Two Journeys

I've often wondered what it would have been like to be with Isaiah - really better, to see with Isaiah, what he saw when he was called to be a prophet and how the Lord revealed to Isaiah his nature. How he showed him his glory, and how Isaiah saw the radiant, shining holiness of Almighty God, and how he saw him high and lifted up on a throne, and how the seraphim were flying around and covering their faces, and how as they called to one another they called this fascinating chant: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty, the whole earth is full of his glory.”

And how then the apostle John, so many centuries later, had a similar vision of heaven and the elders and the four living creatures constantly falling down before the throne and it says in Revelation, 4:8, “Day and night, they never stopped saying, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come.’” And therefore, I have concluded that God's most significant or noteworthy attribute, which he first and foremost, wants to present to the human race is his holiness, that we would understand his holiness.

Now, I do not make distinctions in the attributes of God and say this one is more important than that one or they're divided in any way at all. I think all of God's attributes are perfectly one with another, there's no contradiction within himself between God's justice and his mercy or his righteousness and his wrath and his tender loving kindness to us and grace. They all are perfectly harmonized within himself and yet he states twice “Holy, holy, holy,” and then “Holy, holy, holy.” This is the central lesson it seems, to the sinful human race and therefore I say that God's most noteworthy attribute to us as sinners is his holiness.

Jonathan Edwards in his personal narrative said this, speaking about a change that's happened in his own heart, this is what he said: “God has appeared to me, a glorious and lovely being chiefly on account of his holiness. The holiness of God has always appeared to me the most lovely, of all of his attributes.” Jonathan Edward saw beauty in God's holiness, attractiveness, a winsome beauty in his holiness. So therefore God's most noteworthy attribute, his holiness.

And I would say connected with that our greatest possible happiness is our holiness. Again, Edward said this: “Holiness, as I then wrote down some of my contemplations on it, appeared to me to be of a sweet, pleasant, charming, serene, calm nature, which brought an inexpressible purity, a brightness, peacefulness, and ravishment to the soul. In other words, that it made the soul like a field or garden of God, with all manner of pleasant flowers, all pleasant, delightful, and undisturbed: enjoying a sweet calm and the gentle vivifying beams of the sun.” In other words, he was happiest when he was holiest and that holiness makes us happy, deeply, richly, purely happy.

Have you ever had moments like that in Christ? Little foretastes of heavenly joy, maybe tears might even come to your eyes a sense of the brightness in the presence of God, of the fact that he has loved you with an everlasting love and that you're completely safe in his presence, and that your sin has been completely paid for through the blood of Christ. And really at that moment there's nothing to be done, But just to praise him and to worship him and just be happy in him. What a sweet foretaste of heaven that is and I tell you that holiness is at the center of that experience. You wanna be happy, then be holy. And without holiness, you cannot be happy.

Therefore, I say thirdly, that the characteristic attribute of that heaven to which we are going is holiness. Fifteen times the word holy is used in the book of Revelation, the last six refer to the holiness of the people of God and/or that place to which we are going. Revelation 21:2, “I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven as a bride beautifully prepared for her husband dressed for her husband.”

Again Jonathan Edwards said this: “The heaven I desired was a heaven of holiness to be with God and to spend my eternity in divine love, and holy communion with Christ. My mind was very much taken up with contemplations on heaven and the enjoyments there; and living there in perfect holiness, humility, and love: And it used at that time to appear a greater part of the happiness of heaven that there the saints at last could fully express their love to Christ.”

The heaven we're going to is a heaven of holiness friends, therefore fourthly, God's prevailing call over the church right now is a call of holiness, for he says in Leviticus 19:2, “Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: ‘Be holy, because, I, the Lord your God, am holy.’” That is God's call to First Baptist Church and to every single member of it.

Holiness means being set apart, especially as created beings. Set apart unto God as his special and precious possession, over which he is greatly delighted. Especially, I think, set apart from the world of darkness and wickedness and sin that characterizes this present world age. Set apart from that defilement unto God, pure and holy.

Now, as I studied the word holy, it's first used in the Bible in Genesis 2:3, where it says that God set apart the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he finished from all the creating work that he had done. So there's that sense of set apart. There was nothing defiled or impure about anything in the universe at that point but he set apart the day as holy, sacred unto God.

But then secondly, it's used in the burning bush account, it’s the second time it appears in the Bible, the flames of the burning bush, burning up, and Moses saw it and he drew near, because it was a mysterious sight, in how he looked and saw that the bush was burning, but not being burned up, it was not being consumed. And as he drew near, he heard the voice coming from the bush, the angel of the Lord speaking to him and saying, “Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals, for the place where you're standing is holy ground.” Again, set apart unto God a place where God and man can have fellowship, but take off your sandals, it's holy.

The third time it appears in the Bible is in the song of Moses, after the Exodus and the defeat of Pharaohs forces at the - in one sense, the most spectacular miracle of the Old Testament - the Red Sea crossing. And then the devastation of Pharaoh's army and then comes the song of Moses, a song of celebration. Exodus 15:13, and Moses sings, “In your unfailing love you'll lead the people you have redeemed. In your strength you will guide them to your holy dwelling.” Well, that is our story friends, that is our song. That we are being guided by God to his holy dwelling place.

And soon after God called his people at Mount Sinai to be holy unto him as his precious possession. Exodus 19:5 and 6, “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Again, the idea of being set apart unto God as his precious possession. Friends, then, holiness is of the central essence of God himself in his person, in his stance to all creation. He is holy and infinitely set above it, pure. And high and lifted up above all physical creation. An infinite gap between God and all created beings, the holiness of God. And then of the approaching of God and his dwelling and of God's calling of his people out of this world, the central element of that call is “Be holy because I, the Lord, your God, am holy.”

Now the New Testament applies this directly to the calling of the church of Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 2:9, it says, “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” A call to be holy, again, because God is holy.

Now, the point of the gospel of Jesus Christ, its purpose is to take sinners like you and me who were dead in our transgressions and sins, raise us from the dead, purify us completely, and bring us into the presence of such a Holy God, blameless and unafraid, to stand before him and serve him forever. That's what the gospel does. How powerful must it be to do that for us! Oh, how sweet is the work of gospel grace to take sinners like us and bring us into the presence of a holy God like him.

Now one of the greatest forces in the gospel ministry for that transformation of sinners to perfect and holy saints is a well-ordered gospel church friends, a well-ordered church ordered by the rules of the gospel. And one of the greatest weapons in such a holy church is the zeal, the loving zeal that brothers and sisters have in Christ to watch over one another in brotherly love. To, in a very sweet way, get involved in each other's business. To actually care what's going on spiritually in each other's lives. To the one receiving such a ministry, it may seem from time to time meddlesome. There are right ways to do it and wrong ways to do it, it's true, but in the end, the true ones always thank the ones that loved, and the ones that cared, and the ones that came.

Now the passage commands us to confront sin directly to deal with it, to address it courageously and wisely and lovingly and to seek to have it out of the church. The end of the passage is church discipline, what we generally know as church discipline: that the church has the right, and even the responsibility, to expel wicked unrepentant members from their midst. So for two weeks I'm going to talk about that issue along with the full-blooded issue of dealing with sin in the church. This week, Matthew 18, next week in 1 Corinthians chapter five. For two weeks.

Now, in Matthew 18, Christ here gives us, I think, clear steps for dealing with sin. Context, again, of Matthew 18: It's said in the gospel of Matthew, the purpose of the Gospel of Matthew is to present Jesus Christ as the king of the Kingdom of Heaven to give us his credentials his right to rule, and to govern his people, to be our king. And so therefore, when we come to Mathew 18, we come in that same stance as subjects of the king of the Kingdom of Heaven. Of Jesus, and we're receiving from Jesus now, instructions about how we are to be holy within the context of the church.

