this phrase is used in the Old Testament, describing a mighty kingdom, be it Israel or Egypt or Babylon, the kingdoms will gross in vastness, that the other nations will come and seek refuge in this kingdom. What Jesus is saying here is, "My kingdom is like that.""My kingdom, the kingdom of God is like this, though its beginnings are improbable, a small seed, a crucified Messiah, suffering church, preaching, baptizing, and holding holy communion, praying. Its beginnings are improbable, but its destiny is vast, and there's room for all." In the kingdom of God, there's room for every single one of you, there's room for every single one of your families, there's room for everyone in the world that will come and repent, and to build a nest. I like the idea of just building a little nest with your loved ones. In the kingdom of God, He's like, "Make sure you're building this home that you have in the kingdom of God.""Come and find shelter," Jesus is saying, "In the shade of this kingdom." The parable emphasizes the shelter that the kingdom brings. In Psalm 91, "He who dwells in the shelter of the most high will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, 'My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust, for He will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings, you will find refuge. His faithfulness is a shield and a buckler.'"Jesus concludes our text in Mark 4:33. "With many such parables, He spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it. He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately, to His own disciples, He explained everything," as they were able to hear according to their God-given ability to hear. What He's saying is, and He concludes with this, if you want more revelation, you do it by spending more time with Christ, by following Christ, by communing with Him and abiding in Him. Three points to summarize, and then we'll close with prayer, love the light, hunger for truth, and then share the gains.Sow the seed, trust God for growth, harvest is coming, and there's room for all in the kingdom of God. Let us pray. Lord, we thank You for continuing to build Your kingdom in and through us in this city, in a place of stifling darkness, sometimes it seems, but Lord, You are the Light, and You're the Light that shines in the darkness. Lord, as you saved us, we believe that You can save others, and we pray that You use us in the process, even this week, Lord. Give us opportunities to speak of You, speak of the gospel, speak of Your grace.We pray that You open the door for the proclamation of the gospel here. We pray for revival in this city and beyond. We pray for an awakening, and we pray that, Lord, You save many and draw them to yourself and to Your incredible kingdom, and we pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

Audio Transcript:This media has been made available by Mosaic BostonChurch. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston,or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.Heavenly Father, we thank You that You are God overall, and even over those who don't yet confess Jesus Christ as Lord, You are Lord over them as well. Lord, we thank You for regulating revelation of Your holy truth. By Your Spirit, you're the one that illumines the truth into our hearts, and we pray for more revelation in our church. We pray for more revelation given to us, not just so we can store it, or hold it, or keep it unto ourselves, but so that we can share it with others. As we get light, as we get knowledge and discernment and wisdom, I pray that You give us the unction of the Holy Spirit, the power of the Spirit to then share it with others.As we come to know who You are, let us be a people that wants to testify to the greatness of Your holy name. Lord, You are so holy, even Your name is holy, and we pray that Your name will be hollowed in our church, in our hearts, and our lives, and we pray that Your name will be hollowed and considered holy and revered in the city. Lord, there are many who don't yet follow You, don't yet even believe in You, and we pray for a revival. We pray for an awakening. We do believe that Your kingdom is unstoppable.You promised that there was nothing that is going to remain hidden, You will reveal all truth, and we pray, Lord, use us in the process of this harvest of drawn many to Yourself. Give us a zeal, a burning zeal in our hearts to do everything we possibly can to see people whom we love, come to faith, to receive eternal life, to receive the power of the Holy Spirit, and to receive forgiveness of sins and a relationship with You. Lord, we pray that You instill a hope in us, a hope that is unshakeable so people around us do realize there's something different about these people, they do believe, and they build their life on this hope. And we pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.We're continuing our sermon series to do with the incredible gospel of Mark. We've called it Kingdom Come, the Gospel of Mark and the Secret of God's Kingdom, and the title today is the Unstoppable Kingdom. Question, "What's one thing that grows the more you share it? The more you give it to others, the more you test it, the more you share, what is that one thing that grows?," and I would submit to you, it's your faith. The more you share your faith, the deeper your faith gets.The more you testify to the truth of God, the deeper your understanding of that truth is. Jesus Christ told us, "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men. I'll make you compel people to come into the kingdom. I'm saving you as an instrument of salvation for others." That's part of our purpose.1 Peter 3:15 says, "But in your hearts honor Christ, the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect." We should be such hope-filled people, that people around us are like mesmerized by this hope that we have no matter what the circumstances. No matter what the situation in the world, we have an unshakable hope. Why are you a follower of Jesus Christ? Well, it's because the Lord sent someone to you at some point to sow the seeds of God's word into your heart, and the fact that you're following Jesus today is evidence that the seed was planted into fertile soil.The seed goes deep and it germinates, and a root system goes deep into your heart, and that seed grows as it is nourished by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit bears fruit through us, and the fruit that the Holy Spirit bears has seeds, and that's the seed of God's word, and we are then to take those seeds and we are to sow those seeds into the heart soils of other people. Then, by the power of God, they too are saved. They're saved from God's judgment. They're saved for God's kingdom and His mission, and the intention is clear from these parables that the Lord is giving us today. We are not only to receive knowledge, but do everything we can to impart that knowledge to others, and this is how the kingdom of God grows in your life and in the world.Today, we're in Mark 4:21-34. Would you look at the text with me? "And He said to them, 'Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand? For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.'""And He said to them, 'Pay attention to what you hear, with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you. For to the one who has more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.' And He said, 'The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows. He knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear, but when the grain is ripe at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.'""And He said, 'With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which when sown on the ground is the smallest of the seeds on the earth, yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.' With many such parables He spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it. He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to His own disciples, He explained everything." This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word.May He write these truths on our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. First, love the light, hunger for truth, and share the gains, second, sow the seed, trust God for growth, harvest is coming, and third, there's room for all in the kingdom of God. First, love the light, hunger for truth, and share the gains. So Jesus, in the previous text, has interpreted the parable of the sower, and now, He gives us a few more parables, of the lamp, of the hidden in the manifest of having, and not having, and that the kingdom grows like seed.These parables, with their emphasis on revelation and the necessity of paying attention, extends the theme of the word and its hearers. Verse 21, "And He said to them, 'Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand?'" Jesus uses very similar phrasing in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5:14, Jesus said, "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.""In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." Now, the text in Matthew 5 is very clear. Don't hide your light. Be good witnesses to Jesus Christ, and this world do good works so people see the good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. It's tempting when you come across a text like ours to say, "Oh, there's a similar phrase that's used in a different text like Matthew 5," and just assume that Jesus means the same thing because He used the same phrase.Jesus, just like us, often uses the same expressions and different context to communicate different truths. So just because Jesus is using the same image, or the same expression, or the same phraseology doesn't automatically mean He's saying the same thing. We have to pay attention to the context. In Matthew 5:15, Jesus is urging us to do something. You shine your light to the world.Here, Jesus is promising us something wonderful. He's not just calling us to action, but He's giving us a promise, and the promise is about the destiny of the kingdom of God. The parable is teaching us that the future for the kingdom of God is bright, and I just want to point out a couple of things from the text. In our translation, the English standard, it just says a light. There's no definite article.The definite article is the. In the original Greek, there is a definite article before the word, lamp, so it's the lamp. A particular lamp is in view, and where the text says that the lamp is brought in, the Greek actually says, "Does the lamp come in?" It isn't brought in, it comes in all on its own. There's a personal agency ascribed to the lamp. Meaning, the lamp is a person.The lamp comes in. The lamp here is the Lord Jesus Christ, and this is what Jesus taught us about His identity in John 8:12. "Again, Jesus spoke to them saying, 'I, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.'" So probably, the best way to read verse 21 in our text is that the lamp is the revelation of God and His kingdom as has come in the person, the words, the works of Jesus Christ.It's a message, a revelation summarized in the message of the gospel. If the lamp is here and the gospel of the kingdom is here, Jesus is saying, "What's the intent?" It's here in order to be exposed. It's here in order to shine. This is what He's telling His disciples.He says, "Be patient. When it looks like the darkness in the world is oppressive, when it looks like there's so much darkness, that no light can penetrate that darkness, be patient. Continue to believe." Even with Christ, many were opposing Him. There was an antagonism that was growing amongst the Scribes and the Pharisees, and partially because they didn't want the light of God in their life.This is a lot of people, they want God's love, but they don't want God's light, but God is Love and He is Light, and you can't have one part of Him without all of Him. Many people love John 3:16, a verse that many have memorized even since Sunday school, but in the context about God loving the world, He does say like the world has rejected this love because they don't want the light, they want to continue living in darkness. Look at John 3:16-21, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.""And this is the judgment, the light has come into the world and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed, but whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God." He's saying the light has come and the light has come in the form of Jesus Christ, and people reject Him because people loved darkness. This is what the difference between a believer and non-believer. A believer has a brand new heart.You're regenerated. When you repent of your sin, you're given this brand new heart that longs for God's light. You want to love the light. You love standing in the light, living in the light. You love being a child of the Light, and you love God's word because God's word illuminates more of your life. It shows you more of the ways that you are to walk in and the ways that you are not to walk in light that shows the way to live.Psalm 119:105 says, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." So even in the short-term, God intends those outside even if He does intend that they misunderstand this word. It's not going to be hidden forever. The truth is here, and even if people suppress that truth, there will come a point where the suppression is no longer even possible. Mark 4:22, Jesus continues, says, "For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light."He did not come to have His light hidden away, and the whole point of His coming in this veiled form, often rejected form, was so that the light might shine, undim to the ends of the earth. He came in weakness and suffering. He came as a seed to be buried in the ground. Look at Isaiah 53, one of the most powerful, prophetic passages about the person of Christ. "Who has believed what He has heard from us and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?""For He grew up before Him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by man, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their faces. He was despised and we esteemed Him not." Just as in the past, nothing was hidden except in order to become manifest, so Jesus is saying this is true.Even now, in the present, all the hiddenness of the current age will ultimately serve the purpose of revelation. This is exactly what happened with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Jesus, who is God, the Son of God, King of kings, comes and He proclaims the word of the kingdom. "The kingdom is here. Repent and believe. Everyone who repents and believes is welcome."But the opponents of Jesus, they misunderstood His word, and they rejected it. The word didn't penetrate their hearts, it didn't transform them, but this rejection of the word led to Jesus' death, and as a result from the divine perspective, it led to ultimate revelation, more revelation. He was killed by those who refuse to believe His word, refuse to see His identity, but in this divinely will death, which is caused by their spiritual blindness, God ushers in a brand new age of revelation. After Good Friday and Easter Sunday, Jesus now is proclaimed as the Messiah, as the Son of God, and after the Holy Spirit falls on Pentecost. Now, when the message of the gospel was proclaimed, the Holy Spirit takes that message and transforms people.He saves people. The obscurity of the word ultimately serves to lead to greater revelation. The lamp of God's word has come into the room and is casting its light into every crevice for everyone who would welcome the light into their heart. 1 John 2:8-11, "At the same time, it is a new commandment that I'm writing to you, which is true in Him and in you because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him, there is no cause for stumbling, but whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes." At the same time, we look around the world and we say, "Well, if the light has come and the light is revealing the kingdom of God, why aren't more people Christians? Why aren't more people following the word of God?," and Jesus here says, "There will come a time when everything is revealed, and at that point, it will be too late." The kingdom will not remain hidden forever. It is seemingly hidden now, in that its full power is not evident, it's concealed in some way, but there will be a day when the kingdom is completely revealed because the light of function is to expose the darkness.The kingdom of God, the kingdom of Jesus Christ cannot stay hidden. Nothing can obscure it. No shadow can engulf it or eclipse it. Why are we believers? Because God shown His light into our heart so that the knowledge of the glory of Jesus Christ is understood.The light of the gospel is chasing away the shadows of unbelief, and the people who walked in darkness are beginning to see the light. And what's our job? Our job is to believe this promise, that the kingdom is unstoppable, that the gospel light will continue to shine and God will draw the elect, will draw His children to Himself. And what's our job in the process? We are to love the truth, hunger for the truth, and impart the truth for others. The light isn't just given to us so we enjoy our lives here on earth until we go to heaven.No. We have work to do to testify to Jesus Christ, that He alone is the Doctor of our souls, that He alone is the Way to salvation. There's no other name by which anyone will be saved. That day, the judgment day, or when Christ returns will reveal that to everybody, and for most people, will be too late then. I understand in a place like Boston, it's easy to lose your hope.You look around, you're like, "We are outnumbered. Big league, we are outnumbered. We are on the losing side," and that is a lie of the enemy. As soon as you begin to believe that lie, we lose the power. We are to believe that Jesus' kingdom is growing, will continue to grow, and sometimes it feels like our light just isn't enough.It feels like you're in Fenway Park, all the lights are out, you're by yourself, and you want to light up the night just a little bit. You take out your phone with a little flashlight, and you're like, "Yeah, the light of Jesus," and it looks pathetic, puny, flickering even. It seems like the darkness is absolute impenetrable. You say, "What can my little light do?," and then you realize, "It's not my light. It's not my light, it's not my lamp."The light is Jesus Christ Himself. The light is God. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. Do you believe this? Do you believe that there is no one beyond the reach of Jesus Christ? Do you believe that there is no heart so hard, that grace cannot soften it and change it forever?The light will pierce the darkness. We just need to proclaim that Jesus is the Light. He is the only Way of salvation. I'm confident of that because of the promise here, that the light came not to be hidden, it came to blaze forth and to give light to the world, and nothing can stop Jesus Christ. Nothing can stop the King.Last week, I shared that I had a toothache, and thank you for all your condolences. It was supposed to be solved on Tuesday. I woke up the happiest person to get a root canal ever. I even got a shirt, buttoned. I was like, "I'm ready to go."Did my hair. I'm like, "I'm ready to go to the endodontist." I show up, and they say, "Thank you for coming for your consultation." I was like, "What? No."So my dental appointment is on Tuesday. Tuesday is coming. Praise be to God. And so I was at a staff meeting. I came into the staff meeting on Thursday. We were praying for one another, and I shared about my toothpaste, and Raquel was praying for me, and Raquel starts praying, and it's just powerful, and then she's like, "Lord, you see the decay in Pastor Jan's tooth, just decay.""Decay. He's decaying. He's fallen apart. Decay, decay, decay." And that's all I heard.I'm like, "I am ... Yup." I said, "Amen." We are all decaying. I just want to just share that tremendous news. We are all mortal.We are all going to die. Time will be up for each one of us. The Lord knows when that is, but I'm telling you, dear soul, dear eternal soul, that moment will come, and you will stand before Jesus Christ, and you will stand before Him as forgiven, welcome into the presence of God, or He will stand before you like a judge. It's one or the other. This is what Jesus is saying, that the kingdom is inevitable.This is true. This is the greatest truth that there is. This is the truth underneath every single truth, that Jesus Christ is King, and the only way that we can be forgiven of our law-breaking, of our insubordination, of our rebellion against the King, is to fall on our knees and say, "Lord Jesus, please forgive me of all my sins. Lord Jesus, I repent," and Jesus Christ says, "The love of God will be poured into your heart. The light of God will be poured into your mind, and you will be transformed."This has to be real for every believer. When we meet friends who are not Christians, who are not followers of Christ, you need to believe that they are on their way to hell, eternal damnation apart from Jesus Christ, and this is why we proclaim the gospel, this is why we do what we do. This is the truth, and our job is to sow the seed of the gospel, and not to be afraid of it, not to be afraid of speaking the truth. There are proponents of other religions who are 10 times, 100 times more courageous than most Christians today. I watched the UFC.A lot of Muslim fighters are in there, and they're all, "Inshallah," and they're just saying, "Praise be to God. If God wills ..." They're just throwing in God in every ... I'm like, "Imagine if believers did that, just on a daily basis, speaking the name of Christ every opportunity that we get, no matter what cost." Why? Because that's how important it is.In Mark 4:23, He says, "If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear." He's saying that ears to hear this message are a gift from God. Repentance is a gift from God. Faith is a gift from God, but using the ears that God has given us, that's our responsibility. We are to say, "Lord, tune our ears to hear Your voice and give us grace to hear."In verse 24, "And He said to them, 'Pay attention to what you hear, with the measure you use, it will be measured to you and still more will be added to you." The wake-up call is repeated and reinforced, pay attention to what you hear. He's not saying that it's just hearing per se, you hear. No. It's hearing to understand.It's hearing with the commitment to obey no matter what it says. Also, he says, "See what you hear." That's the original. It's the sense of hearing doubled by the sense of sight, suggesting we're going to use all of our faculties to listen to the word of God, and significant in the wording, the call is to pay attention not just to how we hear, but to what we listen to. Be careful in the voices you'll allow into your life and to your heart in a world that is still, in some sense, Satan's house and his dominion.Not all voices who claim to be speaking on behalf of God really are. Many of the voices are deceitful, perhaps even satanic in claiming to be God's word. Later on in Mark 13, Jesus says that, "Satan does everything he can to lead astray if possible, even the elect." So we, as believers need to be careful, careful of the voices we allow. Listening sermons is important.You should listen to sermons, but I want you versed in the scriptures more than you are in sermons so that you can discern, "Is this truly the word of God or not?" On the other hand, when we listen to God's word with the intent to obey, God gives us more revelation, and as He does, He continues to draw us to the calling that He has for us to go and preach the gospel, to receive, and then also share the gains that we have. Romans 10:14, "How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed, and how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? How are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, 'How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news?,' but they have not all believed the gospel, for Isaiah says, 'Lord, who has believed what He has heard from us?'""So faith comes from hearing and hearing from the word of Christ." In Ephesians 1:13, "In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of His glory." He says, "With the measure you use, it will be measured to you and still more will be added to you." Mark here takes a phrase that was known in ancient literature, a phrase that had to do with giving. If you give to others, whatever you give will return to you, but here, he applies it to epistemology, knowledge of God, in particular.What He's saying is if you receive insight from the Lord, if you receive it with a welcome heart and a pure heart, you will get more insight, and the measure of our engagement with the word, the way we respond, our desire to grasp its message and digest its truth, no matter how hard to chew, will determine the measure of blessing we enjoy from it. Do you want more blessing? Of course we do. He says, "Pay closer attention." The word teaches clearly that if you come close to God, He will come close to you.He will draw near to you. If you take a tiny step toward God, God will more than match the movement. In verse 25, He says, "For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away." Now, Proverbs 13:4 says, "The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied." Diligence.Are you diligent about your faith? The Christians that I know, that I've seen them grow spiritually by leaps and bounds, and the ones that have grown in spiritual prosperity are those who are diligent, diligent in their study of scripture on a daily basis, diligent over private devotions and private prayer, diligent over attending worship services and community groups, in the same way that exercise and use of muscles are strengthened with exercise so that the soul is strengthened when we exercise the means of grace that God has given us, and we are to expend all energy to listen to the word and the promises that we will be proportionally rewarded. Those who heed the message get more understanding of the message, get more revelation, get more blessing. Those who do not heed the message end up with nothing, and the idea of the rich getting richer applies to truth, that God gives wisdom to the wise, and He gives grace to those who long for insight and knowledge. For example, Daniel 2:19-23, "Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night.""Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven. Daniel answered and said, 'Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, to whom belong wisdom and might. He changes times and seasons. He removes kings and sets up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.""He reveals deep and hidden things. He knows what is in the darkness and the light dwells with him. To You, O God, of my fathers that give thanks and praise, for You have given me wisdom and might and have now made known to me what we asked of you, for You have made known to us the kings matter." So we are to pay careful attention to how we listen, to what we listen in terms of the word of God, and let the measure of your response to the word be full, and complete, and heartfelt, and diligent, and real, and those who give themselves to the word like this, they gain much. What do you gain when you pay attention to the word?You gain eternal life. You gain a relationship with God. You gain energy and strength to persevere despite trials. You gain comforts that the world cannot even imagine and you gain a hope that no tragedy can touch, and you gain heaven itself. But to those who hear the word and do not respond like this, but respond with tepid indifference, "Oh, yeah, God," "Oh, yeah, God's word," "Oh, yeah, Christ dying on the cross, bleeding, crucifixion," "Oh, yeah, Jan, I've heard that before," well, Jesus says those who listen like that, even what they have will be taken away.So the word of God when proclaimed, no matter how familiar you are with the word, you can't ignore it. What a joy and peace we have in the word. In particular, watch for those texts in holy scripture where you are tempted to plug your ears with your fingers. "No, that's not for me. Yeah, they say that that's God's word, but that's not for me."Pay close attention to those texts. Some of you have been walking with Christ for years, and your relationship with the Lord has just grown cold. There's no obvious rebellion in your life, but it just feels like your faith is like stale bread, left out too long, dry, crusty, and moldy. The word used to come to you like fresh water from a rock in the desert, like manna from heaven, and now you just sit in services or you're reading scripture, and there's just nothing. There's no life, there's no interest.There's just boredom. At these moments, the Lord is speaking to you and say, "Pay attention. Pay attention to what you hear, how you hear because the stakes are that high," and Jesus today invites you to turn away from your lukewarmness and draw near to Him, and ask the, "Lord, send me this hunger. Send me a thirst for Your presence and for Your word, and give me this attentiveness, this desire to hear it no matter what and to obey," and the Lord will meet you there. Second, sow the seed, trust God for growth, and harvest is coming.Mark 4:26-27, "And He said, 'The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows, he knows not how." The emphasis in this parable is that God grows His kingdom, that God is the One that gives the growth. The farmer, all he does is plant the seed, and then how it grows eludes his comprehension. It's beyond his control.He can't control how it grows. All he does is cast the seed and weight, and the seed germinates and develops by itself even while he is sleeping. He has no idea how it grows, and the Lord here is saying, "I give the growth." This is from 1 Corinthians. Paul says, "I planted, Apollos watered it, but God gave the growth."Verse 28, "The Earth produces by itself, first, the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear, and when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle because the harvest has come." Our job is to preach the word. Our job is to sow the seed of God's word. What God does with His word is His business. It's only for us to make sure we're faithful in our sowing.This is our responsibility, but God is the One that gives the growth. The soil can't produce life apart from the seed, but why? Because humans are dead in sin. Life must come from the outside, and it comes from the word of God. He says, "First, the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear."The children of God are not born in perfect faith or perfect hope, or perfect knowledge or experience, but the moment you become a child of God, even the weakest child of God is a true child of God, and the true child of God is expected by God to grow. If God began the process of salvation, He's promised He's going to complete it, and the process of salvation includes maturity and growth. Philippians 1:6, "And I'm sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." He's the one that starts the work, and He will bring it to completion. What's our job?We are to grow ... In 1 Peter 3:18 says, "But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him, be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. This is how the reign of God grows in your life.You grow in grace, grow in grace by the means of grace, studying scripture, and praying, and worshiping the Lord. We receive grace when we recognize that we've sinned. "Lord, give me more grace and power me with that grace," and that's how maturity, that's how growth come. The real cause of agent of the words fruition isn't the farmer, it's the seed. It's God Himself.He says, "Keep sowing, keep sowing, keep sowing until the day of harvest comes." The day of harvest in scripture from Joel, from Revelation we see, the day of harvest is actually an image of judgment. A time when evil is judged and righteousness is vindicated. For example, Revelation 14:15, "And another angel came out of the temple calling with a loud voice to him who sat on the cloud, 'Out in your sickle and reap for the hour to reap has come for the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.'" The harvest is, in the Lord's parable, is a symbol of the end of the age, the last judgment, the consummation of history, and we have the same text in Joel 3:13, "Put in the stickle for the harvest is ripe.""Go in, tread, for the winepress is full. The vats overflow, for their evil is great." Jesus here is showing us a picture of the whole period of world history from the first coming of Christ to the second coming of Christ, from His first advent to the next, and Jesus is saying that, "Kingdom is growing. The kingdom is growing. The kingdom is growing.Sow the seed, the kingdom is growing, but a day will come when finally, it's time for reaping and the harvest." Our job is to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom. Were to sow the seed of the word of God. Our task is not to attempt to manipulate the seed, or force growth, or change the seed somehow. No, Jesus wants us to have complete confidence, that there's life in the seed itself, the word of God is living inactive, and the word of God is going to accomplish the work that God has for it.We are to trust in it, hope in it, and recognize that the kingdom of God is unstoppable, the kingdom of God is inevitable, and God is going to save all of the elect. Galatians 6:9, "Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season, we will reap if we do not give up." One of the reasons why this church even exists is because we believe this. We've believed this from the very beginning when we establish the church. We said, "What kind of church do we ..."We want to be a church that's faithful of God's word, and we want to do God's work God's way. Sometimes it does feel like the soil here isn't really soil, but it's kind of like concrete, and I remember a while back, I was walking my daughters to school, and I saw the pavement of a sidewalk with a little sprout growing. I was like, "Oh, that's cute," and I just walked by, and then a few weeks later, I'm walking ... I look at it, I'm like, "I can't believe it." It was a tomato plant, a tomato plant just out of the sidewalk with a little tomato, and I should have plucked it.I should have plucked it. I should have had it. I didn't plant it, though, and it was just an image of like, "No matter what, God's seeds can break through even the hardness of payment." Can God save people in Boston, Massachusetts? Of course He can, and He does, and we see it at this church, and we see it in the other gospel proclaiming ministries we support.The point of, and this is what Jesus closed it with, there's room for all in the kingdom of God. Mark 4:30, and He said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? How do we understand the kingdom of God?" Here, He's quoting from Isaiah, "To whom will we liken God or what likeness compare with Him?" Jesus is saying that the kingdom is a kingdom that's going to grow.It starts and it looks like a tiny, little seed, as tiny even as a mustard seed, but it's going to grow because God promised the. Previous parable is a call to patience. The seed's going to grow surely, slowly, but surely. This parable is a call to hope. It's not only going to grow, it's going to grow massively, so we can confidently sow and not grow weary and not grow discouraged, not lose heart.But remember, the promise that God said, "I will build my church and the gates of hell will not overcome it." We are to be content with the growth that God sends us, but we are never complacent. We are thankful for all the people that God saved here in and through this church, and sanctify, but we're not complacent. We do believe that God wants this church to grow. He wants the kingdom of God to grow.We are a kingdom building force, and how do we build the kingdom? By sowing the seed, and the seed can be even as small as a grain of mustard seed. Verse 31, "It's like a grain of mustard seed, which when sown on the ground is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth," and here, Jesus is hyperbolic. He's comparing something very tiny, mustard seed to something great, and that's the growth that comes from the mustard seed, over 700 mustard seeds to a gram, and the height of the bush or the tree can grow to 10 feet. What He's saying is that the kingdom of God grows like this.In the beginnings, there's small, paltry in appearance, but there's tremendous power, divine potency in the word of God. The mustard seed is chosen because of its commonness, and because of its smallness, but it grows into something vast and incredible. What is Jesus here saying? He's saying, "Well, look how the kingdom came into the world initially, and weakness." How did the King of kings, the King of the universe come into this world?He came as a baby, born in a manger, at Bethlehem, without riches, without armies, without attendance, without power. And who are the men that God chose to build His church? Who were the appointed apostles? Just average men. What was the last public act of Jesus' earthly ministry as the King of kings?Well, He was crucified between two criminals, between two thieves, and He was forsaken by His disciples, betrayed by one, denied by another. What was the doctrine that the first apostles, the first builders of the church ... What was the doctrine they preached? They preached Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and to Greeks. It was foolishness, but because of the Holy Spirit, when the Holy Spirit took that message, that we have all sinned, we have all transgressed the commandments of God, Jesus Christ lived a perfect life on our behalf, and then He died on a cross as our substitutionary atonement, and then He rose in the third day, and whoever believes in Christ has all of their sins blotted out, forgiven.It's as if God cast our sins as far from us, says the east is from the west. He chooses to not just forgive, but forget our sins. When that message was proclaimed and the Holy Spirit took and applied to people's hearts, lives were changed. The world was changed, in the same way that the gospel changed people's lives, then He does so today. In all this, the mind of man can only look at Christ, can only look at His disciples and see weakness and feebleness, but we, as believers, we understand that beyond the feebleness, beyond the weakness, is the power of God, a power that can truly save. Mark 4:32, "Yet, when it is sown, it grows up and it becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."Now, this phrase, birds of the air is used in Ezekiel 31 and Daniel 4. It's to represent the multitude of the nations, that the kingdom grows and it's going to grow in vastness, and then people of all nations are going to come and build nests within this tree. Ezekiel 17:23, "On the mountain height of Israel, will I plant it, that it may bear branches and produce fruit and become a noble cedar, and under it will dwell every kind of bird in the shadow of its branches, birds of every sort will nest." Every time this phrase is used in the Old Testament, describing a mighty kingdom, be it Israel or Egypt or Babylon, the kingdoms will gross in vastness, that the other nations will come and seek refuge in this kingdom. What Jesus is saying here is, "My kingdom is like that.""My kingdom, the kingdom of God is like this, though its beginnings are improbable, a small seed, a crucified Messiah, suffering church, preaching, baptizing, and holding holy communion, praying. Its beginnings are improbable, but its destiny is vast, and there's room for all." In the kingdom of God, there's room for every single one of you, there's room for every single one of your families, there's room for everyone in the world that will come and repent, and to build a nest. I like the idea of just building a little nest with your loved ones. In the kingdom of God, He's like, "Make sure you're building this home that you have in the kingdom of God.""Come and find shelter," Jesus is saying, "In the shade of this kingdom." The parable emphasizes the shelter that the kingdom brings. In Psalm 91, "He who dwells in the shelter of the most high will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, 'My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust, for He will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings, you will find refuge. His faithfulness is a shield and a buckler.'"Jesus concludes our text in Mark 4:33. "With many such parables, He spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it. He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately, to His own disciples, He explained everything," as they were able to hear according to their God-given ability to hear. What He's saying is, and He concludes with this, if you want more revelation, you do it by spending more time with Christ, by following Christ, by communing with Him and abiding in Him. Three points to summarize, and then we'll close with prayer, love the light, hunger for truth, and then share the gains.Sow the seed, trust God for growth, harvest is coming, and there's room for all in the kingdom of God. Let us pray. Lord, we thank You for continuing to build Your kingdom in and through us in this city, in a place of stifling darkness, sometimes it seems, but Lord, You are the Light, and You're the Light that shines in the darkness. Lord, as you saved us, we believe that You can save others, and we pray that You use us in the process, even this week, Lord. Give us opportunities to speak of You, speak of the gospel, speak of Your grace.We pray that You open the door for the proclamation of the gospel here. We pray for revival in this city and beyond. We pray for an awakening, and we pray that, Lord, You save many and draw them to yourself and to Your incredible kingdom, and we pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

Pastor Jeffery talks with Pastor Jan Prorok, a CREC Pastor from the Czech Republic. They discuss tattoos, the relationships between godly affections and godly actions, and the so-called “Benedict Option” (a reference to a book by Rod Dreher with that title).  The post Tattoos, affections, and the Benedict Option | Pastor Jan Prorok. appeared first on .

