Two Journeys

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on 1 Corinthians 15:28. The main subject of the sermon is that all things will be subjected to God as a result of Christ's work.

So take your Bibles and turn to the text you just heard read, 1 Corinthians 15. Now this morning, effectively we're gonna zero in on just one verse, verse 28. We human beings, if we're honest with ourselves, have a serious problem when it comes to authority and submission, a serious problem. On one hand, we've seen ample evidence of the old adage that, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." We've seen evidence of that. Jesus in the first century teachings, he made it plain that the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over the people that they were ruling and the high officials exercised authority in a domineering sort of way, but Christian leaders were not supposed to be like that. Centuries before Christ, said those words the prophet Daniel, likened world empires to ravenous beasts that came up out of a turbulent sea to crush and kill and destroy, four beasts one after the other, Daniel 7. Kings and dictators and premiers and masters and bosses have arisen in every generation to use their power to feed their flesh and stoke their ego, and crush and destroy those that they were ruling over. We've seen it. The 20th century gave a sample evidence as one terrible dictator after another rose and abused power, whether Mussolini or Hitler or Stalin, Pol Pot in Cambodia, Mao Zedong in China. Just one tyrant dictator after another, doing that very same thing that Jesus warned about.

So with good reason, we feel we are mistrustful of those with power and authority. But on the other hand, if we're honest with ourselves, we see inside ourselves a tendency to resist authority that comes over us. We like our freedom. We like to rule our own thing. We like autonomy. We resent people telling us what to do. I was talking to Kevin Shaub, he's from Texas, and he gave me permission to say his comment, he said, "People from Texas don't like anyone telling them what to do." I have a feeling I can speak for people from Massachusetts; they don't like it any better. Maybe even people from North Carolina don't like anyone telling them what to do.

Throughout my life, as the Holy Spirit has more and more illuminated my mind to my sin nature, I've seen a regular pattern of resistance and pushback to God-ordained authorities in my life, whether my parents, bosses, teachers, professors, state police officers, other people. I remember recently I was on a tour, a historical tour, in a city in Europe, and the tour guide, we'd reached a certain place and I went up on some stairs to listen a little bit better, and he looked at me and rather imperiously told me to get down from the stairs. I tell you the feelings that went through my mind at that moment. I was like, "Really?" But I got down, behaved properly, but there was something inside me that just pushed back at being told what to do. And all of you who are parents know exactly what I mean when I tell you that the infants come into the world, and as they do and as they grow, they very much demand to rule their own world and they would like to rule yours too. And so parenting, that's a struggle that we have.

We sinners neither wield authority well, nor yield to authority well, either way. And I believe that a lot of the hottest cultural controversies and issues that face us every day that are actually somewhat rending evangelical unity, you will find, if you look for it, authority and submission problems on all sides. Misuse of power, rebelliousness against power, you're gonna find it, it's there. And we might think that the heaven that we're going to will be free at last from all authority and submission, but it won't. Actually what's going to happen is, and we're gonna study that in the text today, we are going to a universe, a new heaven and new Earth, where authority itself will be central and perfect, and the hearts of all of the redeemed will be healed from all patterns of rebellion and will both wield and yield to authority as God wills perfectly. We're not going to an egalitarian heaven where there is no authority and submission, but rather where all of these things will be healed, where Christ's subjection to his Father will be a pattern for all creation to be in harmony around the throne of God, so that God will be all in all.

So there it is. That's the sermon. The rest is details and we're gonna go through it, but it's a beautiful vision that this text gives us of the future. Now, let's get some context. It's been a while since we've been in 1 Corinthians 15, so we need to go back and look at what this chapter is about and what verse 28, that we're zeroing in on today, how it sits in the chapter. So in the context, Paul is right into the Corinthian church that he helped plant. It's a dysfunctional, messed-up church. They have a lot of problems, and one of the problems that they had was, according to verse 12, it seemed that some were there who taught that there is no resurrection from the dead, that resurrection from the dead, bodily resurrection, cannot happen, does not happen. In some sense, perhaps they were saying it ought not happen. Best to be liberated from our physical bodies. And so in verse 12, Paul says, "how can some of you say there is no resurrection from the dead?" So in order to heal this false understanding, he goes back to the basics of the gospel at the beginning of the chapter, verse 3-4, "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He was buried, and he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures." That's foundational. That is the gospel of our salvation. In verse 14, he says, "If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless, and so is your faith." So it's essential to Christianity. The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is essential to the Christian faith. But Paul's point here is not so much that Christ has been raised and all that. He's going beyond that to the bodily resurrection of all Christians at the end of all things. That's really what the chapter is about. Verse 20, "Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep." So there's a vast harvest of Christians who will themselves, like Christ, be raised bodily from the dead. That's what this chapter is about.

Now, Paul needs to answer, if Christ has won this great resurrection victory over the grave, then why does death still seem to have its way? Nothing's changed. People are still dying; we're still going to Christian funerals. People we love in the church are dying. Loved ones, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, even children are dying. So how do we understand this? This intervening period in which the fullness of Christ's mighty resurrection victory is being applied gradually by the Father, little by little. The Father, according to the text, is subduing all of his enemies through Christ, little by little. Look at verse 25-26. "He must reign," Jesus must reign, "until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death." So since death is the final enemy or the last enemy, it will continue to steal, kill and destroy until the end of time. Don't be surprised at that. It's gonna continue. It's gonna continue to wreak havoc on planet Earth until God finally decides to end all of human history. Meanwhile, the gradual, spiritual hidden advance of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Christ, will continue. Every tribe and language and people and nation has individuals chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in God's sight. They are the unconverted elect. We don't know who they are until the gospel comes and they respond to the gospel. That's what missions is all about, that's why we raise money for missions for the IMB every December through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, because there are unconverted elect. Paul says, "I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ." And so that's what's going on. This is evangelism and missions. This is the hidden spread of the kingdom of God. He must reign until he puts all his enemies under his feet. And after that has happened, then the end will come; the kingdom will be consummated in eternity. And that will include, based on this verse that we're looking at today, the perfect harmony of all of creation under the throne of God, around the throne of God. That's where we're going. That's the spread of the gospel and of the kingdom. And it will be a world perfectly content and submissive under the throne of Almighty God. No longer rebelling to the throne, no longer murmuring or questioning or plotting or any of those things. But all of those things will be ended. It will be a world perfectly in subjection to God's reign, in submission to his authority. So look at verse 28, "When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all." 

All right, so the first point in the outline is the rebellion will be finally subdued, the rebellion finally subdued. In order to understand that rebellion, we have to go back to the first creation, the beginning of creation, Genesis 1. God created all things in heaven and Earth. Because he is the Creator, he is the King, he rules over all things, sovereign over what he has made. And as King, he is the Lawgiver; he has the right to give the laws by which his kingdom will be ruled. And in giving laws, he must also be the judge to determine whether his laws were obeyed or not. Creator, King, Lawgiver and Judge, these are the four roles of God that are foundational. But we are taught from the Bible that I think before man was created, Satan and it seems a third of the holy angels fell into rebellion against the throne of God, if Isaiah 14 is talking about Satan's ambition. He decided to rise up and topple the throne of God and become king himself. And God threw him down along with the angels; they became what we call demons or evil spirits. Then Adam, at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, joined Satan in his rebellion against God the King, against God's authority. He disobeyed God. And through that one man's disobedience, his entire progeny, his sons and daughters to this present day and to the end of time, became sinners. And so sin is... We're told in 1 John 3:4, sin is lawlessness, a fundamental rebellion against God's laws. Sin is a force, a pervasive force, inside our hearts of rebellion against God's throne, against God's laws, independence from God. A lot of non-Christians, they're just independent, they don't think about God in all their thoughts, they don't consider him, they don't think about God's rules, they don't think about God. Others are aware of God's laws and just disobey them, disregard them, throw them off. And even amongst God's people in the Old Testament, the Jews, and then now for us as believers in Christ, we realize that principle of resistance, of rebellion against God's authority, is still there. And so the terms "stiff-necked" and "hard-hearted" are very similar. Basically, they're just two different ways of saying the same thing: hard resistance to what God wants you to do. You hear God talking to you and you say, "No." So that's what stiff-neck... You're not yielding to God's kingly authority. Hard-hearted; you won't submit to him. So that's the problem: the rebellion. All evil flows from this.