Now, at the beginning of Matthew 18, if you put together the other parallel accounts in Mark and Luke, beginning of Matthew 18, what we have is a dispute or a conflict between the disciples over which of them is the greatest. And Jesus calls a little child and has him stand among them and gives through the little child an object lesson on true broken humility. He said anyone who humbles himself like this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. And so becoming like a child and ministering to those that are like children, that's the essence of apostolic ministry. And so he's really teaching his leaders, how to be leaders.

He also warns them about the seriousness of sin. If your right hand or your right eye causes you to sin, then cut them off and throw them away, even a valuable part of your body if it causes you to sin. It's better for you to lose one part of your body than your whole body to be thrown into the fires of hell. So, he deal's very seriously with the issue of sin.

He also presents God as a shepherd who leaves the 99 on the hills and goes to look for that wandering sheep. Again the issue is sin the wandering that we do into sin. So we can see the context. One of the great purposes of church leaders, these apostles here and then eventually, I think, elders, pastors is restoring wandering Christians who have fallen into sin. So that's the context. So we come to Matthew 18:15-20.

And with this and 1 Corinthians 5 next week, we have the two central passages on the issue of dealing with sin in the church. What some people just would go straight to the issue of church and discipline, dealing with the topic of church discipline. I believe both are essential in understanding Christ's will for dealing with sin in the body of Christ. But they have a different focus. Matthew 18 seems to me to be a little more interpersonal, little more private, an issue between two individuals, maybe at a low level and you go and deal with that person privately, etcetera. 1 Corinthians 5, it seems a more public scandalous sin and how the church needs to deal with that. So, a bit different focus, I think. But both of them dealing with sin in the church.

Now, the first step in this whole process is unfortunate, but it happens. In verse 15, it says, “If your brother sins against you,” so it starts with sin, the brother has committed some sin against you. Now in one sense we know biblically all sin is ultimately sin against God and God only. Psalm 51, “Against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight,” said David. Next section in Matthew, we're gonna talk about the 10,000 talents and the 100 denarii and so sin toward God, that vertical aspect of sin is really infinitely more significant than any horizontal issue of sin, human to human. But yet, there is still the 100 denarii there are still sin issues, horizontally, and they should be dealt with, addressed, and Jesus is dealing with that.

Now, in this case, we are the offended person, the brother has sinned against us. We're the one who has been offended. Now, this word “brother,” I think should be taken in the Christian sense, brother and sister in Christ, not just other human being. I think it really is dealing with an in-house issue here because he mentions the church.

And so therefore we're dealing with Christians sinning against other Christians. And you have received that affront. Somebody has sinned against you, now Christ doesn't say what the sin is or how serious or give categories of sin. Enough of that's covered across the Bible. We know what sin is. It doesn't say how serious it is. Now, frankly, in all honesty there's some sins we just need to bear. In other words there's just some things you just need to put up with. It says in Colossians 3:13 “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you.”

I remember I was on a mission trip in Poland and we arrived at the airport hours and hours early. Good thing too because of the 15 metal detector sites they had there in Poland only one of them was working or operating. I don't know, the others might have worked fine, but they only wanted one to work. And there was a line as far as the eye could see, and those people were highly agitated. I wasn't, because I was okay with the five hours. I didn't wanna spend all five hours standing in line, but if that happened, I was still gonna make my plane flight, I was fine with it. But there were some people highly agitated.

I noticed that the guards didn't seem too disturbed by it, one way or the other. I think they actually took a secret delight in it, because they had the metal detector set at its most extreme sensitivity. I know because I set it off, I usually don't take my belt buckle off, it's usually fine. I took that off, I took, I was trying to take the rivets out of my jeans - It was nothing left for me to take out.

But I kept setting it off. I wondered if my fillings were setting it off and I didn't know what to do about that. There's nothing I could do. Come to find out that there was a piece of foil from a gum, piece of gum, that I had in my breast pocket and when I took it out, I went through, I was alright with it. I was thinking I was looking for the knob I was sure was up at 100 percent.

Now, this is a bit of a parable for what we must not do with each other friends, we must not be so sensitive that everything's an issue of confrontation and going, dealing with something someone, an arched eyebrow, a tone of voice a little bit of an iciness a little bit of hesitation. Look, life is tough friends. It may have nothing to do with you. Overlook it, be gracious.

God will give you wisdom, he'll give you wisdom. You need that wisdom because there are some things you ought not to overlook in love, you ought not to overlook them. And you need wisdom through the Holy Spirit to know which is which. There's some things that ought not to be brought on the plane. They are a danger to the plane, they ought not to be brought on to the plane. And there are some things that ought not to be in a church or in an individual, and so God will give you wisdom to know what to do.

So let's say the Lord has given you that wisdom and it's time to go, you need to go, Jesus says, "Go show him his fault just between the two of you. Now, interestingly here, the burden is on the person who is sinned against to take the initiative. The person who sinned against is the one who is to go and show him his fault.

But in Matthew 5, it's exactly the opposite. There, you are the offending party, you're the one who's committed the sin. Remember “If you're offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.” Settle matters quickly, Jesus said.

So there he's actually then working on both ends of the equation, Both ought to go, if there's been some kind of an incident or an issue. Both of them ought to go. Either way, the thing has to be addressed. He really wants it to be addressed. Now, before you go, I think, bringing in some other scriptures, there's some things I think you ought to do. In Matthew 7, Jesus said, “Do not judge or you will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged. And with the measure you use, it'll be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank that's in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there's a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.”

Now, what is Jesus dealing with? He's dealing with sin, he's dealing with a brother going to another brother dealing with the issue of sin. But what is he saying? First look to yourself. Look to yourself. And I would say there are two things, two character traits that a godly person who goes to a sinning brother or sister should display openly and obviously. The two traits are humility and gentleness. Those are the two key traits.

Humility means recognize that you, yourself, are a sinner. I think the plank in the eye could be many things, but I think it definitely relates to our own sin and to our perception of our own sin and to the fact that we really can see much more clearly our own sin than we can ever see anybody else's sin. And that we recognize that the very issue we're going for, we are fully capable of doing that same thing. That's a gospel humility that's worked in you before you ever go.

And secondly, gentleness. If you have something in your eye, and you can't get it out, you do want someone to come and help you with it. But may they not come boldly, may they not come with aggression and toughness: “I only have so much time. Let's get that thing out of there.” You can't do that. The eye is very sensitive, Perhaps the most sensitive part of the surface of the body, very sensitive. And so I would urge that you come with gentleness.

And it's fascinating to me that these same character traits are talked about in Galatians 6:1, “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are a spiritual should restore him gently watching yourselves lest you also be tempted.” There it is, a genuine humility, you're not a hypocrite, and gentleness.

So, that should happen before you ever go; but, when you go, what are you doing? Your brother sins against you. In Matthew 18, what are you doing? Well, it says, “Go and show him his fault,” or “reprove him.” Now, this word has to do, I think, almost like a court case where you are presenting evidence of the issue. You're presenting historical evidence - let me speak more plainly - what happened, the thing that was said, the thing that was done, etcetera. And you're also presenting biblical evidence, this is a sin because etcetera. How you do it, it's your own personality, but these are the things you're going to be discussing. What happened and what the Bible says about it.

You're gonna go reprove him, you're gonna go show him the faults and the goal of that is resolution. If he listens to you, it says you won your brother over. So your goal is to win back the brother or the sister, in Christ to repentance, into good relationship with you. That's the goal.

Now on their part, they ought to be looking at humility big time, at this moment, this is a moment to be humble. If a brother or sister in Christ ever comes to you with this kind of a case, and you thought you were sinless and perfect up to that moment, you will get reintroduced to your base primary sin and that's pride. Quickly, it'll come right away. What you do at that moment shows whether you are wise or a fool; a wise person or a fool.