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. We're thrilled to have you here. We're always praying for the Lord to send us just people asking questions about Christianity, questions about Jesus, how to be saved, and we're always praying for the Lord to send us people who already have vibrant, loving relationships with the Lord and are here to work. And this is an exciting time here to serve the Lord with us, join mission with us. And this is an exciting time of year where we always have a lot of fresh faces coming in at the end of summer, beginning of the year program, academic year and after a lot of people have left. So we're thrilled you're here. If you are new and you want to get plugged in, I hope you just talk to people next to you, but a formal way to do that is to fill out the connection card and take it to the welcome center or put it in the offering bin there at the back of the center aisle, and we'll get you plugged in. And if you are new, again I said, I'm Andy. I was out for the past four weeks. The church blessed me with a long three-week vacation after a busy year, and I'll elaborate a lot on that. And today is an exciting time of year for us. We just ended a long series in the Book of Genesis, going through Genesis 37 through 50, talking about the life of a great saint Joseph and how his life pointed us to Jesus Christ in many ways, even in the first book of the Bible and how he pointed us ultimately to Christ and his sacrifice and the forgiveness he offers us. But today we're done with Genesis and we are taking up an identity series. We talk about our identity, we talk about our values every time this time of August, every September, and we're really trying to bring unity of identity, unity of purpose and vision to the body, and so I'll take us up. My hope today is really to prime your hearts, prepare your hearts as we reflect on the past year together today in order to prepare our hearts to get going and flying in support of the slightly tweaked vision going forward. So today I want to begin by reading the main passage of the day, and that is Ephesians 2:11-22, Ephesians 2:11-22. And this is the living word of God. Ephesians 2:11-22, "Therefore, remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands." "Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off, have been brought near by the blood of Christ, for he himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God and one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near." "For through him we both have access in one spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In Him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit." This is the word of our Lord. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that it is living. We thank you that it is authoritative. We thank you that it is powerful. Lord, we thank you for the reminder that we see in it today that who we are is rooted in the work of Jesus Christ and his life, death and sacrifice in the cross. And Lord, we praise you that we can have an identity that is gifted to us by you. We do not have to work our way towards you, but in Jesus we can have peace simply by believing in his works. And Lord, right now, we pray as we work out our own identity, seek to understand it better, let it inform the way that we approach brother and sister, especially here in the church here at Mosaic. Lord, we seek to be a more faithful body. We seek to show the world who you are, show the blessedness that comes with faith in the gospel by loving one another better this year. Lord, we ask that your spirit would just refine our view, our understanding of church, our understanding of relating to brother and sister and, of course, our understanding of our relationship to you and Jesus today. Bless the preaching of your word. In Jesus name I pray. Amen. So happy New Year. To contribute to my introduction, I want you to look at the person next to you and say, happy New Year. And wow, some of you actually did that. I would've been the kind of person to just sit there. Thank you for your vulnerability and following my instruction. So why do I begin the day, this series, this little moment in the year where we reflect on who we are as a church with happy New Year? Why first? There's three reasons. First, because it actually is the real new year in Boston coming up this week. We have Labor Day weekend next week, and everybody who's been in Boston for a while and really the northeastern United States and America knows that this is really the start of the real new year, and this is New Year's Eve. We're at the point where we are looking back in preparation to looking ahead to the new year before we get running. And I say this just as a little reminder to all of you, get ready for it. Next week, life speeds up. And if you haven't prepared your body, haven't prepared your heart before it takes off, you've got to be careful because you could just get lost in the wind as the dust of life speeds up. And so you know that preschools through postgraduate programs are starting in the coming week. You know that there's a lot of people starting new jobs, taking up new titles, they're actually getting real responsibility if they got the title in the summer now that September is here. And you know that everybody who survived May through August without leaving the city is processing, committing their hearts for another year of what's to come here, and you're welcome for the reminder if you've been snoozing on that a little bit. But I bring this up to you just because we at Mosaic, we don't want you to get lost in the storm, in the wind, in the waves of life. We at Mosaic, we have a philosophy of ministry rooted in Ephesians 4:11-6 which says, and "He," the Lord, "gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers," and we pastors are shepherd, teachers, "to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Jesus Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes, rather speaking the truth and love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ, from the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped when each part is working properly." So at Mosaic, we are the pastors, we view our role to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, and we pause at this time of year to really calibrate your hearts, calibrate your minds to get prepared for really the program missional year ahead, for we don't want you to get lost into the waves and winds that come through life. And we know more than ever, since 2020, just how unpredictable life can be compared to those who grew up in the '90s and 2000s when things were pretty chill. Every year we hold this series and today's no different. Today, as the real new year approaches, again, I want to help us process in looking back, Pastor Jan will look ahead. And so the second reason though, why I say happy New Year is with facetiousness. As I acknowledge the approach of Boston's real New Year, I say it in a manner that's a little bit flippant and sarcastic. It's a year, it's really stating, "Thank God 2022, 2023 is over," in the words of a blessed beloved member of Mosaic in my mind I say happy New Year, there's a little bit of, "Bye Felicia," as I think of 2022, 2023. There's a, "Sayonara, goodbye. Good riddance. Let's turn the page and move on." And I say that because it was a hard year, and today I just want to acknowledge that I really wish that it was as simple as moving on, turning the page and everything will be different after Labor Day next week, but we need to be honest as a church that it was a hard year. And so today I hope to process that with you a little bit. Now, keeping the last two reasons in mind for why I say happy New Year, the third reason why I say happy New Year to start off this missional program year in the church is because I really mean it. I say it with deep sincerity. Why? Because even though I wouldn't have planned everything that the past year brought, even though it was excruciatingly painful personally as a church body, I'm so thankful that we as pastors, we as a membership, we as a body of believers here at Mosaic, went through what we went through. And just to give you a little bit, those of you who are new, in many years, it was a great year. We have a great membership at this church of a couple hundred people. People committed to be on mission here and we did maintain, we retained that membership and boy, did it grow up a lot. And I could give you dozens of examples of how people in this body came to faith, were baptized, grew in the faith, served the Lord through tremendous acts of charity and generosity, but really it was a year that was difficult. The trajectory of Mosaic's history, we're a church that was started in 2011, and that's a time when Pastor Jan really took over, rooted this church with the vision, the values, the beliefs, the identity that is very similar to what we promote right now. And 2011 through 2020 just basically putting it in simplistic terms, lots of growth, lots of seemingly flourishing on the outside and a lot on the inside. But since 2020, what did we deal with in 2023? 2020 poured over into 2021, poured over into 2022, poured over into 2023, and we're just catching our breath in the past year. At one point in the year we had three pastors, Pastor Shane, a beloved pastor was here for 10 years. He felt called home to the Midwest in the past year. He took an extended period of rest. Pastor Jan felt the effects of the strain of engaging all that came with just being a pastor in the past few years. And he took an extended break. I got a nice three weeks. I've never had that amount of time off in my adulthood. And so we as pastors, we as a body, we've faced challenges that we could have never imagined, and we're just feel like we're coming up from being underwater, grasping to stay afloat. And furthermore, we as a church, we confess to one another as a membership that we did commit some sin. There was some youthful, what we often phrase as youthful naivety, but there was some pride behind our method. Perhaps, we thought, "This is the way we're always going to go, just trajectory and growth as a body up, up, up." But furthermore, no, we pastors profess to this congregation that we functioned in our own strength a lot, especially since 2020. We didn't admit to one another when we needed rest, when we needed help, when we needed care. Furthermore, we were guilty of breaking the Sabbath and keeping it holy, and in many ways that emanated and trickled down in our body. And so praise God, we have a united body. We've processed a lot, we've been through a lot, sometimes from the public pulpit a lot of it, and members meetings, deep family talks over the past year. And I go back to why I say happy New Year sincerely, I'm thankful we went through it for we're a young body, young pastors, pretty naive. We don't have old saints to really guide us in the way and the Lord has matured us. So as I look ahead at the new year, I'm excited to think about what the Lord can do with this body of believers, what the Lord can do with me as someone who's grown up a lot as we look ahead to 2023, 2024. And so I begin with this happy New Year. I have pretty raw, transparent explanations for, and in my flesh, this is the time of the sermon where I want to switch back to Mosaic mode and really enter into classic Love Jesus Simple sermons. And if you go online, these are great sermons. Pastor Jan has preached these every year since 2011 except in 2020. And I want to just jump right into, "All right, said a little bit about what happened. Let's jump forward." But I want to use efficient language. I want to use just brilliant clear language that we've often used to articulate our vision. I want to make comparisons to our simple method of ministry to Chick-fil-A's simple method of business. I want to make comparisons to Michael Scott and Albert Einstein as we have over the years in pursuit of our vision and, of course, as all of their quotes pertain to scripture. But I don't want to run ahead, you're going to get that Pastor Jan, he's rearing and ready to go and I say, whatever you think, whatever you get today, come back. It's going to be very different. But realistically, we as pastors, we called an audible. I told Pastor Jan after coming back from my time off in the past week about what I've been processing, and really we're just trying to hit the heart of those in our body who are still ailing a little bit, coming out of what we went through, for it was hard. And so I'm not jumping into classic Love Jesus Simple mode. Today's not a classic expository sermon where we, in a very logical sense, pull the analysis of the textile and very systematic, orderly manner. This is really a very reflective pastoral sermon. And we just want to be cognizant that you guys have hearts and that the church is something you've invested in, and we really want to engage you where you are. And we are a body with many members with Christ as the head, and to go forward before we jump forward, and it's going to come fast next week and in the weeks beyond. We don't want anybody struggling, anybody holding on to pains, anybody questioning their commitment with us going ahead this year. And so I continue, therefore with a very transparent vulnerable tone, and I don't really want to go like this, but I think it's most appropriate to meet the season. So I just took three weeks off. It was my first chance to process this year and everything that transpired. And I have to admit that once I got a chance to breathe, once separated from the community, and I did have accountability in my wife, I wasn't just not working as a pastor and then rebelling and lashing out, no. I just want to be honest. I was really struggling with, "I just want to be a Christian by myself. Why do I need the church? It just makes everything so much harder. Why deal with the people? Why deal with the hardship? Why deal with standing on the truth? Why speak the truth to my brothers and sister in love when it often comes back to bite me? And then we have to do extra meetings to reconcile." And I wasn't thinking about quitting my job, I wasn't thinking about walking away from the faith, but I saw the appeal of letting myself continue in my thoughts, and it's been a great year actually outside of the church. Great year for me socially. I've lived in Brookline for three years. My son was in second grade. It's like all of a sudden I have all these social connections in the community that took a few years to cultivate. And so it's easy to think, "Man, I could start my own ministry, my own little circles outside this church and just run without the impediments of truly committing to the body that I've committed to love here at Mosaic and in Boston." And in an attempt exercise wisdom, first thing I did was said, "I'm tired. I need to rest," and so first week I just shut my mouth and prayed. And as I prayed approaching the trip and into that first week I just said, "Lord, bring me to the scriptures. Bring me to a Christian book. Bring me to a brother, a sister that can check my heart, check my mind, call me out in this position of frustration toward the church, disillusionment with the church," and the Lord in his grace was working on me and my wife at the same time at multiple times, separate ways we heard quotes and snippets of this book, Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In the months leading to our time off, and separately unbeknownst to one another, we both ordered this book to read together during our time off, and there were multiple copies that arrived at our apartment and I said, "I ordered this. Why is there another one? Did you order one?" And the Lord providentially arranged for us separately to take up this book. And it really appealed to us too because we have three kids under seven and you can't really take up a giant tome like a giant biography or theological treaties. This is 122 pages, and it really unexpectedly just spoke right to the heart of just a lot of the questions and a lot of frustrations I was dealing with. And so today the main text is Ephesians 2:11-22. I will open that up a little bit but not open it up as much as we often do with the text. The general outline flow of the message is going to be a list of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer says are the blessings of Christian community. He asked the question, "Why is Christian community a blessing?" And he helps press us to think about, "Why should we... Why should I, Pastor Andy? Why should we continue to gather with other Christians?" And I know some people in our body in moments are dealing with that. I know that some people are new, and you might be coming here today, it could be your first time at church in years and you have pains and scars tied to dealing with church. And so I hope that this is an encouragement to those within our body already, those coming from the outside to really see the church as a blessing, see engagement with other Christians as an essential part to this life. And so the first point that I'll take up... And who is Dietrich Bonhoeffer? He was a Christian German pastor, theologian who was a pastor in the 1930s into the 1940s. And he saw the German church rooted in just the reformation of Martin Luther. He saw the German church leave God's word, leave the gospel and in its insecurity dealing with modernism, dealing with just technological advantages, dealing with politics, the German church in his day went with the Nazi party. And so he was one of a minority of pastors that started a new confessing church that stayed true to scripture. Ultimately he died as for being a part of a plot to try to kill Hitler. And ultimately he offers us perspective for what are essential elements for church, and really as part of the Love Jesus Simple series, I hope today I help strip apart any views of church, expectations of church, expectations of other Christians that might not be biblical, and a man who faced such pressures really has a lot of wisdom and insight for us. So why is a Christian community, a church, a blessing? First, Bonhoeffer says Jesus lived among his enemies. First paragraph, he just says this right away, "At the end of his life on earth, all of his disciples deserted him. On the cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause, he had come to bring peace to the enemies of God." I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but Jesus entire walk on the earth was really full of disappointment with community. Who rejected him? His brothers, the Jews. And then even his disciples, those intimate 12, even within the 12, his top three, they all were not there at the end. They all left him, and then the 72 and greater crowds came and went as they agreed and disagreed with his teachings. And so when we face hardship in community, we're not facing something that the Lord himself did not face. And this is to start with this point, it's a kind of logic that says, "You think you have had it bad in your situation in your church. Think about how bad Christ had it, yet he endured faithfully to the end." And it's an effort to counter any entitlement we as Christians have thinking we deserve better. We deserve a better church. We deserve to be received better. Christ himself, if anybody of all people in the history of the earth, the Son of God deserved to be received better in community, and he really never was. And are we greater than him? John 13:16, "Truly, truly I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor a messenger is greater than the one who sent him." And so this isn't really the kind of reason to show the blessedness of Christian community that's soothing to the soul. But I love that Bonhoeffer begins with this. He says, sorry he doesn't say this. Because if we really understand the extent that God went through Christ to show us love for us, the fact that Christ in the trinity, in the wisdom of the trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit for all eternity took on flesh to come and walk among enemies, walk among flakes that would abandon him simply to come, primarily to come and be our savior just fathoming that, fathoming the love of God shows us in doing that, that really should help us to look upon our struggles in this life with Christians and even the greater world, with a little more humility, we should be amazed what the Lord endured for us to procure our salvation. So why is Christianity a blessing? Because Christ didn't have it yet he is gracious enough to offer us the chance to gather with others. Second, why is Christian community a blessing? Many Christians Bonhoeffer says, don't experience community. He says, "It is by the grace of God that a congregation is permitted to gather visibly in the world to share God's word and sacrament. Not all Christians receive this blessing. The imprisoned, the sick, the scattered, lonely, the proclaimers of the gospel in heathen lands, they stand alone." Do you ever pause when you're pondering the challenges that come with gathering with the church, that there are people, there are Christians all throughout the world, people all throughout history who profess the name of Christ who don't have a regular gathering assembly of believers to gather with, people who don't have pastors to open up the word for them? And the truth is those of us who do have it, we take our community for granted, and this is my mind, my heart was drifting in this direction. "It is true of course," "Bonhoeffer says, "that what is an unspeakable gift of God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded and trodden underfoot by those who have the gift every day. It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of a Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us, that the time still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed." And so if we have it, we should function with the awareness that the Lord could strip it right away. And how many of you... As I processed just my thoughts, my approach towards the church, I asked myself this question, "What would happen if Mosaic Boston Church just closed its doors, it just disappeared?" And I didn't really pause to think like this all throughout the turmoil of recent seasons, but I realized I would be broken. I wouldn't be broken to the point of despair and unbelief, but I'd still have Christ, but man, it would be so hard to face that and just this perspective, others in the world do not have what we have. And so seasons of turmoil, they're not fun. But we should still bless the Lord and be thankful that he has provided our community. Third, Bonhoeffer goes on to say why the church is a blessing. "The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength for the believer. The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength for the believer." To support this, he mentions how Paul in 2 Timothy 1:4 talks about his longing to see Timothy in the flesh. Next, he talks about how the Apostle John in 2 John 12 says that his joy will not be complete until he can come to his people and speak face to face instead of writing to them. Do you long to come to church and see your brothers and sisters like this? Bonhoeffer says, "It's okay to feel no shame... He says, "The believer feels no shame as though he was still living too much in the flesh when he yearns for the physical presence of other Christians. Man was created by a body, man was created a body. The son of God appeared on earth in the body. He was raised in the body and the resurrection of the dead will bring about the perfected fellowship of God's spiritual physical creatures. The believer therefore lauds the creator, the redeemer, God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit for the bodily presence of a brother." So Christ taking on a flesh shows us that this world, this life, the relationships we forge, especially in the church, matter. And it's okay as a Christian to say, "Lord, I need you," as we sung earlier, "but I also need my church," and to get excited about gathering with other Christians. And I ask, do you have these people that you see and they just give you joy and strength? And I definitely feel this way broadly about Mosaic. I got to visit three different churches while I was taking my time off, three different worship services and they're good churches, love the Lord, preach the gospel, but it just wasn't the same as gathering with you. When I'm here, as processing the worship music, there's different things that every member of our band does that encourage me. Aaron put his hands up here in the front and I'm a stiff guy, but he encourages me to worship with more passion, and this body, there's so many people who encourage me like that. But in terms of just outside of worship, are there people who bring you joy and comfort Christians, people who you don't really even have to talk to them but their presence brings you joy? And I can think of so many people here in the church who provide that, but do you have them, and if you don't, are you seeking to build those relationships? Only in commitment to a local church can you forge such relationships. People, friends that are nonbelievers can't be this presence for you in your life. And what's the benefit of them? Whether you have a great spoken relationship or it's really just about the presence, there's some kind of encouragement that comes with gathering with people who believe what you believe, who are fighting the good fight. Sometimes they stumble but they get back, they receive grace, they keep going and they just keep walking forward in the direction you're trying to go. And at Mosaic, that's what we're trying to do every Sunday and as part of our service, create a warm hospital strengthening environment and with community groups. A lot of times people come into our church and we have community groups that do discuss every week's sermon together. They do sermon discussion, fellowship, just hanging out and prayer. But really we're trying to forge bonds where it's just the unspeakables of gathering that breed encouragement with one another. It's not necessarily just about the discussion and conversation. We want people gathering simply because they love each other and are encouraged by one another. And Paul and John show us that, that happens. And the thing about it is that we should pursue this, we should desire these kinds of relationships, but we should not become codependent, overly dependent on such relationships. For once we do so we commit the sin of idolatry and we're looking upon these relationships for our sense of satisfaction, strength, peace, joy instead of looking to Jesus Christ himself. And that's one of the main things that happens, we have a really young body, lots of people, very driven, lots of people who came to the city for academic programs, for work. The way they grew was finding mentors, finding training and studying and climbing the way to the top, and they approach Christianity the same way. And I'm saying we want you to get relationships. We want you to build bonds where there's this unspoken connection. We want you to build a mentor relationships where there is spoken connection, but we don't want you to be overdependent on them. We want Christians to develop abiding relationships with the Lord where they one-on-one are engaging the Lord in their minds through prayer, in song, in worship, independently of others, for that is ultimately just the most life-giving relationship we can have. So we just don't want to overemphasize these relationships. Next, why is a Christian community a blessing? And this is the hardest one to chew on, but if you get this, this is the greatest source of encouragement. Bonhoeffer says, "A christian has an alien righteousness and needs to be reminded of it constantly." So the Christian community is a blessing because it's a place where a Christian can go and be reminded of who they are in Jesus. What do I mean by alien righteousness? He says, "The Christian is the man or woman who no longer seeks his salvation. He's not trying to earn his way to God's love and favor. The Christian is the man who no longer seeks his salvation, his deliverance, his justification, his declaration that he is not guilty before God in himself but in Christ alone. The Christian no longer lives of himself by his own claims and his own justification, but by God's claims and God's justification." "The reformers expressed it this way, our righteousness, our right standing before God is an alien righteousness that comes from outside of us. The reformers were saying that the Christian is dependent on the word of God spoken to them. God has willed that we should seek and find his living word in the witness of a brother in the mouth of a man." And there's scriptures that really open this up. God chose the foolishness of the preaching of men, of broken vessels to save people. God chooses the foolishness of his broken vessels in the church to exhort one another with the word. There's a lot of scripture around this. But what Bonhoeffer is stating is that the way Christian is saved with this alien righteousness, this right standing before God being applied to him by the Lord himself from the outside, the way Christian is saved through this signifies the way that he needs to be encouraged over and over again after he is saved. And when you understand this, he's really defining how a church should get engaged. A man is saved by that which is outside of him, the righteousness of Christ coming to him and therefore over and over he needs to be reminded of that when he stumbles in sin, when he's discouraged by the events and circumstances around him, when the church faces hardship, a person, a Christian needs to be reminded of who they are that their right standing despite their circumstances before God does not change. And the thing about it is God has willed whether we like it or not, that the way that we are reminded of who we are in Christ is by other people, brothers and sisters in the church. And so if you're not gathering in a church, you do not have people who can remind you that you are not a sinner. When you fall into the just being overcome by guilt and shame, you are a beloved son and daughter of the living and true God because Jesus Christ died on the cross for you. What happens when a person is saved, when they turn and receive God's forgiveness? They believe that their sinful record is applied to Jesus Christ, and in turn his perfect righteous record is applied to them, and it's a whole process initiated by God through the Holy Spirit. And once we experience this, we know who we are but we forget over and over again, and so what is the church? It's the place that we go to, to be reminded of who we are in Jesus. For when we know at the fundamental level the source of our identity, when we understand all of the promises of God, that we are forgiven of our sins, we're beloved adopted son or daughter, we are bestowed with the inheritance due to the firstborn. All the covenant promises due to the Old Testament fathers apply to us in Jesus when we have security of identity in who we are through this alien righteousness that's gifted to us, we can face the world, we can face others with the sobriety of mind and heart, and boldness that God can use us in the process. And so what is the church? It's the place not where you go because there's people who might look like you, might be at a similar age, might have similar interests of you, might be in a similar life phase of you. You go to the church to be reminded of who you are in Jesus Christ, first and foremost. And that is the single most important center of your bond to the church. And as a member of a church, you have to fight to keep that central with the challenges of seasons, with the desires of the flesh, with the competing models and preferences that you have, that people in the church have. You have to look first and foremost at the church and identify, "Does this church remind me of who I am in Jesus?" And what does that change? The way we engage with one another. There is a huge part for listening to one another and Bonhoeffer has a great section on listening as one of the primary practices within the church. But we also speak the word to one another and it's not therapy. We're not just consoling one another and trying to make each other feel better in the moment. A lot of our communication in the church when you understand we are all bonded together as recipients of this alien righteousness. We are the common practice. The way we engage is reminding of ourselves who we are in Jesus. And when we do that, we are setting ourselves up to be able to face all the challenges of life church around us. And Pastor Jan talked about this a lot over the years as we are not here... Once you know you're saved in Jesus, your identity is secured, the Father will never leave you or forsake you, and you have newness and you have freedom, and you have innocence before the Lord that even stumblings and sin can't take away for you after you turn and repent. And so what we are doing, church is not, "I come and go to the sanctuary to receive therapy." It's the halftime talk. It's where we remind you of who you are in Jesus. You have all the promises and power of God working for you, and we are here to boost you up, build you up before we send you out, and then you have community group to get a little boost midweek as well. And so the church is the place, it's a blessing because we are reminded that we are recipients of this alien righteousness. And I connect this if you're not really buying fallen Bonhoeffer for following me on this, this is really a point that Paul makes in Ephesians 2:11-22, the text for the day in verses 11:12, it begins with a description of alienation separation between Jewish and Gentile Christians. Verse 11 says, "Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision, but what is called the circumcision," that Jewish believers, "which is made in the flesh by hand, remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world." So what's going on here? Paul is saying there's a conflict in the community, from the context of the passage, we don't know exactly what the conflict is given the rest of the book and the specific verses. It seems to be rooted in the racial and ethnic differences, Christians, people who are Christian highlighting their ethnic, religious and racial differences. But important thing to point out is there is a conflict and how does the apostle Paul tell them how to face it? What does he do? Verse 13, he reminds him of their hopelessness and exclusion from God's family, the Gentiles particularly. He reminds him of their hopelessness and exclusion from God's family before Christ came and died for them. Verse 13, "But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." Once you were alienated, once you were hopeless without the promises of God applied to you, without chance of coming into God's family, but now because of the blood of Christ, because this alien righteousness that comes to you, you are brought near to the Lord himself, "For he himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in the flesh the dividing wall of hostility." It's a really frustrating piece of advice like, if you're in conflict with someone and someone says, "Remember who you are, that's the way forward." In a way, Paul is doing that. He's telling the Gentile Christians and then all of us Christians today for when we face conflict, really if you really remember who you were, whether you're Jew or Gentile in this situation, but God and his mercy was gracious to you. He offered forgiveness of sin. He saved you despite your rebellion against him. If you really process that, this identity that has been gifted to you, you can look upon your brethren and offer a similar grace and mercy to them. And so if you remember who you are that'll inform your way forward and help you to go forward faithfully. And one of, in Christianity, the main area where we see instruction similarly, Mark 10-9, "Let not man separate what God has put together," with regard to marriage. Every good Christian marriage knows that there's points in the marriage because it's two sinners come together who both need grace from God and each other daily. There are going to be times where conflict and trial are so large that the only thing that makes them stick together is the belief that God has established their relationship, and that's the logic that Bonhoeffer, that Paul are trying to teach us. They're trying to get us to view our sense of personal security with God derived from the identity that he has given us. And furthermore, trying to say we have a bond with other believers and that bond was forged by God, and we need to commit and covenant and hold fast to our commitment to other believers, not walk on them or isolate ourselves from them because God has established the capacity for us to have peaceful relationship with them. And so it's not really practical, but he's calling through this appealing to alien righteousness. Paul and Bonhoeffer, they're saying it's a call in our walk with the Lord individually, how do we correct ourselves? We remember who we are in Jesus. We remember this gifted identity that we have. For our walk in the church, we remember the gift that our community is and there's greater spiritualties. As an individual, who we are is not the one who is stumbling in sin over and over again. Who we are is a beloved son and daughter, and that's how we should view and see ourselves and that's what's going to help us march forward. Who we are in community is so much more than a body of believers at stray and get in the fickle arguments often. What does Paul say to end the passage? Paul alludes to, there's so much more spiritually going on with our believers. And Bonhoeffer and Paul, the next line, Bonhoeffer says, another reason why Christian community is a blessing is because we are going to be with each other in eternity. And so there's greater spiritual realities that we are called to live up to as individuals and as a body. And to continue what I was saying, Paul says, he appeals to these greater communal realities that take place when a group of people gather. In verse 19 it says, "So then you're no longer strangers and aliens, but you're fellow citizens, Jew and Gentile. You're fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the spirit." So what is taking place when Christians truly rooted in their identity in Christ, this blessed gracious gift of an identity that they have when they gather in community. There's some sort of spiritual holy, eternal temple suited to be a dwelling place of God that is being constructed. And I say that and we're getting up into the sky, but that's a reality that is happening when we covenant, when we commit to live with one another, when we don't isolate with one another, when we disagree but come and love one another and work out conflict for God's glory, this spiritual structure is being built. And does it always feel like that? No. When we look back at the past year, did it feel like we were building this glorious, heavenly structure as we faced a lot of hardship that we never faced as a young church before? No, but we need to function with faith that, that is actually taking place as we go forward in faith loving one another, calling one another to the identity that we have in Jesus and the faithful ways forward, repentance of sin and faith. And so one of the things that Bonhoeffer really points out to close, I just want to bring up a thought. He says that until a church is really united and gathering around just the fact that everyone has this alien identity applied to them, this alien righteousness applied to them, until that is revealed as the primary connection point between a body of believers, the Lord is going to strip away pretty painfully all of those other things that appear to be the central bond that brings them together, and it's in his mercy. He could just bring wrath and punishment for the folly of gathering around other things, but in his mercy, he strips away all that gets at the heart of our true bond with one another, which is our faith in Jesus Christ and his saving work and in his sanctifying work in our lives. Bonhoeffer frames it like this, "The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work become the one and only thing that is vital between us." And that when you think about the past couple of years facing a little more challenges as a body, that's what I see happening. That's what we pastors see happening. Scripture talks about us maturing. Scripture talks about us being pruned. God is a vine dresser, and as we hold fast to Jesus, and we are the branches, he's going to pull off those fruits that are taken away, the nourishment for the good fruit and he's going to refine us, put us in the fire. That's what God does to make sure that Christ stays central as the primary gathering point for our body, and that's love Jesus simple with Jesus at the center. Pastor Jan will elaborate in a whole lot more detail in a technical sense on how we apply these things. And I couldn't help but think that Bonhoeffer or Paul, they're alluding to imagery that comes with our name, our logo, Mosaic. "You are united by the blood of Christ," says Paul. "You are united by this alien righteousness that comes with believing in the blood and the cross of Christ," says Bonhoeffer. And isn't that what a mosaic is? We're a bunch of pieces, different shapes, different sizes, different backgrounds, different colors, different language, different nationalities, coming from different socioeconomic strata, life perspective, church background, non-church background, uniting together around the saving work of Jesus Christ. And my prayer, as I say, happy real New Year. My prayer before we cast the vision for next year is that Christ shows us more deeply that the most vital thing between us all is Jesus Christ and his work. And if he has to continue to strip it away in slightly painful ways or sometimes really painful ways, then all praise and glory to God because ultimately we're developing a more pure and unified bond as saints and followers with him. So let me pray in closing. Heavenly Father, we praise you for just the blessing that this church has been. We thank you as our 12th birthday is coming up in October, we thank you that I could have spent weeks talking about just amazing stories of seeing your saving hand just call dead sinners to life in Jesus Christ and bring them to freedom from the power of sin in their lives. I could spend just weeks talking about ways that communities, brothers and sisters walking together have served you in the form of doing charitable generous works, have served each other in terms of speaking the truth and love, calling each other to accountability to the identity that you have bestowed upon them. I thank you that we really have had such a blessed experience as your saints here in this city, in our short lifespan. But Lord, I praise you all the more for the hard lessons that you've provided in the past year. And Lord, we thank you for the perspective. We thank you for the maturity, the insight that we have developed for facing them. And Lord, I just ask, give us power to hold fast to you, hold fast to the cross of Jesus Christ, to always preach it, to always teach it, to always point ourselves first and foremost to it and your offer of salvation in it when we face personal challenges, when we face collective challenges as a body moving forward. Lord Mayor, we pray that our light would continue to shine brightly in this city, and we do ask for a harvest, Lord, just pour out the rains from heaven where you just call just thousands of people home in the months in the season ahead. I pray this then in Jesus name. Amen.

Pastor Jan speaks with us about shepherding and the Kingdom of Heaven.

This is week 2 of our Glory Series. This week Pastor Jan shares on breaking the limitations that we put on ourselves before Pastor Gary brings the message. Pastor Gary shares three more pieces of prophecies that were spoken over Transformation Church of Lubbock. 

Listen as my Special Guest talks about his Testimony and his Book " Grace: Discovering the untold Riches" --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tamala-jenise-coleman/support