Now, the gospel of Christ is the remedy and the only remedy to this universal problem. And so the gradual subduing of God's enemies by his victorious Son is one way to look at it. Look again at verse 24-25, "Then the end will come when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power, for he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet." So all of God's enemies will be subdued, finally subdued. Satan and the demonic powers that are mentioned here in verse 24, the dominion, authority and power, that's invisible spiritual realms, will be finally subdued. He's going to subdue those evil powers. But it extends to human rebels as well, the human opposition. And that's all of us naturally in our sins. And so the hidden secret advance of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of God advances where an individual sinner repents of his or her sins, his or her rebellion against God's kingly authority, repents and gladly submits to God the King in their lives. They've entered the kingdom of God. That's what it is. They have entered the spiritual kingdom of God by throwing down their weapons of revolt. Every human rebel will either be converted or condemned. All of God's enemies are gonna be dealt with in one way or the other. And the sweetest is for them to be converted.

I love the gospel invitation that Jesus gives in Matthew 11:28-30; it's one of my favorites. I was talking to Daphne yesterday. I say, "Which is better, do you think? Isaiah 55 as an invitation or Matthew 11?" "Come unto me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." That's Matthew 11. "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." There’s many years that I was walking as a Christian before I understood the word yoke in that statement. In the Bible, a yoke is either a literal piece of wood that's put across the neck of a team of oxen so that they can pull a plow, a literal yoke, or it's a metaphor almost always for kingly authority. Kingly authority. What is Jesus saying when he says, "Take my yoke upon you"? He's saying, "Submit to me, your king. Stop rebelling against God's kingship. Don't be stiff-necked anymore. Don't be hard-hearted anymore. Take your neck and put it under my yoke. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. And if you do, you will find what kind of a king I am, for I am gentle and humble in heart. And you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light." As John says in 1 John, "his commands are not burdensome." You know what's burden? Sin is burdensome. Being enslaved to Satan and the flesh and to evil, that's oppression. Freedom from sin, that's what Jesus offers. But it's not freedom from authority; it's submission to his authority. That's salvation. "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me."

So this process of subduing God's enemies has been going on now gloriously, hidden-ly, hidden for 2000 years. In heaven we're gonna, I think, look back and study that secret progress and celebrate all the triumphs that we didn't even know happened. 2000 years of God's rebels being converted into sweet submission to his kingly authority. Now, the final act is yet to come, verse 26, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” verse 26. Revelation 20:14 talks about that. "Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire." Hallelujah, the death of death forever. So we're going to a place where there'll be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, but also no more rebellion. It's gone forever. That's where we're going. 

Now, the submission of the Son of Man to the throne of God is the final act of that journey, it's the final demonstration of that advance, the perfect submission of the Son to the Father. Now, we've already had the submission of the Son displayed plainly in his first coming, in his incarnation. Jesus put on display what perfect submission to God looks like. There's no text that describes it better than Philippians 2, "That Jesus, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in Heaven and Earth and under the Earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." Philippians chapter 2 describes the perfect submission of the Son of God to God's rule when he became a man.

Now, it is vital for us to understand before the incarnation, Jesus was not human yet. As the second person of the Trinity, he was perfectly equal in all respects to the Father, ontologically, essentially equal, fully God, not yet human. And so in that he chose to add a human nature, he chose to become a servant. There's been a long debate recently in evangelical circles over the authority and submission of the Father and the Son in the trinity before Christ was incarnate, and I'm denying that or distancing myself from that. I understand it, but I don't see it there. I think it runs into theological problems. It's sometimes called eternal functional subordination, or eternal relationship of authority and submission. I understand, but I reject it. But once he became man and became the Son of Man, Philippians 2 says, "In the form of God, he took on the form of a servant." Because the Greek is the same, he's as much servant as he was God. That's the mystery of the incarnation: fully God, fully man. And as man, therefore servant, we're made to serve. And so that's what Jesus did, and he lived that out, didn't he? He lived it out every day of his life. I love John 8:28-29. Jesus said, "I do nothing of my own accord, but I speak just what the Father has taught me. The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone," listen to this, "for I always do what pleases him." Isn't that beautiful? Wouldn't you love to be able to say that? "I always do what pleases him, the Father." Now, that's the picture of perfect submission. He didn't say even a single word apart from the will of his Father.

Now, the culmination of that came in Gethsemane, in Calvary, at the cross. In Gethsemane, he said, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup be taken away from me, yet not my will but yours be done." So that's his human submission to the drinking of the cup of death and judgment at the cross. And he was willing; he was obedient, as Philippians 2 says, "even to the death on a cross." So, perfectly obedient, he laid down his life by the command of his Father, and he took his life back up in resurrection by the command of his Father. Perfect submission.

Now, our text, however, is not looking back, we're not looking back at eternity past, we're not even looking back at the incarnation, Jesus' perfect obedience there. We're looking ahead to a yet future subjection of Jesus to the Father, the eternal submission of the Son. Now, the final submission is asserted, look again at verse 28, "When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all." So what this is talking about is a future time, it's a future subjection, it hasn't happened yet. It's the final step of redemption, of God's solution to the evil sin problem. The Son will be formally and finally subjected to God. Now, I believe this is just the beginning of an eternal relationship of subjection to the Father as our mediator, as the Son of Man, as the human forever subjected to the Father. Jesus is still human. He took on a human body in his resurrection, and therefore a permanent role of submission as the preeminent human being to the will of God. He gives us that beautiful image.

Now, this does not... Let's say what this is not teaching. We are not teaching in any way that Jesus is a creature or a created being, like the Jehovah's Witnesses teach. That's what they teach, that Jesus is God's first and greatest creature. There was a time he didn't exist. No, we're not saying that. And we are not asserting this functional subordination of Jesus within the Trinity. Jesus has the right to fully be worshipped like the Father. I love John 17:5. Jesus is praying, and he says, "Now Father, grant to me [or give me the glory or glorify me in your presence with] the glory I had with you before the world began." Now, if you read Isaiah, in Isaiah he says, "I will not share my glory with another." That's the glory of deity. There's a unique glory of deity that only he has. Now, what is Jesus asking in John 17:5? "Give me that glory, that evident, radiant display of my deity, give it back, the glory I had with you before the world began." So the eternal submission of the Son is not in any way denigrating or diminishing his right to be worshipped as God.

Well, what does it mean? Well, it means as the Son of Man, as the perfect human being, he took on a permanent role as servant to his Father. Now, the depths of the incarnation are far beyond our ability to plumb, we don't understand it fully, but Jesus, fully God, fully servant for all eternity. Now, one vision in Revelation 5 says it all for me, Revelation 5:6. I love this, so picture this in your mind, if you can, "Then I saw a Lamb looking as if it had been slain standing in the center of the throne." Friends, don't that say it all right there? Picture in your mind's eye Jesus, the lamb that was slain in perfect submission to his Father, standing in the center of the throne of heaven, receiving worship as God. And that's what we're gonna see for all eternity, a combination of those aspects, slain Lamb, full subjection, standing in the center of the throne, full deity. 