It really is, it's covered again and again in the Book of Proverbs, Psalms says in 141:5, “Let a righteous man strike me, it is a kindness. Let him rebuke me, it is oil on my head, my head will not refuse it.” Bring it on. I think one of the key differences then between a Christian and a non-Christian is the humility that comes at moments like this, the Christian is actually eager and ready to believe that there's far more sin in them that they can see and that they need help and any help they can get, they're willing to receive it. Maybe that's not their knee-jerk reaction, but they know that that's their home base, they want the sin out of their lives, they want the help.

We have blind spots, and so the fool and the wise man part company here. Proverbs 9:8, says, “Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you; rebuke a wise man and he will love you.” And Proverbs 12:1 says, “Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge but he who hates correction is stupid.” Well, that's blunt isn't it? You should embrace this, you should thank the person. It's oil on your - That was a good thing back in those days - oil on the head. That's like being anointed. It's a good thing. You will not refuse it, takes humility to repent quickly when someone shows you your fault and it is your responsibility to do so. Save the church a lot of trouble please, repent quickly. Repent from as much as you possibly can repent from repent, and do it wholeheartedly, but do it quickly.

C.J. Mahaney's book on humility carries with it this account showing how we have these blind spots, and we need help. Maybe you've read his book, it's a delightful little book, I love it. But this is what he wrote. Just an incident he remembers, “As I sat with my family at a local breakfast establishment, I noticed a finely dressed man at an adjacent table: His Armani suit and stiffly pressed shirt coordinated perfectly with a power tie. His wing-tip shoes sparkled from a recent shine, every hair was in place, including his perfectly groomed mustache. The man sat alone eating a bagel as he prepared for a meeting. And as he reviewed the papers before him, he appeared nervous glancing frequently at his Rolex watch. It was obvious he had an important meeting ahead. The man stood up and I watched as he straightened his tie and prepared to leave. Immediately I noticed a blob of cream cheese attached to his finely groomed mustache. He was about to go into the world, dressed in his finest with a blob of cream cheese on his face. I thought of the business meeting he was about to attend. Who would tell him about the cream cheese? Should I? What if no one did?”

Friends, we all have cream cheese moments. Have you ever had any? You know what I'm talking about? Blind spots. Do you have anyone in your life who'll tell you the truth other than your spouse. Of course he or she will. Part of the ministry, right? Part of the ministry. And it's a good thing, it's a good thing, but do you have anyone else who will tell you the truth? Is this church a truth telling church? Are we characterized by the kind of truth telling that the Lord wants us to have here in Matthew 18. That's the burden on my heart today. Let's be that for each other.

Now, step three, if sadly needed, you take witnesses and try again. Verse 16, “If he will not listen, take one or two others along so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.” Alright, suppose the person doesn't listen. They harden their hearts, they dig in their heels, they're not listening. You're not getting anywhere.

So now you bring somebody along and now already it's getting serious. It was just a private matter between just the two of you. Now, it's becoming more public and the use of witnesses seems a bit ominous. It's almost like the final court case is already getting arranged and there are gonna be witnesses about what was done, what was said, how it was handled. So that any false accusations can be refuted by the testimony of two or three witnesses.

Legally in the Law of Moses no one could be condemned without two or three witnesses, and therefore this step is preparation for the final trial before the church. Christ is directly quoting Deuteronomy 19:15, “One witness is not enough to convict a man accused of any crime or offence he may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.”

Practically, though, these witnesses can bring a different perspective, maybe a different way a more winsome way or a different way of bringing about peace being a peacemaker. And perhaps that can happen as well. Remember, the goal is still the same, and that is repentance of the sinner and full reconciliation of the offended parties so that they can be in good relationship with one another.

Step four, if sadly needed, you tell it to the church. Still, however, trying to win the individual. “If he refuses to listen to them,” says Jesus, “tell it to the church.” This, I believe, is referring to the local assembly of covenant believers. We'll talk more about that next time. But they know who they are, they know who's on the inside. He uses 1 Corinthians 5 language, not the outsiders. You're talking about people on the inside in the community, tell it to them. This is the local church and here we see clearly the authority of the congregation. That's why I am congregational in my Polity. This is probably the prime passage on that, that the final court of appeals is the congregation. It's not the elders, it's no other people, it's the church, the local congregation.

Notice again that the goal is still persuasion. The church is assembled, hearing the case, and seeks to win the sinner over to repentance. We know this because the final step comes only if he will not listen to the church. So even at that final meeting, however stressful and tense, the goal is still, will you repent brother, sister? Will you come back? Now again the final court of appeals, the congregation, the elders, I think have a leadership role in that very much so, but the congregation must make the final decision.

Step five, if even more sadly needed, you treat him as you would have a pagan or a tax collector. Look at verse 17, “If he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.” It's the final step of church discipline, expulsion from the membership of the church. From then on, they're not seen as a member of the church.

And we're gonna cover this more next week, much more clearly in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, Paul says, in verse 4-5, “Shouldn't you have been filled with grief and have put out of your assembly the man who did this?” Verse 4 and 5 of that same chapter, “When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus, and I'm with you in spirit, and the power of the Lord Jesus is present, then hand this man over to Satan,” he said. And then at the end of that passage, “Expel the wicked man from among you.” It's very clear, there's no doubt.

It's a devastating step and listen to what Jesus is saying here, “Treat him as you would a pagan.” Basically the church in church discipline is saying, “We think that you're unconverted. We think that you're unregenerate.” Very serious. And why? Because repentance and faith is characteristic of a believer, this person just won't repent, won't repent, won't repent. And so the church assembled is saying, we think that you're an unbeliever.

This is the most significant thing that could ever happen to a person in this world spiritually. That a local body could be testifying negatively, they don't think that you're a Christian. If that should ever happen to you, and may it never happen to you, but if that should ever happen to you, the issue of your relationship with Jesus should be priority one, until it's resolved. Don't blow it off, don't make light of the discipline of the Lord, deal seriously with it.

Notice two other things, that the medieval practice of burning the heretic is rejected here. Now, we don't really need to go into much detail, we don't do that now. I might add through Baptist influence on the history of our country. We can talk about that another day, but it's true. Alright? Separation of church and state, a Baptist idea. But the idea is we don't kill heretics. This is the last thing we do. We expel them from the congregation. That's it, there's nothing more. And we continue to hope and to pray for their repentance that they might turn back and then they can rejoin, more on that in a moment. But the final act is this issue of church discipline. There's no physical or corporal punishment, or whipping or burnings or any of the stuff they did in the Middle Ages so wrongly.

Again, the Presbyterian model of a higher court of appeals beyond the congregation is not in view here, either. Final act is done by the local church. 2 Corinthians 2:6, it says, “The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient for him.” It implies that it's a vote, a majority vote. And if the majority of the church thinks he ought not to be a church member any longer, he isn't. That's how it works.

And treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector, consider him unregenerate. We're gonna say next week, very plainly, don't associate yourself intimately with him. There are exceptions, of course, if you have a pre-standing biological or marital relationship with him, that's a different issue. We'll talk about that next time, but with such a man do not even drink. 

And yet at the same time, there's a yearning to seek repentance and restoration. Eventually, even the 1 Corinthians 5, sinner it seems repented and came back. More on that next time. And the whole time prayer, prayer and more prayer. Saturating the issue in prayer, more on that in a moment.

Jesus then next talks about the authority of the church to do this. You might say, what right do you have to do this? That right is even questioned legally these days. There are legal issues. Does a church have even the right to do this? Well, let's not worry about the laws of the state. Let's first just deal with the laws of the Bible. Does the church have the right to do this? And the answer is clearly it does.

In verse 18, “I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” This is a Rabbinic expression having to do with leadership and spiritual matters. Binding is to utter a restriction in a spiritual matter. Loosing is to state liberty in a spiritual matter, binding and loosing.