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.Today, we are continuing in our series, Graduate Level Grace, and we are walking through chapter by chapter through Genesis 37-50. Today, we're in Genesis 43, and we are studying the life of Joseph. The constant theme that keeps coming up is that salvation is by grace. It's not something that we earn. It's not a process that we initiate by our good works, our own efforts to conjure up righteousness before God. It's something that God initiates, that God blesses us with. He bestows us with His grace to get us into right relationship with him. As we go forward in the Christian life, he continues to give us more and more of it to carry out his work faithfully. Today, we're going to keep in touch into the theme of grace again, and talk further how Joseph points us to Christ in his engagement with his brothers. Again, these are long chapters. I'm going to read Genesis 43, the whole chapter. It's verses one through 34.Pastor Jan has not been reading at the beginning and doing more longer quotations, walking through the text. I'm going to read it now, and just go in and out of the text quickly throughout the sermon. So if you do have a Bible, open up to Genesis 43:1-34 and follow along, and we'll have it on the screen as well. Furthermore, we are going to partake in communion today. This is something that we, as a church, practice the first Sunday of every month. I'll preach the word, we'll respond, and then we will partake in communion and I'll explain the steps along the way once we get there. I'm going to read Genesis 43 verses 1-34, and the sermons is about the mercy of God. Genesis 43:1-34. Now, the famine was severe in the land and when they had eaten the grain that they had brought from Egypt, their father said to them, "Go again, buy us a little food."But Judah said to him, "The man solemnly warned us, saying, 'You shall not see my face unless your brother is with you. 'If you'll send our brother with us, we will go down and buy you food. But if you'll not send him, we'll not go down, for the man said to us, 'You shall not see my face, unless your brother is with you.'" Israel said, "Why did you treat me so badly as to tell that man that you had another brother?" They replied, "The man questioned us carefully about ourselves and our kindred, saying, 'Is your father still alive? Do you have another brother?' What we told him was an answer to these questions. Could we in any way know that he would say, 'Bring your brother down'?"And Judah said to Israel his father "Send the boy with me, and we'll rise and go, that we may live and not die, both we and you and also our little ones. I will be a pledge of his safety. For my hand you shall require him. If I do not bring him back to you and set him before you, then let me bear the blame forever. If we had not delayed, we would now have returned twice." Then their father Israel said to them, "If it must be so, then do this: take some of the choice fruits of the land in your bags, and carry a present down to the man, a little balm and a little honey, gum, myrrh, pistachio nuts and almonds. Take back with you the money that was returned in the mouth of your sacks. Perhaps it wasn't oversight. Take also your brother and arise, go again to the man. May God Almighty grant you mercy before the man, and may he send back your other brother and Benjamin. And as for me, if I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved."So the men took this present, and they took double the money with them, and Benjamin. They arose and went down to Egypt and stood before Joseph. When Joseph saw Benjamin with them, he said to the steward of his house, "Bring the men into the house and slaughter an animal and make ready for the men, for the men are to dine with me at noon." The man did as Joseph told him and brought the men to Joseph's house. And the men were afraid because they were brought to Joseph's house, and they said, "It is because of the money which was replaced in our sacks the first time, that we were brought in, so that he may assault us and fall upon us to make us servants and seize our donkeys."So they went up to the steward of Joseph's house and spoke with him at the door of the house, and said, "Oh, my Lord, we came down the first time to buy food. And when we came to the lodging place we opened our sacks, and there was each man's money in the mouth of his sack and money in full weight. So we have brought it again with us, and we have brought other money down with us to buy food. We do not know who put our money in our sacks." He replied, "Peace to you. Do not be afraid. Your God and the God of your father has put treasure in your sacks for you. I received your money." Then he brought Simeon out to them. And when the man had brought the men into Joseph's house and given them water, and they had washed their feet and when he had given their donkeys fodder, they prepared the present for Joseph coming at noon, for they heard that they should eat bread there.When Joseph came home, they brought into the house to him the present that they had with them and bowed down to him to the ground. And he inquired about their welfare and said, "Is your father well, the old man of whom you spoke? Is he still alive?" They said, "You're serving our father as well. He's still alive." And they bowed their heads and prostrated themselves and he lifted up his eyes and saw his brother Benjamin, his mother's son, and said, "Is this your youngest brother of whom you spoke to me? God be gracious to you, my son." Then Joseph hurried out, for his compassion grew warm for his brother, and he saw a place to weep. And he entered his chamber and wept there. Then he washed his face and came out.And controlling himself he said, "Serve the food." They served him by himself, and then by themselves, and the Egyptians who ate with him by themselves, because the Egyptians could not eat with the Hebrews, for that is an abomination to the Egyptians. And they sat before him, the firstborn according to his birthright and the youngest according to his youth. And the men looked at one another in amazement. Portions were taken to them from Joseph's table, but Benjamin's portion was five times as much as any of theirs. And they drank and were Mary with him. This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray.Heavenly Father, we praise you that your word says the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord remains forever. We thank you, Lord, for this ancient book that is so much more than a book. We thank you, Lord, for this story of the life of Jacob and his sons, Judah, Joseph. We thank you Lord that this story is not just a story, not just a piece of history. It's something that your spirit turn alive in our hearts that can use to sanctify us, to grow us, to mold us, to grow our dependence on you and see our need for you in greater forms. We pray, Lord, for the blessing of your word. Bless the word as I preach it, but it'd go out in power and force. Let each one of here convicted to trust you through the hardship of day-to-day life, convicted of their need to look for your work in their lives, more closely, convicted of their need to cling to your word in all trials and circumstances. Lord, I pray these things in Jesus' holy name. Amen.Well, today, we are talking about Genesis 43. And yesterday, I sent out an email. We sent out a weekly email before the sermons go out, and I ask you to think about if you were God, how would you tell him to work on you? And if you're a believer, I'm wanting you to think about how would you want God to grow you, to shape you. I know that for me, even though I know God, Christ calls us to take up our cross daily and follow in his footsteps. I think my plan for myself would involve lots of isolation. My wife would be there, my kids would be there, but sometimes I'd be able to escape and get full freedom from them. There'd be a babysitter for me and my wife when we want to spend time together. And then, there'd be a lot of opportunity to grow by watching soccer, to grow by exercising about three hours a day, to grow by just processing things, facts, knowledge, the word of God in isolation without really engaging other people.So, what is it for you? If you had the choice as a believer, how would you like God to grow you? What do you think is best? I think a lot of us, we don't really go, we know it's not really mature to think like that. But oftentimes, when God follows his classic means, shown to us in scripture, we resist and we think we could do it better. And if you're a nonbeliever, you say, "God, show me. Woo me. I want you to talk to me in this specific way." And what is that for you if you're a nonbeliever here today? Because this is a chapter where in Genesis 43, and God is dealing with Jacob and his sons... Who's Jacob? Jacob is the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham and God. This is the first book of the Bible, the book of the beginnings of the creation, the book of the beginnings of the family of God, and God's work in creation.God creates the world, all things are good. Adam and Eve walk in perfect unity and peace and perfect knowledge of him. There's no sin, there's no tension, there's no conflict, there's no brokenness in the world. And Genesis 2 comes, and Adam and Eve sinned. Genesis 3 talks about how there's going to be thorns and thistles to life. The creation is impacted by man's sin. And really, Genesis 3-12, it's a story of the spread of the sin of mankind, in the hearts of man and in relationships and in the creation. So God calls Abraham, and he says, "Abraham, I'm going to bless you. I'm going to make you into great people." He's a man. I think he's 75 years old when he calls him, and he doesn't have a child. He says, "I'm going to make you a great people, and I'm going to bless you. I'm going to make you the father of many kings, the father of many nations."So his son, Isaac, receives that promise. His son Jacob receives that promise. And what we're finding out in this series is that Jacob, though he had some good moments in his youth where he showed true faith in the Lord, he is a bit of a bonehead and his sons are worse than him. They are adulterers, his 12 sons. They've committed incest, they are prideful, they're slanderous. They're all fighting inwardly. They're competing with each other. And furthermore, at one point, 20 years ago, they put the Father Jacob's prize son, the son that he had with his favorite wife, they left him in a pit for dead. What they don't know is that God preserved his life, and put him through a process to bring him to the right hand of Pharaoh. So God's dealing with this broken family while the lingering promise that they're going to be a blessing to the earth stands, so God has to work.These people are not perfect. God's people are never perfect. But what we see is that these people probably aren't saved, these people probably don't know God, and it's kind of offensive that God would choose to work through these people. This is kind of a stance that, "God is doing something new. Why would he save the world from the slavery to sin through such a broken family?" It's a statement that religion that says, "I do right. I earn favor before God is wrong." It's a statement that salvation is initiated by God, not by any individual man as he tries to approach God. It's a statement that God uses broken people. And how can he use broken people? It's because he gives grace to them. We're talking about this family and their brokenness, but we're talking about how God is dealing with them.Again, think about how would you like God to deal with you? But in this chapter, compare that with how God is working on these people as a model of the family of faith. Last week, we discussed a lot of this already. In chapter 42, Genesis, we discussed how God has been working on them through the hardship of famine. When the famine hits the land for about a year, they're forced to look for a source of food. We discussed how God has been dealing with them through the hardship of sojourning, of temporarily turning to foreign land for help and relief. It's the hardship of being a refugee or a migrant worker looking for the best for their family. You're engaging with hard travel, engaging foreign officials, engaging with bureaucracy stacked against them. There's a language barrier and there's stereotypes that they're engaging with.We discussed how God has dealt with this family through the pain of unjust imprisonment. We saw that after three days in prison, they go to Egypt, there's the famine, you're one of the famine. They run out of food, they go to Egypt, and they approach the Egyptian ruler and they receive food, but he places them unjustly in a jail for three days. They don't know that it's their brother Joseph and he's trying to chip away, get a sense of have these men repented, "Are they right before God? Are their hearts still the same as when they put them in the pit?" And they go unjustly to prison, they're sent unjustly to prison, and in Genesis 42:21, they exclaim, "In truth, we are guilty concerning our brother." For them, this is the first time probably in 20 years since abandoning Joseph, leaving him for dead, telling their father that he is gone to the point that he thinks he's dead, this is the first time that their guilty conscience is probably coming alive.And furthermore or less, we talked about how actually the awakened conscience was actually a grace of God, a gift of God. As the men process all the hardship that happened to them in the chapter last week and the things that I just list listed out, they ask in verse 28, "What is this that God has done to us?" God is doing something. He's dealing with Jacob and his sons, but the process is slow. So in this chapter, God continues the work of bringing these men into his family. As we process how God chose to work on this family, we should ask him to show us how he is... If we're not walking with him calling us back, or those walking with him, we should be asking him to show us how he is continuing to stay near us, to refine us.What the New Testament shows us is that the Christian life is like that. We are a piece of gold in the refiner's fire. So we're saved, but then God is exposing us to trials to burn out the impurities that we... Until we grow to the fullness of Christ likeness, God is going to be refining us. So ask Lord, "How are you working in me to save me, to grow me?" And a key verse, "How does he do that?" The key verse in the chapter and one of the key verses in the book, all the Book of Genesis is verse 14. And this is Jacob saying, "May God Almighty grant you mercy before the man." This is the first occurrence of mercy in all of Genesis and all of the Bible. The chapter is all about God's mercy to guilty, fearful, hopeless, lost sinners.The condition of these men as they are contemplating having to go back to Egypt, when they approach Joseph at his house. This chapter is all about the mercy that God offers to guilty sinners like you and me. It's by the mercy of God that God is using life circumstances, and the Egyptian ruler, who Jacob and his sons don't know to be Joseph, to refine these men, to draw them into saving an intimate relationship. And what we see in this chapter is that God dispatches different kinds of mercy. You kind of see it. Last week we touched on it, and this week there's a little bit. Joseph to them, the Egyptian ruler, he deals with the brothers in kind of a bad cop, good cop method. At some moments, God, through Joseph, dishes out tender mercy to the men. And just through pure kindness, gentleness, there's some moments he dishes out severe mercy by inflicting tough circumstances upon them.We're going to learn about different kinds of mercy. How does God try to draw us in, draw non-believers in through mercy? How does God grow and refine Christians through mercy? I'm going to point out three different kinds of mercy. God calls his children home and grows them through severe mercy, common mercy, and tender mercy. And know, the term mercy and grace, and then how they relate to love as you grow in the faith, they're kind of hard terms used because you can't really use them by fully separating them from the other, particularly grace and mercy. Know that I use the term mercy in this outline because I think the key verse talks about God's mercy to the men in this process of going back to Egypt. But I could have equally used the term grace. So to say that God gives mercy to someone has a connotation that God gives leniency when it is not required of him.To say that God gives grace, it means that God gives favor when it is not merited by the recipient and that they're intertwined. Because when God is extending leniency, he is extending favor or grace. When God is extending grace or unmerited favor, he's extending leniency. But this, today, I want to step away from the title of the sermons here and talk about mercy as it relates to grace. God calls his children home and grows them through severe mercy. In verses 1-14, we see that God calls his children home, and I use the term, by extending severe mercy. This is a term that I first became acquainted with in the book, A Severe Mercy by an author Sheldon Vanauken. I probably butchered that. To say that God calls his children home and grows them through severe mercy, put most broadly, it's to say that God calls his children home and grows them by exposing them to severe situations.God purposes that his children face severe, hard, difficult, challenging situations in order to draw them in. In the book, Vanauken, he talks about how God used the death of his wife of a couple of decades. He thinks to actually save him, because ultimately he saw all of his engagement with Christianity was really tied to this desire to build this perfect marriage with his wife. He never really wanted God for God's sake. God had to strip, he says, and he talks about how his engagement through personal letters with CS Lewis helped him. He saw that through taking his wife, he could finally treasure a relationship with God. And that was a severe mercy. Because if that's what it took to get him into a right relationship with God, to see his need for God, to treasure relationship with God that's offered through Christ, then it's a mercy.It's a confusing term, a severe mercy. But when you chew on it, it can really help you understand how God works. To face the severe mercy is severe because it's hard and difficult to face such circumstances. To face the severe mercy is an experience of God's mercy. Because though the severe mercy may be severe and difficult to face or endure, the experience altogether is so much better than what a sinner deserves. So severe mercy, it leads to a person to have a greater understanding of who God is and it leads one to see their limitations of their own power. Furthermore, it leads one to see the boundless limits of God's infinite power, and it's hard to swallow. By exposing people as children to hardship, God is actually being very gentle or merciful to them. How is this true? The whole narrative of scripture says that God is a holy God, and that from the beginning, man was to walk in a holy manner before him.And if he did not, the penalty would be death. Eternal expulsion from the loving presence of God. For the just punishment of sin against an infinite holy God is infinite wrath and eternal punishment. Romans 3:23 says that all have fallen, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Because nobody has met the mark perfect holiness before God, any moment where God withholds or delays the carrying out of his wrath, it's a blessing, a severely merciful act where he is shown leniency. So even as Christians or people approaching the faith, when life is really difficult or hard for any person because it's not anything close to facing the just wrath of God, such a moment is an act of severe mercy extended to them by God. So in this, I'm going to step into the text verses 1-14. I'm going to talk about different forms of severe mercy that God extends, that he exposes his followers too.He uses it to save people, he uses it to grow people, and he is merciful in doing so again. Because the lessons that they learn are so much more important than the idols that they're clinging to, that he's stripping away. In this chapter, we find Jacob's brothers a long while after their initial experience of guilt in the last chapter. Remember, in verse 21, they said, "In truth, we are guilty concerning our brother, this is the last chapter, in that we saw the distress of his soul, they're talking about Joseph in the pit, when he begged us and we did not listen. That is why this distress has come upon us." They exclaimed this and felt their conscience stirred. But now that they're back home, away from Egypt, away from the tension of the moment, away from the threat of imprisonment, away from this man who has authority over them, things have gone back to normal.Maybe the famine will end, they think. Maybe they won't have to go back to Egypt, if that happens. Perhaps, they can forget their past sins. Maybe they can push those ideas of God that crept up in their mind and his authority over their lives, off their consciences forever. They've made an idol. They've gone back home and they've made an idol out of the facade of a peaceful status quo on the surface of their lives, while there's guilt for sin on their conscience they've not dealt with. If this is their thinking, whether the text shows us, is that God has another plan in mind. If you're wrestling with guilt or fighting to suppress guilt, God has another plan in mind for you. He's relentless in his pursuit of them. And in these verses, we see the three forms of severe mercy.First, he exposes them to famine. More broadly, he exposes them to the pressures of living in a fallen world. Genesis 43:1-2. Now, the famine was severe in the land. And when they had eaten the grain that they had bought brought from Egypt, their father said to them, "Go again, buy us a little food." So God exposes them to continued famine. This is probably close to the end of year two of famine based on what other chapters tell us. And famine, honestly, as a modern American, I can't fathom this. Apparently, 49 million people in 46 countries are experiencing severe food crisis or famine in the present day. And that's according to a quick Google search, an organization called Action Against Hunger. Famine occurs when drought and her infestation and her plant disease and her war continuously plague a huge region of land for months or years at a time.It's a severe hardship that, when faced, lingers on your mind all day every day until there is relief. Hardship that adds uncertainty to all matters of life, to every minute, every hour, every week. It kills you physically and it kills you psychologically, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. You're powerless to put an end to it. All you're left to do is know how to respond to it and engage with it and survive through it. Obviously, today, we praise God. We have a lot of knowledge, materials, technology, pesticides, and means of food preservation to try to confront famine, but it clearly arises in many lands today. But the point is, back then, they did not. Jacob and his family, this family called to bless the world and become numerous nation of people of kingdoms, they're facing famine. They are almost at the point of not surviving.So the famine, it exerts pressure on them, they have to deal with it and they're powerless. But famine, it's something that the greatest schemes of men, greatest schemes of America, of science and technology cannot control. There are other forms of natural disasters, severe forms of mercy that we face, drought, hurricanes, tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, biological and airborne microorganisms. I was reminded of this while I'm reading this, studying this, writing this yesterday. I got multiple notifications on my phone and on my computer from Apple talking about the fine particulates that are floating around, the bad air quality because of the wildfires in Canada. We can't control the weather and the shifting of the earth and microorganisms and fine particulates. And our increased ability to track a lot of these things, it seems to cause more paranoia and anxiety than actually helps us at times.So God speaks to us again and again through pressures of famine still, but pressures of a fallen sin, fallen world through weather, through disease, through political, international turmoil that we cannot control. 9/11, floods, hurricane Katrina, hurricane Harvey in Houston several years back, COVID, heated elections, Russia-Ukraine, the threat of personal sickness and death at any minute, struggles with conception still plaguing the world. Miscarriage, race, gender, class battles, the Lord... These things have entered the world because of sin and we have to face them. What is God telling us in all of it? We are not in control. He is sovereign. He is in control to be brought to this knowledge, to love this knowledge, to find peace in this knowledge. It's a mercy, a grace of God. He's in control. He's in charge. We know he is good. Look at how he redeemed the travesty of the cross of Jesus Christ.So all of natural history, world history align with the words of St. Paul in Romans 8:18-22, I'm just going to read 22. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now, Jacob and his sons face it. We still face it. It impacts our lives and our decisions. So I ask you, what is God telling you through the Earth's groaning? It's going to keep happening until Jesus comes back to make all things new. Paul has to think about it. How has God used natural circumstances or pressures of a fallen world to make you think or act in life? What have you learned from them? What do you think you can learn right now? Second, God extends mercy to Jacob and his brothers to draw them into fellowship with him by exposing them to the pressure of broken people.Verse three. But Judah said to him, "The man, the Egyptian ruler, solemnly warned us saying, 'You shall not see my face unless your brother is with you.'" So the will of a relatively random governor in Egypt, according to the brothers as they don't know it is Joseph, he's forcing them in a certain direction. He's adding pressures and limitations to their freedom. They have to deal with the fact that one brother, Simeon, is still imprisoned by him there. And specifically in this chapter, they're pressured to send Benjamin to Egypt upon his command simply to have food for their families to survive. Like Jacob, we still face these unwanted pressures from other people and these are appointed by the severe mercy of God. We can try to create vacuums to avoid such people. We can seek out echo chambers of those who are like-minded. It's easier than ever.We can seek spouses with the exact same interests, companies and departments, literally through search algorithms on apps online. We can find neighbors, churches, work departments that are the perfect fit. But people are inevitable, they're broken, they're sinful. We can't escape them, we can't cancel them, and that's by God's design. The tendency when we engage people and they inflict their presence and authority on our lives, whether we seek it or not, is that we think we can change them. When we're first confronted with hard people, we say to ourselves, "That's okay. Give me a little time, I'll change you." But with time, we see that we can't. This is the husband and the wife almost on a day-to-day basis. This is parents trying to change their children, grow their children, save their children on their time. Children trying to change their parents.This is the boss trying to change the employee, the employee trying to change the boss. No matter how many phone apps, forms of counseling or technology we have that can teach us how to change people, we have to realize that we can't. Only God can. Only God can change someone from the inside out, change them at the heart level such that their behavior, their presence, their communication changes. We need to just approach these moments, this lack of power with humility. We can fight it, we can keep pressing on and nagging on the people of our lives to change them, or we can ask God what is he trying to do through this, the presence of these people.What is that you trying to do through the engagements of them? We have to allow our lives to be shaped by the necessity of engaging people. So ask God, how are you changing me? How are you calling me home to you to crave your presence, your sinless presence, your loving presence more? How are you refining me through other people? This is a severe mercy of God that we have to engage people. Third, God extends severe mercy to Jacob and his brothers to draw them into fellowship with him by exposing them to undesirable circumstances. Verse 6, Jacob says, "Why did you treat me so badly as to tell the man that you had another brother?" So Jacob, the neglectful father, comes off as an angry old curmudgeon, as a victim of the folly of his sons as he processes the situation. He's just whining. Honestly, my first engagement with this was laughing as I read it because I was just sitting and whining with my wife in the minutes before I'd started to study this.And I just want to say, "Men, we think that our wives and children are blessed when we sit down and tell them how we have it right, everyone else in our life has it wrong, and that we are victim of our circumstances." We need to stop. We need to be models of faith and steadfast faithfulness to God. There's no way to avoid difficult circumstances. Jacob and his sons had no control over the fact of the famine and the extension of the famine, and they had no control over the fact that Egypt had all the grain in that period. Similarly, in our lives, there's seasons, moments, trials that just fall into our lap. Things that we didn't invite into our households, our churches, our neighborhoods, our schools, our local state and national governments, financial downturns, wars that we have to engage, that we have no interest in engaging but we have to.We can get depressed, we can get paralyzed, we can busy ourselves to avoid the fact that these tensions and these situations exist. We can distract ourselves with relationships, devices, and shows, adrenaline rushes. We can try to ignore them by engaging in drink, smoke, other chemicals, or we can face the fact that circumstances are part of life. We're called to face them in faith, and find the faithful narrow way forward that brings glory to God. As we do that in the process, the Lord is teaching us, shaping us, saving many all along. These moments, these undesired circumstances shouldn't always be viewed as hindrances, but as opportunities for us to see God's wisdom at work in our lives, to see his power moving in our life. So in some, I've talked about the severe mercy of God as he exposes us to it through the effects of living in a sinful world through people, through random undesired circumstances.And know, the message that I want you to take is not just expect hardship to be a part of your life, but not become a stoic. It's not a, "Pick-up your bootstraps. This is life, just face it. Everybody has to deal with it. Find a way to cope." No, it's find a way to see God's hand through it all. Ask him to grow your wisdom, your insight to engage such moments in a way that pleases him. Ask him to show you what he's teaching you. Ask him how he wants you to respond, one day at a time, without getting overcome with anxiety, thinking about how hard it will be in the future. I like the framing of, "You need to see that as you think about severe mercies, a lot of these external circumstances forcing their pressure on onto your life. You need to see that what makes you you, and the Lord is not just the things that you have done but the things that also have happened to you.God's using it all in his grand plan and glorious plan to save you, to shape you, prepare you for his work. We've seen him do such work in the life of Joseph as we meditated upon his experience in the pit. We meditated upon facing false accusations of adultery. We meditated upon him being forced to be in an Egyptian jail for several years. We've seen how God prepared him to handle this moment with grace and mercy. So the same thing that he did with Joseph, the same thing he's doing with you and you need to trust him as he does it. See here, the text says that God is shaping these men through severe mercy. I just want to take time to look at Judah and Jacob to show you that transformation is actually happening. Let's look at Judah. Judah, who we know from our study in Genesis 38, was a very hard and stubborn man.He slept with his deceased son's wife when he thought she was a prostitute. This Judah is changing by God's severe mercy and becoming the family leader in this chapter. In the text, at the beginning when after Jacob resists sending the brothers back with Benjamin, Judah honestly, respectfully, directly speaks to his father. He still honors him, but he stands on truth before him. In verse 8, to convince his father, he takes a wise strategy. He repeats to his father, "Send the boy with me, and we will rise and go, that we may live and not die." Jacob said when he first sent the sons to Egypt, he said, "Go to Egypt to get grain, so that we may live and not die." He's using Jacob's words to convince him. And then he adds an element so that both we and you and also our little ones may be saved, may stay alive.Judah's not thinking of himself as we saw him do. Primarily, he's thinking of others. So further, Judah, the biggest thing that he does is he pledges his life to Jacob. He commits to taking personal responsibility if Benjamin does not return. This is in comparison to the author that Ruben makes in the last chapter in verse 7. Ruben says to Jacob, this harsh approach, "Kill my two sons if I go to Egypt with Benjamin and don't return with him." We see Jacob's wisdom. We see him taking responsibility. And this foreshadows, a little side note, the precedence that the tribe of Judah eventually takes among the other tribes of the nation of Israel. It points to the time that Jesus Christ, a descendant of Judah, the line of the tribe of Judah's scripture calls him, takes responsibility for the sins of the lost sons of God by going to the cross, offering himself in their place.Judah changes but we see an incredible change in Jacob through the severe mercy of God, through the providential appointment of hardship. Jacob, again, he is a whiny curmudgeon at the start of the chapter, blaming everyone else for the situation that they're in. He's still showing extreme preference for his son Benjamin over the other 10, but there's great change taking place as the chapter goes forward. This is noted most clearly by the fact that, for most of the story today, Jacob's story is that God does save him. Jacob does have faith in God. And God, at that point, he passes his promises of the covenant from Abraham and Isaac to him, and God gives him a covenant named Israel. But Jacob, even after a profound experience in earlier chapters of Genesis, he goes back to his old ways. So the story, the narrative throughout Genesis primarily calls him Jacob over and over again.In chapter 42, he's Jacob. In this chapter, he moves from the old angry man to the new man Israel. He starts off complaining, but then he takes charge as these situations force him to. He provides decisive and wise leadership in granting the brother's permission to bring Benjamin, and giving them instructions to pack gifts, local delicacies that they don't have in Egypt to earn the favor of the ruler, to double the money that they bring back after the Egyptians did not keep their money last time. He takes practical matters. He thinks responsibly. But the most notable change that we see in Jacob as he faces the severe mercy of God is that he has revival in his faith. In verse 14, he's brought to the point where he knows he's powerless to change the situation, and he says, "May God Almighty grant you mercy before the man, and may send back your other brother and Benjamin. And as for me, if I'm bereaved of my children, I'm bereaved."Jacob, now Israel, he appeals to the covenant name of God of Genesis, El Shaddai, Genesis 17 particularly, the mighty God. This God, he's trusted in before, he will trust in again. Furthermore, in this verse, he appeals to the mercy of God for the success of the journey for Egypt. He knows only God can give them favorable outcome here. Lastly, what's most profound, he entrusts Benjamin's safety and the desire for the return of Benjamin's brother Joseph to God, right? He's been grieving the loss of Joseph, basically not functioning, not engaging the other brothers for 20 years, all the while preserving Benjamin's life at all costs and just ignoring those other brothers. And Jacob relinquish his grip on the matter. He goes as far as showing peace over the fact that if it's the Lord's will to bereave him of his children, then so be it.You got to remember, he did not forget that God said that He's carrying this promise to be the father of many nations, like that was passed down from Abraham and Isaac. He says, "God, I trust you. You have the power to fulfill your promises even when there seems to be no hope." So I elaborate on Judas' transformation, Jacob's transformation to illustrate how God uses severe mercy, hard circumstances to change them, to save them, to grow them in the faith. We can spend all of our life begrudgingly facing the appointed personal, familial, cultural, global circumstances that we're born into or approach them with faith. We can see how they deepen our dependence on God, make us better men and women, grow our vision and appreciation for the daily mercies and graces of God, and increase the fruit of the spirit within us. We're becoming more like Christ as we engage them faithfully.Some may ask, why does God act like this? Why does he have a point to choose to use severe mercy? This is my second point, and it's really short. If God calls his children home and grows them through severe mercy, common mercy, why does he use severe mercy? Because he is offering common mercy constantly, and we don't receive it. Matthew 5:45 says, "For he makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." God is actually trying to tell us through the basic mercies, basic graces of daily life that he is God and he is in control, and we owe him our worship and faithfulness. Through the rising of the sun, every day on all people, through the sending of rains, through daily health, through the beauty of nature, through the provision of daily bread, through the joyful spirit and faith that children have as they wake up and just expect God to provide through the majesty of just the creative world, he's talking to us and it's not enough for us.We are stubborn. We are selfish. We choose to say that that is not enough. We place ourselves in the position of God, and we don't accept his means of communicating that. That's the mistake that Adam and Eve made in the garden. They think that God is keeping something from them in just the basic provision of life in the garden. So we commit the same sin and we don't receive common mercy, which I'm also basically saying is the same thing, historically-referred to as common grace. But praise God, he doesn't stop at common mercy. He doesn't stop at severe mercy to draw us in. He gives us tender mercy, and this is my third point. God calls his children home through severe mercy, common mercy, tender mercy.The use of tender mercy, it's a little redundant. I could have just said mercy. But to drive home in the point and emphasize how good it is, I went forward with tender mercy. He said that he speaks to us through tender mercy, expose us to tender mercy. He treats us and speaks to us with very loving treatment. He engages our fears and guilt uniquely. He mercifully and graciously condescends to speak to us at a level that we understand, in his process of calling us to him and refining us once we're in the family. This is what verses 15-34 really show us. God calls the brothers back by tender mercy. Verse 18 says, "And the men were afraid because they were brought to Joseph's house." So they bring the goods, they bring the money, they bring Benjamin back to Egypt, and they're told by a servant to go to his house.Can you imagine these tent dwellers, these back country men when they're about to go to the house, the property of this powerful Egyptian ruler, essentially a billionaire of their day? They're rolling up on their donkeys, not even camels, to palace with dozens of camels. It's like driving a rusty old pickup truck to a mansion with multiple Teslas and model cars. And they're weary from facing God's severe mercy, the famine, the travel. The anxiety of how they will be received by the ruler after they return, as they know that the ruler did not receive the money the first time, it would've been paralyzing them. Just not knowing, "Is this ruler just going to come down and arrest us and make us his slave?" Their worst fear would probably be over the fact, "That as we engage this man, are we going to be brought to that point where we feel guilty again for throwing Joseph into the pit?"Again, they don't know that Joseph is the ruler. But they know that through engagement with this man, they were brought back to this thing that they just want to depress. But God brings these men back to Egypt as part of the process to draw him in. And how are they received? It's with kindness, with love. Remember, Jacob/Israel's prayer in verse 14, May God Almighty grant you mercy before him. Jacob's prayers come true. It's answered. The ruler and his servant receive them with tender mercy. They arise in Egypt, guilty, fearful. What does the servant say to them? He says, "Peace," shalom in Hebrew, "Peace to you. Do not be afraid. Your God and the God of your father has put treasure in your sacks for you." This is after they say hello and confess that they went home with the money. It says, "Don't worry about it."As the text continues, the servant brings him out, Simeon. He's released as promised, upon their return in their last chapter, and he's in good shape. Then though they're foreigners, they are brought into the private residence of a ruler. Further, the text says they're given water, their feet are washed, their donkeys aren't stolen but are given fodder from the royal feed, and they're invited to a feast. When they approach Joseph at the feast, they bow down to him. And what does he do? He inquires of their welfare, asks them how they are doing, and I'm sure it would've been a little bit of a sugarcoated answer of, "Oh, we're great." Like not acknowledging the fact that they're in turmoil for the months and weeks as this moment approached. But he inquires about their welfare, asks about their father. The ruler further goes to greet the younger brother that he didn't meet during the last visit, Benjamin, and blesses him saying, "God be gracious to you, my son."Altogether, God, after providentially offering common mercy throughout their lives, after offering a lot of severe mercy recently, God has arranged for them to taste his tender mercy as part of the process to draw him in, to fellowship with him. In a situation where Joseph, the ruler, could have brought down justice for the situation with the money as things appeared. For his sin, their sin against him 20 years ago, he treats him with mercy. He treats him with love and kindness. One of the most notable things about the merciful treatment that God has arranged for the brothers is that he goes above and beyond to show the brothers that he's speaking to them through these mercies in ways that are uniquely designed for them. Verse 33 says, And they sat before him, the firstborn according to his birthright and the youngest according to his youth. And the men looked at one another in amazement. God, through Joseph, announces this moment in such a way that the brothers should know that they're talking to him.Just think, there's 11 brothers sitting down. And in this moment, they're arranged from oldest to youngest. If you think about how many ways that the ruler could have arranged them, it's equal to 11 factorial. Yes, I'm making you think about middle school math right now. 11 factorial ways that he could have arranged these men. That's 39,916,800 ways that the ruler could have seeded them, and one of them is the perfect way and he does it. God is clearly speaking to them. And do they see it? Further, in verse 34, the text mentions that the ruler gives Benjamin, the brother of Joseph, five times the portion of food. God's trying to communicate to them that he is God. He knows what they did, and he is mercifully dealing with their sin toward Joseph right now by bringing attention to Benjamin. In this specific communication to the brothers, God is just calling them home.He wants them to cry out mercy as they see that he is God. And they need his mercy for their sin, for their rebellion against his authority over their life, for their specific sins, and particularly, the sin against Joseph. Through tender mercy and the generalness of the ruler's reception, through the specific details of the seating arrangement and serving, God's talking to them. He's trying to stir their minds to acknowledge him as God. But what is their response? Verse 33 says, They looked at one another in amazement. They looked around at each other as if the way they were seated was a coincidence. They looked at each other and said, "Well, forgot about it," and set their minds to the feast before them. Verse 34 says, after Benjamin was given a huge portion, they just enjoyed themselves and had a nice meal like at any other banquet. With their youngest brother, nobody would ever have given the youngest brother this kind of portion. He gets five times more than them in this patriarchal society.And furthermore, at the start of the next chapter, the brothers after this experience where God is just talking to them, offering them mercy, showing them gentleness, tender mercy, they're just content to wake up and go home. They're not inclined to think about everything that's happening. Their reception of the mercy of God, it's dull. They're not moved. It gives them no more than a smile and the satisfaction of a good day and full belly gives them. Isn't that very similar to the reaction that the world has toward God and his mercy? Isn't that very similar to the reaction that you have toward it, on some days? If you're a believer, you can't be a believer without truly cherishing this moment, at one point. But it grows dry and worn out. That's because we're not seeing how God is moving through everything to save us, grow us, shape us.You see, Joseph's brothers, they have an excuse. The ruler didn't reveal himself as Joseph. They don't know that's him, but we know who the ruler is. We know who the governor is. We know who the king of kings, the Lord of Lord is, over all of the earth and over us all as individuals. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. It's written on our heart, our conscience, and it's written in the creation. We long for God's perfect and just rule and reign and the comfort of his presence, when the storms and trials, the rulers and people and circumstances of the broken world impress their unjust influence on our lives and decision making. We long for his unique and tender love toward us as we face these hardships. We know that for all of history, all the time, God has supremely shown his love to man.He has communicated his desire to extend love and grace to each of us in a million unique different ways. Most clearly, he has mercifully and graciously shown his love for us. In coming to deal with our greatest need as parched, guilty, dead sinners. He took on flesh, went from heaven to earth and walked the earth. He came to deal with our greatest need, our thirst for him. God broke the barrier by sending a son to take on flesh, bear the hardship and temptations of this world perfectly as we could not, and to go to the cross in our place. We know that God chosen his love for us and, that while we are still sinners, Christ died for us. How much more clearly could God in all of his glory condescend to speak to us in our greatest need to communicate his love to us? And yet we're often reluctant to receive it.We're reluctant to see our need to entrust our lives to him. Joseph and his brothers had an excuse, but we don't. So Colossians 2:9-10, it says, we're in him the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily. And you have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority. We have no excuse. God is showing his mercy, communicating his love and desire to be in relationship with us over and over again, and we need to receive it. Christ, he broke the divide between heaven and earth. His crowning act of glory with all of his authority was to lay side as glory and die for us. That's really what Joseph is doing. Joseph could be using his authority to squash these sinners to just pour out wrath, but he doesn't. God, Christ did all of this in order that we might live and dine at the same table with him, with a portion due to the firstborn and rule with him and his eternal kingdom.That's what Joseph was doing. That's what Christ offers to us. So I ask you today to close, how is God extending severe mercy to you? How is he extending common mercy? How can you see it better? How is he extending tender mercy, specifically speaking to you, in ways that speak to your greatest fears, your greatest sense, your areas of guilt, your questions of the truth? As you see that, just bow and humble submission to him. Genesis 43 says, you're doubtful, sinful, guilty people like Jacob's family and us with a bad record of bad conscience. There is one power. One of great power and great honor who loves you, who wants to bless you and deliver you from the guilt of your sin and circumstances. He's doing so much to get you to see that. Try to see it. Come into his family, his love, his grace, his mercy. It's sufficient. Let us pray.Heavenly Father, we praise you that Christ has come and he came out of love. He initiated the process that procured our salvation. It's not anything that we can do, but it's all that he has done. And Lord, we praise you that you do not leave us in the condition that we're in. When you save us, you give us your righteousness, but you appoint seasons and trials and circumstances and engagement with the fallen world to grow us. We get to see your hand of redemption at work in us and through us every day. Lord, we praise you that we know we have a savior who has lived perfectly, died in our place, roses from the dead, and ascended to your right hand of authority just like Joseph was at the right hand of Pharaoh. And he is working for our good, for our preservation, for our growth in the faith. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.Now, we're going to transition to a time in the service of communion. This is something that we do as believers to commemorate the fact that by offering his body, pouring out his blood for us on the cross, Jesus invites us to live and dine guilt free at his table. For whom is holy communion—it's for repentant Christians, repentant children of God. If you're not a Christian, not sure where you stand before God, we ask you to withhold from partaking and meditate on the gospel, meditate upon the sermon, the message of today. But if you have decided today to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you're welcome to partake. And if are a Christian, we emphasize that this is for repentant believers. If you have unreconciled sin in your life that you have not brought to the Lord, if you have it on your conscience to approach other brothers and sisters where there is sin, we ask you to with withhold.So if you haven't received a cup with a little wafer and the elements, please raise your hand. As I pray, one of the ushers will give you one. Heavenly Father, we praise you for your grace and mercy. Jesus, we thank you for procuring salvation for us. You suffered, Lord, and triumphed for us. Today, we remember your suffering. Holy Spirit, I pray that you prepare our hearts now to focus on the attention of the cross of Jesus Christ dying for us, the primary act of showing your tender mercy toward us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Take off the bottom layer. I think all of our cups now have the bread on the bottom. Take the bread out and follow along with me. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread and after eating it, he said, "This is my body broken for you. Take, eat, and do this in remembrance of me."He 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." Let's pray. Lord God, we glorify you. We pray, Lord, Holy Spirit, help us in glorifying God as we meditate upon the wisdom of his ways, the ability to redeem and use the brokenness of this world, the broken moments of our life, the broken moments of our personality, and redeem them and use them to be a blessing to others. Help us, Lord, as we worship. Help us to cast off all of our burdens and anxieties and stresses for situations, relationships that we cannot control to you. Help us to focus on you on the greatness of your power, your majesty, holiness, righteousness, truth, perfect plans, and sovereignty. Help us to sing with all that we have because you are worthy of all worship and glory and honor in all seasons. We pray this all in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.Today, we are continuing in our series, Graduate Level Grace, and we are walking through chapter by chapter through Genesis 37-50. Today, we're in Genesis 43, and we are studying the life of Joseph. The constant theme that keeps coming up is that salvation is by grace. It's not something that we earn. It's not a process that we initiate by our good works, our own efforts to conjure up righteousness before God. It's something that God initiates, that God blesses us with. He bestows us with His grace to get us into right relationship with him. As we go forward in the Christian life, he continues to give us more and more of it to carry out his work faithfully. Today, we're going to keep in touch into the theme of grace again, and talk further how Joseph points us to Christ in his engagement with his brothers. Again, these are long chapters. I'm going to read Genesis 43, the whole chapter. It's verses one through 34.Pastor Jan has not been reading at the beginning and doing more longer quotations, walking through the text. I'm going to read it now, and just go in and out of the text quickly throughout the sermon. So if you do have a Bible, open up to Genesis 43:1-34 and follow along, and we'll have it on the screen as well. Furthermore, we are going to partake in communion today. This is something that we, as a church, practice the first Sunday of every month. I'll preach the word, we'll respond, and then we will partake in communion and I'll explain the steps along the way once we get there. I'm going to read Genesis 43 verses 1-34, and the sermons is about the mercy of God. Genesis 43:1-34. Now, the famine was severe in the land and when they had eaten the grain that they had brought from Egypt, their father said to them, "Go again, buy us a little food."But Judah said to him, "The man solemnly warned us, saying, 'You shall not see my face unless your brother is with you. 'If you'll send our brother with us, we will go down and buy you food. But if you'll not send him, we'll not go down, for the man said to us, 'You shall not see my face, unless your brother is with you.'" Israel said, "Why did you treat me so badly as to tell that man that you had another brother?" They replied, "The man questioned us carefully about ourselves and our kindred, saying, 'Is your father still alive? Do you have another brother?' What we told him was an answer to these questions. Could we in any way know that he would say, 'Bring your brother down'?"And Judah said to Israel his father "Send the boy with me, and we'll rise and go, that we may live and not die, both we and you and also our little ones. I will be a pledge of his safety. For my hand you shall require him. If I do not bring him back to you and set him before you, then let me bear the blame forever. If we had not delayed, we would now have returned twice." Then their father Israel said to them, "If it must be so, then do this: take some of the choice fruits of the land in your bags, and carry a present down to the man, a little balm and a little honey, gum, myrrh, pistachio nuts and almonds. Take back with you the money that was returned in the mouth of your sacks. Perhaps it wasn't oversight. Take also your brother and arise, go again to the man. May God Almighty grant you mercy before the man, and may he send back your other brother and Benjamin. And as for me, if I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved."So the men took this present, and they took double the money with them, and Benjamin. They arose and went down to Egypt and stood before Joseph. When Joseph saw Benjamin with them, he said to the steward of his house, "Bring the men into the house and slaughter an animal and make ready for the men, for the men are to dine with me at noon." The man did as Joseph told him and brought the men to Joseph's house. And the men were afraid because they were brought to Joseph's house, and they said, "It is because of the money which was replaced in our sacks the first time, that we were brought in, so that he may assault us and fall upon us to make us servants and seize our donkeys."So they went up to the steward of Joseph's house and spoke with him at the door of the house, and said, "Oh, my Lord, we came down the first time to buy food. And when we came to the lodging place we opened our sacks, and there was each man's money in the mouth of his sack and money in full weight. So we have brought it again with us, and we have brought other money down with us to buy food. We do not know who put our money in our sacks." He replied, "Peace to you. Do not be afraid. Your God and the God of your father has put treasure in your sacks for you. I received your money." Then he brought Simeon out to them. And when the man had brought the men into Joseph's house and given them water, and they had washed their feet and when he had given their donkeys fodder, they prepared the present for Joseph coming at noon, for they heard that they should eat bread there.When Joseph came home, they brought into the house to him the present that they had with them and bowed down to him to the ground. And he inquired about their welfare and said, "Is your father well, the old man of whom you spoke? Is he still alive?" They said, "You're serving our father as well. He's still alive." And they bowed their heads and prostrated themselves and he lifted up his eyes and saw his brother Benjamin, his mother's son, and said, "Is this your youngest brother of whom you spoke to me? God be gracious to you, my son." Then Joseph hurried out, for his compassion grew warm for his brother, and he saw a place to weep. And he entered his chamber and wept there. Then he washed his face and came out.And controlling himself he said, "Serve the food." They served him by himself, and then by themselves, and the Egyptians who ate with him by themselves, because the Egyptians could not eat with the Hebrews, for that is an abomination to the Egyptians. And they sat before him, the firstborn according to his birthright and the youngest according to his youth. And the men looked at one another in amazement. Portions were taken to them from Joseph's table, but Benjamin's portion was five times as much as any of theirs. And they drank and were Mary with him. This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray.Heavenly Father, we praise you that your word says the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord remains forever. We thank you, Lord, for this ancient book that is so much more than a book. We thank you, Lord, for this story of the life of Jacob and his sons, Judah, Joseph. We thank you Lord that this story is not just a story, not just a piece of history. It's something that your spirit turn alive in our hearts that can use to sanctify us, to grow us, to mold us, to grow our dependence on you and see our need for you in greater forms. We pray, Lord, for the blessing of your word. Bless the word as I preach it, but it'd go out in power and force. Let each one of here convicted to trust you through the hardship of day-to-day life, convicted of their need to look for your work in their lives, more closely, convicted of their need to cling to your word in all trials and circumstances. Lord, I pray these things in Jesus' holy name. Amen.Well, today, we are talking about Genesis 43. And yesterday, I sent out an email. We sent out a weekly email before the sermons go out, and I ask you to think about if you were God, how would you tell him to work on you? And if you're a believer, I'm wanting you to think about how would you want God to grow you, to shape you. I know that for me, even though I know God, Christ calls us to take up our cross daily and follow in his footsteps. I think my plan for myself would involve lots of isolation. My wife would be there, my kids would be there, but sometimes I'd be able to escape and get full freedom from them. There'd be a babysitter for me and my wife when we want to spend time together. And then, there'd be a lot of opportunity to grow by watching soccer, to grow by exercising about three hours a day, to grow by just processing things, facts, knowledge, the word of God in isolation without really engaging other people.So, what is it for you? If you had the choice as a believer, how would you like God to grow you? What do you think is best? I think a lot of us, we don't really go, we know it's not really mature to think like that. But oftentimes, when God follows his classic means, shown to us in scripture, we resist and we think we could do it better. And if you're a nonbeliever, you say, "God, show me. Woo me. I want you to talk to me in this specific way." And what is that for you if you're a nonbeliever here today? Because this is a chapter where in Genesis 43, and God is dealing with Jacob and his sons... Who's Jacob? Jacob is the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham and God. This is the first book of the Bible, the book of the beginnings of the creation, the book of the beginnings of the family of God, and God's work in creation.God creates the world, all things are good. Adam and Eve walk in perfect unity and peace and perfect knowledge of him. There's no sin, there's no tension, there's no conflict, there's no brokenness in the world. And Genesis 2 comes, and Adam and Eve sinned. Genesis 3 talks about how there's going to be thorns and thistles to life. The creation is impacted by man's sin. And really, Genesis 3-12, it's a story of the spread of the sin of mankind, in the hearts of man and in relationships and in the creation. So God calls Abraham, and he says, "Abraham, I'm going to bless you. I'm going to make you into great people." He's a man. I think he's 75 years old when he calls him, and he doesn't have a child. He says, "I'm going to make you a great people, and I'm going to bless you. I'm going to make you the father of many kings, the father of many nations."So his son, Isaac, receives that promise. His son Jacob receives that promise. And what we're finding out in this series is that Jacob, though he had some good moments in his youth where he showed true faith in the Lord, he is a bit of a bonehead and his sons are worse than him. They are adulterers, his 12 sons. They've committed incest, they are prideful, they're slanderous. They're all fighting inwardly. They're competing with each other. And furthermore, at one point, 20 years ago, they put the Father Jacob's prize son, the son that he had with his favorite wife, they left him in a pit for dead. What they don't know is that God preserved his life, and put him through a process to bring him to the right hand of Pharaoh. So God's dealing with this broken family while the lingering promise that they're going to be a blessing to the earth stands, so God has to work.These people are not perfect. God's people are never perfect. But what we see is that these people probably aren't saved, these people probably don't know God, and it's kind of offensive that God would choose to work through these people. This is kind of a stance that, "God is doing something new. Why would he save the world from the slavery to sin through such a broken family?" It's a statement that religion that says, "I do right. I earn favor before God is wrong." It's a statement that salvation is initiated by God, not by any individual man as he tries to approach God. It's a statement that God uses broken people. And how can he use broken people? It's because he gives grace to them. We're talking about this family and their brokenness, but we're talking about how God is dealing with them.Again, think about how would you like God to deal with you? But in this chapter, compare that with how God is working on these people as a model of the family of faith. Last week, we discussed a lot of this already. In chapter 42, Genesis, we discussed how God has been working on them through the hardship of famine. When the famine hits the land for about a year, they're forced to look for a source of food. We discussed how God has been dealing with them through the hardship of sojourning, of temporarily turning to foreign land for help and relief. It's the hardship of being a refugee or a migrant worker looking for the best for their family. You're engaging with hard travel, engaging foreign officials, engaging with bureaucracy stacked against them. There's a language barrier and there's stereotypes that they're engaging with.We discussed how God has dealt with this family through the pain of unjust imprisonment. We saw that after three days in prison, they go to Egypt, there's the famine, you're one of the famine. They run out of food, they go to Egypt, and they approach the Egyptian ruler and they receive food, but he places them unjustly in a jail for three days. They don't know that it's their brother Joseph and he's trying to chip away, get a sense of have these men repented, "Are they right before God? Are their hearts still the same as when they put them in the pit?" And they go unjustly to prison, they're sent unjustly to prison, and in Genesis 42:21, they exclaim, "In truth, we are guilty concerning our brother." For them, this is the first time probably in 20 years since abandoning Joseph, leaving him for dead, telling their father that he is gone to the point that he thinks he's dead, this is the first time that their guilty conscience is probably coming alive.And furthermore or less, we talked about how actually the awakened conscience was actually a grace of God, a gift of God. As the men process all the hardship that happened to them in the chapter last week and the things that I just list listed out, they ask in verse 28, "What is this that God has done to us?" God is doing something. He's dealing with Jacob and his sons, but the process is slow. So in this chapter, God continues the work of bringing these men into his family. As we process how God chose to work on this family, we should ask him to show us how he is... If we're not walking with him calling us back, or those walking with him, we should be asking him to show us how he is continuing to stay near us, to refine us.What the New Testament shows us is that the Christian life is like that. We are a piece of gold in the refiner's fire. So we're saved, but then God is exposing us to trials to burn out the impurities that we... Until we grow to the fullness of Christ likeness, God is going to be refining us. So ask Lord, "How are you working in me to save me, to grow me?" And a key verse, "How does he do that?" The key verse in the chapter and one of the key verses in the book, all the Book of Genesis is verse 14. And this is Jacob saying, "May God Almighty grant you mercy before the man." This is the first occurrence of mercy in all of Genesis and all of the Bible. The chapter is all about God's mercy to guilty, fearful, hopeless, lost sinners.The condition of these men as they are contemplating having to go back to Egypt, when they approach Joseph at his house. This chapter is all about the mercy that God offers to guilty sinners like you and me. It's by the mercy of God that God is using life circumstances, and the Egyptian ruler, who Jacob and his sons don't know to be Joseph, to refine these men, to draw them into saving an intimate relationship. And what we see in this chapter is that God dispatches different kinds of mercy. You kind of see it. Last week we touched on it, and this week there's a little bit. Joseph to them, the Egyptian ruler, he deals with the brothers in kind of a bad cop, good cop method. At some moments, God, through Joseph, dishes out tender mercy to the men. And just through pure kindness, gentleness, there's some moments he dishes out severe mercy by inflicting tough circumstances upon them.We're going to learn about different kinds of mercy. How does God try to draw us in, draw non-believers in through mercy? How does God grow and refine Christians through mercy? I'm going to point out three different kinds of mercy. God calls his children home and grows them through severe mercy, common mercy, and tender mercy. And know, the term mercy and grace, and then how they relate to love as you grow in the faith, they're kind of hard terms used because you can't really use them by fully separating them from the other, particularly grace and mercy. Know that I use the term mercy in this outline because I think the key verse talks about God's mercy to the men in this process of going back to Egypt. But I could have equally used the term grace. So to say that God gives mercy to someone has a connotation that God gives leniency when it is not required of him.To say that God gives grace, it means that God gives favor when it is not merited by the recipient and that they're intertwined. Because when God is extending leniency, he is extending favor or grace. When God is extending grace or unmerited favor, he's extending leniency. But this, today, I want to step away from the title of the sermons here and talk about mercy as it relates to grace. God calls his children home and grows them through severe mercy. In verses 1-14, we see that God calls his children home, and I use the term, by extending severe mercy. This is a term that I first became acquainted with in the book, A Severe Mercy by an author Sheldon Vanauken. I probably butchered that. To say that God calls his children home and grows them through severe mercy, put most broadly, it's to say that God calls his children home and grows them by exposing them to severe situations.God purposes that his children face severe, hard, difficult, challenging situations in order to draw them in. In the book, Vanauken, he talks about how God used the death of his wife of a couple of decades. He thinks to actually save him, because ultimately he saw all of his engagement with Christianity was really tied to this desire to build this perfect marriage with his wife. He never really wanted God for God's sake. God had to strip, he says, and he talks about how his engagement through personal letters with CS Lewis helped him. He saw that through taking his wife, he could finally treasure a relationship with God. And that was a severe mercy. Because if that's what it took to get him into a right relationship with God, to see his need for God, to treasure relationship with God that's offered through Christ, then it's a mercy.It's a confusing term, a severe mercy. But when you chew on it, it can really help you understand how God works. To face the severe mercy is severe because it's hard and difficult to face such circumstances. To face the severe mercy is an experience of God's mercy. Because though the severe mercy may be severe and difficult to face or endure, the experience altogether is so much better than what a sinner deserves. So severe mercy, it leads to a person to have a greater understanding of who God is and it leads one to see their limitations of their own power. Furthermore, it leads one to see the boundless limits of God's infinite power, and it's hard to swallow. By exposing people as children to hardship, God is actually being very gentle or merciful to them. How is this true? The whole narrative of scripture says that God is a holy God, and that from the beginning, man was to walk in a holy manner before him.And if he did not, the penalty would be death. Eternal expulsion from the loving presence of God. For the just punishment of sin against an infinite holy God is infinite wrath and eternal punishment. Romans 3:23 says that all have fallen, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Because nobody has met the mark perfect holiness before God, any moment where God withholds or delays the carrying out of his wrath, it's a blessing, a severely merciful act where he is shown leniency. So even as Christians or people approaching the faith, when life is really difficult or hard for any person because it's not anything close to facing the just wrath of God, such a moment is an act of severe mercy extended to them by God. So in this, I'm going to step into the text verses 1-14. I'm going to talk about different forms of severe mercy that God extends, that he exposes his followers too.He uses it to save people, he uses it to grow people, and he is merciful in doing so again. Because the lessons that they learn are so much more important than the idols that they're clinging to, that he's stripping away. In this chapter, we find Jacob's brothers a long while after their initial experience of guilt in the last chapter. Remember, in verse 21, they said, "In truth, we are guilty concerning our brother, this is the last chapter, in that we saw the distress of his soul, they're talking about Joseph in the pit, when he begged us and we did not listen. That is why this distress has come upon us." They exclaimed this and felt their conscience stirred. But now that they're back home, away from Egypt, away from the tension of the moment, away from the threat of imprisonment, away from this man who has authority over them, things have gone back to normal.Maybe the famine will end, they think. Maybe they won't have to go back to Egypt, if that happens. Perhaps, they can forget their past sins. Maybe they can push those ideas of God that crept up in their mind and his authority over their lives, off their consciences forever. They've made an idol. They've gone back home and they've made an idol out of the facade of a peaceful status quo on the surface of their lives, while there's guilt for sin on their conscience they've not dealt with. If this is their thinking, whether the text shows us, is that God has another plan in mind. If you're wrestling with guilt or fighting to suppress guilt, God has another plan in mind for you. He's relentless in his pursuit of them. And in these verses, we see the three forms of severe mercy.First, he exposes them to famine. More broadly, he exposes them to the pressures of living in a fallen world. Genesis 43:1-2. Now, the famine was severe in the land. And when they had eaten the grain that they had bought brought from Egypt, their father said to them, "Go again, buy us a little food." So God exposes them to continued famine. This is probably close to the end of year two of famine based on what other chapters tell us. And famine, honestly, as a modern American, I can't fathom this. Apparently, 49 million people in 46 countries are experiencing severe food crisis or famine in the present day. And that's according to a quick Google search, an organization called Action Against Hunger. Famine occurs when drought and her infestation and her plant disease and her war continuously plague a huge region of land for months or years at a time.It's a severe hardship that, when faced, lingers on your mind all day every day until there is relief. Hardship that adds uncertainty to all matters of life, to every minute, every hour, every week. It kills you physically and it kills you psychologically, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. You're powerless to put an end to it. All you're left to do is know how to respond to it and engage with it and survive through it. Obviously, today, we praise God. We have a lot of knowledge, materials, technology, pesticides, and means of food preservation to try to confront famine, but it clearly arises in many lands today. But the point is, back then, they did not. Jacob and his family, this family called to bless the world and become numerous nation of people of kingdoms, they're facing famine. They are almost at the point of not surviving.So the famine, it exerts pressure on them, they have to deal with it and they're powerless. But famine, it's something that the greatest schemes of men, greatest schemes of America, of science and technology cannot control. There are other forms of natural disasters, severe forms of mercy that we face, drought, hurricanes, tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, biological and airborne microorganisms. I was reminded of this while I'm reading this, studying this, writing this yesterday. I got multiple notifications on my phone and on my computer from Apple talking about the fine particulates that are floating around, the bad air quality because of the wildfires in Canada. We can't control the weather and the shifting of the earth and microorganisms and fine particulates. And our increased ability to track a lot of these things, it seems to cause more paranoia and anxiety than actually helps us at times.So God speaks to us again and again through pressures of famine still, but pressures of a fallen sin, fallen world through weather, through disease, through political, international turmoil that we cannot control. 9/11, floods, hurricane Katrina, hurricane Harvey in Houston several years back, COVID, heated elections, Russia-Ukraine, the threat of personal sickness and death at any minute, struggles with conception still plaguing the world. Miscarriage, race, gender, class battles, the Lord... These things have entered the world because of sin and we have to face them. What is God telling us in all of it? We are not in control. He is sovereign. He is in control to be brought to this knowledge, to love this knowledge, to find peace in this knowledge. It's a mercy, a grace of God. He's in control. He's in charge. We know he is good. Look at how he redeemed the travesty of the cross of Jesus Christ.So all of natural history, world history align with the words of St. Paul in Romans 8:18-22, I'm just going to read 22. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now, Jacob and his sons face it. We still face it. It impacts our lives and our decisions. So I ask you, what is God telling you through the Earth's groaning? It's going to keep happening until Jesus comes back to make all things new. Paul has to think about it. How has God used natural circumstances or pressures of a fallen world to make you think or act in life? What have you learned from them? What do you think you can learn right now? Second, God extends mercy to Jacob and his brothers to draw them into fellowship with him by exposing them to the pressure of broken people.Verse three. But Judah said to him, "The man, the Egyptian ruler, solemnly warned us saying, 'You shall not see my face unless your brother is with you.'" So the will of a relatively random governor in Egypt, according to the brothers as they don't know it is Joseph, he's forcing them in a certain direction. He's adding pressures and limitations to their freedom. They have to deal with the fact that one brother, Simeon, is still imprisoned by him there. And specifically in this chapter, they're pressured to send Benjamin to Egypt upon his command simply to have food for their families to survive. Like Jacob, we still face these unwanted pressures from other people and these are appointed by the severe mercy of God. We can try to create vacuums to avoid such people. We can seek out echo chambers of those who are like-minded. It's easier than ever.We can seek spouses with the exact same interests, companies and departments, literally through search algorithms on apps online. We can find neighbors, churches, work departments that are the perfect fit. But people are inevitable, they're broken, they're sinful. We can't escape them, we can't cancel them, and that's by God's design. The tendency when we engage people and they inflict their presence and authority on our lives, whether we seek it or not, is that we think we can change them. When we're first confronted with hard people, we say to ourselves, "That's okay. Give me a little time, I'll change you." But with time, we see that we can't. This is the husband and the wife almost on a day-to-day basis. This is parents trying to change their children, grow their children, save their children on their time. Children trying to change their parents.This is the boss trying to change the employee, the employee trying to change the boss. No matter how many phone apps, forms of counseling or technology we have that can teach us how to change people, we have to realize that we can't. Only God can. Only God can change someone from the inside out, change them at the heart level such that their behavior, their presence, their communication changes. We need to just approach these moments, this lack of power with humility. We can fight it, we can keep pressing on and nagging on the people of our lives to change them, or we can ask God what is he trying to do through this, the presence of these people.What is that you trying to do through the engagements of them? We have to allow our lives to be shaped by the necessity of engaging people. So ask God, how are you changing me? How are you calling me home to you to crave your presence, your sinless presence, your loving presence more? How are you refining me through other people? This is a severe mercy of God that we have to engage people. Third, God extends severe mercy to Jacob and his brothers to draw them into fellowship with him by exposing them to undesirable circumstances. Verse 6, Jacob says, "Why did you treat me so badly as to tell the man that you had another brother?" So Jacob, the neglectful father, comes off as an angry old curmudgeon, as a victim of the folly of his sons as he processes the situation. He's just whining. Honestly, my first engagement with this was laughing as I read it because I was just sitting and whining with my wife in the minutes before I'd started to study this.And I just want to say, "Men, we think that our wives and children are blessed when we sit down and tell them how we have it right, everyone else in our life has it wrong, and that we are victim of our circumstances." We need to stop. We need to be models of faith and steadfast faithfulness to God. There's no way to avoid difficult circumstances. Jacob and his sons had no control over the fact of the famine and the extension of the famine, and they had no control over the fact that Egypt had all the grain in that period. Similarly, in our lives, there's seasons, moments, trials that just fall into our lap. Things that we didn't invite into our households, our churches, our neighborhoods, our schools, our local state and national governments, financial downturns, wars that we have to engage, that we have no interest in engaging but we have to.We can get depressed, we can get paralyzed, we can busy ourselves to avoid the fact that these tensions and these situations exist. We can distract ourselves with relationships, devices, and shows, adrenaline rushes. We can try to ignore them by engaging in drink, smoke, other chemicals, or we can face the fact that circumstances are part of life. We're called to face them in faith, and find the faithful narrow way forward that brings glory to God. As we do that in the process, the Lord is teaching us, shaping us, saving many all along. These moments, these undesired circumstances shouldn't always be viewed as hindrances, but as opportunities for us to see God's wisdom at work in our lives, to see his power moving in our life. So in some, I've talked about the severe mercy of God as he exposes us to it through the effects of living in a sinful world through people, through random undesired circumstances.And know, the message that I want you to take is not just expect hardship to be a part of your life, but not become a stoic. It's not a, "Pick-up your bootstraps. This is life, just face it. Everybody has to deal with it. Find a way to cope." No, it's find a way to see God's hand through it all. Ask him to grow your wisdom, your insight to engage such moments in a way that pleases him. Ask him to show you what he's teaching you. Ask him how he wants you to respond, one day at a time, without getting overcome with anxiety, thinking about how hard it will be in the future. I like the framing of, "You need to see that as you think about severe mercies, a lot of these external circumstances forcing their pressure on onto your life. You need to see that what makes you you, and the Lord is not just the things that you have done but the things that also have happened to you.God's using it all in his grand plan and glorious plan to save you, to shape you, prepare you for his work. We've seen him do such work in the life of Joseph as we meditated upon his experience in the pit. We meditated upon facing false accusations of adultery. We meditated upon him being forced to be in an Egyptian jail for several years. We've seen how God prepared him to handle this moment with grace and mercy. So the same thing that he did with Joseph, the same thing he's doing with you and you need to trust him as he does it. See here, the text says that God is shaping these men through severe mercy. I just want to take time to look at Judah and Jacob to show you that transformation is actually happening. Let's look at Judah. Judah, who we know from our study in Genesis 38, was a very hard and stubborn man.He slept with his deceased son's wife when he thought she was a prostitute. This Judah is changing by God's severe mercy and becoming the family leader in this chapter. In the text, at the beginning when after Jacob resists sending the brothers back with Benjamin, Judah honestly, respectfully, directly speaks to his father. He still honors him, but he stands on truth before him. In verse 8, to convince his father, he takes a wise strategy. He repeats to his father, "Send the boy with me, and we will rise and go, that we may live and not die." Jacob said when he first sent the sons to Egypt, he said, "Go to Egypt to get grain, so that we may live and not die." He's using Jacob's words to convince him. And then he adds an element so that both we and you and also our little ones may be saved, may stay alive.Judah's not thinking of himself as we saw him do. Primarily, he's thinking of others. So further, Judah, the biggest thing that he does is he pledges his life to Jacob. He commits to taking personal responsibility if Benjamin does not return. This is in comparison to the author that Ruben makes in the last chapter in verse 7. Ruben says to Jacob, this harsh approach, "Kill my two sons if I go to Egypt with Benjamin and don't return with him." We see Jacob's wisdom. We see him taking responsibility. And this foreshadows, a little side note, the precedence that the tribe of Judah eventually takes among the other tribes of the nation of Israel. It points to the time that Jesus Christ, a descendant of Judah, the line of the tribe of Judah's scripture calls him, takes responsibility for the sins of the lost sons of God by going to the cross, offering himself in their place.Judah changes but we see an incredible change in Jacob through the severe mercy of God, through the providential appointment of hardship. Jacob, again, he is a whiny curmudgeon at the start of the chapter, blaming everyone else for the situation that they're in. He's still showing extreme preference for his son Benjamin over the other 10, but there's great change taking place as the chapter goes forward. This is noted most clearly by the fact that, for most of the story today, Jacob's story is that God does save him. Jacob does have faith in God. And God, at that point, he passes his promises of the covenant from Abraham and Isaac to him, and God gives him a covenant named Israel. But Jacob, even after a profound experience in earlier chapters of Genesis, he goes back to his old ways. So the story, the narrative throughout Genesis primarily calls him Jacob over and over again.In chapter 42, he's Jacob. In this chapter, he moves from the old angry man to the new man Israel. He starts off complaining, but then he takes charge as these situations force him to. He provides decisive and wise leadership in granting the brother's permission to bring Benjamin, and giving them instructions to pack gifts, local delicacies that they don't have in Egypt to earn the favor of the ruler, to double the money that they bring back after the Egyptians did not keep their money last time. He takes practical matters. He thinks responsibly. But the most notable change that we see in Jacob as he faces the severe mercy of God is that he has revival in his faith. In verse 14, he's brought to the point where he knows he's powerless to change the situation, and he says, "May God Almighty grant you mercy before the man, and may send back your other brother and Benjamin. And as for me, if I'm bereaved of my children, I'm bereaved."Jacob, now Israel, he appeals to the covenant name of God of Genesis, El Shaddai, Genesis 17 particularly, the mighty God. This God, he's trusted in before, he will trust in again. Furthermore, in this verse, he appeals to the mercy of God for the success of the journey for Egypt. He knows only God can give them favorable outcome here. Lastly, what's most profound, he entrusts Benjamin's safety and the desire for the return of Benjamin's brother Joseph to God, right? He's been grieving the loss of Joseph, basically not functioning, not engaging the other brothers for 20 years, all the while preserving Benjamin's life at all costs and just ignoring those other brothers. And Jacob relinquish his grip on the matter. He goes as far as showing peace over the fact that if it's the Lord's will to bereave him of his children, then so be it.You got to remember, he did not forget that God said that He's carrying this promise to be the father of many nations, like that was passed down from Abraham and Isaac. He says, "God, I trust you. You have the power to fulfill your promises even when there seems to be no hope." So I elaborate on Judas' transformation, Jacob's transformation to illustrate how God uses severe mercy, hard circumstances to change them, to save them, to grow them in the faith. We can spend all of our life begrudgingly facing the appointed personal, familial, cultural, global circumstances that we're born into or approach them with faith. We can see how they deepen our dependence on God, make us better men and women, grow our vision and appreciation for the daily mercies and graces of God, and increase the fruit of the spirit within us. We're becoming more like Christ as we engage them faithfully.Some may ask, why does God act like this? Why does he have a point to choose to use severe mercy? This is my second point, and it's really short. If God calls his children home and grows them through severe mercy, common mercy, why does he use severe mercy? Because he is offering common mercy constantly, and we don't receive it. Matthew 5:45 says, "For he makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." God is actually trying to tell us through the basic mercies, basic graces of daily life that he is God and he is in control, and we owe him our worship and faithfulness. Through the rising of the sun, every day on all people, through the sending of rains, through daily health, through the beauty of nature, through the provision of daily bread, through the joyful spirit and faith that children have as they wake up and just expect God to provide through the majesty of just the creative world, he's talking to us and it's not enough for us.We are stubborn. We are selfish. We choose to say that that is not enough. We place ourselves in the position of God, and we don't accept his means of communicating that. That's the mistake that Adam and Eve made in the garden. They think that God is keeping something from them in just the basic provision of life in the garden. So we commit the same sin and we don't receive common mercy, which I'm also basically saying is the same thing, historically-referred to as common grace. But praise God, he doesn't stop at common mercy. He doesn't stop at severe mercy to draw us in. He gives us tender mercy, and this is my third point. God calls his children home through severe mercy, common mercy, tender mercy.The use of tender mercy, it's a little redundant. I could have just said mercy. But to drive home in the point and emphasize how good it is, I went forward with tender mercy. He said that he speaks to us through tender mercy, expose us to tender mercy. He treats us and speaks to us with very loving treatment. He engages our fears and guilt uniquely. He mercifully and graciously condescends to speak to us at a level that we understand, in his process of calling us to him and refining us once we're in the family. This is what verses 15-34 really show us. God calls the brothers back by tender mercy. Verse 18 says, "And the men were afraid because they were brought to Joseph's house." So they bring the goods, they bring the money, they bring Benjamin back to Egypt, and they're told by a servant to go to his house.Can you imagine these tent dwellers, these back country men when they're about to go to the house, the property of this powerful Egyptian ruler, essentially a billionaire of their day? They're rolling up on their donkeys, not even camels, to palace with dozens of camels. It's like driving a rusty old pickup truck to a mansion with multiple Teslas and model cars. And they're weary from facing God's severe mercy, the famine, the travel. The anxiety of how they will be received by the ruler after they return, as they know that the ruler did not receive the money the first time, it would've been paralyzing them. Just not knowing, "Is this ruler just going to come down and arrest us and make us his slave?" Their worst fear would probably be over the fact, "That as we engage this man, are we going to be brought to that point where we feel guilty again for throwing Joseph into the pit?"Again, they don't know that Joseph is the ruler. But they know that through engagement with this man, they were brought back to this thing that they just want to depress. But God brings these men back to Egypt as part of the process to draw him in. And how are they received? It's with kindness, with love. Remember, Jacob/Israel's prayer in verse 14, May God Almighty grant you mercy before him. Jacob's prayers come true. It's answered. The ruler and his servant receive them with tender mercy. They arise in Egypt, guilty, fearful. What does the servant say to them? He says, "Peace," shalom in Hebrew, "Peace to you. Do not be afraid. Your God and the God of your father has put treasure in your sacks for you." This is after they say hello and confess that they went home with the money. It says, "Don't worry about it."As the text continues, the servant brings him out, Simeon. He's released as promised, upon their return in their last chapter, and he's in good shape. Then though they're foreigners, they are brought into the private residence of a ruler. Further, the text says they're given water, their feet are washed, their donkeys aren't stolen but are given fodder from the royal feed, and they're invited to a feast. When they approach Joseph at the feast, they bow down to him. And what does he do? He inquires of their welfare, asks them how they are doing, and I'm sure it would've been a little bit of a sugarcoated answer of, "Oh, we're great." Like not acknowledging the fact that they're in turmoil for the months and weeks as this moment approached. But he inquires about their welfare, asks about their father. The ruler further goes to greet the younger brother that he didn't meet during the last visit, Benjamin, and blesses him saying, "God be gracious to you, my son."Altogether, God, after providentially offering common mercy throughout their lives, after offering a lot of severe mercy recently, God has arranged for them to taste his tender mercy as part of the process to draw him in, to fellowship with him. In a situation where Joseph, the ruler, could have brought down justice for the situation with the money as things appeared. For his sin, their sin against him 20 years ago, he treats him with mercy. He treats him with love and kindness. One of the most notable things about the merciful treatment that God has arranged for the brothers is that he goes above and beyond to show the brothers that he's speaking to them through these mercies in ways that are uniquely designed for them. Verse 33 says, And they sat before him, the firstborn according to his birthright and the youngest according to his youth. And the men looked at one another in amazement. God, through Joseph, announces this moment in such a way that the brothers should know that they're talking to him.Just think, there's 11 brothers sitting down. And in this moment, they're arranged from oldest to youngest. If you think about how many ways that the ruler could have arranged them, it's equal to 11 factorial. Yes, I'm making you think about middle school math right now. 11 factorial ways that he could have arranged these men. That's 39,916,800 ways that the ruler could have seeded them, and one of them is the perfect way and he does it. God is clearly speaking to them. And do they see it? Further, in verse 34, the text mentions that the ruler gives Benjamin, the brother of Joseph, five times the portion of food. God's trying to communicate to them that he is God. He knows what they did, and he is mercifully dealing with their sin toward Joseph right now by bringing attention to Benjamin. In this specific communication to the brothers, God is just calling them home.He wants them to cry out mercy as they see that he is God. And they need his mercy for their sin, for their rebellion against his authority over their life, for their specific sins, and particularly, the sin against Joseph. Through tender mercy and the generalness of the ruler's reception, through the specific details of the seating arrangement and serving, God's talking to them. He's trying to stir their minds to acknowledge him as God. But what is their response? Verse 33 says, They looked at one another in amazement. They looked around at each other as if the way they were seated was a coincidence. They looked at each other and said, "Well, forgot about it," and set their minds to the feast before them. Verse 34 says, after Benjamin was given a huge portion, they just enjoyed themselves and had a nice meal like at any other banquet. With their youngest brother, nobody would ever have given the youngest brother this kind of portion. He gets five times more than them in this patriarchal society.And furthermore, at the start of the next chapter, the brothers after this experience where God is just talking to them, offering them mercy, showing them gentleness, tender mercy, they're just content to wake up and go home. They're not inclined to think about everything that's happening. Their reception of the mercy of God, it's dull. They're not moved. It gives them no more than a smile and the satisfaction of a good day and full belly gives them. Isn't that very similar to the reaction that the world has toward God and his mercy? Isn't that very similar to the reaction that you have toward it, on some days? If you're a believer, you can't be a believer without truly cherishing this moment, at one point. But it grows dry and worn out. That's because we're not seeing how God is moving through everything to save us, grow us, shape us.You see, Joseph's brothers, they have an excuse. The ruler didn't reveal himself as Joseph. They don't know that's him, but we know who the ruler is. We know who the governor is. We know who the king of kings, the Lord of Lord is, over all of the earth and over us all as individuals. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. It's written on our heart, our conscience, and it's written in the creation. We long for God's perfect and just rule and reign and the comfort of his presence, when the storms and trials, the rulers and people and circumstances of the broken world impress their unjust influence on our lives and decision making. We long for his unique and tender love toward us as we face these hardships. We know that for all of history, all the time, God has supremely shown his love to man.He has communicated his desire to extend love and grace to each of us in a million unique different ways. Most clearly, he has mercifully and graciously shown his love for us. In coming to deal with our greatest need as parched, guilty, dead sinners. He took on flesh, went from heaven to earth and walked the earth. He came to deal with our greatest need, our thirst for him. God broke the barrier by sending a son to take on flesh, bear the hardship and temptations of this world perfectly as we could not, and to go to the cross in our place. We know that God chosen his love for us and, that while we are still sinners, Christ died for us. How much more clearly could God in all of his glory condescend to speak to us in our greatest need to communicate his love to us? And yet we're often reluctant to receive it.We're reluctant to see our need to entrust our lives to him. Joseph and his brothers had an excuse, but we don't. So Colossians 2:9-10, it says, we're in him the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily. And you have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority. We have no excuse. God is showing his mercy, communicating his love and desire to be in relationship with us over and over again, and we need to receive it. Christ, he broke the divide between heaven and earth. His crowning act of glory with all of his authority was to lay side as glory and die for us. That's really what Joseph is doing. Joseph could be using his authority to squash these sinners to just pour out wrath, but he doesn't. God, Christ did all of this in order that we might live and dine at the same table with him, with a portion due to the firstborn and rule with him and his eternal kingdom.That's what Joseph was doing. That's what Christ offers to us. So I ask you today to close, how is God extending severe mercy to you? How is he extending common mercy? How can you see it better? How is he extending tender mercy, specifically speaking to you, in ways that speak to your greatest fears, your greatest sense, your areas of guilt, your questions of the truth? As you see that, just bow and humble submission to him. Genesis 43 says, you're doubtful, sinful, guilty people like Jacob's family and us with a bad record of bad conscience. There is one power. One of great power and great honor who loves you, who wants to bless you and deliver you from the guilt of your sin and circumstances. He's doing so much to get you to see that. Try to see it. Come into his family, his love, his grace, his mercy. It's sufficient. Let us pray.Heavenly Father, we praise you that Christ has come and he came out of love. He initiated the process that procured our salvation. It's not anything that we can do, but it's all that he has done. And Lord, we praise you that you do not leave us in the condition that we're in. When you save us, you give us your righteousness, but you appoint seasons and trials and circumstances and engagement with the fallen world to grow us. We get to see your hand of redemption at work in us and through us every day. Lord, we praise you that we know we have a savior who has lived perfectly, died in our place, roses from the dead, and ascended to your right hand of authority just like Joseph was at the right hand of Pharaoh. And he is working for our good, for our preservation, for our growth in the faith. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.Now, we're going to transition to a time in the service of communion. This is something that we do as believers to commemorate the fact that by offering his body, pouring out his blood for us on the cross, Jesus invites us to live and dine guilt free at his table. For whom is holy communion—it's for repentant Christians, repentant children of God. If you're not a Christian, not sure where you stand before God, we ask you to withhold from partaking and meditate on the gospel, meditate upon the sermon, the message of today. But if you have decided today to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you're welcome to partake. And if are a Christian, we emphasize that this is for repentant believers. If you have unreconciled sin in your life that you have not brought to the Lord, if you have it on your conscience to approach other brothers and sisters where there is sin, we ask you to with withhold.So if you haven't received a cup with a little wafer and the elements, please raise your hand. As I pray, one of the ushers will give you one. Heavenly Father, we praise you for your grace and mercy. Jesus, we thank you for procuring salvation for us. You suffered, Lord, and triumphed for us. Today, we remember your suffering. Holy Spirit, I pray that you prepare our hearts now to focus on the attention of the cross of Jesus Christ dying for us, the primary act of showing your tender mercy toward us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Take off the bottom layer. I think all of our cups now have the bread on the bottom. Take the bread out and follow along with me. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread and after eating it, he said, "This is my body broken for you. Take, eat, and do this in remembrance of me."He 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." Let's pray. Lord God, we glorify you. We pray, Lord, Holy Spirit, help us in glorifying God as we meditate upon the wisdom of his ways, the ability to redeem and use the brokenness of this world, the broken moments of our life, the broken moments of our personality, and redeem them and use them to be a blessing to others. Help us, Lord, as we worship. Help us to cast off all of our burdens and anxieties and stresses for situations, relationships that we cannot control to you. Help us to focus on you on the greatness of your power, your majesty, holiness, righteousness, truth, perfect plans, and sovereignty. Help us to sing with all that we have because you are worthy of all worship and glory and honor in all seasons. We pray this all in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This podcast contains an excerpt from the St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows worship service on Sunday, April 30th, 2023. For more information about the community and ministries of St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows, you can visit our website: smlutheran.org