So what is the significance for us of the subjection of Jesus? Well, I believe this represents the eternal harmony of the universe. That's my fourth point in the outline, the eternal harmony of the universe. Christ represents all of creation. It says in Colossians 1:15 that Christ is the firstborn of all creation. "Firstborn" speaks to rank or preeminence. He stands at the head of everything that was ever made. He's the firstborn over all creation. He represents all creation. Now, in that word "creation", it's only in terms of his human nature, his human body, resurrected body, his physical stuff created. In that, he is creation, he is deity not. But in his role as the redeemer and mediator as a human, first born over all creation. And so for him to be in subjection to God's throne, it means all creation behind him that he represents is in harmony at last around God's rein, around God's throne. At last, evil has been destroyed. At last, the rebellion is over, the universe is one with God. Look at verse 28, "That God may be all in all." What does that mean? Well, that God's purposes and plans and power and glory are everything. God is all in all. There's no dissonant thought at all. And we will be in the new heaven and new Earth, and living in the New Jerusalem and worshipping there, and we will realize the truth of Romans 11:36, "For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever."  Everything belongs to God, for he made it and it goes back to God, for he deserves it. Now that's what it means, that God may be all in all. And we will see in heaven the perfect sustaining power of God, that God upholds all things by his powerful word. Hebrews 1:3 says that it's a continually needy universe even then, that nothing in the universe will be severed or disconnected from the power of God, but God is all in all, he rules over everything.

Now, when we walk around the New Jerusalem and we see the radiant beauty and the holiness and the glory of that place, it says in Revelation 21 we will see it illuminated with the glory of God. Revelation 21:10-11 says, "The holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal." Verse 23 says, "The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light and the Lamb is its lamp." So it's gonna be radiant with God and we'll know it. We're not gonna wonder about it, we will just know. We're not gonna worship and serve the creature anymore, but the Creator through the creature.

So what does this mean positively? The throne is the center of the new universe. Christ's subjection to the Father means the culmination of the kingdom of God. Look at verse 24, "Then the end will come when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power." So the kingdom is now God's, it's been returned to God by the Son's redemptive work, he gives it all back. The central issue of the kingdom of God is the throne of God. It's center to everything, the throne of God. Now, the throne of God is the center now. It's not like this is going to happen in the future. It's happening now. Remember the island of Patmos, and John was invited to come up from the island of Patmos through a door into the heavenly realms. And the first thing he saw, Revelation 4, was the throne of God with someone seated on it. The throne of God is not empty; it's full and God reigns on it. And he saw it, it's going on now, but it's going to be the center of the new heaven and new Earth, and everything is gonna be in perfect harmony around that throne. Then will be fulfilled the prayers that millions and millions of Christians have prayed in every generation, "May your kingdom come, may your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven." perfect harmony around the rule of God.

Secondly, it means all worship will center on the throne. The image we have in Revelation is of concentric circles. You have the throne and then you have the four living creatures, the 24 elders, 100 million angels, everything centers, all worship centers, around the throne. Thirdly: especially the redeemed. What we heard earlier that Wes read for us in Revelation 7 let me read it again, "After this, I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count from every nation, tribe, people, and language standing where? Before the throne of God and before the Lamb." So all worship of the redeemed are centered on the throne of God and of the Lamb. Fourthly: new creation. The new creation will derive its order and its existence from God. Revelation 21:5, "He who is seated on the throne said, 'I am making everything new.'" So all of the beauty we will see in the new heaven and new Earth, we will know it came right from the throne. God is making everything new.

Fifthly, all life flows from the throne. Revelation 21:1-2, "Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city." It's mind-boggling. For me as a geeky mechanical engineer, the incessant creation of water coming from the throne is hard to even fathom, but there it is. Everything just flowing and flowing, literal, symbolic, I like it all. You listen to how I preach Revelation, you go back; I don't pick and choose. Why not literal and symbolic? Why not all of it? It just flows. Everything flows, all creation flows. All life flows from the throne. And then all blessedness, sixthly, all blessedness comes from the throne, because Revelation 22:2, "On each side of the river stood the Tree of Life bearing 12 crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations." A dynamic feasting, a dynamic healing boggles the mind. You're like, "Well, I thought there was no more death, mourning, crying and pain." There isn't, because of this. We’ll be feasting on life continually. You'll never stub your toe... If you stub your toe, it won't hurt. You'll be immediately healed, no cellular damage. It's just mind-boggling. I'm going to speculate if I'm not careful here, but I'm just saying all life and blessedness flows from the river of the water of life and from the Tree of Life. Seventh, all created beings will gladly serve the throne. Verse 3, "The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city and his servants will serve him."

Eighthly, all purposes, drives, initiatives for heavenly life will start at the throne. What we're gonna do today will start at the throne. Now, you may think you'll know what to do, and you will, but you won't. If you think God has the whole plan and so do you, even in heaven, you have become omniscient; you got it all figured out. But it could be that you'll learn new things in heaven, including what you should do today in your heavenly day, and it's gonna just flow from God. All the initiatives, start from the throne, everything. And then all glorious achievement in the new heaven and new Earth will flow back to the throne. As it says in Revelation 21:24-26, "The kings of the Earth will bring their splendor into the New Jerusalem. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it." So everything gets brought back to the throne and placed there before the throne. The throne's everything, everything.

Negatively, what does it mean? Well, what it means is these will cease forever. There will be no rebellion against the throne, no disobedience against God's throne, no opposition to God's throne, no disagreement with God's throne, no questioning of God's throne, no challenging of God's throne, no resistance to God's throne, no murmuring against God's throne, no sullen chafing against God's throne, no complaining against God's throne, no ignoring of God's throne, no independence whatsoever from God's throne. That's where we're going, that's the heaven we're going to. And all subordinate authorities will be cheerfully obeyed as well, all subordinate authorities. Well, what do I mean by that? Well, Revelation 22:3-5 says, "The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city and his servants will serve him and they will reign" they will reign, not just he, but they will reign, "forever and ever." Wow, this is interesting. Yes, there will be eternally delegated authority. It says in Revelation 19:16, at the second coming of Christ, it says, "On his robe and on his thigh, he has this name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords." Will he have that title on into eternity? Yes. Will there be kings under his overall kingship? There will. Lords under his overall lordship? Yes, there will. Daniel 7:27, I commend it to you for careful study, but there it says, "Then the kingdom and the power and the authority of all the world will go to the saints." It's a kind of a shocker. You expected it to go to God. Well, it does go to God, but it goes to the saints. "And God's kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom and all rulers will worship and obey him." Daniel 7:27, so there you have a clear hierarchy of rulers under the overall ruler.