Jesus says this authority is given to the church. But I believe and I think it's right to see this authority as delegated. It's a delegated authority from heaven down. The grammar, the Greek grammar actually implies this. You really could literally read it this way: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be having already been bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be having already been loosed in heaven.”

All we are is the mouthpiece. God does the binding and loosing. He does the forgiving or not forgiving. We're the ones that just declare the state to the individuals. Just like in John 20, Jesus breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone their sins, they're forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” Again, who can forgive sins but God alone? But it's our job based on their statements, based on the scripture, based on what's going on to say your sins are forgiven or your sins are not forgiven. So you have that the congregation has the authority to bind and loose in these matters of sin and discipline. Yes, not just the right, but I would say the responsibility to follow this track.

What about prayer, the effectual prayer of the church? Well this process can be quite difficult, it's not pleasant. There is entrenched sin all the way along the line. And the people who are bringing about the discipline are not perfect people either and they can be open to accusations. The whole thing could be very difficult. I would urge and I think the text urges that there'd be a super saturation here in prayer, lots of prayer.

Only God can change a sinner's heart. God alone has the power of repentance, to give as a gift. 2 Timothy 2, it says, in verse 25-26, “Those who oppose the man of God, he must gently instruct in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape the trap of the devil, who's taken them captive to do his will.” And so the desire is God please grant him or her repentance. Turn their hearts, O Lord please give it to them and there's this prevailing prayer, saturating prayer for ourselves and for the individual.

Now, I think that this passage is about prayer, I just don't think it's only about prayer. When it says “If two of you agree on earth about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven,” what could this be other than prayer? It's definitely talking about prayer.

But then there's that issue of authority for “two or three come together in my name there, am I with them.” So the idea is when the witnesses go, the two or three that are going, Jesus is there authoritatively in their midst. They're really dealing with Jesus there, all the way through. So it's both authority, and also prayer. God is willing eager to hear prayer about this, pray for the sinner that God would turn them back and that grace would triumph.

Now, next week, we're gonna talk about the motives and purposes and some practicalities of church discipline and questions that people frequently have. And our text there will be 1 Corinthians 5. What applications can we take for this?

First of all, from the very beginning of the sermon can I urge you to hunger and thirst for holiness? Our hunger and thirst for righteousness, hunger and thirst for it. It's the happiest state you can possibly have. It characterizes God, you should yearn for it. And not just in your own life but because you love a brother or sister, you yearn for their holiness too.

And secondly I urge you, please think about love differently. Love isn't some sentimental romantic thing that - well, it can be sentimental and romantic, ought to be from time to time, but not like this, concerning this. You need to think about love differently. Is it loving to leave a brother or sister in Christ, in some kind of bondage, to sin. Is that loving? Is it loving for a mother to see a tick embedded in the back of their toddler and make no effort to pull it out? Is that love? “Oh, the process is gonna be painful.” No, that's not love, it's not love friends.

And we had to go through this issue here in this church. I remember it distinctly. And there were open questions about whether it was even love, loving to vote someone off the membership role. “In love we oughta leave them on.” That is not loving friends. For able-bodied people who are just never coming to church to be constantly reassured that that's all right. It isn't all right. And it isn't loving to leave them so deluded. It's not love. We need to think about love differently.

We need to yearn for this kind of thing to happen in this church, the way Christ intended it. The way Christ intended it. That we would be bold and loving, as elders. Pray for the elders that we be bold in loving in leading the church and striving after holiness. Pray for yourselves to embrace your role and responsibility. The elders could only make a recommendation to the church. If you reject this teaching, Matthew 18, 1 Corinthians 5, you'll never vote anyone out of the church, the church will become unholy. It's your job as the congregation to accept this teaching as right and biblical and say yes, we will do this, we want to do this.

Now, pray also as you pray for this that we would be properly balanced. Many churches have nothing to do with this at all, at all, at all, at all. They don't do any of this. More about that next week, but they do nothing about it. Other churches go too far into legalism. They've got that 100 percent metal detector thing and everything becomes an issue of judgmentalism and legalism. And it's sin. And Satan works both of them, Satan's working both of them, really, because he doesn't want the church to do this, he makes this appear repugnant so that they don't do that.

And I think that's actually what did happen 100 years ago. Most churches were doing discipline 100 years ago, Baptist churches anyway, but then it got legalistic. It got extreme and now they don't do it at all, many. So pray for the right balance, sweet balance.

And if you're ever confronted, if somebody comes to you, be humble, welcome it, don't dig in your heels. Accept it, learn from it, listen to it, be genuinely thankful if somebody comes, even if they don't get it all right or you don't think they were particularly gentle. They probably won't look particularly gentle to you at that moment but they might have been trying to be gentle, as best that they know how. Don't worry about their demeanor. Look at what they're saying and say, “Lord is there some truth in it?”

And then finally, if you go, please go for the right reasons, and in the right way. Seek to win your brother over, go for the glory of God, the purity of his church. Go out of love, not out of vindictiveness. Go with deep humility and brokenheartedness and go saturated in prayer.

We come now to a time of celebration of the Lord's Supper, and this is really a good opportunity for us to look at the issue of indwelling sin, to look at the issue of what's going on in my life. The Bible says that we ought to look inward in our own hearts and assess ourselves to see if there's any sin in us, when we come to the table, and resolve to make it right. This is not for sinless people there are no sinless people, it's for sinners.

We believe that this is for those that have testified to saving faith by water baptism, which you saw earlier today. So that if you have come to faith in Christ, and have testified to that by water baptism, as a believer, you're welcome to the Lord's Supper. Please come. And if you have never trusted in Christ, do not take from the Lord's Supper. It's not for you yet. But my prayer is that you will trust in the Lord Jesus, you'll look to the cross of Christ and to his blood shed on the cross as sufficient for your sins and come to faith in Christ, and be able to partake next time. Please, if you would, close this part of the service in prayer.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on John 1:4-5. The main subject of the sermon is that life is valuable because it is first and foremost found in God.

 So we live in historic times, and we live in perilous times, both physically and spiritually. Today is the Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, and in two days, Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States in the Capitol Building, Washington DC. The first African American to be elected as president of United States. Now, I'm gonna come back to our current events later in the message, but I wanna focus our mind right now on the preciousness of the gift of life itself. And as you heard me pray, for me that means focusing on Jesus Christ. For the Scripture says, “in Him was life, and that life was a light of men, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not understood it.” I want to link the gift of life directly to the person of Jesus Christ. I want to speak of biological life as a gift of Christ. I want to speak of eternal life as a gift of Christ. I wanna speak to our current events, the context that we find ourselves in today, on the sanctity of human life, on the issue specifically of abortion, and where we may be headed soon on that crucial topic. And I want to center on the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is our only hope, our great hope, we don't need another hope. It is a sustaining hope, and it brings me great joy, even as I stand here and preach today.

So, I want to begin with the simple assertion, “in him was life,” and by that I mean in him here at the beginning, I mean biological life. Now, let's set this statement in its context, in John, chapter 1. I believe that the purpose of the entire gospel of John is to proclaim in clearest terms the deity of Jesus Christ. And that we as sinners, having received that testimony, and believing in it we might have eternal life, that's why John wrote the gospel of John. And so right from the very beginning, we have a proclamation of the deity of Jesus Christ. Look at John 1:1, very familiar. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That's a very plain statement. Now later in verse 14, we have the statement, “the Word became flesh.” That means He became human and made his dwelling among us. And then a couple of verses after that, in verse 17, lest there should be any doubt at all as to who John is talking about, he says, “The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

So you put all that together right from the very beginning, we have the statement at the beginning of John's gospel, Jesus Christ is God. And in verse 14, Jesus Christ is human, took on a human body. And very clearly in these first 18 verses of John's gospel, really from the very first verse, we have the deity of Christ established. The climax of the Gospel, as I already alluded to, the great resurrection appearance of Jesus in John 20 to his 12 apostles. Thomas wasn't there the first time, and so a week later, Jesus appears again for Thomas’ benefit. Now, in the intervening time, Thomas had made this pronouncement in John 20:25, “Unless I see the nail marks in His hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hands in the side, I will not believe it.” Well, a week later, Jesus proved His resurrection directly to doubting Thomas for our benefit.