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. Well, good evening. My name is Andy. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic along with Pastor Jan and Pastor Shane. And as we say every service, we are glad to have everybody here worshiping with us today. And whether you're new or one of our seasoned attendees, we're thankful to be worshiping with you. If you are not a regular attendee, we invite you out to come on Sunday after this service. We won't hold any announcements at the end of the service today. Come out, we have services at 9:15 and 11:15 AM. Bring friends, bring family, and just come celebrate the resurrection, as tonight we'll be a little more intense. But we're glad that you're here and we're always praying for the Lord to send us people asking questions about Christianity, asking questions about the cross of Jesus Christ. And praying that the Lord would also send seasoned saints to come and just take up the labor, the mission here with us in Boston. Tonight, I'm going to have just a meditation on God's zeal for His glory, how good Friday shows God's zeal for His glory. And before we do so, I just want to jump in and pray. Heavenly Father, we praise You that You are God. You are worthy of our worship. You speak to us through Your creation. When we look upon all that is good in this world, we see Your fingerprint upon it. When we look upon other human lives, we see Your presence. We see some of the character attributes that You have passed on. Lord, when we look upon Your word, most importantly, we see Your love for us. We see this Bible from the third chapter through the finish, talking about man's fall to sin and Your plan to be the solution to that, to crush the serpent on the head, and to come and be both the priest and the sacrifice of the atonement for our sins. And Lord, we praise You for sending Jesus Christ who is our brother, but is also our God. We thank You that He took on flesh to be tempted and tried in every way. He took on flesh to know the challenges firsthand that we face in this life. And Lord, He took on flesh to walk perfectly under your law in the way that we could not. And we thank you Lord that He came, He lived for the primary purpose of going to the cross for Your lost children. And He went and He bore the full wrath that is due for all of our sins and the work is finished. We praise You that as we look upon Good Friday, as we look upon Christ, we know that it is finished. And Lord, it's sad, it sickens us to know what Christ went through us. But we praise You for that. We praise You that we can say ultimately You have worked the great travesty of the cross for Your good, for Your glory, for our salvation. We pray right now. Lord, just show us more of Your heart. Let us not get lost in thinking what this day means and offers to us. Let's not just seek an emotional religious experience, Lord. Let us grow further and further in love with your heart. I pray these things in Jesus's name. Amen. Now to start, I want to read from Matthew ... Excuse me, Mark chapter 15 and I'll read the whole chapter, I think it's 1-47, Mark chapter 15 verses 1-47. "And as soon as it was morning, the chief priest held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate. And Pilate asked him, 'Are you the king of the Jews?' And he answered him, 'You have said so.' And the chief priest accused him of many things. And Pilate again asked him, 'Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you?' But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate was amazed. Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. And among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas. And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them. And he answered them saying, 'Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?' For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priest had delivered him up. But the chief priest stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead. And Pilate again said to them, 'Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews?' And they cried out again, 'Crucify him.' And Pilate said to them, 'Why? What evil has he done?' But they shouted all the more, 'Crucify him.' So Pilate wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas. And having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the governor's headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion. And they clothed him a in a purple cloak and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. And they began to salute him, 'Hail, King of the Jews!' And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him. And they comp compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry the cross. And they brought him to the place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull). And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take. And it was the third hour when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him read, 'The King of the Jews.' And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, 'Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross!' So also the chief priest with the scribes mocked him to one another, saying, 'He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.' Those who were crucified with him also reviled him. And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, 'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?' 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' And some of the bystanders hearing it said, 'Behold, he is calling Elijah.' And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink and said, 'Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.' And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!' There were also women looking on from a distance among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and the younger and of Joses and Salome. When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem." "And when evening had come, since it was the day of preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. And Joseph brought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid." This is the reading of God's holy word. It's in this, the blood of Christ, His crucifixion, and on Sunday, his resurrection that we boast as Christians. To start, I'm glad that Caleb in the introduction said Happy Good Friday because it's just a confusing day. This is the most solemn day of the year for the church, yet it really is one of the most joyful days. Today we celebrate the cross of Jesus Christ. And I come from a lot of ... I've been through a few traditions of Christianity before I came to Mosaic. And there's a lot of questions about how to approach Good Friday. And so I want to start by just making a couple critiques of the typical approach of Good Friday. There's one where people come and on Good Friday, there's this extra pressure to come and think about what Christ went through for me. Wow. Look how far, look at the ridicule, look at the mockery, look at the physical pain, look at the sin, the wrath that He bore for me. And I want to say keep doing that. We have to keep doing that for at the cross we boast He who knew us and became sin, so in Him we might become the righteousness of God. And there's a tendency though, to just get one side of the Good Friday story. And it's when you really just think about, wow, what did Jesus go through for me, what you miss out on is, is your heart being taken to worship of God. What does the cross, how does this direct me to worship of God? And so this point's a little confusing. I say, don't make this the only thing that you do. As you contemplate the weight that Christ bore on the cross, you should be in awe and astonishment and wonder about what He did for you. You should grimace as you read the gospel story, the crucifixion story. You should grimace as we take communion and you eat the bread and drink the juice, the wine. You should grimace, almost feel sick as I go through a reading to close out my portion of this message that will tell you and explain more details of the crucifixion than you could have ever wanted to know. But you don't want to make it the primary thing. And there's just beneath this wow what he did for me, some Christians can just get lost. We say that Jesus Christ, He is our Lord and He is our savior. And we get stuck in our faith just saying, "Wow, he's my savior. What has he done for me?" But beneath that is really me, me, me, instead of wow, God, God, God, look at what God has done. And so I challenge you today, think. I said this is a message where we're talking about God's zeal for his glory. As I preach to you right now, ask the Lord to show you what does Good Friday teach me about God Himself? Not what does Good Friday do for me? And so that's a nuanced point. You want to feel the weight. You should feel the weight. You have the law of God standing over you in this dark building right now. I just read Mark, the crucifixion story. You should be feeling it, but don't let that be the only thing. Don't let that be the primary thing. And next, I just want to critique. A lot of people come to a Good Friday service to tremble and really just get that little taste of religious experience, of emotional experience that will just carry them forward in their life. There's a famous hymn that really I think captures this tendency for Good Friday and it's, were you there when they crucified my Lord. I think a lot of people know that. And the lyrics go: Were you there when you crucified my Lord? Were you there when you crucified my Lord? Oh. If you know the song, you know that I do not have the capacity to sing it. Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. And I used to attend a church that sang this song on every Good Friday and I really looked forward to it. It's catchy. Guys like Johnny Cash sang it. But I think this approach captures, reveals the wrong mindset. It reveals a mindset of I just want to tremble. I just want to be shaken a little bit as I engage God, as I engage His holy scriptures. And this has shown, some Christians who are regular church attendees, we fall into this. But many people come out once a year, let me go get my fix, let me go get right before God by doing this. And it's not the right way. What's the problem? We only want to sometimes tremble. We want to pause and be shaken a bit. And what Good Friday teaches is that it's not about us. It's not about coming to get a religious experience. And you can come and do that every week at Mosaic and hopefully it goes beyond that to your heart. But Good Friday, first and foremost is about God and His zeal for His glory. And if your mind, as you ponder just the weight that Christ bore for you, if you come and you have this religious experience, but you don't get taken up to worship and awe and wonder at the glory of God and his character, then we have failed in this service. You are either after the wrong thing in your approach or we as a church are not taking you to the heavenly of heavenlys, taking you into the presence of God. And Jesus knew this. He knew that the cross was all about God's glory. Right before He was betrayed by Judas and handed to the authorities Christ prayed, "Now is my soul troubled." And this is John chapter 12:27-28. "Now, is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.' Then a voice from heaven came from heaven: 'I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.'" When we observe Good Friday, we tend to get so caught up in the thinking about the power and ambiance of Christ, of the situation of the service. We get so caught up in thinking about what does this mean for me? What's the point of coming out here? How does this add to my personal walk in the faith? But in doing so, we miss what God is trying to teach us about himself. And what is that God has a zeal. He's teaching us, God, I have a zeal for my glory, first and foremost. What is Christ's passion? This week where we talk about his suffering in holy week, it's a storm, literally the sky went black, probably felt a lot like this for several hours of the day in Jerusalem, while Christ was on the cross. The cross is the storm. The fury of God's just rest, the whole cup of it for all sins, past, present, and future of his children. And our engagement in one of the events in Christ's life with a storm should teach us how to take lessons from this storm on the cross. Mark 4:36-41 says, "And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep in the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, 'Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?' And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, 'Peace! Be still!' And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, 'Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?' And they're filled with great fear and said to one another, 'Who then is this, that even the wind in the sea obey him?'" So what's the situation at the end of this storm scene? Imagine just being in a boat with waves just rocking over your head, the winds just loud howling in your ears, rain's coming down, thunder, lightning, and Jesus is there sleeping and he wakes up and he says, "Peace. Be still." The situation at the end is that the disciples are left more scared as they ponder the nature of Jesus than they were by the storm that was rocking them a moment ago. "Who is this man? Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him," they ask. And that's how our engagement with the storm of Good Friday should be when we think about God. We should ask, "Who is this God?" When we get a greater glimpse at the lens he goes to preserve his just, his righteous, his glorious nature, it should shake us to the core, not just give us a little tremble. It should inspire us to turn to get right with him through Christ immediately and should change us all together from the inside out. And this is in several parts of scripture. Where do I give this primarily tonight? Romans chapter 3:21-26. It says, "But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus for all who believe. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." I think these verses contain the most important paragraph on the atonement in the Bible, and that's not biblical. That's just my after me really digging into it in this season and in the past. What do these verses say? They say that beneath God's pursuit of our justification, our being made right before him and forgiveness, beneath our justification and forgiveness in sending to the cross was the pursuit of God to clear his own name. Verse 25 can be understood as "God put Christ forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins." The text tells us that until Christ sacrifice on the cross, God's righteousness is at stake. His name was in need of vindication. Why is that the case? Why did God face the problem of needing to give a public vindication of his righteousness? The answer it's provided in verse 25, "because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins." Now what does that mean? It means that for millennia, God had been doing what Psalm 103 verse 10 says. "He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities." Think King David. He sends a man off to war to get killed so that he can marry his wife and the prophet Nathan tells him his sins are forgiven and David gets to continue to serve as king. There's no punishment in the kingdom, and he's not stricken dead. And that's offensive. Why is passing over of sin of forgiveness such a problem? Well, what is sin? Romans 3:23 says, "For all sin and fall short of the glory of God," or translated literally, "all of sinned and lacked the glory of God." Sin is related to glory and it's understood as a lacking or losing of it. When Adam sinned, he lost the glory that came with being a sinless image bearer of the trial of God. How did he lose his glory? He exchanged that glory which was inherent in his nature as an image bearer of God for something offered to him in the creation. All sin is a preference for the temporary pleasures of things found within the finite creation over the everlasting joy of eternal fellowship with the creator. Sin is a failing to love God's glory above everything else. Altogether sin might be understood as an effort to rob God of his glory, or that sin is a rebellion against God's glory. Therefore, the problem when God passes over sin is that God seems to condone the behavior of those who commit sin. He seems to be saying it is a matter of indifference that his glory is spurned. He seems to condone the low assessment of who He is, His righteousness, His worth from the sinner. Where the passing over of sin communicates that God's glory and His righteous governance are of little or no value to the sinner. But according to Romans, this is the most basic problem that God solved by the death on his son. Verse 25 and 26 say, "This, God's putting Christ his son forward to die was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time." So God, he could have settled accounts with man by not saving anybody and punishing all sinners with hell. This would've demonstrated that He does not condone our falling short of his glory or the belittling of His honor. But God did not will to condemn everyone like that. John 3:17 says, "God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." This truth we know well. We know well that God is for us. We know that our salvation is God's goal in sending Jesus. But today I'm asking, do you know the foundation of God's rescue plan for his children? Do you know that there is a deeper goal in the father's sending of the son? Do you know that God's love for us depends on a deeper love, namely God's love for his own glory? Do you know that God's desire to save sinners rest on a deeper desire, namely God's desire to vindicate his righteousness? Do you realize that the accomplishment of our salvation does not center on us, but on God's zeal for his own glory? The big question of the cross is not can we be saved, but can Christ repair the glory of God for the people of God? And the resounding answer of the Bible is yes. Christ drank the full cup of God's wrath for the sins of his children, past, present, future when he went to the cross and first and foremost for God the Father, then for us. So this is why is it important to understand, meditate upon Good Friday. It shows us that the cross is the foremost display of God's love for sinners. Not because it demonstrates the value of sinners, but because it vindicates the value of God for sinners to enjoy. God's love for man does not consist in making man central, but in making Himself central to man. The cross doesn't direct man's attention to His own vindicated worth, but to God's vindicated righteousness. This is love, God pursuing His own glory because the only eternal happiness for man is happiness focused on the riches of God's glory. Psalm 16:11 says, "In your presence there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore." God's self-exaltation, it's loving because it preserves for us and offers to us the only fully satisfying object of desire in the universe, Himself, the all glorious, all righteous God. If God doesn't correct things, if God doesn't make sure that there is payment for sins, he is not worthy to be God. At the cross your view of God and His character and love of God and His character, they should expand. He destroys any formulations of a God that we could have contrived by our own personal preferences. He destroys any construction of God that could have been contrived by the primary ideals of our day, our culture, our country, our government. At the cross, you don't just tremble. Sometimes but are shaken to the core. Who is this God that chases after his own glory with such zeal? At the cross, you see that you're not the center of things. Your glory and joy are not at the center of life and history, but God and his glory and joy are. You see that you're just blessed that He even offers a chance to walk beside Him in life despite your sin through faith in Jesus Christ. At the cross you see most clearly on Good Friday that you are a mere creature made for worship of the good, holy, and wise God. At the cross you see that God is both just and the justifier. You cherish the fact that he has procured your salvation through the sending of the Son and the fact of His righteous character. At the cross you'll find that to be loved intimately is to be forgiven, cleansed and enabled to see and to feel the wonder that the Father has for himself and that Christ has for the Father and that the spirit has for them both. To close my speaking portion before we partake ... Oh, excuse me, what the cross is it's the Grand Canyon. God doesn't take us to Mount Washington, a cheap New England wannabe. Now the cross, God takes us to the Grand Canyon. He displays the full majesty of who he is. He shows a zeal for righteousness, holiness, perfection, all glories, preserves them and says, "Look upon me. Look upon how great I am. Look at how holy set apart from all other as I am and be holy before me, because that is what is best for you." And praise God, he doesn't say that to us in our sin without hope, for we know that without Jesus Christ, who was perfect, who was holy, while we are sinners, we can look to Christ and have peace with him. We can look to God and know that He in all of His glory and power and splendor, the might of His good hand is working towards us for all of eternity in Jesus. And so to close my portion before we partake in communion together, I want to read a really long excerpt that does spend a lot of time making me say, "Wow, look what God has done for me." But as you read it, I want you to test yourself. I want you to test yourself. When you look at the death, the crucifixion of Christ, do you look simply to be shaken, to tremble a little? Or as a reader, are you only thinking, "Wow, look at what God has done for me," and not go beyond that? Or are you brought to praise and wonder to see the lens that God goes to preserve his glorious and righteous character for your eternal satisfaction in him? I'm going to read a long section from Fleming Rutledge's book, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ. "It is formidably difficult to understand the cross today in its original context after 2000 years in which it has been domesticated, romanticized, idealized, and misappropriated. Occasionally a modern interpreter struggling to find some correspondence that can be grasped by people today will compare the cross of Roman times to the American electric chair. This is an adequate analogy for a number of reasons as we shall see, but we can learn a few things from it. Imagine revering an electric chair. Imagine using it as the focal point in our churches, hanging small replicas around our necks, carrying it aloft in procession and bow bowing our heads as it passes. The absurdity of this scenario can readily be grasped, but other features in the comparison might help us. For instance, the electric chair when it was still used was almost always used for executing the lowest class of criminal and majority of them black with no powerful connections or other resources. Similarly, the Romans virtually never used the cross for executing people who had occupied high positions and never for Roman citizens. Another point of contact is the contradictory response of revulsion and attraction familiar to anyone who has ever slowed to look at a wreck on a highway. Even the most fastidious person when confronted by a photograph of an electric chair, let alone the real thing, will experience a disturbing fascination. There have always been people who specialize in coming to cheer and applaud executions when they took place, whether lynchings, hangings, or electrocutions. That is what undoubtedly happened on Calvary when Jesus was nailed to the cross and left there to die. Crowds of people then as now took pleasure in reviling the one who is being put to death. When they became bored with this pastime, they went safely home to their comforts and gave the victim no further thought. 'It is nothing to you, all you who passed by,' Lamentations 1:12. But there are very important differences. Electrocutions were at least theoretically supposed to be humane and quick, but crucifixion as a method of execution was specifically designed to intensify and prolong agony. In this sense, the cross was infinitely more dreadful than the electric chair, odious, though the chair was. Another difference is that the person to be electrocuted is permitted the dignity of a mask or a hood, presumably so that the privilege of the face noted by Susan Sontag would be protected. Most important of all, electrocutions took place indoors out of public view with only a few select people permitted to watch. Crucifixion, on the other hand, was supposed to be seen by as many people as possible. The basement resulting from public display was a chief feature of the method along with the prolonging of the agony. It was a form of advertisement or public announcement. 'This person is the scum of the earth, not fit to live, more an insect than a human being.' The crucified wretch was pinned up like a specimen. Crosses were not placed out in the open for convenience or sanitation, but for maximum public exposure. Crucifixion as a means of execution in the Roman Empire had its express purpose, the elimination of victims from consideration as members of the human race. It cannot be said too strongly that it was its function. It was meant to indicate to all who might be toying with subversive ideas that crucified persons were not of the same species as either the executioners or the spectators, and were therefore not only expendable, but also deserving of ritualized extermination. Therefore, the mocking and jeering that accompanied crucifixion were not only allowed, they're part of the spectacle and were programmed into it. In a sense, crucifixion was a form of entertainment. Everyone understood that the specific role of the passerby was to exacerbate the dehumanization and degradation of the person had thus been designated to be a spectacle. Crucifixion was cleverly designed, we might say diabolically designed, to be an almost theatrical enactment of the sadistic and inhumane impulses that lie within human beings. According to the Christian gospel, the Son of God voluntarily and purposefully absorbed all of that, drawing it into himself. Anyone seeking to interpret Jesus crucifixion must decide whether or not to include a clinical description. Since the New Testament writers are conspicuously silent about the physical details, it is legitimate to ask whether it is suitable or helpful to introduce them. On the other hand, people in New Testament times had all seen crucifixions and did not need a description. The evangelists and the other New Testament writers were able to assume a familiarity with the method that is unthinkable for us today. Most of us have never even come close to see anyone tortured to death. 'For this reason,' as Martin Hengel writes, 'reflection on the harsh reality of crucifixion and antiquity may help us to overcome the acute loss of reality, which is to be found so often present in theology and preaching.' The early theologian originally called Jesus death the utterly vile death on the cross. Cicero, the great Roman statesman and writer referred to the crucifixion as the supreme penalty, exceeding burning and decapitation and gruesomeness. Some rudimentary knowledge of what was taking place will help us to understand these terms. The first phase of a Roman execution was scourging. The lictors, Roman legionnaires assigned to this duty used a whip made of leather cords to which small pieces of metal or bone had been fastened. Paintings of the scouring of Jesus had always shown him with a loin cloth but in fact the victim would've been naked, tied to a post in a position to expose the back and buttocks to maximum effect. With the first strokes of the scourge, skin would be pulled away and subcutaneous tissue exposed. As the process continued, the lacerations would begin to tear into the underlying skeletal muscles. This would result not only in a great pain but also in appreciable blood loss. The idea was to weaken the victim to a state just short of collapse or death. It was common for taunting and ridicule to accompany the procedure. In the case of Jesus, the New Testament tells us that a crown of thorns, a purple robe and a mock scepter were added to intensify the mockery. The condition of a prisoner after scourging just prior to crucifixion would depend upon several things. Previous physical condition, the enthusiasm of the lictors and the extent of blood loss. In the case of Jesus, these things cannot be known. But the fact that he was apparently unable to carry the crossbar himself would indicate that he was probably in a severely weakened state and he may have been close to circulatory shock. Those being crucified were then paraded through the streets, exposing them to the full scorn of the population. When the procession reached the site of the crucifixion, the victims would see before them the heavy upright wooden post permanently in place to which the crossbar, sorry, they have the Latin terms, to which the crossbar would be joint. The person was to be crucified. The person to be crucified would be thrown down on his back, exacerbating the pain of the wounds from the scourging and introducing dirt into them. His hands would be tied or now to the crossbar. Nailing seams to have been preferred by the Romans. Ossuary finds have given us a clearer idea of how this was done. 2000 years of Christian iconography notwithstanding that nails were not driven into the palms which could not support the weight of a man's body, but into the wrists. The long stake of the cross was then hoisted onto the crossbar with the victim dependent from it, and the feet were tied or nailed. At this point, the process of crucifixion proper began. Victims of crucifixion lived on their crosses for periods varying from three or four hours or to three or four days. It has often been remarked that Jesus ordeal is relatively brief. Perhaps he was weakened by the scourging or had lost more blood than usual or suffered cardiac rupture. We cannot know. In any sense, it has been surmised that the major pathophysiological effect of crucifixion beyond the excruciating pain was a marked interference with normal respiration, particularly exhalation, passive exhalation, which we all do thousand of times a day without thinking about it, becomes impossible for a person hanging on a cross. The weight of a body hanging by its wrists would depress the muscles required for breathing out. Therefore, each exiled breath could only be achieved by a tremendous effort. The only way to gain a breath at all would be by pushing oneself up from the legs and feet or pulling ones off up by the arms, either of which would cause intense agony. Add to this primary factor, the following secondary ones, bodily functions uncontrolled, insects feasting on wounds and orifices, unspeakable thirst, muscle cramps, bolts of pain from the severed median nerves in the wrist, scourged back scraping against the wooden post. It is more than any of us are capable of fully imagining. The verbal abuse and other actions such as spitting and throwing refuse by the spectators. Roman soldiers and passersby added the final touch. The New Testament shows us life lived between two worlds, the Roman and the near Middle Eastern crucifixion was noxious enough in Roman eyes. Palestinian attitudes would've found it perhaps even more so. Middle Eastern cultures still have to this day an acute sense of personal honor lodged in the body. An amputation administered as punishment, for instance, would be seen as much more than just physical cruelty or permanent handicap. It would mean that the amputee would carry the visible marks of dishonor and shame for the rest of his or her life. Anything done to the body would've been understood as exceptionally cruel, not just because it inflicted pain, but even more because it caused dishonor. Furthermore, the passion accounts reflect in part a very ancient ritual of humiliation. The mocking of Jesus, the spitting and scorn, the inversion of his kingship and the studious dethronement with the crown of thorns and purple robe would've been understood as a central part of a total right of infamy, of which the crucifixion itself is the culmination. Another aspect of crucifixion not widely noted is that a crucified person gasping and heaving on his cross is forced to be his own executioner. He is not even allowed the perverse dignity of having a human being corresponding to himself who hangs or decapitates him. He dies truly and completely alone with the weight of his own body, killing him as it hangs, causing his own diaphragm to suffocate him." All of this Jesus Christ went through for you, but also for the Father's glory. Let us pray before we partake in communion. Heavenly Father, we are just sickened and nauseous, just pondering just what Christ went through on the cross, the pain, the isolation, the thirst, the sadness. Lord, we cannot fathom. Lord, we do thank you that He came and He bore that for us. And because He bore that, He can identify with us from this moment on in history and our weaknesses and in our pains and conflicts. But most of all, Lord, we thank you that on the cross when He cried out, you did not hear Him, you did not respond. You did forsake him. Lord, he took the full cup of the punishment due for our sin so that we do not have to. We thank you that we do not have to relate with Him in that. We praise you for freeing us from the fear of death, from the fear of eternal torment, which would rightly be due to us had Jesus not gone to the cross for us. Lord, we pray, we thank you. But more as I reflect on tonight, we thank you for your zeal, for your glory. We thank you that to preserve your holy and right name, Lord, you go to such lengths. We thank you that you use your power for all that is good and godly and pure. We thank you for the hope that we have, knowing that as we go forward facing this creation, that is still impacted by Satan, sin, and death. We know that you're working for our good and not against us. Lord, help us to grow in our love and appreciation of you and who you are. You are all together set apart. You are all together holy. And with our limited minds we can only understand that to the degree that you allow us. So I pray, Lord, as we look at the cross, let us grow in our love and knowledge and understanding of you in addition to our appreciation for what you have done for us in Jesus and offering us salvation. Let us find joy walking in communion with you. I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic BostonChurch. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston ordonate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com. Well, good evening. My name is Andy. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic along with Pastor Jan and Pastor Shane. And as we say every service, we are glad to have everybody here worshiping with us today. And whether you're new or one of our seasoned attendees, we're thankful to be worshiping with you. If you are not a regular attendee, we invite you out to come on Sunday after this service. We won't hold any announcements at the end of the service today. Come out, we have services at 9:15 and 11:15 AM. Bring friends, bring family, and just come celebrate the resurrection, as tonight we'll be a little more intense. But we're glad that you're here and we're always praying for the Lord to send us people asking questions about Christianity, asking questions about the cross of Jesus Christ. And praying that the Lord would also send seasoned saints to come and just take up the labor, the mission here with us in Boston. Tonight, I'm going to have just a meditation on God's zeal for His glory, how good Friday shows God's zeal for His glory. And before we do so, I just want to jump in and pray. Heavenly Father, we praise You that You are God. You are worthy of our worship. You speak to us through Your creation. When we look upon all that is good in this world, we see Your fingerprint upon it. When we look upon other human lives, we see Your presence. We see some of the character attributes that You have passed on. Lord, when we look upon Your word, most importantly, we see Your love for us. We see this Bible from the third chapter through the finish, talking about man's fall to sin and Your plan to be the solution to that, to crush the serpent on the head, and to come and be both the priest and the sacrifice of the atonement for our sins. And Lord, we praise You for sending Jesus Christ who is our brother, but is also our God. We thank You that He took on flesh to be tempted and tried in every way. He took on flesh to know the challenges firsthand that we face in this life. And Lord, He took on flesh to walk perfectly under your law in the way that we could not. And we thank you Lord that He came, He lived for the primary purpose of going to the cross for Your lost children. And He went and He bore the full wrath that is due for all of our sins and the work is finished. We praise You that as we look upon Good Friday, as we look upon Christ, we know that it is finished. And Lord, it's sad, it sickens us to know what Christ went through us. But we praise You for that. We praise You that we can say ultimately You have worked the great travesty of the cross for Your good, for Your glory, for our salvation. We pray right now. Lord, just show us more of Your heart. Let us not get lost in thinking what this day means and offers to us. Let's not just seek an emotional religious experience, Lord. Let us grow further and further in love with your heart. I pray these things in Jesus's name. Amen. Now to start, I want to read from Matthew ... Excuse me, Mark chapter 15 and I'll read the whole chapter, I think it's 1-47, Mark chapter 15 verses 1-47. "And as soon as it was morning, the chief priest held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate. And Pilate asked him, 'Are you the king of the Jews?' And he answered him, 'You have said so.' And the chief priest accused him of many things. And Pilate again asked him, 'Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you?' But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate was amazed. Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. And among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas. And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them. And he answered them saying, 'Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?' For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priest had delivered him up. But the chief priest stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead. And Pilate again said to them, 'Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews?' And they cried out again, 'Crucify him.' And Pilate said to them, 'Why? What evil has he done?' But they shouted all the more, 'Crucify him.' So Pilate wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas. And having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the governor's headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion. And they clothed him a in a purple cloak and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. And they began to salute him, 'Hail, King of the Jews!' And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him. And they comp compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry the cross. And they brought him to the place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull). And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take. And it was the third hour when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him read, 'The King of the Jews.' And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, 'Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross!' So also the chief priest with the scribes mocked him to one another, saying, 'He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.' Those who were crucified with him also reviled him. And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, 'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?' 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' And some of the bystanders hearing it said, 'Behold, he is calling Elijah.' And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink and said, 'Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.' And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!' There were also women looking on from a distance among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and the younger and of Joses and Salome. When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem." "And when evening had come, since it was the day of preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. And Joseph brought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid." This is the reading of God's holy word. It's in this, the blood of Christ, His crucifixion, and on Sunday, his resurrection that we boast as Christians. To start, I'm glad that Caleb in the introduction said Happy Good Friday because it's just a confusing day. This is the most solemn day of the year for the church, yet it really is one of the most joyful days. Today we celebrate the cross of Jesus Christ. And I come from a lot of ... I've been through a few traditions of Christianity before I came to Mosaic. And there's a lot of questions about how to approach Good Friday. And so I want to start by just making a couple critiques of the typical approach of Good Friday. There's one where people come and on Good Friday, there's this extra pressure to come and think about what Christ went through for me. Wow. Look how far, look at the ridicule, look at the mockery, look at the physical pain, look at the sin, the wrath that He bore for me. And I want to say keep doing that. We have to keep doing that for at the cross we boast He who knew us and became sin, so in Him we might become the righteousness of God. And there's a tendency though, to just get one side of the Good Friday story. And it's when you really just think about, wow, what did Jesus go through for me, what you miss out on is, is your heart being taken to worship of God. What does the cross, how does this direct me to worship of God? And so this point's a little confusing. I say, don't make this the only thing that you do. As you contemplate the weight that Christ bore on the cross, you should be in awe and astonishment and wonder about what He did for you. You should grimace as you read the gospel story, the crucifixion story. You should grimace as we take communion and you eat the bread and drink the juice, the wine. You should grimace, almost feel sick as I go through a reading to close out my portion of this message that will tell you and explain more details of the crucifixion than you could have ever wanted to know. But you don't want to make it the primary thing. And there's just beneath this wow what he did for me, some Christians can just get lost. We say that Jesus Christ, He is our Lord and He is our savior. And we get stuck in our faith just saying, "Wow, he's my savior. What has he done for me?" But beneath that is really me, me, me, instead of wow, God, God, God, look at what God has done. And so I challenge you today, think. I said this is a message where we're talking about God's zeal for his glory. As I preach to you right now, ask the Lord to show you what does Good Friday teach me about God Himself? Not what does Good Friday do for me? And so that's a nuanced point. You want to feel the weight. You should feel the weight. You have the law of God standing over you in this dark building right now. I just read Mark, the crucifixion story. You should be feeling it, but don't let that be the only thing. Don't let that be the primary thing. And next, I just want to critique. A lot of people come to a Good Friday service to tremble and really just get that little taste of religious experience, of emotional experience that will just carry them forward in their life. There's a famous hymn that really I think captures this tendency for Good Friday and it's, were you there when they crucified my Lord. I think a lot of people know that. And the lyrics go: Were you there when you crucified my Lord? Were you there when you crucified my Lord? Oh. If you know the song, you know that I do not have the capacity to sing it. Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. And I used to attend a church that sang this song on every Good Friday and I really looked forward to it. It's catchy. Guys like Johnny Cash sang it. But I think this approach captures, reveals the wrong mindset. It reveals a mindset of I just want to tremble. I just want to be shaken a little bit as I engage God, as I engage His holy scriptures. And this has shown, some Christians who are regular church attendees, we fall into this. But many people come out once a year, let me go get my fix, let me go get right before God by doing this. And it's not the right way. What's the problem? We only want to sometimes tremble. We want to pause and be shaken a bit. And what Good Friday teaches is that it's not about us. It's not about coming to get a religious experience. And you can come and do that every week at Mosaic and hopefully it goes beyond that to your heart. But Good Friday, first and foremost is about God and His zeal for His glory. And if your mind, as you ponder just the weight that Christ bore for you, if you come and you have this religious experience, but you don't get taken up to worship and awe and wonder at the glory of God and his character, then we have failed in this service. You are either after the wrong thing in your approach or we as a church are not taking you to the heavenly of heavenlys, taking you into the presence of God. And Jesus knew this. He knew that the cross was all about God's glory. Right before He was betrayed by Judas and handed to the authorities Christ prayed, "Now is my soul troubled." And this is John chapter 12:27-28. "Now, is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.' Then a voice from heaven came from heaven: 'I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.'" When we observe Good Friday, we tend to get so caught up in the thinking about the power and ambiance of Christ, of the situation of the service. We get so caught up in thinking about what does this mean for me? What's the point of coming out here? How does this add to my personal walk in the faith? But in doing so, we miss what God is trying to teach us about himself. And what is that God has a zeal. He's teaching us, God, I have a zeal for my glory, first and foremost. What is Christ's passion? This week where we talk about his suffering in holy week, it's a storm, literally the sky went black, probably felt a lot like this for several hours of the day in Jerusalem, while Christ was on the cross. The cross is the storm. The fury of God's just rest, the whole cup of it for all sins, past, present, and future of his children. And our engagement in one of the events in Christ's life with a storm should teach us how to take lessons from this storm on the cross. Mark 4:36-41 says, "And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep in the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, 'Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?' And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, 'Peace! Be still!' And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, 'Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?' And they're filled with great fear and said to one another, 'Who then is this, that even the wind in the sea obey him?'" So what's the situation at the end of this storm scene? Imagine just being in a boat with waves just rocking over your head, the winds just loud howling in your ears, rain's coming down, thunder, lightning, and Jesus is there sleeping and he wakes up and he says, "Peace. Be still." The situation at the end is that the disciples are left more scared as they ponder the nature of Jesus than they were by the storm that was rocking them a moment ago. "Who is this man? Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him," they ask. And that's how our engagement with the storm of Good Friday should be when we think about God. We should ask, "Who is this God?" When we get a greater glimpse at the lens he goes to preserve his just, his righteous, his glorious nature, it should shake us to the core, not just give us a little tremble. It should inspire us to turn to get right with him through Christ immediately and should change us all together from the inside out. And this is in several parts of scripture. Where do I give this primarily tonight? Romans chapter 3:21-26. It says, "But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus for all who believe. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." I think these verses contain the most important paragraph on the atonement in the Bible, and that's not biblical. That's just my after me really digging into it in this season and in the past. What do these verses say? They say that beneath God's pursuit of our justification, our being made right before him and forgiveness, beneath our justification and forgiveness in sending to the cross was the pursuit of God to clear his own name. Verse 25 can be understood as "God put Christ forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins." The text tells us that until Christ sacrifice on the cross, God's righteousness is at stake. His name was in need of vindication. Why is that the case? Why did God face the problem of needing to give a public vindication of his righteousness? The answer it's provided in verse 25, "because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins." Now what does that mean? It means that for millennia, God had been doing what Psalm 103 verse 10 says. "He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities." Think King David. He sends a man off to war to get killed so that he can marry his wife and the prophet Nathan tells him his sins are forgiven and David gets to continue to serve as king. There's no punishment in the kingdom, and he's not stricken dead. And that's offensive. Why is passing over of sin of forgiveness such a problem? Well, what is sin? Romans 3:23 says, "For all sin and fall short of the glory of God," or translated literally, "all of sinned and lacked the glory of God." Sin is related to glory and it's understood as a lacking or losing of it. When Adam sinned, he lost the glory that came with being a sinless image bearer of the trial of God. How did he lose his glory? He exchanged that glory which was inherent in his nature as an image bearer of God for something offered to him in the creation. All sin is a preference for the temporary pleasures of things found within the finite creation over the everlasting joy of eternal fellowship with the creator. Sin is a failing to love God's glory above everything else. Altogether sin might be understood as an effort to rob God of his glory, or that sin is a rebellion against God's glory. Therefore, the problem when God passes over sin is that God seems to condone the behavior of those who commit sin. He seems to be saying it is a matter of indifference that his glory is spurned. He seems to condone the low assessment of who He is, His righteousness, His worth from the sinner. Where the passing over of sin communicates that God's glory and His righteous governance are of little or no value to the sinner. But according to Romans, this is the most basic problem that God solved by the death on his son. Verse 25 and 26 say, "This, God's putting Christ his son forward to die was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time." So God, he could have settled accounts with man by not saving anybody and punishing all sinners with hell. This would've demonstrated that He does not condone our falling short of his glory or the belittling of His honor. But God did not will to condemn everyone like that. John 3:17 says, "God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." This truth we know well. We know well that God is for us. We know that our salvation is God's goal in sending Jesus. But today I'm asking, do you know the foundation of God's rescue plan for his children? Do you know that there is a deeper goal in the father's sending of the son? Do you know that God's love for us depends on a deeper love, namely God's love for his own glory? Do you know that God's desire to save sinners rest on a deeper desire, namely God's desire to vindicate his righteousness? Do you realize that the accomplishment of our salvation does not center on us, but on God's zeal for his own glory? The big question of the cross is not can we be saved, but can Christ repair the glory of God for the people of God? And the resounding answer of the Bible is yes. Christ drank the full cup of God's wrath for the sins of his children, past, present, future when he went to the cross and first and foremost for God the Father, then for us. So this is why is it important to understand, meditate upon Good Friday. It shows us that the cross is the foremost display of God's love for sinners. Not because it demonstrates the value of sinners, but because it vindicates the value of God for sinners to enjoy. God's love for man does not consist in making man central, but in making Himself central to man. The cross doesn't direct man's attention to His own vindicated worth, but to God's vindicated righteousness. This is love, God pursuing His own glory because the only eternal happiness for man is happiness focused on the riches of God's glory. Psalm 16:11 says, "In your presence there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore." God's self-exaltation, it's loving because it preserves for us and offers to us the only fully satisfying object of desire in the universe, Himself, the all glorious, all righteous God. If God doesn't correct things, if God doesn't make sure that there is payment for sins, he is not worthy to be God. At the cross your view of God and His character and love of God and His character, they should expand. He destroys any formulations of a God that we could have contrived by our own personal preferences. He destroys any construction of God that could have been contrived by the primary ideals of our day, our culture, our country, our government. At the cross, you don't just tremble. Sometimes but are shaken to the core. Who is this God that chases after his own glory with such zeal? At the cross, you see that you're not the center of things. Your glory and joy are not at the center of life and history, but God and his glory and joy are. You see that you're just blessed that He even offers a chance to walk beside Him in life despite your sin through faith in Jesus Christ. At the cross you see most clearly on Good Friday that you are a mere creature made for worship of the good, holy, and wise God. At the cross you see that God is both just and the justifier. You cherish the fact that he has procured your salvation through the sending of the Son and the fact of His righteous character. At the cross you'll find that to be loved intimately is to be forgiven, cleansed and enabled to see and to feel the wonder that the Father has for himself and that Christ has for the Father and that the spirit has for them both. To close my speaking portion before we partake ... Oh, excuse me, what the cross is it's the Grand Canyon. God doesn't take us to Mount Washington, a cheap New England wannabe. Now the cross, God takes us to the Grand Canyon. He displays the full majesty of who he is. He shows a zeal for righteousness, holiness, perfection, all glories, preserves them and says, "Look upon me. Look upon how great I am. Look at how holy set apart from all other as I am and be holy before me, because that is what is best for you." And praise God, he doesn't say that to us in our sin without hope, for we know that without Jesus Christ, who was perfect, who was holy, while we are sinners, we can look to Christ and have peace with him. We can look to God and know that He in all of His glory and power and splendor, the might of His good hand is working towards us for all of eternity in Jesus. And so to close my portion before we partake in communion together, I want to read a really long excerpt that does spend a lot of time making me say, "Wow, look what God has done for me." But as you read it, I want you to test yourself. I want you to test yourself. When you look at the death, the crucifixion of Christ, do you look simply to be shaken, to tremble a little? Or as a reader, are you only thinking, "Wow, look at what God has done for me," and not go beyond that? Or are you brought to praise and wonder to see the lens that God goes to preserve his glorious and righteous character for your eternal satisfaction in him? I'm going to read a long section from Fleming Rutledge's book, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ. "It is formidably difficult to understand the cross today in its original context after 2000 years in which it has been domesticated, romanticized, idealized, and misappropriated. Occasionally a modern interpreter struggling to find some correspondence that can be grasped by people today will compare the cross of Roman times to the American electric chair. This is an adequate analogy for a number of reasons as we shall see, but we can learn a few things from it. Imagine revering an electric chair. Imagine using it as the focal point in our churches, hanging small replicas around our necks, carrying it aloft in procession and bow bowing our heads as it passes. The absurdity of this scenario can readily be grasped, but other features in the comparison might help us. For instance, the electric chair when it was still used was almost always used for executing the lowest class of criminal and majority of them black with no powerful connections or other resources. Similarly, the Romans virtually never used the cross for executing people who had occupied high positions and never for Roman citizens. Another point of contact is the contradictory response of revulsion and attraction familiar to anyone who has ever slowed to look at a wreck on a highway. Even the most fastidious person when confronted by a photograph of an electric chair, let alone the real thing, will experience a disturbing fascination. There have always been people who specialize in coming to cheer and applaud executions when they took place, whether lynchings, hangings, or electrocutions. That is what undoubtedly happened on Calvary when Jesus was nailed to the cross and left there to die. Crowds of people then as now took pleasure in reviling the one who is being put to death. When they became bored with this pastime, they went safely home to their comforts and gave the victim no further thought. 'It is nothing to you, all you who passed by,' Lamentations 1:12. But there are very important differences. Electrocutions were at least theoretically supposed to be humane and quick, but crucifixion as a method of execution was specifically designed to intensify and prolong agony. In this sense, the cross was infinitely more dreadful than the electric chair, odious, though the chair was. Another difference is that the person to be electrocuted is permitted the dignity of a mask or a hood, presumably so that the privilege of the face noted by Susan Sontag would be protected. Most important of all, electrocutions took place indoors out of public view with only a few select people permitted to watch. Crucifixion, on the other hand, was supposed to be seen by as many people as possible. The basement resulting from public display was a chief feature of the method along with the prolonging of the agony. It was a form of advertisement or public announcement. 'This person is the scum of the earth, not fit to live, more an insect than a human being.' The crucified wretch was pinned up like a specimen. Crosses were not placed out in the open for convenience or sanitation, but for maximum public exposure. Crucifixion as a means of execution in the Roman Empire had its express purpose, the elimination of victims from consideration as members of the human race. It cannot be said too strongly that it was its function. It was meant to indicate to all who might be toying with subversive ideas that crucified persons were not of the same species as either the executioners or the spectators, and were therefore not only expendable, but also deserving of ritualized extermination. Therefore, the mocking and jeering that accompanied crucifixion were not only allowed, they're part of the spectacle and were programmed into it. In a sense, crucifixion was a form of entertainment. Everyone understood that the specific role of the passerby was to exacerbate the dehumanization and degradation of the person had thus been designated to be a spectacle. Crucifixion was cleverly designed, we might say diabolically designed, to be an almost theatrical enactment of the sadistic and inhumane impulses that lie within human beings. According to the Christian gospel, the Son of God voluntarily and purposefully absorbed all of that, drawing it into himself. Anyone seeking to interpret Jesus crucifixion must decide whether or not to include a clinical description. Since the New Testament writers are conspicuously silent about the physical details, it is legitimate to ask whether it is suitable or helpful to introduce them. On the other hand, people in New Testament times had all seen crucifixions and did not need a description. The evangelists and the other New Testament writers were able to assume a familiarity with the method that is unthinkable for us today. Most of us have never even come close to see anyone tortured to death. 'For this reason,' as Martin Hengel writes, 'reflection on the harsh reality of crucifixion and antiquity may help us to overcome the acute loss of reality, which is to be found so often present in theology and preaching.' The early theologian originally called Jesus death the utterly vile death on the cross. Cicero, the great Roman statesman and writer referred to the crucifixion as the supreme penalty, exceeding burning and decapitation and gruesomeness. Some rudimentary knowledge of what was taking place will help us to understand these terms. The first phase of a Roman execution was scourging. The lictors, Roman legionnaires assigned to this duty used a whip made of leather cords to which small pieces of metal or bone had been fastened. Paintings of the scouring of Jesus had always shown him with a loin cloth but in fact the victim would've been naked, tied to a post in a position to expose the back and buttocks to maximum effect. With the first strokes of the scourge, skin would be pulled away and subcutaneous tissue exposed. As the process continued, the lacerations would begin to tear into the underlying skeletal muscles. This would result not only in a great pain but also in appreciable blood loss. The idea was to weaken the victim to a state just short of collapse or death. It was common for taunting and ridicule to accompany the procedure. In the case of Jesus, the New Testament tells us that a crown of thorns, a purple robe and a mock scepter were added to intensify the mockery. The condition of a prisoner after scourging just prior to crucifixion would depend upon several things. Previous physical condition, the enthusiasm of the lictors and the extent of blood loss. In the case of Jesus, these things cannot be known. But the fact that he was apparently unable to carry the crossbar himself would indicate that he was probably in a severely weakened state and he may have been close to circulatory shock. Those being crucified were then paraded through the streets, exposing them to the full scorn of the population. When the procession reached the site of the crucifixion, the victims would see before them the heavy upright wooden post permanently in place to which the crossbar, sorry, they have the Latin terms, to which the crossbar would be joint. The person was to be crucified. The person to be crucified would be thrown down on his back, exacerbating the pain of the wounds from the scourging and introducing dirt into them. His hands would be tied or now to the crossbar. Nailing seams to have been preferred by the Romans. Ossuary finds have given us a clearer idea of how this was done. 2000 years of Christian iconography notwithstanding that nails were not driven into the palms which could not support the weight of a man's body, but into the wrists. The long stake of the cross was then hoisted onto the crossbar with the victim dependent from it, and the feet were tied or nailed. At this point, the process of crucifixion proper began. Victims of crucifixion lived on their crosses for periods varying from three or four hours or to three or four days. It has often been remarked that Jesus ordeal is relatively brief. Perhaps he was weakened by the scourging or had lost more blood than usual or suffered cardiac rupture. We cannot know. In any sense, it has been surmised that the major pathophysiological effect of crucifixion beyond the excruciating pain was a marked interference with normal respiration, particularly exhalation, passive exhalation, which we all do thousand of times a day without thinking about it, becomes impossible for a person hanging on a cross. The weight of a body hanging by its wrists would depress the muscles required for breathing out. Therefore, each exiled breath could only be achieved by a tremendous effort. The only way to gain a breath at all would be by pushing oneself up from the legs and feet or pulling ones off up by the arms, either of which would cause intense agony. Add to this primary factor, the following secondary ones, bodily functions uncontrolled, insects feasting on wounds and orifices, unspeakable thirst, muscle cramps, bolts of pain from the severed median nerves in the wrist, scourged back scraping against the wooden post. It is more than any of us are capable of fully imagining. The verbal abuse and other actions such as spitting and throwing refuse by the spectators. Roman soldiers and passersby added the final touch. The New Testament shows us life lived between two worlds, the Roman and the near Middle Eastern crucifixion was noxious enough in Roman eyes. Palestinian attitudes would've found it perhaps even more so. Middle Eastern cultures still have to this day an acute sense of personal honor lodged in the body. An amputation administered as punishment, for instance, would be seen as much more than just physical cruelty or permanent handicap. It would mean that the amputee would carry the visible marks of dishonor and shame for the rest of his or her life. Anything done to the body would've been understood as exceptionally cruel, not just because it inflicted pain, but even more because it caused dishonor. Furthermore, the passion accounts reflect in part a very ancient ritual of humiliation. The mocking of Jesus, the spitting and scorn, the inversion of his kingship and the studious dethronement with the crown of thorns and purple robe would've been understood as a central part of a total right of infamy, of which the crucifixion itself is the culmination. Another aspect of crucifixion not widely noted is that a crucified person gasping and heaving on his cross is forced to be his own executioner. He is not even allowed the perverse dignity of having a human being corresponding to himself who hangs or decapitates him. He dies truly and completely alone with the weight of his own body, killing him as it hangs, causing his own diaphragm to suffocate him." All of this Jesus Christ went through for you, but also for the Father's glory. Let us pray before we partake in communion. Heavenly Father, we are just sickened and nauseous, just pondering just what Christ went through on the cross, the pain, the isolation, the thirst, the sadness. Lord, we cannot fathom. Lord, we do thank you that He came and He bore that for us. And because He bore that, He can identify with us from this moment on in history and our weaknesses and in our pains and conflicts. But most of all, Lord, we thank you that on the cross when He cried out, you did not hear Him, you did not respond. You did forsake him. Lord, he took the full cup of the punishment due for our sin so that we do not have to. We thank you that we do not have to relate with Him in that. We praise you for freeing us from the fear of death, from the fear of eternal torment, which would rightly be due to us had Jesus not gone to the cross for us. Lord, we pray, we thank you. But more as I reflect on tonight, we thank you for your zeal, for your glory. We thank you that to preserve your holy and right name, Lord, you go to such lengths. We thank you that you use your power for all that is good and godly and pure. We thank you for the hope that we have, knowing that as we go forward facing this creation, that is still impacted by Satan, sin, and death. We know that you're working for our good and not against us. Lord, help us to grow in our love and appreciation of you and who you are. You are all together set apart. You are all together holy. And with our limited minds we can only understand that to the degree that you allow us. So I pray, Lord, as we look at the cross, let us grow in our love and knowledge and understanding of you in addition to our appreciation for what you have done for us in Jesus and offering us salvation. Let us find joy walking in communion with you. I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