Some parables imply differences of responsibility in the kingdom of heaven, for example, the parable of the minas. A mina is a measure of money worth about 100 days' wages. About a third of a year's wages, a pretty significant sum of money. So in the parable, the master entrusts different number of minas, and some of them are faithful and they're faithful with it. And the first one came and said, "‘Sir, your mina has gained 10 more.’ ‘Well done, my good servant,’ his master replied. ‘Because you have been trustworthy in a very small matter, take charge of 10 cities.’” Wow. Now, that's interesting. “The second came, ‘Sir, your mina has earned five more.’ His master answered, ‘You take charge of five cities.’” And you're like, “Well, wait a minute, I thought it was New Jerusalem?” It's possible the New Jerusalem is merely the capital city of the empire and there will be other cities somewhere in the new Earth. I don't know, but it's possible. And you're already thinking in your mind, "I'm gonna be one of the 10 in charge of 10. I wanna be in charge of 10." Well, it's available, but just find out the way by which those positions are given. Humble, sacrificial service to others and to God, that's how it's given. Faithfulness, that's how it's given. But that there will be a hierarchy, I think, is clear. And what that means is that people... Some redeemed will reign over other redeemed. But the Son's subjection to the throne of God means that there'll be no rebellion at all, including to heavenly ordained or established ones in authority, and neither will those people lord it over anyone or behave in any way different than Jesus would have them to be. And so authority and submission will have been completely purged of all evil and completely free from all sin, and that's what we're gonna have, and we will delight in it. And you may get your marching orders from some redeemed person, and you won't have any problem going off and having your heavenly day and doing whatever it is the Lord wants you to do as delegated to you from this ruler. And how sweet will that be?

Now, some of you who are extremely egalitarian and say that the ground is level at the cross and all that, you can come talk to me afterwards, we can discuss it. The ground is level in that we all need a redeemer, but God delights in authority and he delegates it, and we are gonna be freed at last from the infection of rebellion. And how sweet is that gonna be? And not only that, all of physical creation will be in harmony around the throne at last. The ground was cursed because of Adam's sin, it produced thorns and thistles, this curse is clearly discussed in Romans 8:20-21, "The creation was subjected to futility not by its own choice, but by the will of him who subjected it in hope that the creation will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God." And so the churning of the seas represents this disharmony. Isaiah 57:20 says, "The wicked are like the tossing sea which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud." Natural disasters, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados, tsunamis, all of these kinds of things will end. Nature will be in perfect harmony around the throne of God. When Jesus was asleep in the back of the boat, Mark chapter 4, do you remember? And the disciples wake him and say, "Teacher, would you be interested in the fact that we're about to drown? Would that hit your radar screen at all?" They're terrified, and Jesus stood up and rebuked the wind and said to the waves, "Peace, be still," and immediately it became quiet. That's a picture of where we're heading. And Isaiah 11 says so beautifully, verse 6-9, "The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf, and the lion and the yearling together. They will neither harm nor destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earthly full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” Perfect harmony at last that God may be all in all, oneness at last. I've likened before the effect of evil in God's perfect universe as a fragmentation grenade, things broke apart and spread in all directions. Jesus brought everything back together and made it one as it says in Ephesians 1:9-10, "To bring all things together in heaven and Earth under one head, even Christ. And he prayed that all of us may be one as the Father and the Son are one." Perfect unity. That's where we're heading.

Applications. First, I plead with any of you who came in here out of fellowship with God, not yet converted, submit to Christ's yoke. This is a moment of invitation. Christ, through the preaching of the Word, is inviting you to throw down weapons of rebellion, and through repentance and faith in Christ, find full amnesty, full forgiveness against all the rebellion that you've ever done in the past, and that he will then come in you by the power of the Spirit and heal you from all rebellion in the future. Come to Christ.

Secondly, for you Christians, see the remnants and the patterns of rebellion still in your heart. Don't imagine that they're out there all over there; they're still in you. Look at the resistance you feel to the Word of God, the things that when God tells you to do something, you harden your heart. It says in Hebrews 3, "Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts." Find out how you're doing that. Allow the Holy Spirit to show you remnants of rebellion against God-ordained authority. Thirdly, look forward to an eternity of harmony around the throne. Be filled with hope. Take this message of hope out to people you know that are lost and that need to hear it. Be filled with hope yourself, everything's gonna be brought under order.

Fourthly, understand that submission to authority itself is not an evil thing at all; it is a good thing, a beautiful thing. So what that means is... Let me exhort you parents who are in the thick of it right now, and you're training your kids to submit to God-ordained authority. There could be fewer things more important in your parenting that that. Be patient. Be loving. Model Christ-like loving authority, but wield authority. You have the right to command. It's a God-given right to command. That's what authority is. You have it as parents. And you children that are listening to me, don't resent your parents' authority, see God in it, and the order and the beauty of the world to which we're going, and don't fight against it. So understand that it's good.

And then one last image in my mind before I close: servanthood itself is going to be so completely redeemed, I believe, that based on Luke 12:37, where it says, "I tell you the truth, he will dress himself to serve and will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them." Wouldn't it be something when you're sitting at a table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, and someone taps you on the elbow and wants to fill your cup, and you look up and it's Jesus, filling your cup at the heavenly banquet, service itself completely redeemed, and you'll realize how perfectly our mediator has saved us from sin. I'm looking forward to that moment.

Let's close in prayer. Lord, thank you for the time that we've had to study your Word. It's deep, it's powerful, it's rich, it's relevant. Lord, as we see the rending and wrenching and distress and agony in our culture, in our society, hot issues, people disagreeing, people struggling, Father, we understand that this issue of power, of authority and also submission is at the center of a lot of these issues. Lord, we pray that you would continue your hidden secret work of redemption, of salvation in our hearts. And help us, oh Lord, as we pray and as we live and as we evangelize to look forward to the day of perfect harmony that this text describes, in Jesus' name, Amen.

Humans rebel against authority but through Christ's perfect submission, we too can enter into harmony and submission around the throne of God.

The post Eternal Submission to God’s Heavenly Throne (1 Corinthians Sermon 61) appeared first on Two Journeys.

In this episode, Andy Davis walks through John 20:1-18. John lays out the physical and experiential evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The physical evidence is the empty tomb and the grave clothes. The experiential evidence is the testimony of His appearances to disciples like Mary Magdalene. These two types of evidence are combined to give us sufficient grounds for belief that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. John’s extended treatment of the tender appearance to Mary shows Jesus’ unbreakable commitment to every one of His sheep, no matter how lowly their station in life.

The post John 20:1-18 Episode 42 – Resurrection Morning, Pt.1 appeared first on Two Journeys.

In this episode, Andy Davis covers the Catholic Counter Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the First Great Awakening. Some specifics Andy touches on are the Jesuits, the Spanish Conquistadors, the Inquisition, separation of church and state, Christians in the British-American colonies, Voltaire, revival, and George Whitefield.

The post Journeys from the Past, Ep.7: Counter Reformation, Enlightenment and Great Awakening appeared first on Two Journeys.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on Luke 17:11-19. The main subject of the sermon is how we should return thanks to God in response to the wonderful gift of salvation.

I'd like to ask that you turn in your Bibles to the Word that we just heard, Luke 17. And I do wanna say it's a joy and delight to be able to be back here preaching at First Baptist Church. For those of you who don't know me, and even for those of you who do, I'm Andy Davis. I'm senior pastor of First Baptist Church and delighted to be here. Been away for three months on a sabbatical, it was a very productive, fruitful time, but I'm so delighted to be back, be able to share God's word with you. Now, God willing, my plan is to resume the series, the expository series that I have been in, in 1 Corinthians next week, 1 Corinthians 15, right in the middle of the mighty resurrection chapter. There's so much to get out of that, looking forward to that, resume that next week. But as I came back, I just wanted to spend some time on this theme of Thanksgiving, and so we're gonna look at Thanksgiving.