Thomas made, I think this statement for our benefit, because we don't get to do that, do we? We don’t get to put our finger in the nail marks, our hand in the side, we don't get to see him or touch his clothes or do any of that. And so for our benefit, I believe, Thomas stated his doubts. And so He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, see my hands, reach out your hand, put it in my side, stop doubting and believe.” Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!” Can I tell you that abortion really isn't the ultimate point of my ministry? It’s not really the ultimate point of my sermon, but rather that you might be able to fall before Jesus by faith and say to him, “my Lord and my God!” That you could make Thomas's confession from the heart, and that you would know the eternal joy that comes from doing that, that's the purpose of each of my sermons, really the purpose of my whole ministry. 

So yes, I think we need to talk about abortion and sanctity of human life, it's right for us to do so, but that's not the center, is it? You can reject abortion and still be lost. But rather that you can make Thomas's confession, then Jesus told him, and through him and through John, really all of us. “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed [that means happy] blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Is there anybody like that here today? Those that have not seen and yet have believed? Well blessed are you, happy are you to not see Jesus, and yet you believe that he is God, that he died for you and that he's raised from the dead and sits right now at the right hand of Almighty God and is interceding for you and some day you're gonna see him. “Oh, blessed are you”. That's the pronouncement. But then he declares why he wrote the Gospel. John 20:31, “Jesus said, ‘These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have,” Have what? Well, “have life in his name.” And so the point of the ministry, the point of the writing of the gospel, the point of what Jesus did is that we might have life. It's all for life, friends. So we have to go back to John 1, and look at Christ and creation. John reveals that Christ, not only is God, but the creative instrument — it's some mysterious way that I do not understand — but the creative instrument by which God made everything that exists. Everything in all creation was made through Christ. 

Now, John makes that very clear in verse 3, that nothing in creation exists apart from Jesus Christ’s direct involvement, and he stresses it really by repetition. Look at verse 3, “Through Him all things were made, and without him nothing was made that has been made.” We were singing earlier that beautiful hymn, This is My Father's World, that happens to be Daphne’s favorite hymn. So we sing it, each of us gets a chance, in family devotions, to choose a hymn, and I think she chose that one 27 consecutive times, something like that. So we know it very well. She knows it well, and so we were singing, This is My Father's World. What a sweet, sweet hymn that is. But we, as Christians, have permission from the Scripture to say, this is my Savior’s world too. This is Jesus's world, for God made it through him. I don't know what that preposition means through, but I just accept it that through Jesus everything exists. Colossians 11:6 uses the preposition by. It says, for “by Him all things were created, things in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, where the thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things are created by Him and for Him.” 

And speaking of Christ's ongoing work in creation, Colossians 1:17 says, “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” So Jesus is constantly exerting sovereign power to hold everything in the universe together. But then John gets specific about the issue of life, not just physical creation. We sang about this in This is My Father's World, “the rocks and the trees, the skies and the seas,” those are the physical creation, but he focuses then on the issue of life. “In Him was life, and that life was the light of men.” Now, there's a vast difference between non-living and living things in God's universe. Life itself is a mystery, very difficult to define, but from the beginning of his gospel, the apostle John makes it clear that God has linked Jesus in life, in effect saying, there wouldn't be any life, if there weren't for Jesus. Now here, we're speaking simply of physical, biological life at first, though I think it's pretty plain across John's gospel, he means far more than that, and we'll get to that in a moment. But he is at least speaking of biological life, that Jesus is the original creator and the constant sustainer of it.

 So what constitutes life? Well, I told you it's difficult to define. I went to biological textbooks, I went to websites, nobody could really give a good kind of suitable definition of life. Instead, they just tend to describe living things and how they're different from non-living. For example, living things are made up of cells; living things adapt to their environment so as to promote their own survival; living things can reproduce organisms of the same type. Is this satisfying to you? Reading from a biological textbook? Oh, Pastor, give us the Scripture, I'll get back to the Scripture in a moment, all right? But these are the descriptions biologically of life.

Living things are capable of growth and development at some point over their lifespan. Living organisms obtain energy from the environment and use it in unique ways, so plants do it through photosynthesis, hence my green tie today, do you like it? Okay, the picture of life. All right. And so they are able mystically, in some way, to turn light into food for them, and then of course, animals by eating. So that's how they describe life, it's really hard to do. But Genesis 1 speaks of God creating all living things in their various places, each of them assigned a certain place, plants of various kinds, sea creatures of various kinds, birds, land animals, insects, beasts of the field, all kinds of things, a wide array of living things. And God created all of them the Scripture says, by the word of his power. God said, “Let there be” and there was. And John 1:3 tells us, it's by the word Jesus Christ that all of this came about. And in him was life. So therefore, Jesus creates and upholds every biological form of life, every species of plant life on Earth was created by Christ, every blade of grass waving in a tundra out there in Siberia, Jesus created it and sustains it. Every mass of plankton floating in the North Atlantic Sea, Jesus created it, sustains it. Wild flowers, cultivated plants, crops all of this created by Jesus, for he is the author of life. So also every species of fish, from those brightly colored tropical fish that school in the Caribbean, to a great sperm whale, 67 feet long, swim in pods off the continental shelf, Jesus created all things. So also every mammal, small and great, every insect, solitary or swarming. Jesus created all of these things and sustains every one of them. “In him was life.” 

But of course, the Scripture focuses especially on human life, and hence we have this idea of the sanctity or sacredness of human life. It’s as though there's somewhat of a pause in Genesis 1. “Then God said, let us make man in our image, in our likeness.” And so there's a set-apartness to human life. And again, Christ is the creator of it. Psalm 139:13, “You created my in most being, you knit me together in my mother's womb.” And so, as we put John 1 together with Psalm 139, it's Jesus who's actively knitting the babies together in their mother's womb. Jesus is all over that process. A magnificent thing, it is, it's his handiwork. The marvelous steps of development, or a picture of Christ's compassion and wisdom and crafting and creating every human being after his own image and likeness.

And so there are steps. Eighteen days after conception, the baby's heart starts beating. Most mothers don't even know that they're pregnant at that early stage. Twenty-one days, this little baby pumps its own blood through a separate closed circulatory system with its own blood type. Twenty-eight days, the eye and the ear, and the respiratory systems began to form. By 42 days, brain waves are recorded, the skeleton is complete, the reflexes are present. At seven weeks you can have those magnificent photos of the baby sucking his or her thumb. I have one on my... the door of my office, been there for years. At eight weeks, all bodily systems are present. Nine weeks the baby squints, swallows, moves the tongue, makes a fist. At 11 weeks, there are spontaneous breathing movements, the baby has fingernails, all bodily systems are working. By 23 weeks, there's a 15% chance of viability apart from the womb. At 24 weeks, that number goes up to 56%. Babies that survive premature birth at 25 weeks, the number goes up to 79%, and you know those numbers are changing all the time, just by even research done by physicians here in this city. We've even seen some amazing things in our congregation, haven't we, concerning that?

How anyone, any politician, anybody can say, “I have no idea when human life begins, that's above my pay grade. I have no idea.” They suppress the truth in unrighteousness, friends. Is it not clear from Scripture and from biology that life begins at conception? Listen to the statement by Paul Rockwell, who is an anesthesiologist. He wrote this 11 years ago, “While giving an anesthetic for a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, at eight weeks gestation, I was handed what I believe was the smallest living human ever seen. The embryonic sac was intact and transparent within the sack was a tiny human male swimming extremely vigorously in the amniotic fluid while attached to the wall by the umbilical cord. This tiny human was perfectly developed with long tapering fingers, feet and toes. It was almost transparent as regards the skin and the delicate arteries and veins were prominent to the ends of its fingers.” Baby looks like a human, has the genetic make-up of a human, has all the organs of a human in the proper place, all the bodily functions present by 12 weeks on. How can anyone say, rightly, it's beyond my pay grade to determine when life begins?