This podcast contains an excerpt from the St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows worship service on Sunday, March 26th, 2023. For more information about the community and ministries of St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows, you can visit our website: smlutheran.org

This podcast contains an excerpt from the St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows worship service on Sunday, March 5th, 2023. For more information about the community and ministries of St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows, you can visit our website: smlutheran.org

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. If you have your Bibles, go ahead and open up to Matthew 28. We are in week three of our sermon series Committed. We've been talking about the essential habits of an abundant life in Christ, and what I've been saying over these last couple of weeks is we're taking this time to focus on some of the essential, non-negotiable, super practical commitments that every Christian must make in order to grow in their faith, in order to persevere through trials, in order to fulfill God's purpose and calling for their life, and in order to experience and to enjoy this abundant life that Jesus Christ came to give us. Two weeks ago, we started off by talking about the commitment to follow Jesus as our Lord, as our savior, as our good shepherd. Last week we talked about committing to a local church and the importance of having a church, having fellowship with other believers to support us, encourage us, and hold us accountable as we follow Jesus. This week we're going to talk about evangelism. Our sermon is called Commit to Evangelism. At the end of last week's passage in Acts 2, verse 47 tells us that the early church, these early Christians were praising God and having favor with all of the people, and the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved. If you're here last week, you remember we talked about how these early Christians were committed. They were devoted to sharing their lives with one another sacrificially. They were deeply committed to one another and the church. But this doesn't mean that they were just a holy huddle of the frozen chosen as we joke about some churches being today. They were a church on a mission. We talked a little bit about how the church can be thought of in the metaphor of a ship. That we as a church, we're not trying to be a cruise ship, we're trying to be a battleship. On a cruise ship, everyone shows up and everyone shows up to be served and to be entertained. You float around in circles. You wind up right back where you started. On a battleship, everyone shows up to serve. Everyone shows up because we're all working together with same purpose, same mission, and we're going to be spending these next two weeks talking about what that mission is, focusing on what has come to be called the Great Commission and two aspects of that Great Commission. If you're not familiar with the Great Commission, this is basically Jesus' final marching orders to the church, his final instructions that he leaves before ascending to the right hand of the Father in heaven. We can find it in Matthew 28. This is where we're going to be begin our time today, Matthew 28 beginning in verse 28. This is what it says. It says that Jesus came to them, came to his disciples, and he said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all the 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've commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age." You see the two aspects of this mission, right? First of all, there's this outward mission. Jesus says, "You need to go into all the world and make disciples." That's evangelism. That's what we're going to be talking about today. The second aspect of the mission is more inward where Jesus says, "And then you need to teach them to observe all that I have commanded you to do." That's discipleship. We'll be talking more about that next week. Discipleship is focused on the mission of sanctification. Evangelism is focused on the mission of conversion. Already, hopefully, I wouldn't be surprised if everyone's feeling a little bit uncomfortable. I'm surprised. After last week telling you we were going to talk about evangelism today, I'm like, good to see that some of you came back, because this is not something that we get particularly comfortable with thinking about converting people, proselytizing, things like that. They're not popular concepts in our culture. I don't know if I would use the word proselytizing, but we are going to talk about we do want to convert people to Christianity. We want to persuade people to believe and to follow Jesus Christ. I remember the first time that I ever visited Boston. We were downtown doing kind of the touristy thing. My wife and I were there. Our son Owen, he was about nine months old at the time. We're walking around in the Boston Commons and we're making our way toward Park Street Station. There's these two younger girls behind us having a very loud, very passionate discussion. One of them was pleading passionately with her friend trying to warn her to never read anything by this author that she discovered named C.S. Lewis and to never read the book The Chronicles of Narnia because she had found out that this guy was actually a Christian and he was secretly trying to convert people with his books. If you know anything about C.S. Lewis, there wasn't anything secret about it. He's pretty on the nose about everything that he wrote. He was overtly a Christian. Chronicles of Narnia, it's a straight-up allegory of Christianity. He wasn't trying to hide any of that. But what stuck out to me about that conversation was as I'm listening to these girls have their discussion, really what she was doing was she was trying to convert her friend. She was trying to convert her friend to this position of non-conversion. Providentially, the next morning we got up and we visited Mosaic for the first time and Pastor Jan was preaching on that exact topic, on this idea of the world trying to convert people to this position of non-conversion. This girl was hypocritically doing the very thing that she was condemning someone else, C.S. Lewis in this case, of doing. The question then is, why are we then so afraid to do that ourselves as Christians? Non-Christians do it all the time. People in general do it all the time. If you believe that something is true and if you believe that that truth matters, well, then it's only natural that you're going to try to persuade other people to accept it and to believe it as well, even if the truth is inconvenient, even if the truth is uncomfortable. Love would compel you to plead with others to accept it and believe it. A good doctor wouldn't hide the truth from their patient. A good doctor will share their diagnosis and prescription even if that truth is not necessarily what the patient wants to hear, because withholding that would be unloving. It would be unprofessional. It could be deadly. I think part of the reason that many Christians are afraid to share their faith is that we have this fear of rejection. I've shared the gospel with several people in Boston, and more often than not, that's been met with rejection. Every single time it's uncomfortable. But what my experiences taught me is that even though in sharing the gospel, yeah, I have faced a lot of rejection, it usually doesn't come as the form that I'm afraid of. It usually doesn't come in the form of anger or hostility. It's usually just kind of more of a Stoic response of like, "Oh, that's interesting or that's nice. I'm glad that that worked for you, but not really something I'm interested in myself." It's not the response that I hoped for, but it's also really not a response that should cause us to be afraid to share the gospel in the first place. I say that just to say don't be anxious, don't catastrophize what might possibly happen when you share the gospel because you really don't know. You don't know how they're going to respond. You can't control how they're going to respond. You might be surprised to discover that a lot of people are more open and more comfortable to talking about these things than you might assume. Sometimes we are reluctant to share the gospel out of fear of rejection. I think most Christians, however, are reluctant to share the gospel out of a fear of failure. I think a lot of Christians, maybe they want to share the gospel, they have a desire, they know that it's something they ought to do, but they're worried about failure because they don't feel equipped. What if they ask me a question I don't know how to answer? What if I say something wrong? We can't control how people are going to respond to the message, but there are things that we can do to prepare ourselves and to be equipped to share that message more effectively when we have opportunities to do so. That's really what I want to spend our time focusing more on today. Toward the end of our time this morning, I'm going to share just some rapid fire practical tips for evangelism. But to begin with, I want us to just start by looking at three biblical truths, three realities, three things that Jesus equips us with in order to help us overcome this fear of sharing the gospel. If you have your Bibles, we're going to be launching out of Matthew 28, but we're going to be doing a survey of many scriptures that will help us understand these things. Before we begin, let's pray and then we'll jump into the message together. Jesus, you told your disciples that they should pray to the Lord of the harvest, that the harvest is great, but the workers are few. Pray to the Lord of the harvest to raise up more workers for this mission. Lord, we pray that you would do that. Even right now, Lord, I pray that you would be doing that. Lord, we know that immediately after instructing his disciples to pray, he then sends them out to do the very thing, to be the answer to their very own prayers and to go and to preach the gospel. Lord, I pray that you would help us today to see that you have saved us in order to send us. That you have called us, you have commissioned us, and you have equipped us. That you do not send us out alone, you do not send us out, but you send us out fully equipped to do what you have called to do. That you have given us the authority of your word. You've given us the presence and the power of your Holy Spirit. You've given us the fellowship of the church. We have everything we need to accomplish this mission together. Lord, I pray that you would give us grace to do so. God, we pray right now that you just bless our time and your holy word this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, the first truth, the first reality that I want us to look at, that we need to understand and believe that's going to help us overcome our fear of sharing the gospel is this, that Jesus equips us and he sends us with both the clarity and the authority of his word. That Jesus doesn't send us out with a long list of complicated religious rights and rituals and rules. We sang this earlier, that it's finished, it is accomplished. There's no work that we can do to further this mission that the message of the mission is very simple. It's so simple that it can be summed up here in just a couple of sentences. It's so deep, it's so sophisticated that you can spend the rest of your life devoting yourself to it and never master it. There's always room to grow. You can spend the rest of your life studying scripture, growing and maturing in the Holy Spirit. What is the mission? There's a story in the Gospel of Matthew where a religious leader, a teacher of the religious law comes up to Jesus and he wants to know, he wants to ask him, "Jesus, what is the greatest of all of the commandments?" In Matthew 22:37, Jesus said to him, he said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your mind. This is the great and the first commandment. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depends all the law and the prophets." All the Old Testament, the law, the prophets, they're all summed up on these two things, to love God with everything and to love your neighbor as yourself. The mission of the church is simply this, the Great Commission is to simply live that out and then to teach others to do the same. Repent of your sin. Put your faith in Jesus Christ. Commit to follow him, to obey him, to observe all that he has commanded. To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself and then to teach others to do the same. The mission is simple, the mission is clear, but that doesn't mean that it's easy. Following Jesus is going to be hard. Taking this message to the ends of the earth is going to be hard. Just taking this message across the hallway, across the street, across the cubicle is going to be hard. We need to understand that Jesus doesn't merely send us out with a clear mission, he also sends us out with clear authority. I think one of the best explanations of these two realities coming together can be seen in 2 Corinthians 5:17-21. The apostle Paul says this, he says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed, and behold, the new has come. All of this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you and on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." It's very clear the message, that Jesus Christ became sin for us. He took our sin upon himself on the cross. He paid the penalty that we deserve so that we could become the righteousness of God, so that we could be forgiven, reconciled to God through this ministry of reconciliation. That's the message. The mission is then to go with this message and to reconcile people to God. The authority then is that we are not going out alone. We're not going out in our own authority. We are going out sent by the king, sent as ambassadors of Christ for proclaiming this good news about his kingdom. All that to say is don't make the mission overly complicated. Evangelism simply means to announce the good news that Jesus is king. Human beings are sinners. Jesus is the savior. He is Lord, he is king, and he has now sent us as his ambassadors of his kingdom, sent us to warn the world that he is going to come again to judge the world in righteousness, but also sent to proclaim this good news that the king is coming right now. He's offering amnesty that right now this king has made a way to reconcile the world to himself. He is offering terms of peace for all who would repent, believe, for all who would lay down their arms and surrender, commit their allegiance to him as the good and the rightful king that he is. C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, he put it like this. He said, "Enemy occupied territory, that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, and you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part of a great campaign of sabotage." We're going out as ambassadors on this rescue mission, recruiting people to the kingdom of God. Sharing the gospel is intimidating because it's intimidating to go and to walk into enemy occupied territory. But we do this with a clear mission, with a clear message, and with a clear authority of knowing that we have been sent by the true, the good, the rightful king. When you're feeling fearful about sharing your faith, remember this, that every time that you speak the words of scripture and share God's word, every time that you proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, that Jesus is not just with you, but as this text just said, he's actually making his appeal through you, calling people to himself to be reconciled, to make peace through his bloodshed on the cross. 2 Timothy 3:14-17 tells us that, "All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching and for reproof, for correction, and for training and righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." Every good work that we'll ever be called to do. Scripture equips us for all of that. The first step to overcoming our fear is to know God's word, to know that his word is authoritative and true. It is living and active. It equips us for every good work, and so that we shouldn't be ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ because we know it is the power of God unto salvation. Point number two, Jesus sends us out with the clarity and the authority of his word. He also sends us out with the courageous readiness of knowing and of resting in his sovereignty. Ephesians 6:14, Paul tells us to, "Stand firm, therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace." That God's sovereignty and salvation should replace our fear with this incredible courage and a readiness to share the gospel. Because when you think about this, what does this mean, God's sovereignty? It means that he has the power to save anyone, anytime, anywhere, even the people that we least expect. Nobody knew this better than the apostle Paul himself, right? I mean, this was the guy who was a violent persecutor of the church. No one ever expected this guy to get saved. He hated Christians. He had made it his mission to snuff out the Christian movement wherever he could find it, and yet Jesus finds him. Jesus saves him. Jesus gave him a new mission and turns him into the greatest missionary that the church has ever seen. Paul knew that if Jesus could save him, well, Jesus could save anyone. Why should he be afraid? Why should he be fearful of sharing this good news with anyone wherever he goes, no matter what opposition, no matter what persecution he often faced. Consider the life of Paul with me for a moment. Just going to take a look at an episode of his life from the Book of Acts. In Acts 14, Paul is preaching the gospel in Lystra. As he's there, as he's preaching a gospel, this angry mob shows up, drags him out of town, stones him, leaves him for dead. Do you remember what it says what Paul does after he eventually wakes up not dead? It seems like you can go down a whole rabbit trail on this. Reading the Book of Galatians, Paul kind of eludes like maybe he actually died. He has this out of body experience, and then he comes back. We don't know. But he's stoned and left for dead. He wakes up eventually. He regains consciousness. And what does he do? He gets back up and he goes back into the town where the people just mobbed him, dragged him out, and stoned him and left him for dead. Incredible courage and boldness. He then leaves. He makes his way onto Philippi. In Philippi, he gets arrested again. He's beaten with rods. After that, it goes to Thessaloniki. Again, angry mob in Thessaloniki. Escapes by night to Berea where he's faced with yet another angry mob of people. He goes through Athens, makes his way to Corinth. And once again, we're told that he was met with those people who opposed and reviled him. I don't know about you, by this point, I'd be feeling a little bit discouraged. Mob me once, shame on you. Mob me 17, 18, 19 times, I must be doing something wrong. I should go take a class on evangelism or something. I don't know. What keeps Paul going? What kept him going was his belief in the sovereignty of God. That despite all the opposition that he faced, all the persecution that he experienced, that in each of these cities, people were getting saved, churches were being planted, lives were being transformed, legacies were being built. In the midst of all of this, in Acts 17, when Paul is in Corinth, God came to him in a vision during the night. In Acts 17:9-11, it says this that the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision. He said, "Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people." He stayed there a year and six months teaching the word of God among them. Paul understood that there would be many in this city who would oppose and revile him, and yet he would go on preaching the gospel because he also knew that there were many of God's elect, many of God's people here as well. His job was to preach the word. No gimmicks. No tricks. Preach the word, trust the word to do its work, trust God to draw his people to himself. That's what happened. Trust that Jesus' sheep would hear his voice and follow him. Right before getting to Corinth, Paul was in Athens. In Athens, he met with the philosophers at the Areopagus on Mars Hill. As he meets with them, he's walking through their temples. He's observing all of their idols that they've made to their many gods, and he gets to have this conversation with them. This is what he tells them in verse 26. He tells them that God made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth and determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place. That God determined where, when every person would live. So that what? Verse 27, so that they should seek God, perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he's actually not far from each of us. For in him we live and move and have our being, even as some of your own poets have said, "For indeed we are his offspring." Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of men. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man, Jesus Christ, whom he appointed, and of this he's given full assurance to all by raising him from the dead. See, I don't think that Paul believed in coincidence. I think Paul believed in providence, and this is what gave him this courageous readiness to share the gospel no matter where he was, no matter what kind of opposition that he was facing, because he knew that God was sovereign. I think one of my favorite examples of this is when he writes to the church in Philippi. At the end of Paul's letter to the Philippians, he's sending his greetings and he tells them in Philippians 4:22, he says, "All the saints send their greetings," then he adds this little comment, "especially those of Caesar's household." At the time, Paul was in chains. He was in prison, maybe under house arrest, and he's chained to these guards from Caesar's household all day. What does he do? He doesn't get discouraged. He doesn't quit. He doesn't say, "Well, I'm here/ I'm locked up. There's nothing I can do." He says, "Well, if I'm here and I'm locked up and I'm chained to these guards, it must be because I need to share the gospel with them. You think that Lord Caesar has me chained to you? Well, I think that Lord Jesus has you chained to me, and so now you're going to hear the gospel." He begins sharing the gospel with these guards and they end up getting saved. He's just kind of showing how God is flexing here. He's like, "Oh, and by the way, the people in Caesar's household, they send you their greetings that they are now believers, that they are now following Jesus as well." If God puts people in your life, if God gives you opportunities to share the gospel, perhaps that's not a coincidence. As Paul told the philosophers, God's providence determines the allotted periods and boundaries. Perhaps he's placed you in these people's lives for a reason. We all know this. When you go to school or when you go to work or when you go home and you're amongst your neighbors, that chances are if you are a Christian living in Boston, Massachusetts, you are quite probably the only Christian that any of these people know in the city. Maybe there's a reason that God has put you in their lives. You can't save anyone. That's not your job, right? That's Jesus' department is salvation. Your job is to be a faithful witness wherever he's placed you, to scatter the seed to pray and to trust God, to bring the growth, to bring the harvest. Trust God with the results. And with this, if you don't see those results right away, don't let that discourage you either. It doesn't mean that you did something wrong. It also doesn't mean that nothing is happening. We can't always see what God is doing beneath the surface when we share the gospel with people. Just an example from my own life, I've shared this before. In a former life as a young college student in the early 2000s, I was in a pop punk band. That was a thing at the time. We were in the Midwest. You had the West Coast punk. You had the East Coast punk. We were trying to pioneer the Midwest Coast punk. What that meant was we would go to class during the week. And then on the weekends, we would load up our big white conversion van and we would hit the road. We'd drive all over the Midwest playing shows in different towns and cities, and we got to spend a lot of time just driving around on the road, having conversations with one another as members of the band. At the time, none of the other members of the band were Christians. I shared last week that I had grown up in the church, but I wasn't walking with the Lord at this time. I don't really think that I was even yet a Christian at this time. But one night, it's late at night, we're on the road and we get into this conversation about faith and Jesus and Christianity. For whatever reason, I find myself defending the faith to our bass player and our drummer, trying to convince them that Christianity is true, that Jesus really is God, that he really did fulfill all of these prophecies, and he rose from the dead. We're having this, we're going back and forth. Eventually at one point, the bass player just shut the conversation down. Not in a mean way, but just kind of like a joking like, "I don't want to talk about this. I'm getting uncomfortable kind of way." We changed the subject, moved on, and honestly didn't think about that conversation again for a really long time. Fast-forward several years, we'd split up. We'd all grown up and went out and got real jobs and still in touch, but weren't living near each other, hadn't really talked to each other for a long time. I get a phone call one day from one of the guys in the band. It wasn't the bass player or the drummer. Actually for a brief time, there was a fourth guy in our band. He was only in the band for a few months after I joined, and then he quit. I really hadn't heard or seen from him again. He called me up because he wanted to tell me that he had become a Christian. He remembered that I had grown up going to church and I was a Christian. He wanted to let me know, "I'm a Christian now. I'm leading worship in my church." He was all excited. He was all on fire. He's like, "And I want you to know that this all started for me way back because of that conversation in the van." I was like, "You weren't even part of that conversation in the van." Actually, he was sitting in the back. I thought he was asleep the whole time, and apparently he'd been paying attention and somehow some seeds had gotten planted in him that eventually led to him becoming a Christian. He's still a Christian today. He's working in ministry today, and God's doing awesome things through his life. But I share all that just to say, you never know what God does with the gospel after you've shared it with somebody. Even if you don't see those results right away, it doesn't mean that God's not doing something. Don't get discouraged. Don't lose heart. Just be faithful and continue and persevere. Jesus equips us. He sends us with clarity and authority of his word, with the courageous readiness of his sovereignty, and number three, with the comforting power of his presence. I'm going to read several passages for us, because this is really important. First one is John 14:16-18. Jesus tells his disciples, he says, "I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him or knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.: In Luke 24:26, he said to them, "Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon. You, but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high." Acts 1:8, Jesus again tells his disciples, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." In our passage today, he says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age." Something happened on the day of Pentecost that we read about in Acts 2 a couple weeks ago. Something happened that day that had never happened before in the history of mankind. Before Christ in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit would come upon people for a time and for a task. But now what we see is that from now on, all of those who are in Christ, that the Holy Spirit is poured out, that the Holy Spirit dwells in us each personally and permanently. Jesus, he promised in the Great Commission, he said, "I will be with you always to the very end of the age." Obviously he's not here with us physically right now, but that's not what he was talking about. He's alluding to the gift of the Holy Spirit that he was going to pour out on his church after ascending into heaven. Jesus, he talked about this in John 16. In John 16, Jesus was talking with his disciples and he tells him this in verse five. He says, "Now I am going to him who sent me and none of you asks me, where are you going?" He said, "I'm preparing to go back to ascend to the right hand of my father. But because of I've said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts," which is understandable, right? You just got to spend three years in the presence of Jesus Christ physically. That would be sad to think about him leaving and ascending back to heaven. But verse seven, Jesus tells them, "Nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it's to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you." I don't know if we can really grasp what a big deal that is. Jesus is literally saying what we have right now as believers, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is in some ways to our advantage that it's actually in some ways we are better off right now than if he had remained physically here with us in the flesh. That when Jesus Christ took on flesh, that he in some sense allowed his presence to be confined by time and space in a human body. But when he ascended into heaven, he poured out the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Holy Spirit of the living God upon every member of his church. That the Holy Spirit is indwelling in all Christians, in all places at all times for all times. If you are in Christ, what this means is that Christ is not just with you, he is in you. You have been clothed with power from high, scripture says. You have been filled with the Holy Spirit of God, that God is with you and for you. He will not leave you or forsake you. He's working all things together for you, working for you and in you and through you, so you can have courage. You don't need to fear. That wherever you go, you go with the comforting power of the presence of Jesus Christ with you. Paul in Ephesians 3, he just writes this amazing passage. He says, "For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven on earth is named. That according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Holy Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." He says, "And now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever, amen." It's too much to wrap your mind around. God is with us, that he is for us, that he is able to do abundantly more than we could ask or even imagine or hope to think. Set your minds on these things. If you're feeling fearful, if you're feeling discouraged, before you go and preach to others, preach to yourself. Remind your heart, your soul, your mind that God is sovereign, that God is faithful, that Christ is with you. He is in. He wants his spirit and his power to work through you. All right, well, I said at the beginning that I'd give you some practical tips here at the end, some just practical steps for evangelism. We don't have a lot of time, so I'm going to go through these pretty fast. Someone told me last week that my sermon had a lot of bullet points. I've only given you three this far, so I'm going to give you seven more. We're going to go really quick. This is another machine gun sermon. We're going like rapid fire through these last seven here at the end, but super practical, just seven tips for sharing your faith. First and foremost, you need to pray before you preach. We read in Ephesians, Paul said, "Stand therefore having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness. And as for shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace." We talked about that readiness of sharing the gospel. But if we keep reading, Paul connects that readiness to prayer. He goes on in verse 16. He says, "In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish the flaming darts of the evil one, take up the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication. And to that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints." And then he says, "Pray also for me, that words may be given me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak." Paul's pleading with the early church to pray for him so that he can be faithful in this proclamation of the gospel. Paul believed in God's providence and his sovereignty in salvation, but that didn't stop him from acting, from working hard, from preaching, and from praying. Actually it compelled him to pray even more, to pray that God would open eyes, that God would open ears, that God would open doors that give him opportunities to share the gospel. Pray. Pray for people. Pray for people by name. Make a list. Pray for them privately. Pray for them with your community group. But we all have those people in our lives, we know who they are, and so pray for them. Pray before you preach. Number two, study hard and do your homework if you want to feel equipped, if you want to feel ready and prepared. We read this earlier. I'm going to read it again, 2 Timothy 3:14. Paul tells Timothy, "As for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you've been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work." If you want to feel more equipped to share the gospel, study scripture. If you want to be more ready to answer the questions and the objections that people might have about Christianity, you need to read the Bible, study the Bible. If you haven't done it, get yourself a nice ESV study Bible and just dig in. Learn the scriptures. If you need to, pick up some books on evangelism or apologetics. You can just go to our website. If you click on I think it's the connect and grow tab at the top, there's a little menu and there's a section there called Explore Christianity. It's a sermon series that Pastor Jan preached several years ago, but it's an awesome and it's a timeless series. He just goes through some of the most common objections and questions that people have about Christianity, to show that Christianity really is true and ways that we can defend our faith. If that's something you think that would be helpful, do it. Do your homework, study hard, prepare yourself, and most importantly, study God's word. Number three, don't go alone. Evangelism is a team sport. When you look at the life of Jesus Christ, almost everything he did, he did in community. You almost never see Jesus in a one-on-one situation. He's almost always surrounded by other people. Sometimes it's three, sometimes it's 12, sometimes it's more than that, but he's got a community of people around him. When he sends his disciples out, he doesn't send them out alone. He sends them out minimum two by two. When we read about Paul in his letters, he's traveling with an entourage, right? Everywhere he goes, he's got Timothy, he's got Silas, he's got all of these companions who are with him. Don't think that evangelism can only happen in one-on-one conversations. A lot of times it doesn't. A lot of times it's beneficial to do evangelism in more of a communal setting. Just purely practically, if you're going to hang out with a Christian friend, invite one of your non-Christian friends along. Or if you're going to hang out with a coworker, invite one of your Christian friends along. If your community group is getting together and have some kind of party or hang out, that might be a good time to invite a friend, a neighbor, a classmate, a coworker, someone who you might just want to spend that time with other Christians. You can love that person, witness to them together as a community. Don't go it alone. Number four, connect before you correct. When Paul was in Athens, he reasoned with the philosophers. He quoted their own poetry. He displayed knowledge of their culture. He connected with them. He met them where they were, and then he did his best to lead them to Christ. In homiletics, we call this contextualization, which is a big fancy word for just like don't be a weirdo. Be a relatable, normal person. Don't be the person who shows up in a three-piece suit with a briefcase full of charts and graphs and pulling everything out. Don't be the guy with the megaphone and the sandwich board telling people to turn or burn, get sanctified or chicken fried. Be a real person. I'm not saying don't talk about sin. I'm not saying don't talk about hell, don't talk about God's judgment. We need to talk about those things, and those things are real. What I'm saying is those things are real, we need to be real, right? We're just sinners saved by grace. We don't go into these conversations with pride, with self-righteousness. We don't approach people condescendingly. We speak the truth and we speak it boldly, but scripture says speak the truth in love. Be relatable. Show some emotional intelligence. Be humble. Be respectful. Be gentle. Show that you genuinely care about these people. That they're not just projects, that they're people, they're souls that we love, that we are concerned for. One just super easy practical way of doing this, if you find it hard or awkward to begin conversations about your faith or Jesus or Christianity, is before you dive into telling people what you think, just simply ask them what they think. Like, hey, do you have any kind of religious background? What do you think about the meaning of life? What do you think about Jesus Christ? People love to be asked questions. People love to talk about themselves. When they're done talking about themselves, more often than not, they're going to turn around and they're going to ask you the same questions. They've just given you the opportunity then to share the gospel and to tell them, "Well, this is what I think. This is what I believe. This is how Jesus saved me and changed my life." It's cliche, but it's true. People don't care what you know until they know that you care. Now, Paul put it like this in 1 Corinthians 9:19. He says, "For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win more Jews. To those under the law, I became as one under the law, though not myself being under the law, that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law, I became as one outside of the law, not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ, that I might win those outside of the law. To the weak, I became weak that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that what? So that I may share with them in its blessings." That's what it's all about. We have experienced the blessing of salvation, of a relationship with God the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ, and we want to share that blessing with others. Peter put it like this. 1 Peter 3:15 says, "In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and with respect." Connect before you correct. Number five, point people to Jesus. Peter said always be prepared right there. There's preparation involved. Be prepared to share the reason for your hope. I would encourage you at some point to write down your testimony and keep it up to date from time to time. But as you do, keep this in mind. If you read your testimony and your testimony is all about you, if you read your testimony and you come out looking like the hero, you probably did something wrong. That's probably not a testimony, that's more just a self-help book. You didn't save yourself. I didn't save myself. Your testimony should be focused on the one who did save you. Your testimony should be focused on what Jesus has done for you, not so much on what you have done for him. So that when you get the opportunity to share the reason for your hope, it becomes clear to everyone that the reason is Jesus. He's your living hope, that he is the hero of your story. That's really what we're doing in evangelism, right? Our job, help people see that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ. That Jesus is the hero of history. That Jesus is the hero of our story and help them to see that Jesus could be the hero of their story as well. Make sure that you're pointing people to Jesus. Number six, call for commitment. At some point, you have to make a call to action and make that clear for people. Faith comes by hearing the good news, but true and saving faith moves people to action. You have to talk about that. Talk about repentance and faith. Talk about baptism and the importance of getting plugged into a local church. Help them to see those next steps when they are ready to commit to following Jesus. If they're not ready, then number seven, the final tip, is just trust God with the growth. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 3:6, "I planted, Apollos watered, but God's the one who gives the growth." At the end of the day, your job is not to save anyone. You can't do that. Your job is just to be faithfully there witnessing, planting, watering, praying, trusting God to bring the growth, trusting God to bring the harvest. All right, well, today is a special day. We are going to be celebrating communion together today. Communion is one more way that we as a community proclaim the gospel together. This is what Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 11:23. He says, "I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it, and he said, 'This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' In the same way he took the cup after supper saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.' For, he says, as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." The way that we celebrate communion here at Mosaic is hopefully as you came in, you're able grab one of these little cups. If not, feel free to just raise your hand right now. The ushers will be happy to bring one to you wherever you're sitting. Inside here, the bread represents, as we just read, the body of Christ. The cup represents his blood that was poured out so that we could be forgiven. This is a time for us to remember, to reflect, to celebrate the gospel of Jesus Christ. That we did not save ourselves, that we are sinners. And that because of our great sin, the only hope we could have of salvation is for Jesus Christ, the perfect spotless lamb of God, the Son of God, to come, to take on flesh and to give himself through his death on the cross, taking our place, taking the punishment that we deserved, paying that penalty, paying that debt that we could never afford to pay our own. That he did that for us, and that we can receive that by repenting and putting our faith in him as our Lord and Savior. That when we do that, we are forgiven. We are cleansed by his blood. We read this earlier, that he became sins so that we might become the righteousness of God. That our sin is accounted to Jesus. He pays for that on the cross and his righteousness is accredited to us. We are now able to stand before the Father cleansed, holy, righteous because of what Christ has done for us. That is what we remember, that's what we celebrate, and that's what we give thanks to God for right now. If you're here today and you are a Christian, we would welcome you to celebrate communion with us right now as we partake of the elements together. If you're not a Christian, or if you are a Christian who is living an unrepentant sin, we would ask you to refrain from this part of the service. It's not going to do anything for you. There's nothing magical about this, apart from faith in Jesus Christ and walking in repentance for Jesus Christ. Scripture actually warns us and Paul continues in the very next verse, verse 27 of 1 Corinthians 11. He says, "Whoever therefore eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Therefore, let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself." If that is you, as we would say, refrain from this. Better would be to spend this time right now to repent, confess to God, and he will be faithful and just to forgive you. If you've done that today, if you have given your life to Christ and made that commitment today, or if you are a Christian walking in repentance and faith, we would invite you to join us now as we celebrate communion together. Let's pray and then we will move. God, we thank you for this great hope that we have, this living hope that we have through Jesus Christ, our risen Lord and Savior. We thank you for the many blessings that we have, for the abundant life that we have in Christ as we follow Him, our good shepherd. Lord, I pray that you would give us a joy and a burden and an urgency and excitement to share this good news with others, to share in this blessing with those that you've placed into our lives. I pray that you would open people's hearts, that you would open doors of opportunity for us in those moments, that you would give us grace, that your Holy Spirit would speak through us to be faithful witnesses to you and to all that you have done wherever we have opportunity to do so, Lord. I pray that in doing so, that you would continue to draw many to yourself and add to our number day by day those who are being saved. All of this is possible only because of the blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus, we thank you for the cross. We thank you for your sacrifice, for the amazing love and grace that you have poured out on us. We didn't deserve it, but we worship you and we thank you for extending it to us. I pray that you would bless our time of communion right now. In Jesus' name, amen.