As I look around in our world today, I look around at what's going on, we're not all of us un-mindful of what a challenge the year 2020 has been, certainly COVID has been always in front of us, we're mindful of the effect that it's had on individual lives, the suffering and sorrow it's brought to certain families, people we know and love, and even those that we don't. We've heard about numbers that rise, we're aware of that and our responsibility to be praying for an end to this pandemic, for a cure, for whatever medical insights God could give to researchers, we thank God for those that are doing those things, even many of them that we know personally that are skillful in that, we pray that they would be successful. But I also think about just our mission in the world, and we're called on to be light, a light shining in a dark place. “No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bowl or under a bushel, instead they bring it out and put it up on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.” And we are called on, as Jesus said, that we are called on to be the light of the world. And as I think about the theme of today's sermon, the issue of thanksgiving, of thankfulness, I realize what a vital issue that is.

You know our culture, our American culture, our society just passed through the holiday known as Thanksgiving, but it's sad sometimes for me to hear how that holiday is discussed by people who don't know the Lord; and there just seems to be a fundamental confusion about it. For me, I think as a Christian, I'm very, very aware of the vertical aspect of Thanksgiving, of looking upward to our Creator, and our Redeemer, and joy giver, and giving him thanks for everything. We Christians know, as James 1:17 says, "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who doesn't change like shifting shadows.” Every good gift, every perfect gift comes from God, from our Father. And so, therefore, we have the joy of looking upward again, and again, and thanking God for the blessings of our lives, and we are surrounded by people who just don't know about that. They think that it's about thanking ourselves, thanking one another, and I think that it is good manners and it is right for us to thank people who have blessed us and have helped us, and we should do that. And if you wanna do that on Thanksgiving, do it, I do it. And I think it's a good thing to do, but for us as Christians, we know that that's not where the holiday primarily rests, we look upward. And also Romans 11:36, heard that in BFL this morning, wonderful study in Romans, and I just love Romans 11:36, which says, "For from him and through him, and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever, amen." So that's the same as James 1:17, the idea that everything that we have in our lives has come to us through our Heavenly Father through the goodness of God, so it is right and proper for Christians, I think, to lead the way in giving thanks.

Now, I chose this text this morning, Luke 17, that you just heard read so beautifully, and I wanted to do this because I wanna look at both sides of the equation today. I think it is right for us to look at both thankfulness and thanklessness. I wanna understand these things, and I'm going to... Damon did a good job reading, but I wanna go ahead and read Luke 17 again and get our minds oriented to this and then just unfold it as the Spirit leads. Luke 17:11-19:

Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee, and as he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us.” When he saw them, he said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him- and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, “Were not all 10 cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” And then he said to him, “Rise and go, your faith has made you well."

So let's set this in context, look at the location right from the beginning, Jesus is traveling along; he's at a border village between Galilee and Samaria. We know from other texts in the New Testament that the Jews hated the Samaritans and didn't have anything to do with them. They consider them, we find out in other ways, half-breeds, previous generations of Jews, nominal Jews, perhaps that had intermarried with Gentiles after the exile to Assyria, and then also the exile to Babylon, and they had perverted, they believed, the Jews believed the true religion of Moses, the true religion of God, and were not following it. However much that the Jews hated the Samaritans, we would have to say they hated lepers even worse.

Leprosy was- seems the most dreaded contagion of Jesus' day. Everyone was terrified of that disease; everyone was terrified of getting leprosy. It degenerated the human body, turning it into a disgusting living corpse. Lepers were shunned from all society, and they gathered into remote and terrible places like caves, and desert areas, and other hovels far from human society, away from family and friends. And they would have to stand at a distance if they ever got near somebody who didn't have leprosy, or wasn't one of their community, and they would have to cry out "unclean, unclean." They were not welcome at the temple area, they were not welcome in the synagogue, and so they had to stay away. So these 10 lepers were in that lamentable condition, living their tragic lives together in some kind of community. And desperate to escape their plight, to be cured, to be cleansed, and to return to normal society, to normal life, the text says, "They stood at a distance."

Now, they had heard, I believe, of Jesus' power over all diseases. There was not a single disease that Jesus could not cure. We have some amazingly talented medical professionals in our church and also in our area, a lot of our brothers and sisters, experts in the medical world, and specialists too, some of the best in the world, but I think all of those that I know so well would not be offended if I say Jesus knows your specialty better than you do. There's nothing about your specialty he doesn't already know, and there was no disease that was too difficult for Jesus. Effortlessly brought healing to people. Perhaps these lepers had heard specifically of a healing he did very early in his ministry of a leper. The account is in Mark chapter 1, where it says,

A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said, “be clean.” Immediately, the leprosy left him, and he was cured. And Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning, “See that you don't tell this to anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” But, instead, the man went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town or village openly but stayed outside in lonely places, but the people still came to him from everywhere.

So this was a very famous healing of a leper. So perhaps these 10 men came to Jesus with some hope that he would cleanse them, that he would have pity on them, and they cry out to him, "Have pity on us." They were calling to Jesus' astonishing compassion for outcasts, his heart of mercy, it's just moved toward human suffering. Our tendency, my tendency is to go away from human suffering, Jesus just went toward it, and so his heart melted with compassion. He also is a law unto himself, the exception to the law that he should not touch a leper. It's no problem for Jesus to touch a leper. Because I think at the moment Jesus touches the leper, he's not a leper anymore. I think of it in terms of two rooms, adjoining rooms, one of them brilliantly filled with light, the other in total darkness and a door between the two, and you throw open the door, and the light wins, it just floods into the darkened room, and they're both lit, that's Jesus. And so he just is filled with life, in him was life, and the life was the light of men, and he just could touch a leper, and they're both equally free from leprosy.

And so Jesus works this miracle. Jesus did miracles in many different ways; it wasn't the same thing every time. So in the case of that leper in Mark chapter 1, he chose to touch the leper, and this is his normal way. This is the normal aspect of Jesus' ministry: he wants a personal encounter with the people he's healing, generally. He wants to touch Peter's mother-in-law. He wants to find out the woman who touched the hem of his garment. He wants that interaction, and he generally heals one at a time, which is really at one sense inefficient. I mean, he could just have a quick day of it, you know, 5,000, 10,000 people, "You're all healed, go home," and they would be. But instead, he wants that one-on-one encounter; he wants a relationship with you and with me. He wants to look you in the face. He wants you to look him in his glorious face. He wants that intimate relationship. So with that, he healed them by touch. Other miracles, he's not even in the vicinity, he's not even there, John chapter 4, the royal official's son, he's healed remotely, and the man has to like corroborate the time and finds out, "Yeah, that was yesterday at the same time," and his son is healed. He wasn't even there, same thing with the Syro-phoenician woman's demon-possessed daughter. That's an amazing healing to me, I love that healing story because you know how the woman throws herself before Jesus, he doesn't talk to her, but then, in the end, he says, "Because of your statement, you may go, the demon has left your daughter." Bang! Just like that! But what happened? What was the modality? How did it occur? He didn't touch her, He didn't say anything, he didn't... He just thought it, just thought it, and the demon's gone. So He does it in a lot of different means.

In this case now, we got 10 lepers, and he tells them, just like the one in Mark 1, "Go show yourself to the priest." And they're not cured as they begin the journey, they've got to turn and begin walking, and while they're on their way, they get cured. It's really interesting, isn't it? How God just does different things on different days with different people. He never changes, God never changes, he's immutable, but his ways with us are different at different times. And so it reminds me of Joshua and the nation of Israel crossing the Jordan at flood stage, opposite Jericho, you remember that? They had to step into the Jordan River, and then the water divided and they went over on dry ground. So step into the water, see what God does. And so the lepers had to step out in faith, they had to begin the journey, they had to obey Jesus, and then en route, the cleansing happened.