My point from John 1:4 is that the development of this baby is done by Jesus Christ, your Savior and mine. Secondly, I wanna say, in Christ is eternal life. Physical life, friends, is not enough. Clearly, John intends to bring his physically alive heirs to a higher level of life through faith in Jesus. This is a spiritual life. This is eternal life, that's what he has in mind. That they would know God. As it says in John 17:3, “This is eternal life, that they may know God, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Jesus prayed that. Apart from Christ in our natural state, biologically alive, we are spiritually dead. The Bible reveals this in Ephesians 2, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature, objects of wrath.”

 That's who we were. We were the living dead, biologically alive, but spiritually dead. I tell you, you spend much of your life surrounded by the living dead, and the issue goes far deeper than abortion. It has to do with their relationship with Almighty God. They don't know him, they don't love him. They don't live for his glory, they don't thank him for his blessings, they're not aware of him. If they have any thoughts about God, their idolatrous and wrong thoughts, handed them by some satanic system. They do not know him, and God says that they're dead while they live. And it was because of that that Jesus came, it's because of that that John wrote his gospel, that we should no longer be dead but now alive through faith in Jesus Christ. And so John says, “In Him was life and that life was the light of men.” This radiant shining life of Jesus Christ, the word ‘life’ appears in John's gospel fifty times, actually over fifty times, usually with the prefix eternal. Eternal life is in view, and that speaks of the duration of the life, that it will have no end, will go on forever and ever. There'll be no end to the life that Christ gives, well beyond the ending of our physical lives, beyond our death, that we would live forever in the presence of God and have a relationship with him. 

But Jesus also uses other analogies that speak of the nourishing and the sustaining of life. Maybe one of those is hinted at just here in verse 4, where it says “that life was the light of men,” and you know without light, the plants can't live and without the plants and every animal dies, and so light is essential to life. And so Jesus is the source of life for everybody. But then he says to the Samaritan woman, he likens himself to a spring of water welling up to eternal life, that we drink from it and we are satisfied. He speaks later of Jesus being the bread of Heaven, come down so that a man may eat and not die. So Jesus is the living water, Jesus is the bread of life. He says in John 10:9, you heard Eric earlier, “I am the door of the sheep, and through me, they can come in and go out and find pasture.” In the very next verse, he says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill, end life and destroy, I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.” Jesus came to give us abundant life. 

And the ultimate definition of that is certainly life with God, and by repentance and faith friends, simple faith in Jesus Christ, his death on the cross, his blood shed for you. You can have that life. That's not complicated. You don't have to have an advanced degree in theology, you don't have to understand all things, you just have to know that you're a sinner and that Jesus's blood is enough for you. And looking to him, find in him what Thomas said, “My Lord and my God”, and that he died for you. Just ask him to be your savior and he will its really that simple. So that's the Gospel, that's the life. 

What about our present times? Well, as I mentioned it, Barack Obama is going to be inaugurated as the first African-American President of the United States, 44th President. And I must tell you in this, I greatly rejoice in one aspect that racism has been so thoroughly kicked in the teeth, frankly, I rejoice in that. I look on it as a great wickedness and a great evil. Not everyone who's against racism understands the origins of the concept that all men are created equal. I find it in the Bible, I find it in the creation account, I find it in the redemption of Jesus Christ, where the ground is level at the cross. And I find it in the promise that in Revelation 7:9, we're gonna be surrounded by people from every tribe and language and people and nation, we're gonna delight in the same Savior then. And that's a delight to me. So I'm glad that... At least to some degree, I would not say that racism is gone from our country, but that we've been able to progress to that point is a good thing for me. So I celebrate that.

I do not, however, celebrate President-elect Barack Obama's views on abortion, and I reluctantly want to tell you what they are, I actually had somebody this week connected with our church, send me an incredible paean of praise about Barack Obama and just how glad he is, writing as a Caucasian, as a white man that an African-American has become president, and he actually rearranged the words of our national anthem in a very artful way, I read it to the staff, we were quite astonished, but one thing I didn't know is if he happened to know Barack Obama's views on abortion. So I sent them to him and he was shocked. Had never heard them. So today, you'll hear them, not because I'm trying to affect an election. I'm not, the elections over. I just want you to know where we may be heading. 

This information comes from Robert P. George, who's a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University. He just went over Obama's voting records. So just look up Robert P. George, Princeton University, you'll get the whole article, but he basically takes us on a descent, like Dante's Inferno, down lower and lower and lower into how bad the views really are. He says that he's the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever to seek the office of president of the United States, or to hold the office of Senator. I think he's right. For starters, of course, he supports legislation that would repeal the Hyde Amendment, which protects taxpayers from paying for needless abortions that are not necessary to save say the life of the mother and not the result of rape or incest. That's what the Hyde Amendment says. So that would be repealed. So we'd be forced to pay for those, that's just the start though, he has promised... He said this at a Planned Parenthood rally, “The first thing I’d do as President, is to sign the Freedom of Choice Act.” Now, this proposed legislation would create a federally guaranteed fundamental right of abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, including a right to abort a fully developed child in the final days for undefined health reasons. In essence, the FOCA would abolish virtually every existing state and federal limitation on abortion, including parental consent to notification laws for minors, state and federal funding, restrictions on abortion, conscience protections for pro-life citizens who are working in the healthcare industry. They will be forced to participate or lose their jobs. Freedom of Choice Act, I don't see choice there, do you? The pro-abortion National Organization of Women (N.O.W.) has proclaimed, with approval, that FOCA would sweep away hundreds of anti-abortion laws and policies. Now, he said, it's the first thing he'd do, of course, he's skipping the fact that it has to be passed by Congress first, the law has to get to his desk. Oh friends, may it never get to his desk!

"Let's pray that." Exhort later. We will. Should we pray right now? Well, let's pray right now. Father, I pray that the Freedom of Choice Act would never get to Barack Obama's desk, because he will sign it and the courts will probably uphold it, and so we pray it wouldn't even reach, in Jesus's name, I pray, amen. 

But it gets worse. Obama, unlike even, many pro-abortion legislators, opposed the ban on partial birth abortions when he served in the Illinois legislature and condemned the Supreme Court decision that upheld legislation banning this heinous practice, which I will not describe to you, but it's nothing short of infanticide. He opposed it. He said he didn't want to condemn a young woman to the punishment of a baby. But it gets worse, Obama, despite the urging of pro-life members of his own party has not endorsed or supported the Pregnant Women Support Act, which is the signature bill of Democrats for life meant to reduce abortions by providing assistance for women facing crisis pregnancies. This legislation would not make a single abortion illegal, it would simply make it easier for pregnant women to make the choice not to abort their babies. Here is a concrete test in whether Obama is pro-choice or pro-abortion, and he flunked the test. Let's get rid of the language of pro-choice, that's not what it is, it's pro-abortion. 

But it gets worse still, in an act of breathtaking injustice as an Illinois state senator Obama opposed, listen to this, legislation to protect children who are born alive, either as a result of an abortionist’s unsuccessful attempt to kill them in the womb or by the deliberate delivery of the baby prior to viability, the legislation would not ban any abortions. Instead, it included a specific provision ensuring it did not affect existing abortion laws. Everybody supported that one. Edward Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, all of them. It was unanimous. You know why? Because these are viable babies outside the womb, living on their own now, they're human. What's left to say? He opposed that. I can't understand that. I went to a website and there were 10 reasons that he gave or that someone gave defending it, and all of them inadequate. There is no defense, friends. This is a viable human being breathing air outside separate from his mother's womb, and it would make it illegal to give it assistance because it was intended to be aborted. It goes even worse: concerning human embryos for stem cell research, in effect making it illegal to develop alternate sources of stem cells; they must come from aborted babies. 