Audio Transcript:This media has been made available by Mosaic BostonChurch. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston,or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com. If you have your Bibles, go ahead and open up to Matthew 28. We are in week three of our sermon series Committed. We've been talking about the essential habits of an abundant life in Christ, and what I've been saying over these last couple of weeks is we're taking this time to focus on some of the essential, non-negotiable, super practical commitments that every Christian must make in order to grow in their faith, in order to persevere through trials, in order to fulfill God's purpose and calling for their life, and in order to experience and to enjoy this abundant life that Jesus Christ came to give us. Two weeks ago, we started off by talking about the commitment to follow Jesus as our Lord, as our savior, as our good shepherd. Last week we talked about committing to a local church and the importance of having a church, having fellowship with other believers to support us, encourage us, and hold us accountable as we follow Jesus. This week we're going to talk about evangelism. Our sermon is called Commit to Evangelism. At the end of last week's passage in Acts 2, verse 47 tells us that the early church, these early Christians were praising God and having favor with all of the people, and the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved. If you're here last week, you remember we talked about how these early Christians were committed. They were devoted to sharing their lives with one another sacrificially. They were deeply committed to one another and the church. But this doesn't mean that they were just a holy huddle of the frozen chosen as we joke about some churches being today. They were a church on a mission. We talked a little bit about how the church can be thought of in the metaphor of a ship. That we as a church, we're not trying to be a cruise ship, we're trying to be a battleship. On a cruise ship, everyone shows up and everyone shows up to be served and to be entertained. You float around in circles. You wind up right back where you started. On a battleship, everyone shows up to serve. Everyone shows up because we're all working together with same purpose, same mission, and we're going to be spending these next two weeks talking about what that mission is, focusing on what has come to be called the Great Commission and two aspects of that Great Commission. If you're not familiar with the Great Commission, this is basically Jesus' final marching orders to the church, his final instructions that he leaves before ascending to the right hand of the Father in heaven. We can find it in Matthew 28. This is where we're going to be begin our time today, Matthew 28 beginning in verse 28. This is what it says. It says that Jesus came to them, came to his disciples, and he said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all the 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've commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age." You see the two aspects of this mission, right? First of all, there's this outward mission. Jesus says, "You need to go into all the world and make disciples." That's evangelism. That's what we're going to be talking about today. The second aspect of the mission is more inward where Jesus says, "And then you need to teach them to observe all that I have commanded you to do." That's discipleship. We'll be talking more about that next week. Discipleship is focused on the mission of sanctification. Evangelism is focused on the mission of conversion. Already, hopefully, I wouldn't be surprised if everyone's feeling a little bit uncomfortable. I'm surprised. After last week telling you we were going to talk about evangelism today, I'm like, good to see that some of you came back, because this is not something that we get particularly comfortable with thinking about converting people, proselytizing, things like that. They're not popular concepts in our culture. I don't know if I would use the word proselytizing, but we are going to talk about we do want to convert people to Christianity. We want to persuade people to believe and to follow Jesus Christ. I remember the first time that I ever visited Boston. We were downtown doing kind of the touristy thing. My wife and I were there. Our son Owen, he was about nine months old at the time. We're walking around in the Boston Commons and we're making our way toward Park Street Station. There's these two younger girls behind us having a very loud, very passionate discussion. One of them was pleading passionately with her friend trying to warn her to never read anything by this author that she discovered named C.S. Lewis and to never read the book The Chronicles of Narnia because she had found out that this guy was actually a Christian and he was secretly trying to convert people with his books. If you know anything about C.S. Lewis, there wasn't anything secret about it. He's pretty on the nose about everything that he wrote. He was overtly a Christian. Chronicles of Narnia, it's a straight-up allegory of Christianity. He wasn't trying to hide any of that. But what stuck out to me about that conversation was as I'm listening to these girls have their discussion, really what she was doing was she was trying to convert her friend. She was trying to convert her friend to this position of non-conversion. Providentially, the next morning we got up and we visited Mosaic for the first time and Pastor Jan was preaching on that exact topic, on this idea of the world trying to convert people to this position of non-conversion. This girl was hypocritically doing the very thing that she was condemning someone else, C.S. Lewis in this case, of doing. The question then is, why are we then so afraid to do that ourselves as Christians? Non-Christians do it all the time. People in general do it all the time. If you believe that something is true and if you believe that that truth matters, well, then it's only natural that you're going to try to persuade other people to accept it and to believe it as well, even if the truth is inconvenient, even if the truth is uncomfortable. Love would compel you to plead with others to accept it and believe it. A good doctor wouldn't hide the truth from their patient. A good doctor will share their diagnosis and prescription even if that truth is not necessarily what the patient wants to hear, because withholding that would be unloving. It would be unprofessional. It could be deadly. I think part of the reason that many Christians are afraid to share their faith is that we have this fear of rejection. I've shared the gospel with several people in Boston, and more often than not, that's been met with rejection. Every single time it's uncomfortable. But what my experiences taught me is that even though in sharing the gospel, yeah, I have faced a lot of rejection, it usually doesn't come as the form that I'm afraid of. It usually doesn't come in the form of anger or hostility. It's usually just kind of more of a Stoic response of like, "Oh, that's interesting or that's nice. I'm glad that that worked for you, but not really something I'm interested in myself." It's not the response that I hoped for, but it's also really not a response that should cause us to be afraid to share the gospel in the first place. I say that just to say don't be anxious, don't catastrophize what might possibly happen when you share the gospel because you really don't know. You don't know how they're going to respond. You can't control how they're going to respond. You might be surprised to discover that a lot of people are more open and more comfortable to talking about these things than you might assume. Sometimes we are reluctant to share the gospel out of fear of rejection. I think most Christians, however, are reluctant to share the gospel out of a fear of failure. I think a lot of Christians, maybe they want to share the gospel, they have a desire, they know that it's something they ought to do, but they're worried about failure because they don't feel equipped. What if they ask me a question I don't know how to answer? What if I say something wrong? We can't control how people are going to respond to the message, but there are things that we can do to prepare ourselves and to be equipped to share that message more effectively when we have opportunities to do so. That's really what I want to spend our time focusing more on today. Toward the end of our time this morning, I'm going to share just some rapid fire practical tips for evangelism. But to begin with, I want us to just start by looking at three biblical truths, three realities, three things that Jesus equips us with in order to help us overcome this fear of sharing the gospel. If you have your Bibles, we're going to be launching out of Matthew 28, but we're going to be doing a survey of many scriptures that will help us understand these things. Before we begin, let's pray and then we'll jump into the message together. Jesus, you told your disciples that they should pray to the Lord of the harvest, that the harvest is great, but the workers are few. Pray to the Lord of the harvest to raise up more workers for this mission. Lord, we pray that you would do that. Even right now, Lord, I pray that you would be doing that. Lord, we know that immediately after instructing his disciples to pray, he then sends them out to do the very thing, to be the answer to their very own prayers and to go and to preach the gospel. Lord, I pray that you would help us today to see that you have saved us in order to send us. That you have called us, you have commissioned us, and you have equipped us. That you do not send us out alone, you do not send us out, but you send us out fully equipped to do what you have called to do. That you have given us the authority of your word. You've given us the presence and the power of your Holy Spirit. You've given us the fellowship of the church. We have everything we need to accomplish this mission together. Lord, I pray that you would give us grace to do so. God, we pray right now that you just bless our time and your holy word this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, the first truth, the first reality that I want us to look at, that we need to understand and believe that's going to help us overcome our fear of sharing the gospel is this, that Jesus equips us and he sends us with both the clarity and the authority of his word. That Jesus doesn't send us out with a long list of complicated religious rights and rituals and rules. We sang this earlier, that it's finished, it is accomplished. There's no work that we can do to further this mission that the message of the mission is very simple. It's so simple that it can be summed up here in just a couple of sentences. It's so deep, it's so sophisticated that you can spend the rest of your life devoting yourself to it and never master it. There's always room to grow. You can spend the rest of your life studying scripture, growing and maturing in the Holy Spirit. What is the mission? There's a story in the Gospel of Matthew where a religious leader, a teacher of the religious law comes up to Jesus and he wants to know, he wants to ask him, "Jesus, what is the greatest of all of the commandments?" In Matthew 22:37, Jesus said to him, he said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your mind. This is the great and the first commandment. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depends all the law and the prophets." All the Old Testament, the law, the prophets, they're all summed up on these two things, to love God with everything and to love your neighbor as yourself. The mission of the church is simply this, the Great Commission is to simply live that out and then to teach others to do the same. Repent of your sin. Put your faith in Jesus Christ. Commit to follow him, to obey him, to observe all that he has commanded. To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself and then to teach others to do the same. The mission is simple, the mission is clear, but that doesn't mean that it's easy. Following Jesus is going to be hard. Taking this message to the ends of the earth is going to be hard. Just taking this message across the hallway, across the street, across the cubicle is going to be hard. We need to understand that Jesus doesn't merely send us out with a clear mission, he also sends us out with clear authority. I think one of the best explanations of these two realities coming together can be seen in 2 Corinthians 5:17-21. The apostle Paul says this, he says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed, and behold, the new has come. All of this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you and on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." It's very clear the message, that Jesus Christ became sin for us. He took our sin upon himself on the cross. He paid the penalty that we deserve so that we could become the righteousness of God, so that we could be forgiven, reconciled to God through this ministry of reconciliation. That's the message. The mission is then to go with this message and to reconcile people to God. The authority then is that we are not going out alone. We're not going out in our own authority. We are going out sent by the king, sent as ambassadors of Christ for proclaiming this good news about his kingdom. All that to say is don't make the mission overly complicated. Evangelism simply means to announce the good news that Jesus is king. Human beings are sinners. Jesus is the savior. He is Lord, he is king, and he has now sent us as his ambassadors of his kingdom, sent us to warn the world that he is going to come again to judge the world in righteousness, but also sent to proclaim this good news that the king is coming right now. He's offering amnesty that right now this king has made a way to reconcile the world to himself. He is offering terms of peace for all who would repent, believe, for all who would lay down their arms and surrender, commit their allegiance to him as the good and the rightful king that he is. C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, he put it like this. He said, "Enemy occupied territory, that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, and you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part of a great campaign of sabotage." We're going out as ambassadors on this rescue mission, recruiting people to the kingdom of God. Sharing the gospel is intimidating because it's intimidating to go and to walk into enemy occupied territory. But we do this with a clear mission, with a clear message, and with a clear authority of knowing that we have been sent by the true, the good, the rightful king. When you're feeling fearful about sharing your faith, remember this, that every time that you speak the words of scripture and share God's word, every time that you proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, that Jesus is not just with you, but as this text just said, he's actually making his appeal through you, calling people to himself to be reconciled, to make peace through his bloodshed on the cross. 2 Timothy 3:14-17 tells us that, "All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching and for reproof, for correction, and for training and righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." Every good work that we'll ever be called to do. Scripture equips us for all of that. The first step to overcoming our fear is to know God's word, to know that his word is authoritative and true. It is living and active. It equips us for every good work, and so that we shouldn't be ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ because we know it is the power of God unto salvation. Point number two, Jesus sends us out with the clarity and the authority of his word. He also sends us out with the courageous readiness of knowing and of resting in his sovereignty. Ephesians 6:14, Paul tells us to, "Stand firm, therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace." That God's sovereignty and salvation should replace our fear with this incredible courage and a readiness to share the gospel. Because when you think about this, what does this mean, God's sovereignty? It means that he has the power to save anyone, anytime, anywhere, even the people that we least expect. Nobody knew this better than the apostle Paul himself, right? I mean, this was the guy who was a violent persecutor of the church. No one ever expected this guy to get saved. He hated Christians. He had made it his mission to snuff out the Christian movement wherever he could find it, and yet Jesus finds him. Jesus saves him. Jesus gave him a new mission and turns him into the greatest missionary that the church has ever seen. Paul knew that if Jesus could save him, well, Jesus could save anyone. Why should he be afraid? Why should he be fearful of sharing this good news with anyone wherever he goes, no matter what opposition, no matter what persecution he often faced. Consider the life of Paul with me for a moment. Just going to take a look at an episode of his life from the Book of Acts. In Acts 14, Paul is preaching the gospel in Lystra. As he's there, as he's preaching a gospel, this angry mob shows up, drags him out of town, stones him, leaves him for dead. Do you remember what it says what Paul does after he eventually wakes up not dead? It seems like you can go down a whole rabbit trail on this. Reading the Book of Galatians, Paul kind of eludes like maybe he actually died. He has this out of body experience, and then he comes back. We don't know. But he's stoned and left for dead. He wakes up eventually. He regains consciousness. And what does he do? He gets back up and he goes back into the town where the people just mobbed him, dragged him out, and stoned him and left him for dead. Incredible courage and boldness. He then leaves. He makes his way onto Philippi. In Philippi, he gets arrested again. He's beaten with rods. After that, it goes to Thessaloniki. Again, angry mob in Thessaloniki. Escapes by night to Berea where he's faced with yet another angry mob of people. He goes through Athens, makes his way to Corinth. And once again, we're told that he was met with those people who opposed and reviled him. I don't know about you, by this point, I'd be feeling a little bit discouraged. Mob me once, shame on you. Mob me 17, 18, 19 times, I must be doing something wrong. I should go take a class on evangelism or something. I don't know. What keeps Paul going? What kept him going was his belief in the sovereignty of God. That despite all the opposition that he faced, all the persecution that he experienced, that in each of these cities, people were getting saved, churches were being planted, lives were being transformed, legacies were being built. In the midst of all of this, in Acts 17, when Paul is in Corinth, God came to him in a vision during the night. In Acts 17:9-11, it says this that the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision. He said, "Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people." He stayed there a year and six months teaching the word of God among them. Paul understood that there would be many in this city who would oppose and revile him, and yet he would go on preaching the gospel because he also knew that there were many of God's elect, many of God's people here as well. His job was to preach the word. No gimmicks. No tricks. Preach the word, trust the word to do its work, trust God to draw his people to himself. That's what happened. Trust that Jesus' sheep would hear his voice and follow him. Right before getting to Corinth, Paul was in Athens. In Athens, he met with the philosophers at the Areopagus on Mars Hill. As he meets with them, he's walking through their temples. He's observing all of their idols that they've made to their many gods, and he gets to have this conversation with them. This is what he tells them in verse 26. He tells them that God made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth and determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place. That God determined where, when every person would live. So that what? Verse 27, so that they should seek God, perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he's actually not far from each of us. For in him we live and move and have our being, even as some of your own poets have said, "For indeed we are his offspring." Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of men. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man, Jesus Christ, whom he appointed, and of this he's given full assurance to all by raising him from the dead. See, I don't think that Paul believed in coincidence. I think Paul believed in providence, and this is what gave him this courageous readiness to share the gospel no matter where he was, no matter what kind of opposition that he was facing, because he knew that God was sovereign. I think one of my favorite examples of this is when he writes to the church in Philippi. At the end of Paul's letter to the Philippians, he's sending his greetings and he tells them in Philippians 4:22, he says, "All the saints send their greetings," then he adds this little comment, "especially those of Caesar's household." At the time, Paul was in chains. He was in prison, maybe under house arrest, and he's chained to these guards from Caesar's household all day. What does he do? He doesn't get discouraged. He doesn't quit. He doesn't say, "Well, I'm here/ I'm locked up. There's nothing I can do." He says, "Well, if I'm here and I'm locked up and I'm chained to these guards, it must be because I need to share the gospel with them. You think that Lord Caesar has me chained to you? Well, I think that Lord Jesus has you chained to me, and so now you're going to hear the gospel." He begins sharing the gospel with these guards and they end up getting saved. He's just kind of showing how God is flexing here. He's like, "Oh, and by the way, the people in Caesar's household, they send you their greetings that they are now believers, that they are now following Jesus as well." If God puts people in your life, if God gives you opportunities to share the gospel, perhaps that's not a coincidence. As Paul told the philosophers, God's providence determines the allotted periods and boundaries. Perhaps he's placed you in these people's lives for a reason. We all know this. When you go to school or when you go to work or when you go home and you're amongst your neighbors, that chances are if you are a Christian living in Boston, Massachusetts, you are quite probably the only Christian that any of these people know in the city. Maybe there's a reason that God has put you in their lives. You can't save anyone. That's not your job, right? That's Jesus' department is salvation. Your job is to be a faithful witness wherever he's placed you, to scatter the seed to pray and to trust God, to bring the growth, to bring the harvest. Trust God with the results. And with this, if you don't see those results right away, don't let that discourage you either. It doesn't mean that you did something wrong. It also doesn't mean that nothing is happening. We can't always see what God is doing beneath the surface when we share the gospel with people. Just an example from my own life, I've shared this before. In a former life as a young college student in the early 2000s, I was in a pop punk band. That was a thing at the time. We were in the Midwest. You had the West Coast punk. You had the East Coast punk. We were trying to pioneer the Midwest Coast punk. What that meant was we would go to class during the week. And then on the weekends, we would load up our big white conversion van and we would hit the road. We'd drive all over the Midwest playing shows in different towns and cities, and we got to spend a lot of time just driving around on the road, having conversations with one another as members of the band. At the time, none of the other members of the band were Christians. I shared last week that I had grown up in the church, but I wasn't walking with the Lord at this time. I don't really think that I was even yet a Christian at this time. But one night, it's late at night, we're on the road and we get into this conversation about faith and Jesus and Christianity. For whatever reason, I find myself defending the faith to our bass player and our drummer, trying to convince them that Christianity is true, that Jesus really is God, that he really did fulfill all of these prophecies, and he rose from the dead. We're having this, we're going back and forth. Eventually at one point, the bass player just shut the conversation down. Not in a mean way, but just kind of like a joking like, "I don't want to talk about this. I'm getting uncomfortable kind of way." We changed the subject, moved on, and honestly didn't think about that conversation again for a really long time. Fast-forward several years, we'd split up. We'd all grown up and went out and got real jobs and still in touch, but weren't living near each other, hadn't really talked to each other for a long time. I get a phone call one day from one of the guys in the band. It wasn't the bass player or the drummer. Actually for a brief time, there was a fourth guy in our band. He was only in the band for a few months after I joined, and then he quit. I really hadn't heard or seen from him again. He called me up because he wanted to tell me that he had become a Christian. He remembered that I had grown up going to church and I was a Christian. He wanted to let me know, "I'm a Christian now. I'm leading worship in my church." He was all excited. He was all on fire. He's like, "And I want you to know that this all started for me way back because of that conversation in the van." I was like, "You weren't even part of that conversation in the van." Actually, he was sitting in the back. I thought he was asleep the whole time, and apparently he'd been paying attention and somehow some seeds had gotten planted in him that eventually led to him becoming a Christian. He's still a Christian today. He's working in ministry today, and God's doing awesome things through his life. But I share all that just to say, you never know what God does with the gospel after you've shared it with somebody. Even if you don't see those results right away, it doesn't mean that God's not doing something. Don't get discouraged. Don't lose heart. Just be faithful and continue and persevere. Jesus equips us. He sends us with clarity and authority of his word, with the courageous readiness of his sovereignty, and number three, with the comforting power of his presence. I'm going to read several passages for us, because this is really important. First one is John 14:16-18. Jesus tells his disciples, he says, "I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him or knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.: In Luke 24:26, he said to them, "Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon. You, but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high." Acts 1:8, Jesus again tells his disciples, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." In our passage today, he says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age." Something happened on the day of Pentecost that we read about in Acts 2 a couple weeks ago. Something happened that day that had never happened before in the history of mankind. Before Christ in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit would come upon people for a time and for a task. But now what we see is that from now on, all of those who are in Christ, that the Holy Spirit is poured out, that the Holy Spirit dwells in us each personally and permanently. Jesus, he promised in the Great Commission, he said, "I will be with you always to the very end of the age." Obviously he's not here with us physically right now, but that's not what he was talking about. He's alluding to the gift of the Holy Spirit that he was going to pour out on his church after ascending into heaven. Jesus, he talked about this in John 16. In John 16, Jesus was talking with his disciples and he tells him this in verse five. He says, "Now I am going to him who sent me and none of you asks me, where are you going?" He said, "I'm preparing to go back to ascend to the right hand of my father. But because of I've said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts," which is understandable, right? You just got to spend three years in the presence of Jesus Christ physically. That would be sad to think about him leaving and ascending back to heaven. But verse seven, Jesus tells them, "Nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it's to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you." I don't know if we can really grasp what a big deal that is. Jesus is literally saying what we have right now as believers, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is in some ways to our advantage that it's actually in some ways we are better off right now than if he had remained physically here with us in the flesh. That when Jesus Christ took on flesh, that he in some sense allowed his presence to be confined by time and space in a human body. But when he ascended into heaven, he poured out the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Holy Spirit of the living God upon every member of his church. That the Holy Spirit is indwelling in all Christians, in all places at all times for all times. If you are in Christ, what this means is that Christ is not just with you, he is in you. You have been clothed with power from high, scripture says. You have been filled with the Holy Spirit of God, that God is with you and for you. He will not leave you or forsake you. He's working all things together for you, working for you and in you and through you, so you can have courage. You don't need to fear. That wherever you go, you go with the comforting power of the presence of Jesus Christ with you. Paul in Ephesians 3, he just writes this amazing passage. He says, "For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven on earth is named. That according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Holy Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." He says, "And now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever, amen." It's too much to wrap your mind around. God is with us, that he is for us, that he is able to do abundantly more than we could ask or even imagine or hope to think. Set your minds on these things. If you're feeling fearful, if you're feeling discouraged, before you go and preach to others, preach to yourself. Remind your heart, your soul, your mind that God is sovereign, that God is faithful, that Christ is with you. He is in. He wants his spirit and his power to work through you. All right, well, I said at the beginning that I'd give you some practical tips here at the end, some just practical steps for evangelism. We don't have a lot of time, so I'm going to go through these pretty fast. Someone told me last week that my sermon had a lot of bullet points. I've only given you three this far, so I'm going to give you seven more. We're going to go really quick. This is another machine gun sermon. We're going like rapid fire through these last seven here at the end, but super practical, just seven tips for sharing your faith. First and foremost, you need to pray before you preach. We read in Ephesians, Paul said, "Stand therefore having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness. And as for shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace." We talked about that readiness of sharing the gospel. But if we keep reading, Paul connects that readiness to prayer. He goes on in verse 16. He says, "In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish the flaming darts of the evil one, take up the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication. And to that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints." And then he says, "Pray also for me, that words may be given me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak." Paul's pleading with the early church to pray for him so that he can be faithful in this proclamation of the gospel. Paul believed in God's providence and his sovereignty in salvation, but that didn't stop him from acting, from working hard, from preaching, and from praying. Actually it compelled him to pray even more, to pray that God would open eyes, that God would open ears, that God would open doors that give him opportunities to share the gospel. Pray. Pray for people. Pray for people by name. Make a list. Pray for them privately. Pray for them with your community group. But we all have those people in our lives, we know who they are, and so pray for them. Pray before you preach. Number two, study hard and do your homework if you want to feel equipped, if you want to feel ready and prepared. We read this earlier. I'm going to read it again, 2 Timothy 3:14. Paul tells Timothy, "As for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you've been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work." If you want to feel more equipped to share the gospel, study scripture. If you want to be more ready to answer the questions and the objections that people might have about Christianity, you need to read the Bible, study the Bible. If you haven't done it, get yourself a nice ESV study Bible and just dig in. Learn the scriptures. If you need to, pick up some books on evangelism or apologetics. You can just go to our website. If you click on I think it's the connect and grow tab at the top, there's a little menu and there's a section there called Explore Christianity. It's a sermon series that Pastor Jan preached several years ago, but it's an awesome and it's a timeless series. He just goes through some of the most common objections and questions that people have about Christianity, to show that Christianity really is true and ways that we can defend our faith. If that's something you think that would be helpful, do it. Do your homework, study hard, prepare yourself, and most importantly, study God's word. Number three, don't go alone. Evangelism is a team sport. When you look at the life of Jesus Christ, almost everything he did, he did in community. You almost never see Jesus in a one-on-one situation. He's almost always surrounded by other people. Sometimes it's three, sometimes it's 12, sometimes it's more than that, but he's got a community of people around him. When he sends his disciples out, he doesn't send them out alone. He sends them out minimum two by two. When we read about Paul in his letters, he's traveling with an entourage, right? Everywhere he goes, he's got Timothy, he's got Silas, he's got all of these companions who are with him. Don't think that evangelism can only happen in one-on-one conversations. A lot of times it doesn't. A lot of times it's beneficial to do evangelism in more of a communal setting. Just purely practically, if you're going to hang out with a Christian friend, invite one of your non-Christian friends along. Or if you're going to hang out with a coworker, invite one of your Christian friends along. If your community group is getting together and have some kind of party or hang out, that might be a good time to invite a friend, a neighbor, a classmate, a coworker, someone who you might just want to spend that time with other Christians. You can love that person, witness to them together as a community. Don't go it alone. Number four, connect before you correct. When Paul was in Athens, he reasoned with the philosophers. He quoted their own poetry. He displayed knowledge of their culture. He connected with them. He met them where they were, and then he did his best to lead them to Christ. In homiletics, we call this contextualization, which is a big fancy word for just like don't be a weirdo. Be a relatable, normal person. Don't be the person who shows up in a three-piece suit with a briefcase full of charts and graphs and pulling everything out. Don't be the guy with the megaphone and the sandwich board telling people to turn or burn, get sanctified or chicken fried. Be a real person. I'm not saying don't talk about sin. I'm not saying don't talk about hell, don't talk about God's judgment. We need to talk about those things, and those things are real. What I'm saying is those things are real, we need to be real, right? We're just sinners saved by grace. We don't go into these conversations with pride, with self-righteousness. We don't approach people condescendingly. We speak the truth and we speak it boldly, but scripture says speak the truth in love. Be relatable. Show some emotional intelligence. Be humble. Be respectful. Be gentle. Show that you genuinely care about these people. That they're not just projects, that they're people, they're souls that we love, that we are concerned for. One just super easy practical way of doing this, if you find it hard or awkward to begin conversations about your faith or Jesus or Christianity, is before you dive into telling people what you think, just simply ask them what they think. Like, hey, do you have any kind of religious background? What do you think about the meaning of life? What do you think about Jesus Christ? People love to be asked questions. People love to talk about themselves. When they're done talking about themselves, more often than not, they're going to turn around and they're going to ask you the same questions. They've just given you the opportunity then to share the gospel and to tell them, "Well, this is what I think. This is what I believe. This is how Jesus saved me and changed my life." It's cliche, but it's true. People don't care what you know until they know that you care. Now, Paul put it like this in 1 Corinthians 9:19. He says, "For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win more Jews. To those under the law, I became as one under the law, though not myself being under the law, that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law, I became as one outside of the law, not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ, that I might win those outside of the law. To the weak, I became weak that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that what? So that I may share with them in its blessings." That's what it's all about. We have experienced the blessing of salvation, of a relationship with God the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ, and we want to share that blessing with others. Peter put it like this. 1 Peter 3:15 says, "In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and with respect." Connect before you correct. Number five, point people to Jesus. Peter said always be prepared right there. There's preparation involved. Be prepared to share the reason for your hope. I would encourage you at some point to write down your testimony and keep it up to date from time to time. But as you do, keep this in mind. If you read your testimony and your testimony is all about you, if you read your testimony and you come out looking like the hero, you probably did something wrong. That's probably not a testimony, that's more just a self-help book. You didn't save yourself. I didn't save myself. Your testimony should be focused on the one who did save you. Your testimony should be focused on what Jesus has done for you, not so much on what you have done for him. So that when you get the opportunity to share the reason for your hope, it becomes clear to everyone that the reason is Jesus. He's your living hope, that he is the hero of your story. That's really what we're doing in evangelism, right? Our job, help people see that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ. That Jesus is the hero of history. That Jesus is the hero of our story and help them to see that Jesus could be the hero of their story as well. Make sure that you're pointing people to Jesus. Number six, call for commitment. At some point, you have to make a call to action and make that clear for people. Faith comes by hearing the good news, but true and saving faith moves people to action. You have to talk about that. Talk about repentance and faith. Talk about baptism and the importance of getting plugged into a local church. Help them to see those next steps when they are ready to commit to following Jesus. If they're not ready, then number seven, the final tip, is just trust God with the growth. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 3:6, "I planted, Apollos watered, but God's the one who gives the growth." At the end of the day, your job is not to save anyone. You can't do that. Your job is just to be faithfully there witnessing, planting, watering, praying, trusting God to bring the growth, trusting God to bring the harvest. All right, well, today is a special day. We are going to be celebrating communion together today. Communion is one more way that we as a community proclaim the gospel together. This is what Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 11:23. He says, "I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it, and he said, 'This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' In the same way he took the cup after supper saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.' For, he says, as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." The way that we celebrate communion here at Mosaic is hopefully as you came in, you're able grab one of these little cups. If not, feel free to just raise your hand right now. The ushers will be happy to bring one to you wherever you're sitting. Inside here, the bread represents, as we just read, the body of Christ. The cup represents his blood that was poured out so that we could be forgiven. This is a time for us to remember, to reflect, to celebrate the gospel of Jesus Christ. That we did not save ourselves, that we are sinners. And that because of our great sin, the only hope we could have of salvation is for Jesus Christ, the perfect spotless lamb of God, the Son of God, to come, to take on flesh and to give himself through his death on the cross, taking our place, taking the punishment that we deserved, paying that penalty, paying that debt that we could never afford to pay our own. That he did that for us, and that we can receive that by repenting and putting our faith in him as our Lord and Savior. That when we do that, we are forgiven. We are cleansed by his blood. We read this earlier, that he became sins so that we might become the righteousness of God. That our sin is accounted to Jesus. He pays for that on the cross and his righteousness is accredited to us. We are now able to stand before the Father cleansed, holy, righteous because of what Christ has done for us. That is what we remember, that's what we celebrate, and that's what we give thanks to God for right now. If you're here today and you are a Christian, we would welcome you to celebrate communion with us right now as we partake of the elements together. If you're not a Christian, or if you are a Christian who is living an unrepentant sin, we would ask you to refrain from this part of the service. It's not going to do anything for you. There's nothing magical about this, apart from faith in Jesus Christ and walking in repentance for Jesus Christ. Scripture actually warns us and Paul continues in the very next verse, verse 27 of 1 Corinthians 11. He says, "Whoever therefore eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Therefore, let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself." If that is you, as we would say, refrain from this. Better would be to spend this time right now to repent, confess to God, and he will be faithful and just to forgive you. If you've done that today, if you have given your life to Christ and made that commitment today, or if you are a Christian walking in repentance and faith, we would invite you to join us now as we celebrate communion together. Let's pray and then we will move. God, we thank you for this great hope that we have, this living hope that we have through Jesus Christ, our risen Lord and Savior. We thank you for the many blessings that we have, for the abundant life that we have in Christ as we follow Him, our good shepherd. Lord, I pray that you would give us a joy and a burden and an urgency and excitement to share this good news with others, to share in this blessing with those that you've placed into our lives. I pray that you would open people's hearts, that you would open doors of opportunity for us in those moments, that you would give us grace, that your Holy Spirit would speak through us to be faithful witnesses to you and to all that you have done wherever we have opportunity to do so, Lord. I pray that in doing so, that you would continue to draw many to yourself and add to our number day by day those who are being saved. All of this is possible only because of the blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus, we thank you for the cross. We thank you for your sacrifice, for the amazing love and grace that you have poured out on us. We didn't deserve it, but we worship you and we thank you for extending it to us. I pray that you would bless our time of communion right now. In Jesus' name, amen.