Well, all 10 of them were equally cured, all 10 of them, Jesus' power went out in every case, but one of them noticed that he was cleansed and wanted to return thanks, that's the name of this sermon, “Returning Thanks”, he wanted to go back to the one who gave the gift. I don't know how he knew; maybe he felt it in his body, like the woman with the issue of blood felt in her body that she was cured. Maybe he looked at his hand, you know you hear terrible stories about what leprosy does to people's bodies and how they lose members of their body, digits even, fingers or horrible bleeding sores, that kind of thing, and he looks down, and just like happened in Elisha's time with Naaman the Syrian, remember, it said that his flesh was cleansed and became clean like that of a young man. Isn't that amazing? Some of you would be like, “I'd like that, whole-body makeover, if Jesus would just do that to every member of my body, how handsome I would be, how beautiful I would look.” But in this case, maybe just looks at his hand, maybe he was, we don't know, missing a digit or two, but they're back just like Malchus' ear that was hacked off by Peter when Jesus arrests him. Jesus made him a new ear! It's just effortless. So he realized he was cleansed, and he went back, and there was one thing that filled this man's mind. One thing, thankfulness, "I must go back and thank God, I must go back and thank Jesus." And so he does, verse 15-16, "One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him- and he was a Samaritan." Now, this is a beautiful picture, isn't it? Of a truly thankful person. His heart is filled with gratitude. His body is immersed in a moment of worship, and he's there, giving glory to God in the person of his Son, his only begotten Son. He falls at Jesus' feet and thanks God.

Now, in falling at Jesus' feet, and this happens numbers of times in the Gospels, you get the feeling that he's worshipping Jesus as God, and that's completely appropriate, for he is God in the flesh. But you also have a sense that he's going up through Jesus the mediator thanking Almighty God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth for this healing. So this demeanor, dear friends, I want you to picture it, 'cause it's the point of my whole sermon. This is it; this is the moment. This is why I'm preaching, that you would do the same, that you would go back to Jesus and thank God for what he's done for you, that your heart would be overflowing with gratitude, with thankfulness to Jesus for what he has given you.

So that's a sweet picture. It's a positive picture. But we have to deal with the ingratitude, and Jesus addresses it. He uncovers it. Look at verse 17-18, "Jesus asked, ‘Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God, except this foreigner?’" Now, Jesus is underscoring the fact that nine out of 10 of these healed people never bothered to come back and say "Thank you" to God. Now, we might think that Jesus was, what we'll always say, jumping to conclusions. Right? We don't know. Maybe the nine were thanking God on the way. No, don't think that. Jesus is never wrong. He comments for a reason. They weren't thanking God. Jesus is different than us. It says very plainly in John Chapter 2:24-25, "Jesus knew all men, he did not need man's testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man." He knew what was going on in their hearts, and they didn't thank God. The fact of the matter is because Jesus zeroes in on the fact that the nine never returned to give thanks to God, they actually didn't thank God at all, they just went on their way, happy and healed, and blessed, and thankless.

So we have to come to the negative part of this sermon, we have to walk around in the ugly place called ingratitude and thanklessness for a while, and study it, the plague of thanklessness. Every one of us, even the redeemed, even the most redeemed, displays a very lamentable pattern of thanklessness in our lives, consistent pattern. I asked a dear friend, a godly man if he thought this ratio of lepers, 1:10, represented his ratio of thankfulness, appropriate thankfulness to God for the blessings he's received. And he said, "One out of 10, really? 10%? No way. That would be on my best day on Earth. My most Spirit-filled day, I would notice 10% of the blessings God gives me in my life and thank him for it, maybe 1% is heading toward the reality or even worse." Time after time, day after day, we cry out to God for blessings. We ask him for healing, for our self or for others, we ask him for earthly blessings, financial blessings, blessings of success in various areas. We ask him for things. Time and time again, he answers. And it's amazing how many times he blesses us in answer to prayer, and it's just as amazing to me how many times he blesses us that we never prayed at all. But if he does answer our prayers, and even if he doesn't, but blesses us, how often do we forget to thank him, do we live out thanklessness? Now, we need to understand, all of us begin that way. Before the saving grace of God comes into our lives, we begin as thankless people. So we're surrounded by lost people who live out a consistent pattern, a comprehensive pattern, of thanklessness to Almighty God. Paul talks about it in Romans 1:21, he says, "Although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened." So lost people spend their days immersed in a godless world of their own making. The marvels of creation that surround them, they do not see the hand of a Creator that intelligently made those blessings; they don't see it that way. The delicious fruits that they savor, a succulent peach or a crisp tart apple they eat, and it hits their taste buds, and they don't think, "A loving Heavenly Father made this for my pleasure so I could enjoy it. Thank God for it." They don't think that way. Spectacular displays of foliage, my favorite time of year, fall, it's so brief though. I guess it's officially over, we put up our tree on Friday, so we're on to the next holiday, but I mean, it's still so warm and beautiful, and there's still foliage, and it's so beautiful. But, again, lost people are surrounded by these radiant beauties, the oranges, and reds, and that that fierce blue low humidity sky, you know what I'm talking about? On a beautiful fall day, crisp fall day is so pretty. And then at night, when you go out and look out, if you can get away from a population center, get away from what they call light pollution, and you look up and you can see the beauty of the stars, and it's so beautiful, and lost people don't see God in it, they don't see God the Creator. Their own bodies, which Scripture says, that God knit together intelligently, "fearfully and wonderfully made in their mother's womb," they don't give God credit for their own physical talents and skills. And when they do look up at the stars, and they see them, they might notice them, but they don't see God in it. Psalm 19:1-2 says, "The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day, they pour forth speech. Night after night, they display knowledge." But they don't see that, they don't hear that language. Unbelievers do not make room for the existence of God as they drink in creation. Psalm 10:4 says, "In his pride, the wicked does not seek him. In all his thoughts, there is no room for God." And so they don't thank God at all.

"Before the saving grace of God comes into our lives, we begin as thankless people. So we're surrounded by lost people who live out a consistent pattern, a comprehensive pattern, of thanklessness to Almighty God."

Now, years ago, Christie and I hosted a couple to our home, a man and his wife, and the man was a PhD student at Duke University. He was also a successful accomplished triathlete. He was a very accomplished, talented man. His wife had recently come to faith in Christ through a ministry in our church, much to this man's great annoyance. He was an agnostic, but he was willing to come eat dinner with us and to talk to me because his wife really wanted him to talk to me in hopes, I think, that I would be able to share the gospel effectively with him. But he was excited, I think, to win the debate with me, to come and play theology chess with me, or atheology chess... I don't know if... That's probably not a word; but that we could debate and he would win. And we were standing outside by the grill and grilling, and he successfully parried and blocked and diverted any persuasions or apologetics I would use, different things. I remember at one point I talked to him, I didn't say these words, but you know that old statement, "There are no atheists in foxholes." In other words, when you get into danger, when you get into extremity, you tend to go, cry out to God, "God help me," you know, you're skidding on black ice, and just say, "God," you're crying out to God, just... Well, he told me a very, very elaborate story of getting lost on a three-day camping trip out in California, and never once did he think of God, proud of that. So I'm like, "Alright," so we had this time together, at the end of the evening, the evening had come to an end, and he said to Christie, thanked her very sweetly and clearly for the meal, thanked me for the hospitality, and Romans 1:21 came in my mind. "Although they knew God, they didn't glorify God or give thanks to him." And he was very proud of his manners, proud of his thankfulness to Christie and me. "My momma raised me right," he said. I remember that. I said, "You know, actually, you have lived your whole life in God's living room, and you have eaten God's food, and you have drunk God's drink, and you've looked at God's scenery, don't you think you ought to have good manners and thank him?" It was the first part of the entire evening that he didn't have an answer, a quick answer. But we're no different. Apart from the grace of God, we would be thankless too. We're being converted out of a thankless state into an eternity of thankfulness. So even once we're converted, we struggle with thanklessness, with ingratitude.