And we as a nation elected him president. This is where we're heading. I see dark times ahead. The church of Jesus Christ in America has had a comfortable relationship with the surrounding culture and with the government for 200 plus years. That may be ending. Most of our brothers and sisters in the world, throughout the world, do not have that kind of comfortable relationship with their surrounding culture. For the most part, they know that they're aliens and strangers on earth, and they are reminded about that every single day. We've had a comfortable relationship, God has used it for His glory, but it may be decaying, a decaying orbit, we may be seeing it end. Fight the Freedom of Choice Act. It's wickedness, pure wickedness. It will make it very difficult for any pro-life grass movements to do anything. Do you understand that?

Let's remind ourselves of the Scripture, “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not understood it.” Okay, so who wins? Light or darkness? Well, I tell you, the light wins, the light sovereignly wins, but we ought to know the darkness that's surrounding us, we ought to be aware of it, we ought to be courageous in the midst of it, we ought to shine the light... No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bowl. He puts it on a stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. The people in this house, the world, need the light of Jesus Christ, amen? And they need us to speak up and they need us to fight with the weapons that we have, not the weapons of violence, or the weapons of blockade, or the weapons of physicality, which changes nothing.

But with these weapons, 2 Corinthians 10, “Though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of this world. No, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of Christ, and we're ready to take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.” That's a battle of the minds. It's a battle of arguments, not arguing the way we understand, but I mean, filled with the Spirit of God, characterized by the fruit of the Spirit, you stand your ground and tell the truth, and you show how sweet it is to know Jesus, how sweet it is. And we make abortion obsolete. Can I tell you this? That even if he just changes his mind, that's not going to be enough, and I think we ought to pray for it. There are precedents, friends. Well, let's take Saul of Tarsus, for example, woke up that morning, breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples ended up that day, one of them. How do you explain that? The sovereign grace of almighty God.

Or take Nebuchadnezzar as an example, filled with arrogance and filled with violence, a man who could sweep away all of his closest counselors with one command, 'cause they couldn't tell him what his dream was, kill them all. He had a friend, his name was Daniel, he confronted Nebuchadnezzar, told him the truth. Renounce your sins by doing what is right and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed, it may be that then your prosperity will continue. Oh, that someone would tell Barack Obama, the truth like that. Renounce your sins and your wickedness, turn away from this. It may be that then your success will continue.  For in him Barack Obama and all of us live and move and have our being in his hand, we live as long as he wills. It may be that then your prosperity will continue.

So what happened to Nebuchadnezzar? God changed his mind. Now, it didn't happen one day, like Saul of Tarsus. It happened over seven years of being an animal and eating grass, but at the end of the seven years, he was greatly humbled and gave one of the greatest testimonies to the sovereignty and the kingship of Almighty God you'll find anywhere in the Bible, and I have good hopes that we'll see him in heaven. And so we are commanded by the Apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 2 this, “I urge then, first of all, that requests, prayers and intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone, for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good and pleases God, our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.”

So we should pray for kings, despite the fact that we might think the odds are against it. It seems surprising that we should pray for kings and those in authority, the ones that are least likely, it seems to turn and repent. But he says, do it. First of all, that we might live peaceable and godly lives, we ourselves as Christians, but also that we can stamp out heinous and corrupt and wicked laws like these abortion laws. We can live upright lives in this present world, but pray secondly, for their sake, that they won't have to spend eternity in hell, that they can know the forgiveness and love that God gives, pray for them, because he desires all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. So pray for Barack Obama. Could it be that he might end up the number one greatest pro-life advocate this country has ever seen? Is that possible? Could God's grace actually do that? I tell you, it is possible. As I said, there are precedents, so pray for that, but you know even there, that's not enough. Our nation still elected him by the millions. So there's still a lot of work to be done. America as a whole has embraced pro-abortion ideology. The genie's out of the bottle, as some people speak. It’s going to be hard to get it back, and so you have to win it one mind at a time, one person at a time, one crisis pregnancy at a time.

So let me give you some applications. First of all, be repentant, be repentant. Don’t excuse yourself, don't say, “You know I'm against abortion, so I have nothing to confess in this area,” but just be repentant. Whenever I preach on the sin of abortion, I'm mindful that there may well be some here who have sinned specifically in this area. I never forget it, friends. I think much about people like that, and I want to speak to their hearts. I wanna speak tenderly to you about God's grace and mercy of forgiveness, but you have to repent. If you don't repent, rather than just be repentant, I would say be warned because you'll make God, your enemy, but I just speak to you as though there is was some perhaps melting in your heart and that you're willing to repent. Perhaps you're young man who sinfully had relations with a young woman and she became pregnant and you actually advised her to get an abortion. Perhaps you're a father whose daughter became pregnant, and you felt more about your own shame and embarrassment and inconvenience and expense than you did about what was right and urged her to get an abortion. Perhaps you're a woman who chose some time ago to get an abortion, and now you have to live with the memories and the pain of that the rest of your life. Perhaps you're a public official, a judge, an elected official, a legislator who used your position to establish and entrench the sin of abortion even more deeply in our nation. Perhaps you're a medical professional who aided in the taking of innocent life in abortion. Or perhaps you're just like me, been negligent of the opportunities God's given you to fight abortion sufficiently. God calls us to repent.

Secondly, be assured. Be assured that the grace of God flowing through the cross of Jesus Christ is sufficient for your sin and mine, and an infinitude of sins beyond. The grace of Jesus Christ is an ocean, and where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. And the tenderness of God in receiving broken-hearted repentant sinners is displayed throughout Scripture. “All day long I've held out My hands to a disobedient, obstinate people,” he says in Romans where there's the image of the father of the prodigal son, happily welcoming the son back, be assured.

 Thirdly, be prayerful. We've already stopped and prayed, and I challenge you to pray, not just today, but every day for President Obama that God would grant him repentance leading him to a knowledge of the truth. Pray not only for him, but for all the pro-abortion legislators that might join with him on the Hill for the Freedom of Choice Act or for other heinous things that God would grant each one of them repentance and show them the truth. Pray for the hearts of America, pray for people's hearts to be changed, pray for abortion to become obsolete in this land, not just illegal, but actually obsolete. You say, Well, that's perfection. Well we pray toward perfection things all the time, don't we? Pray for it.

Fourthly, be encouraged. I was reading World magazine yesterday. There are many, many reasons for great encouragement; one is that the number of abortions has been consistently dropping over the years. It just keeps going down and down and down, not every single year, and there's still definitely way too many, in the 800,000 range, but down. Even the Democratic Party, after values voters, re-elected George Bush in the last presidential election, started to reassess their, at least their verbiage on abortion, and they started actually funding at lower levels pro-life Democrats, which would have been really party heresy some time ago. Pray that that would continue. Could come a day that the Democratic Party would be the number one pro-life advocacy party that there is. God can do great things. Pray for that. I'm not rooting for this party or that, I'm just saying, just pray.

One World magazine article, spoke of a victory like in Texas, the panhandle of Texas getting all 19 Planned Parenthood clinics shut down after a 12-year battle. They took them on one at a time and hit them in the pocketbook, in the purse, at their fundraising efforts. They handed out leaflets, they went to their neighbors, they talked to them about Planned Parenthood, they talked to them about abortion and Planned Parenthoods in Amarillo, Texas. Their funding went from $3.1 million in 1997 or 1998 to $230,000 last year, and then they shut their doors. They just couldn't keep going, where they severed their ties with Planned Parenthood. Twelve-year battle won, by the way, Freedom of Choice Act would reverse all that, and it'd be against the law to do that kind of work. You see what I'm saying? So friends, that's a battle we must not lose. It must never get to his desk. So be encouraged secondly, or fourthly, I guess. 