This podcast contains an excerpt from the St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows worship service on Sunday, January 29th, 2023. For more information about the community and ministries of St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows, you can visit our website: smlutheran.org

This podcast contains an excerpt from the St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows worship service on Sunday, January 15th, 2023. For more information about the community and ministries of St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows, you can visit our website: smlutheran.org

This podcast contains an excerpt from the St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows worship service on Sunday, January 22nd, 2023. For more information about the community and ministries of St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows, you can visit our website: smlutheran.org

Pastor Jeffery talks with Pastor Jan Prorok, who serves as Pastor of the Reformed Congregation of the Most Holy Trinity (CREC) in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic (reformovani-kv.cz).… The post Meeting Pastor Jan Prorok: Church Planter, Pastor, and Translator appeared first on All Saints Presbyterian Church, Fort Worth.

This podcast contains an excerpt from the St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows online worship service on Sunday, December 11th, 2022. You can view the service in its entirety on our YouTube channel: SMLC Live. For more information about the community and ministries of St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows, you can visit our website: smlutheran.org

This podcast contains an excerpt from the St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows online worship service on Sunday, November 6th, 2022. You can view the service in its entirety on our YouTube channel: SMLC Live. For more information about the community and ministries of St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows, you can visit our website: smlutheran.org

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic BostonChurch. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Bostonand our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visitmosaicboston.com. Heavenly Father, as we find ourselves in a text that speaks about submission to the governing authorities, we also find ourselves as a nation the Sunday after an election. Lord, we thank you for this sovereign timing. We pray that you speak to us now and continue to shape our minds by the renewing of your Word, with the washing of water with the Word. Lord, there are manmade categories in our minds. I pray that you break through them with the power of your holy Word. For each one of us, Lord, we pray that you give us an extra measure of grace to continue to humble ourselves before your kingship so that we do submit every single aspect of our lives to King Jesus. We pray all this in Christ's name, amen. On this November 13th, we find ourselves in Romans 13:1-7. The historical context is this is a few decades after Pentecost. The church has started. The Apostle Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles. He's preaching wherever he goes, planting churches. Part of the reason why he had the freedom to plant church for a few decades is because the imperial authorities didn't distinguish between Christians and Jews. They said, "Oh, Christians are just a sect, just another stripe of Judaism." Left them alone. For several decades, there was no systemic persecution of Christians by the Roman state. Things turned bad, and they turned bad fast. Eventually, in the Book of Acts, we see Paul on the run from the governing authorities, spent several years in prison, eventually put to death by the Roman government. For what? For resisting the state. The state told him, "Stop preaching the gospel." He said, "I will not." Continued to preach even to the death. Same thing with Peter and the other apostles. When Paul wrote Romans, the situation wasn't as severe as it would become. Even then, no one thought that the Roman state was a friend. They just crucified Jesus, although at the instigation of the Jewish Sanhedrin. It's important for us to recognize that the issues raised by this paragraph have been largely theoretical to believers in the United States. In the United States, for the last few centuries, we have experienced relative freedom to preach the gospel, partially why this land has been blessed. Other Christians in other nations at other times have had to ask serious questions, adult questions, sober-minded questions, "Well, what if the government is forbidding me from worshiping God? What if the government is forcing me to do that which is against God? What if the government is preventing me from speaking truth? What about at those moments?" We'll get into all of this. Just to set the context, before the theme of civil government, Paul talks about vengeance. This is in Romans 12:18-21. The passage right before ours, "If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine. I will repay,' says the Lord." "To the contrary, 'If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For by so doing, you will keep burning coals on his head.' Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." This is a precursor for Paul's treatment of the civil government. He starts with God has the prerogative for vengeance. "Vengeance is mine," says the Lord. Then he tells the personal Christian, "Your personal duty is not to take vengeance." Take not vengeance, and leave it up to the Lord. God has vengeance. You can't take vengeance. Between this, He gives us His command about the civil government, that the civil government has been entrusted by God with a sword in order to curb which is evil, to bring down the sword on the evil person. That's the context. God keeps for Himself the prerogative of vengeance. He establishes order on earth with the civil magistrate to carry out justice under the authority of God. There are different spheres that we're talking about here. That's the civil sphere. We went from the personal sphere, "No, you don't have the right to take... " to the civil sphere. This is all in the context, this conversation, of the church, that God has established the church with its redemptive mission. Our job is to go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. The government is also given special task by God for common grace ministry, to further their common good, to further shalom. The church dispenses elements of special grace. That has to do with salvation, whereas the civil government attends to the common good of the human race, not just for Christians but for all people. Both church and state are established and governed by God. This conversation about separation of church and state, well, that... originally, a division of labor. State, you focus on what you focus on, your God-given duty to promote good and curb evil, and we're going to focus on what we need to focus on, which is preaching the Word of God. That's the division of labor. Today church and state means a church that is separated from God completely, divorced from God. Don't even mention. God don't speak about God in public sphere, public schools, or anywhere. No, keep your religion to yourself. That's private. It's true that when the state declares independence from God and seeks autonomous rule apart from Him, well, that government... Be it the United States, or Russia, or any other nation, it becomes demonized and exists as an agent of opposition to God Himself. Such nations truly become godless. That's the context of Romans 13:1-7. Would you look at the text with me? "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad." "Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer." "Therefore, one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this, you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them, taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed." This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points. First, submit to the governing authorities. *Second, to a point. Third, submit to King Jesus always. First, the principle is given to us that we should submit, submit to the governing authorities. This is verse 1, "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God." Paul begins with the basic rationale for Christian subjection to the state. The scriptures testifies that it's God who sets up governments. Even the bad ones, it's all under His sovereignty. Who elected the person in power? It doesn't matter who put that person into power. It was God Himself. God allowed for this to happen. When there's a wicked ruler ruling over people, scripture is clear. It's judgment from God over the people. At those moments, if we don't like our rulers, yeah, vote. Yeah, yeah. We get on our knees as a nation, and we beg God, "God, please assuage your wrath. Remove your judgment from this nation." It only happens with the people who are humble before God. Yes, God puts them in control, even the bad ones. When Daniel gave the prophecy of Nebuchadnezzar's fall, he began by saying, in Daniel 2:20, "Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, to whom belong wisdom and... He changes times and seasons. He removes kings and sets up kingdoms. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding." Later, he summarized what Nebuchadnezzar had learned through his well-deserved humiliation. God punished him because he wouldn't give glory to God. Then Daniel 5:21, "Until he," Nebuchadnezzar, "knew that the Most High God rules the kingdom of mankind and sets over it whom he will." Christians are to recognize that God is sovereign over whoever He puts in charge of me. Christians should be models of civil obedience. That's where we start. This should be the natural spirit fill... We'll get to the disobedience part. Point two is spicy. I like it. First, we start here. We start with, yes, we want to obey. We want to do everything. Jesus was the model of this for us. In Micah, it's prophesied that Jesus will be born in Bethlehem. How did he end up in Bethlehem when His parents were from Nazareth, where Joseph and Mary were following the order of the emperor to go back to your hometown to be counted for the census. For what purpose? So that the emperor gets the most tax amount that he can. Jesus in Mary's womb... Joseph and Mary taking the arduous journey at the risk of the unborn. They're risking the unborn child, all in obedience to the civil magistrate. In the second century, the apologist, Justin Martyr, gave a defense of the faith to the emperor, Antoninus Pius, in which he argued. He's like, "Look, emperor. You want Christians. Leave the Christians alone. That's all they want. They want to be left alone, so they can preach the Word and build up their households and their churches. That's all they want. Leave them alone." What he wrote was, "Compare them to any other citizens in the empire. The Christians pay their taxes in full, scrupulously, and they're in obedience to the civil magistrate. They're a humble people. Leave them alone." The reason Christians must obey the state is because it has been instituted by God, and its authority derives from the Christian's own heavenly Father. All throughout the history of the church, we see God's people suffering to a phenomenal degree. Beautifully, they heeded the council of this great and important text from the earliest days. They also heeded other injunctions from scripture. The St. Paul tells us, "Pray for those who persecute you. Pray for them." Even as they are about to slaughter you, you're praying for them. It was martyrdom of the Christian Church. Their blood was the seed for the church because there's no more powerful testimony. Yes, these people really believe that the second that you slaughter them, they will meet Jesus Christ. They're dying with smiles. They refuse to lift up arms against their rulers. They're often mistreated above any other group of citizens. They remain obedient and dutiful citizens. To be sure, they refused to do wrong when it was demanded of them. They refused to worship Caesar as God, but their refusal was made all the more powerful because they had shown themselves so ready to be obedient and loyal citizens in every way that they could. Then martyrdom was their ultimate resistance. "I obeyed you in absolutely everything, but in this, I will not. No, Caesar, you are not God over me. I will give onto God's what is God's, which is ultimate allegiance, ultimate authority. Government, you are not God over me." The one thing the Roman government could count on was that Christians would pay their taxes, keep the laws. As Augustine would later explain in The City of God, "The patience and faith of the saints wore down the fury of the churches' persecutors." He continues in Romans 13:2, "Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment." This is a sober warning, and you have to take it at face value. If we resist the authorities that God has appointed, we might be regarded as heroes by some, but we can expect the visitation of God's judgment. That's on face value. Verse 3, "For rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you'll receive his approval. For he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer." Oh, this is masterful. Paul, this is masterful. Along with giving Christians our charge, "Submit to the authorities," he gives God's charge to the authorities. He's saying, "Government or anyone in a position of authority, this is your job." The government has two roles. Promote good, bring down the sword on wrongdoers. Promote good and restrain those who are evil by force, if necessary. That's why God gave you the sword. In Romans 13:4, we read of the state as an avenger who carries out God's wrath on wrongdoers. That same verb was used in 12:19, talking about vengeance. Yes, this is God's sort of government. You are God's servant to wield God's sword upon the evildoer as you promote good. That's your job. The state is to do a private individuals, and Christians in particular are never told to do. The state has a different function in the economy of God. It has different callings and authorities. The government's job is to protect us from evil. That is, they are to preserve the security of people. They are to protect us from attack from without and crime from within. For that purpose, governments properly have armies, and police systems, and courts of justice to preserve us from evil in our midst. Submit to governing authorities but never blindly, never blindly, just like you don't submit to anybody blindly, except for Jesus Christ and God's Word. As soon as those in authority over you contradict God's Word, they lost all authority over you, completely. That's a point. To a point, we submit to governing authorities to a point. We must realize what the passage does not tell us. It does not directly say what we ought to do when a government departs from the role God has given them. What if the government starts using the sword to promote evil and bring down the sword upon those who do good? Wait, what about those cases? It doesn't specifically explain what to do when the government is committing a moral wrong. Neither are we told what to do in the midst of a revolution. What if evil people came into the government, and evil people infiltrated, and now evil people are using the government for evil means? You got to ask hard questions. It also does not show us which form of government is best. It doesn't even commend democracy. I'm mentioning these things because many of the difficulties found in this chapter result not from what we read in the text, but they result from what we read into the text. For example, Samuel Rutherford, in his classic 17th century work of political philosophy called Lex Rex: The Law Is King... He was arrested for writing the book by the king's men. He would've been executed had he not died of natural causes while seized by them. He explained why Romans 13 does not prohibit Christians from rising in violent resistance to a tyrant. He goes through the scriptures and scholastic theologians. Basically, his point... This is what Lex Rex means in Latin: law is king. God's law is king. God's law is above the king. When the king starts promoting evil and curbing that which is good, we got to ask some heavy questions. I say this because, look, it's a heavy text, and it's a heavy subject. It's important because we no longer look at the government as benign. I do not. You should not either. My family immigrated from the Soviet Union to get away from tyrants that wouldn't let us preach the gospel. That's how we got here, on religious refugee status. We got here in 1989. I'm telling you, the '90s were the glory days. If you did not grow up in the '90s, man, you missed out. It was a different America. It was tremendous. No, no, no, no, no. The things have changed: the way we're raising our children, what they're being taught. We now have to ask, will our children or grandchildren face a state overtly hostile to our Christian convictions, to our Christian way of life? Will our children be taken from us, as children have been taken from Christians before by rogue states, hostile governments determined to ensure that our children are not raised with our principles? What do we do in those moments? What do we do in those moments when the state encroaches on the church, encroaches on even my family and my household? What do I do? Well, you got to recognize that Romans 13 is to be interpreted in the whole council of God. This text, as so many biblical texts, must be interpreted according to the principle of ceteris paribus. In the Latin, ceteris paribus means all things being equal. I take that from equal, as in from the whole perspective of the council of God. You can't just take one text by itself in isolation and use that as a proof text for theology. No. How does this text read in light of all of the canon? We do not have the teaching of the scripture on any subject unless we have examined all of the relevant passages. Not all the qualifications of a complex subject are to be found in any one passage. The principle that one must obey, the existing government, and that it is God's will that the government shall exist, and that lawless person is resisting this government that was ordained... In that context, yeah, that makes all the sense in the world. When the government is doing its job, and, yes, it punishes bad people for doing bad things, and it approves of good people for doing good things, when all of that is function... Yeah, all things being equal, yes, submit to the governing authorities. But there are also exceptions. The Apostle Peter and the Apostle John are preaching the gospel. All of a sudden, the Jewish leaders are like, "Stop." They said, "No, no, we must obey God rather than men." Well, that's an exception. If there's an exception to a moral rule, then it's not a moral absolute. A moral absolute... This is true always. That's the Ten Commandments. True always, there's no exceptions. This is not a moral absolute. You submit, but if Caesar calls you to do something that God's Word prohibits or against God's Word, no, no, no, we're not submitting. If authority commands us to do something that God forbids or forbids us from doing something God commands, we must obey. I'll repeat that. If authority commands us to do something God forbids or forbids us from doing something God commands, we must disobey. If the civil magistrate calls us to sin, we must say no. History is replete with examples of governments that have commanded the citizens to do evil, right? This is the Nuremberg trials, right? If fascists after... Now all these Nazi lieutenants and high-ranking members, their whole case, justification-wise, "I was following orders." You know what they said? "That's not enough." No, you should have followed your conscience that told you that this was evil. What were they appealing to? They were appealing... the moral law in the heart. You knew. You knew this was evil. When you know this is evil, whoever in authority tells you to do it, say, "No, no." It wasn't an excuse then, and it won't be. I'll bring this example. Ephesians 5, "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." Oh yeah, tremendous text. Keep going. Then, "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord in everything." My wife and I have had very extensive theological conversations on what the word, everything, means. What does everything mean? Let's go to the original. Let's go into the dictionary. It means everything. It means everything. We know. We know there are exceptions. What if your husband is abusive, huh? In everything? What if your husband is telling you not to worship Jesus, not to go to church? In everything? No, of course not. At that moment, when he goes against God's Word, he's lost all authority. No, there are exceptions. At some point, yes, divorce is actually encouraged. Well, apply that to the nation. What if the government is an abusive spouse? You can't speak. You can't believe. You can't say things that are true about gender and about sexuality. What about those moments? It can happen in any country, even our own. We must know that God has the highest authority. This comes from not just our text, but also Matthew 22:15-22. "Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him," Christ, "in his words. And they sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians, saying, 'Teacher, we know that you were true and teach the way of God truthfully. You do not care about anyone's opinion.'" Sad. "'For you are not swayed by appearances. Tell us then what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?' But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, 'Why put me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin for the tax.' And they brought him a denarius. And Jesus said to them, 'Whose likeness and inscription is this?' They said, 'Caesar's.'" "Then he said to them, 'Therefore, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's.' When they heard this, they marveled. They left him and went away." They're trying to trap Him. Bring a coin. It says inscription in the Greek's icon. Whose icon is on this coin? It's Caesar's. Okay, give onto Caesar's. What He's saying is, "It's not that important. Give unto God's what is God's. That which is created in the image of the government, give them that. That which is created in the image of God, give that to God. Who's created in the image of God? That's you." Meaning, ultimately, it's not the government that owns you. The government has no jurisdiction over your soul. It has no jurisdiction over your mind. It can't tell you what to think. It can't tell you what to believe, what to love. No. We are to love God with our highest affections, heart, soul, strength, and mind. God has stamped His own image on us through our intellect, our will, the soul. It all bears the divine stamp. Thus, man may give outward things to Caesar but never inner loyalty, never inner allegiance, never hope. Don't put your hope in people. Don't put your ultimate trust in people. The coin's use is determined by its likeness, and your use is to be determined by the likeness you bear, that of the Lord. 1 Peter 2:17, look at the order. "Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor." Before we get the emperor, yeah, yeah. It was Nero. Yeah. We'll give you the honor that your offices do even if you don't deserve the honor. We'll honor you. First, we fear God. Here in the text, he talks about a sword, that God's sword is given to civil authorities as restrain. The first sword that we see in scripture is the angelic sword at the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve rebelled against God, God puts the sword there as restrain. I am restraining you. I'm restraining your depravity. In the Old Testament, several offenses were considered so heinous that God in the civil code of Israel required the death penalty. Death penalty wasn't just from the Mosaic Law. It was actually grounded in creation. We get that from Genesis 9... Excuse me, 1-6. "And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to him, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.' The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand, they are delivered." "Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I gave you everything, but you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. And for your lifeblood, I will require a reckoning. From every beast, I will require it, and from man. From his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of man. 'Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.'" God, rooted in creation, requires the death penalty for murder. Distinctions are made in the law code of the Old Testament that corresponds to our distinctions between first and second-degree murder or murder and manslaughter. In the case of manslaughter, the penalty was not death but banishment to cities of refuge. If someone kills someone by accident, that was different than first-degree murder. When it was committed, the civil magistrates of Israel were commanded to execute the guilty one. The law of capital punishment for murder isn't restricted to law code of the civil penalties of Israel. No, it was grounded in creation. Here I pause, and I want to deal with an abjection that you hear all the time. Christians are so inconsistent. How are you pro-life by being against abortion, but you're for capital punishment? That doesn't make any sense to people. That's inconsistent.  I would submit to you, it's absolutely consistent because at the heart of it, of our worldview, is the sanctity of human life. Human life is so sacred that if you rise up without just cause and kill your neighbor, you forfeit all your rights and privileges to your own. That makes all the sense in the world. It's not consistent. It's not consistent. You're right. It's not consistent to say, "Abortion is murder, but we're not going to do anything about it." If we were to be consistent, if we would truly be consistent, we would say abortion is murder because life begins at conception. That's the Word of God. We should, or to make it illegal. Anyone who participates in abortion deserves capital punishment. That would be consistent, including the man. The man that fathered the baby, you commit the abortion. That should be a capital offense. I'm telling you, that law would absolutely transform this country. Men would actually start taking responsibility. People wouldn't be so flippant about sexuality anymore. Yes, it creates life. When we go against God's law, obviously, God's going to pour out His judgment on this nation. That's if we were truly consistent. Then this also brings up the just war theory. The same verse, Romans 13:4, serves as a locus classic. It's in historic Christian ethics concerning just war theory. What is the fundamental principle of just war theory? If a nation or a people aggressively invades or attacks another nation, the attacked nation is the victim of external aggression, so has the right and responsibility to protect itself from the invading aggressor. Yes, it's the sanctity of life that's at the heart of just war theory. Human life is so sacred that the civil magistrates have been given the sword to protect the innocent from the evildoer. When the civil magistrate uses reasonable force to restrain the evildoer, he serves not only the community but also God. In terms of just war, those principles are simply elevated to a larger domain of national security. Also, I would say, Christian, we must be sure that whatever cause that we're picking up a gun or sword for is truly just. You got to ask the hard questions because it's silly to assume that the government can be trusted to engage in only just military activity. No, history proven that that's not true. I remember I was 22 years old. One of my first jobs out of college was to work for the CIA as a Russian analyst. I hadn't thought through any of this. It was a job. I remember I had the Holy Spirit. I remember driving into the compound in Langley, and I remember just a darkness would come over me. All day, I was walking around in darkness as I'm writing these little reports about people. I'm showing up. A week later, I find out that that person I wrote a report on is dead. Well, that forces you to ask some questions. Is this a just organization that I'm working for? Are the causes just? I was led by the Lord to believe, "No, it's not." I peaced out. There are more important things to do like building the church of Christ. No, when the government turns its back on its primary responsibility, it's acting in utter defiance of the law of God and is exposing itself and the nation it governs to the judgment of God. The sword is necessary because there's sin in the world, and the sword is given to work against evildoers and restrain them. The primary responsibility of any civil government is to protect, defend, and maintain human life. Third... This is where I land on all of this. I don't like talking about politics or any of that. Submit to King Jesus always because at the end of the day, look, you can only control what you can control. You are responsible for what God has entrusted you to bring all of what you influence, to bring it all in submission to Jesus Christ. That's your mind. That's your soul. That's your body. That's your relationships. That's your finances. That's sexuality, everything. You are to bring in order unto the law of Jesus Christ. Submit to King Jesus always. By the way, this is the posture of God. Remember when Israel was like, "Yeah, I think we want to be like other people. God, send us a king." God's like, "You don't want a king. You don't want a king. Trust me, you don't want a king. You want to pay taxes? You don't want to pay taxes." God literally had that conversation with them. He said, "Look, the king's going to take your daughter. He's going to take your sons. You don't want a king." They said, "We want to be like everyone else. We want a king." God's like, "All right." This is what God told the prophet, "They rejected me, not you." They rejected the ultimate rule of God. This is why God gives us scripture, that we are to be independently dependent on God, independently submissive to God's Word. When you do that, when you get a faithful populace of people who are submitting to God, you don't need as much government as we have. This is my plan to take over the world. You tell everyone to submit to Jesus Christ. "Everybody, let's just submit our lives to Jesus Christ." The more of us there are, like democracy... Let's just use it. The more of us there are, we just vote our own people into power, and then we just dismantle the government. Just dismantle it. No more taxes. Because I want Christians to pay fewer taxes and more to the church, so we can build up the kingdom of God. That's just me. This is verse 5, "Therefore, we must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience." Why does he bring this in? Why not just stand back and say, "I said everything there is. Submit to the authorities." He brings in conscience. We're not to submit simply because we're afraid of law enforcement agencies in our nation. We're to submit because it's a matter of conscience. Jesus told us to. If magistrates are oppressive and we disagree radically with them, we're still to render obedience because our consciences are held captive to the Word of God. This is how God initially ruled, through His Word. Now what if your conscience is in submission to the Word of God, and the government calls you to something that is against your conscience? Well, if your conscience is to submit to the Word of God, at that point, believers must never go against their Christian conscience in order to obey the government. This is crucial. If the Holy Spirit through your conscience and in God's Word is calling you a certain way... I bring the conscious part in because there's some things that it's not just black and white. It's not right or wrong. Those are morality issues. There are questions, discernment and wisdom. Which way is right or left? Which way should we go? I'll bring you an example. For example, COVID, in 2020, March, we have to make a decision as a church. As the elders of the church, what do we do? By the way, we were one of the first churches to shut down because we got the data from the doctors, and they're like, "Yeah, this is going to be crazy." All right, two weeks to flatten the curve. Let's do it. We just stayed closed. I remember we wrestled. The elders were wrestling. This is a question of discernment. It's not a question of law. We're wrestling. My conscience was not easy because in scripture, it says, "Do not forsake the gathering of the saints," the physical gathering of the saints. That wrestling led us, by the Lord, to open up much sooner than most churches. Why? Because we were trying to obey all of these texts. Fundamental to Christian's loyalty to God is his submission to the state at every point possible, but we don't do it blindly. There are limits, of course. We must obey God rather than man. 1 Peter 2:13-14, "Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and praise those who do good." Then in Romans 13:6, everyone's favorite topic, taxes. "For because of this, you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing." I find it interesting that he calls tax collectors, ministers. Also, in the Word, in the Greek, it's deacon. These are deacons of God. They just hired 87,000 more of them. Make sure you're paying your taxes. The Roman government was, in terms of taxation, tribute policies and oppressive government. A lot of Christians are like, "Yeah, but my tax money is going to things that are immoral." Well, so it was during the Roman Empire, right? Jesus still paid the taxes. Paul still said to pay the taxes. We are to pay the taxes. I will say to you, pay as little as possible, legally speaking. You pay as little as possible to Uncle Sam. When you're doing taxes, they're like, "Do you want to pay extra?" No, don't even ask me that. You should pay me extra for having to read. No, no, no, no, no. Pay as little as possible. That's what the rich people do. That's what they do. They figure it out. They get the accountants. You know about foundations. You know about starting businesses and then K-1. You can look into that. Pay as little as possible because a lot of these rules are freaking arbitrary. They are just arbitrary. You cross the border of New Hampshire, from Mass. to New Hampshire, and you go from paying 7% sales tax to nothing. All right? That's just arbitrary. Fake line, arbitrary rules. Manmade rules, you got to obey, but sometimes to an extent. For example, driving, speed limit. I'm not the guy that's going to tell you to obey the speed limit because the governing authorities don't obey the speed limit. If there's exceptions sometimes, then it's not a moral absolute. If my wife's pregnant and I'm in the car, I'm going to be going 120 because we got to get the baby to the hospital, or we're going to heaven together. I don't know. We're going to get her there.At that moment, you're not going to be like, "Romans 13:55." No, of course not. There are things that take precedent over these manmade rules. Okay. One of the great ethical debates in Christian ethics pertains to the sanctity of truth. Are we always in every circumstance obligated to give the unvarnished truth? Rahab lied to protect Joshua and his people, and she made the roll call of saints for her valorous action. The midwives of Egypt were instructed by Pharaoh to kill every male born to Hebrew women. The midwives disobeyed, protected the newborn babies, and then lied about it to the authorities. God commended them for that. Why? Because life takes precedent. Do you always tell the unvarnished truth? Well, here you got to say, "Well, what's the point of truth?" The point of truth is justice. Will this truth be used to further justice or not? Here we got to pause and say, "How do you define justice?" How do you define justice? You wrestle with that. That's hard to define. I think the biblical definition... This is a good shot at it. Justice is giving a person his due. Justice is giving a person his due. What you deserve, that's what you get. That's justice. We deserve because we are condemned because we have transgressed God's law. The justice that we deserve, the celestial justice, is damnation for eternity. We deserve that, but God is a loving God. He wants to forgive us our sins, but He can't just forgive us our sins because He is just. This is why the gospel of Jesus Christ is so powerful because God gets to remain just, and He justifies us because Jesus Christ got what He did not deserve. Jesus Christ on the cross got the sword of God's wrath. He did not deserve it. He was the only flawless one. He was the only sinless one. Never transgressed the law. Through your repentance, and faith in Jesus Christ, and the work of the gospel, that Jesus died on the cross for my sins, bearing the justice that I deserve... The very moment that that sinks into your heart, becomes a reality that you are Christ's follower, you're submitting to Christ, all your sins are wiped out, and Christ's righteousness is counted to you. That's justice. Justice is giving a person his due. The biblical principle is that we should always tell the truth when justice requires it, but righteousness and justice do not always require it. Case in point, a Nazi shows up to your house in the '40s and says, "Are you hiding a Jew?" Right? This is a classic example. If you say, "Oh, Romans 13. Yes, I am. Here they are," no, you'd be just as wicked as the fascist for doing that. You know exactly what this truth will lead to. Yeah, if someone says, "Do I look fat in this dress?" you tell them, "No, you look tremendous." Just make them feel better. It's okay. Pastor Jan said, "It's okay." Everyone feels tremendous. The principle that defines justice and righteousness is that which is due, owed, or obligatory. That's why he tells Roman Christians that we are obliged to pay our taxes. Give him what is due. We must give the state what is due the state. Justice and righteousness require that we submit to taxation. We are to honor the king even if the king isn't honorable. He is to be honored. It's his due. We are to honor our father and mother even if they do not deserve. Because they're our parents, it's due. Romans 13:7, "Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom our honor is owed." I close with this. Hopefully, everyone voted on Tuesday. I voted. I primarily do it to get the sticker. Also, I like writing my name in. There are a bunch of boxes. That's not democracy. Jan Vezikov. A lot of people in the country were hoping for a red wave, right? As we find ourselves in church on Sunday after the midterm elections, people were hoping for a red wave because things are so bad, right? It didn't materialize for reasons. This is what I say to you. This is my pastoral encouragement. Stop hoping in people. Stop hoping in red waves or blue waves. The only red wave that will actually change this country, that will actually save this country, that will actually make a difference is the red wave of the blood of Jesus Christ that needs to pour over like a tsunami over this nation, bring us to our knees, and beg God for grace and mercy. That's the only way I see forward. In the meantime, if you're not a Christian, repent of your sins. Trust in Jesus Christ. Have your sins forgiven, and then submit your life to Jesus Christ. Order your life according to God's Word.For dear Christians, for the rest of us, if there is a place in your life where you are not submitting to Christ, where you know that His Word does not reign in authority, repent. Repent and believe in Jesus Christ. Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of grace. We thank you for the message of the cross. We thank you, Lord, that you remain just and that you became the justifier to all those who trust in Jesus Christ. Lord, pour out your Holy Spirit upon each one of us in a measure that we've never experienced before, and use us powerfully to do what your church is called to do, to make disciples of all those who trust in Jesus Christ. In whose name we pray, amen.

This podcast contains an excerpt from the St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows online worship service on Sunday, October 2nd, 2022. You can view the service in its entirety on our YouTube channel: SMLC Live. For more information about the community and ministries of St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows, you can visit our website: smlutheran.org

This podcast contains an excerpt from the St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows online worship service on Sunday, September 4th, 2022. You can view the service in its entirety on our YouTube channel: SMLC Live. For more information about the community and ministries of St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows, you can visit our website: smlutheran.org

This podcast contains an excerpt from the St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows online worship service on Sunday, August 28th, 2022. You can view the service in its entirety on our YouTube channel: SMLC Live. For more information about the community and ministries of St. Mark's Lutheran Church by The Narrows, you can visit our website: smlutheran.org

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