There are two kind of thieves of thankfulness that I bump into again and again, one is entitlement and the other is envy. Let's talk about those briefly. Entitlement is, "I deserve the blessings I have. I earned these blessings. I worked hard for my degree, I earned my job, I earned my promotion, I earned the money that I have, I earned it; I deserve the blessings I have." Now, it's amazing how God cuts this one off at the pass with the Jews in Deuteronomy 8 before they even cross the Jordan, before they enter the Promised Land. Deuteronomy 8, God talks to them about this attitude in verse 17-18, "You may say to yourself, 'My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.' But remember the Lord your God, for he is the one who gives you the ability to produce wealth." God had warned the Israelites when they went into the Promised Land and they ate crops they did not plant and they drank from vineyards they did not tend, and when they lived in the houses they did not build, that they would become arrogant and forget God and stop thanking him.

I think we American Christians need to worry about this; we need to be concerned about this. That we have been so lavishly blessed that we may think we're entitled to these blessings, we deserve to live in a free society, to have freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, that we should have the right to elect our own governmental leaders. Do you realize the overwhelming majority of our brothers and sisters around the world do not have these blessings? We're not entitled to them, we have them, we ought to thank God for them, but we should not take them for granted or expect them, and therefore be thankless for them, entitlement. And I think with that comes expectancy, you're entitled to things you don't even have yet. I think this can be a problem for kids growing up in relatively affluent settings, that their parents, if they're not careful, can raise entitled kids, and so you think you're entitled to the latest electronics, or you're entitled to a certain standard of living. It's sometimes a wake-up call when you get your first job out of college, your first living wage job, and it's less than your parents made, and it's a big shock, [chuckle] and you're like, "Wow, I'm kinda starting out." "Yeah, you're starting in life, this is what we did, and so, yeah," but there's this entitlement. And it's hard to parent kids out of that entitlement expectation mentality, but it does sap thankfulness. It makes us thankless.

On the other side of it is envy. Envy is, "I'm jealous for the blessings another person has, I actually think I should have that blessing that I'm coveting, I think I should have that promotion that the other person got in my company, I should have that material possession." And so as a result, you look at your own possessions and you're just not thankful for them, and you're just discontent. I think about that story, "The Fisherman and His Wife" by Hans Christian Andersen. I think it's a funny story. This fisherman catches a magic fish, which is, he's a weird fish where he can do almost like supernatural, like to the nth degree things, but he needs help getting away from the fisherman, but anyway. So his wife is discontent living in a dirt floor hovel, as most of us would be, I think. So the fish grants the wish that comes from the wife through the husband, that she would live in a nice stone cottage with a little fenced-in area with some chickens, and the fish grants it. But then she's like, "Why do we settle for this? We could have had a manse, we could have had a nice home; we could have a second story and an orchard, and some things. Go back to the fish and ask for the next level." Well, this story keeps going, you know what happens, "We could have been in a palace, by this time, we could be King and Queen, we could be Emperor and Empress of the world." It just keeps going higher and higher. "We could rule heaven and earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars." It just never ends! Finally, the fish says, "Go back, you're back in the dirt floor hovel where you started," which, it's interesting about the fish, I wanna talk to the fish and say, "You got a lot of power, but if you could just do it better. If we could just cut it off at the pass," but it's a story of discontent, and you've got this situation and this circumstance, and you don't have something that you see your neighbor have, and you have envy, and it drains out thankfulness. So just stop right now and ask God to search your heart and say, "Have these thieves of entitlement/expectation or envy been draining off my thankfulness? Search me O God and know my heart. Show me and teach me, and show me if there's any offensive way in me. Lead me in the way everlasting." 

So we've been walking around in the curse of thanklessness, let's now talk about the present, the power of present thankfulness. Let's go positive. And it begins for us as Christians with our salvation. Psalm 103:1-3 says, "Praise the Lord, oh my soul, all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, oh my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your sins." Let's start with that. Could you not, dear Christian, brother, and sister, whatever age you're at, start and almost end with that? That you could go and throw yourself in your mind and your heart, at Jesus' feet and thank him for the full forgiveness of all of your sins, past, present, and future. That you are forgiven by God through the blood Jesus shed for you on the cross. We had worse than leprosy, spiritually. We were covered in guilt before the holy eyes of God, and there was nothing we could do to get clean, worse than leprosy. And we would be eternally excluded, not just from society, not just from the synagogue or from the temple area, or from friends and family gatherings; we would have been eternally excluded from heaven itself. We would have heard in reference to us, "Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." We would have heard that for us if our sins had not been forgiven, but they are forgiven for all who have trusted in Christ. And so we can go back and just fall on the ground before Jesus, maybe even physically. Go into your room, close the door, and fall on your face, like this leper did, and say, "Thank you, Jesus, for dying on the cross for me for my sins." It's the single greatest blessing we have ever or ever could receive.

Do you remember the story early in Jesus' ministry of the paralyzed man and the four friends that are carrying him on the mat, remember that? And they can't get him to Jesus 'cause it's a huge crowd. So what do they do? They don't give up, they dig through the roof, remember that? They make an opening through the roof, and they lower the mat down right in front of Jesus. I wanna know, when I get to heaven, I wanna know how long that process took. It's just interesting, I actually would like to know if pieces of the roof fell down on Jesus while it was going on, I think about that, the level of effort these four men made, and they lower this man down, and there he is, paralyzed man in front of Jesus. What did they want? Easy. “What do you want?” “I wanna be able to walk like everyone else, so I can earn my own bread, so I can run through a field if I want to, I just wanna be able to walk.” But Jesus didn't address it; he didn't talk about it. He looked at the man and said, "Take heart, son, your sins are forgiven. Now, friends, come and get him and carry him home. I have blessed him with an infinite blessing, the scope and measure, and magnitude of which you underestimate right now, but when all is said and done, you will understand what I just gave you, even if you never walk again the rest of your life." And why did he heal him then? So that everyone around would know that the Son of Man had power on earth to forgive sins.

So just start there with the forgiveness of sins. This is the greatest blessing you could possibly receive, Romans 8:32, "He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also along with him graciously give us all things?" Do you realize the logic of that verse is that there's Jesus given by God for your sins and everything else, and there's like an infinite gap, if he gave you that, everything else is as nothing compared to that. So all of the things that are making life irksome for you or annoying you or difficult for you, blessings you haven't received yet, whether healing, whether an earthly situation, a financial situation, etcetera, are infinitely below the gift of Jesus, God's only begotten Son on the cross for you.

And if you don't have some blessing, it's 'cause God thinks it's best for you not to have it yet, and he may give it to you, but he just knows what he's doing. He loves you, there's no lack of love, no lack of power, no lack of generosity, he will give you all blessings that will be a benefit for the salvation of your soul and the advancement of his Kingdom, he will give them to you. So this extends, this forgiveness of sins extends to all other spiritual blessings, all of them flow through the blood of Jesus, each one of them, adoption into the family of God, the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit, fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ, in local churches, healthy local churches, all of these spiritual blessings flow through the blood of Christ to you. And you should thank God for them. Thank God for your own faith. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "For by grace are you saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it's a gift of God. Not by works so that no one can boast." You can just go to God and say, "Thank you God that I believe in Jesus. To God be the glory that I have faith. I'm not faithless, I'm not an atheist; I'm not an unbeliever. I thank God for my faith." You can thank God for your own obedience. Romans 6:17 says, "Thanks be to God that though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed that form of teaching to which you were entrusted." Romans 6:17, make it real simple. Thank God you obeyed. It's like, "Wow, I should give God credit for my own obedience?" Yes, you should. If it weren't for God's grace, you would be disobedient; but thank God you obeyed the gospel.

So all of these blessings have flowed. And what about perseverance? Some of you have been Christians for decades and decades. Some of you have been Christians for years and years, some of you Christians only for months and months, but from the moment you were genuinely born again until now, your soul has been under constant assault by the world, the flesh, and the devil. How is it then that you still believe in Jesus? Because Jesus has been at the right hand of God and has been interceding for you, that your faith will not fail, and it won't. So thank God for perseverance that you're still a Christian after all of these years, so many things.

Now it extends to temporal blessings. Look again at Psalm 103:1-5, "Praise the Lord, o my soul, all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, o my soul, and forget not all his benefits." Verse 3, we already covered, "who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, and crowns you with love and compassion. Who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles." So beyond forgiveness of sins, you got physical healing, every disease you've ever gotten healed from, God healed you. I thank God that I didn't die in this pulpit in June, as I was preaching on heaven. I've said to friends, I think if there's any sermon I'd like to be preaching while dying, it'd be on heaven, I'd love to do that, but I thank God that I live. Now, I'm not in any way minimizing the skill of the cardiologist that saved my life, I'm not, but I thank God for my healing, he healed me. And all of you who have been healed have been healed by God, and what else? He satisfies your desires with good things, food, clothing, shelter, luxuries, necessities, experiences, friendships, they come from God. So forget not all His benefits. Thank God for these things.

Now, I believe this issue of Christian thankfulness is tied directly to Christian contentment, and I wrote a book on Christian contentment, and I don't think in the history of Christian literature, there's ever been a topic where the author needed to sit under his own book and do it and learn from it as that time. Contentment. Am I a content man? What about right now, Tuesday afternoon, right now? Are you content? Not really, it's amazing how discontent we could be. How can we, who find ourselves in a pattern of discontentment in life, grumbling and complaining, how can we get back on the path of being Spirit-filled, blessed people? I would commend the discipline of thankfulness. It's a great way to start. Thankfulness. Christian contentment is a matter of thankfulness. So you go back, you're in the middle of a circumstance, and you're complaining about something, something you think you should have and you don't. And then you just stop and say, "I'm not gonna do this, I'm not gonna murmur against God I'm not gonna complain, I'm gonna thank God for the blessings he's given me." I would commend this to you. People like that are incredibly attractive, surrounded by grumbling, complaining people, and there you are shining, shining with a buoyant thankfulness where you just keep talking the words of thankfulness, "I'm just so thankful to God. Thankful to God."

I would say it's a remedy in certain marriages that are struggling. Start by thanking God for your spouse, thank God for him or her, thank God for his or her gifts or blessings. Be thankful. Do the same thing in the parent/child relationship. Parents, thank God for your children, thank God for the time you have with them, it's limited; it flies by. And you children, you teens, thank God for your parents, pouring the gospel in you, bringing you to church, loving you, just thankfulness is a quick way toward Christian contentment.

Now, one last point I wanna make before I'm done. I've had the joy over the last three months of working on my book on heaven, and it's been exciting, this is a little sub-theme that I think is pretty cool, I call it, "The final point," it's the eternal future of thankfulness. Remember I told you about that brother that humbly said, "I don't think I thank God for 10% of my blessings, I probably don't thank God for 1%"? How would you like a do-over on that? How would you like a do-over? How would you like a chance for God to reveal in heaven how he blessed you in life, and a chance to thank him for his many blessings, eternally? And not just, you'll be so freed from self-focus in heaven, so freed from selfish- you get to thank God for blessings that you never received that were given to a brother or sister, thanking God for that marriage, or that parenting relationship, or that circumstance, or the opportunity they had to lead that person to Christ and just infinity of thankfulness. There is thankfulness in heaven.

In Revelation 4:9-11, it says, "Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor, and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives forever and ever, the 24 elders fall down before him who sits on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say, 'You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will, they were created and have their being.'" I think, fundamentally, Thanksgiving is backward-looking, it's for a blessing you have received. I think you can thank God for a blessing you're going to receive based on the promise of God, but it's still kind of backward-looking, something good God has given you, and you go back and return thanks. For eternity, we're gonna get to do that, and we're gonna get to do it for things we didn't even know happened. We even get to do it for blessings given to non-Christians that they never thank God for, but we'll be able to give God credit and thanks. So I think the eternal infinite future of thankfulness is a rich, sweet blessing, but don't wait for heaven, friends. Don't wait for heaven. Thank God today. Thank God for the many blessings He's given you today. Let's close in prayer.

Father, thank you for the time we've had to study your Word, grateful for it. Thank you for these brothers and sisters and what they mean to me and to my family. I thank you for your Word that never changes. I thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit who illuminates the Word to me and to those that have had the chance to hear me today. I pray that we would take to heart these lessons; I pray that you would deliver us immediately from thanklessness, help us to be sweetly, richly, fully thankful people. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on Luke 17:11-19. The main subject of the sermon is how we should return thanks to God in response to the wonderful gift of salvation.

The post Returning Thanks appeared first on Two Journeys.

In this episode, Andy Davis covers the Reformation. Some of the specifics Andy discusses are the Lutherans, the Anabaptists, the Reformed, the Church of England, the Puritans and the theologians Martin Luther, Zwingli, and John Calvin.

The post Journeys from the Past, Ep.6: The Reformation appeared first on Two Journeys.

Andy Davis goes verse by verse through John 19:28-42. John brings forth even more evidence of Jesus’ deity: His supernatural knowledge, His total control over the moment of His death, and especially fulfilled prophecies as Jesus dies: a drink of wine vinegar, the timing of His death, His piercing, His bones intact. He also relates the regal burial of Jesus at the hands of two suddenly courageous disciples. The net effect is that, even in His death, Jesus is clearly the Messiah, the Son of God. Everything has been prepared for His resurrection!

The post John 19:28-42 Episode 41 – It Is Finished, Pt.2 appeared first on Two Journeys.

In this episode of "Journeys from the Past," Andy Davis covers the two major topics of the crusades and scholasticism. Andy covers Charlemagne, the Battle of Tours, Islam, the Vikings, Raymond Lull, Peter Abelard, and Thomas Aquinas.

The post Journeys from the Past, Ep.5: Crusades & Scholasticism appeared first on Two Journeys.

Andy Davis goes verse by verse through John 19:28-42. John brings forth even more evidence of Jesus’ deity: His supernatural knowledge, His total control over the moment of His death, and especially fulfilled prophecies as Jesus dies: a drink of wine vinegar, the timing of His death, His piercing, His bones intact. He also relates the regal burial of Jesus at the hands of two suddenly courageous disciples. The net effect is that, even in His death, Jesus is clearly the Messiah, the Son of God. Everything has been prepared for His resurrection!

The post John 19:28-42 Episode 41 – It Is Finished, Pt.1 appeared first on Two Journeys.