Fifthly. Be vigilant and educated. Learn these pro-life things, read books like Randy Alcorn's book on pro-life answers to pro-abortion physicians or questions, get facile and easily conversant in dealing with various things that people tend to say. Train yourself. Teach yourself, educate yourself. 

Sixthly, be active. Pregnancy Support Services in Durham, you have a bulletin insert, Life Care Pregnancy Center in Raleigh, among the Crisis Pregnancy Centers that counsel women against abortion. I have some men in a men's Bible study I teach on Thursdays that are actively involved in that and give counseling as they can, and they have incredible witnessing opportunities to non-Christians all the time. It's a great ministry.  Seventh, be generous. Give financially to pro-life causes, give to these causes. Pregnancy support services. Be generous.

Eighth, be courageous. Speak up. Talk about it. Bring it up. Blessed are you when people persecute you because of righteousness, for yours is the Kingdom of Heaven. I'm not saying go out and... go get some persecution. That should not be your goal. Go speak the truth in love. Tell them the truth.

Ninth, be proactive. Are you the parent of some growing children? Oh, that they would not add to this problem. Tell them the truth, not only of the sanctity of human life, show them pictures of developing babies when they're ready for it. Show it to them, teach them the humanity of the pre-born, but also the sanctity of marriage and of marital relations. Teach them the truth and teach them many times so that they are not part of the problem when the time comes. 

And then finally, be hopeful. Be hopeful. We're gonna win, friends. Jesus is gonna win. We're gonna live in a world where there will be no abortion. Let's go beyond that. We're gonna live in a world where there will be no sin! We are going to go into a place that is called the New Heavens, the New Earth, the home of righteousness. So any effort we make will be ultimately victorious, so be hopeful. And close with me now in prayer.

I still remember my favorite car ever. It was a 1970 Ford Custom 500, bought it for $500 from a retired marine. I'll never forget it. I was in need of a car. I'd just come off my first mission trip in Kenya, I needed a car and the Lord knew what I needed and there it was sitting on somebody's front lawn with a piece of cardboard with spray paint on it that said, “For Sale.”

And so I stopped off and there was this straight shooting Marine, and I asked him about the car, he's in the middle of eating dinner, but he didn't mind. I hoped he didn't mind, he had a sign out, so I figured he'd wanna sell the car. At any rate I said, “It looks kinda old, how many miles does it have on?” He said, “142,502.6.” I said, “Alright,” I said, “Why are you selling it?” He pointed to a brand new car in his driveway and he said, “2.9% financing.” So I said, “Does it still run?” He said, “I drove it to work yesterday.” So I said, “Alright, this guy seems pretty honest.” And one thing led to another. I asked how much he wanted to sell it for. He said, “What do you wanna give me?” And so I guessed at $500, and he took it and I drove that car for eight years for $500, I'll never forget it.

But toward the end of its life it started to develop some problems. And one of the problems it developed was a leak in the power steering train, okay? And what that did was effectively give me intermittent power steering. That'll kill you. I don't mean that facetiously, I mean, it'll kill you, it'll drive into a Jersey barrier or into a tree or into something, who knows. You're riding down the road, everything's fine, and suddenly the car jerks left or jerks right, that's not good. Brothers, these things should not be. So I took it to a friend and he said, “It's gonna be too much money, you probably just need to give up on the power steering.” And so, we just drained it and from then on it was just manual power steering. I've never driven anything so stiff in all of my life, very tough to steer.

But that image of intermittent power steering has kind of stuck with me as a metaphor for how I live my Christian life. Can it really be that we are that intermittent in our love for Jesus Christ? That we're really kind of all over the road when it comes to serving Jesus? Is it really that bad, friends? It's worse than that. As the hymn writer put it, “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, oh, take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.” Can you not say amen to that about your own heart?

Doesn't Romans 7 testify to the wandering nature of your heart? Even though there's been a radical transformation between you and sin, and you're a new creation in Christ yet still, you roam after those things the Lord has forbidden. And isn't it good news that Jesus comes looking for you when you do? That the Good Shepherd leaves those 99 on the hills and goes and looks for the one that wanders off. How much do we need that?

I think about what I consider probably the worst night of the apostle Peter's life, it's the night that Jesus was arrested. You remember how that night began? With an argument about which of them was the greatest, and Jesus had the level with them, and especially with Peter, when he said “Simon, Simon, Satan has demanded to sift you.” That's plural, not just you, Peter, but all of you. “Simon, Simon, Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat. But I've prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail and after you turn back and strengthen your brothers.” “What is this turn back? Lord, I'm ready to go and die with you. Even if all of them fall away, I never will.” “Simon, I tell you the truth, before this very night ends, before the rooster crows, you will deny three times that you even know me.” Peter denied it with an oath, promised that he never would deny Jesus.

Well, you know what happened, how the Lord in Matthew 18, by demanding that his arrestors should identify the one that they had come to arrest. “Who are you looking for?” “Jesus of Nazareth.” And he says, “I am,” and remember, they all fell on the ground, and then Jesus asked a second time, “Who are you looking for?” “Jesus of Nazareth.” And he said, “I told you that I am. If you're looking for me, then let these go.” Jesus said this, so that the word he had spoken will be fulfilled: “I have not lost any of all that you have given me.” He was crafting a net of protection, so they could all run away. They weren't ready. And so he was filtering their tests, he was filtering their temptations, so that they wouldn't have to face martyrdom that night. They weren't ready for it.

But Peter, he disagreed, you know, thought he was ready. So he follows Jesus at a distance. You remember what happened. Tries to get in the high priest's house and servant girl at the door catches him. He's ready for the big burly guard, but he's not ready for the servant girl at the door. And so Satan catches him unaware, it's a little question. “You're not one of his disciples, are you?” “No, no, I'm not. I'm not one of his disciples.” There's the first one. Now he's caught in a lie, and it gets worse and worse, pretty soon some people are around him, challenging him, questioning him, he's back-peddling, afraid for his life, he's not ready. Jesus said he wasn't ready. It's why he crafted a safety net for him so he wouldn't have to face this. Oh, you know the story, pretty soon he denies vigorously, not just a little, he calls down curses on himself if he knows Jesus. That's how bad it got. Do you think you're ready for Satan? Just you and Satan, duking it out, just the two of you? You are not ready. It's too powerful, the temptation. And so there he was.

After the third denial, suddenly the rooster crows, you remember what happened, and Peter recalls Jesus' words. And it just so happened at that moment, in the Luke account, Jesus was going by as he went from one phase of his trial to the next, and he had the opportunity to look right at Peter, look right at him. He didn't have to say a word; Peter remembered. “This very night you will disown me three times.” And Peter went away, he needed to do that, and he wept bitterly, and he needed to do that.

And after the resurrection, you know, in John 21, Jesus restores him, asking three times, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me more than these?” “You know that I love you.” He hurt him in order to heal him. So he works on him. What a picture of our Good Shepherd. Do you not see it, isn't it beautiful? And what a picture of us, our intermittent power steering. “Oh Lord, I love you, I'll always be with you. There's nothing they can do to me,” and that very night disowning him, that's who we are friends. And if you don't know that, you don't know yourself. And part of the gospel is to enable you to know yourself.

Now you know the context here in Matthew 18. The disciples were arguing about which of them was the greatest, a constant theme, bickering about it. Jesus has a little child come and stand in their midst as an object lesson, and he tells them that whoever humbles himself like this little child will be great in the Kingdom of Heaven, gives them that object lesson. And he then turns to the issue of sin. “If anyone causes one of these little ones who believes in me to sin, it would be better to have a large millstone hung around his neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea.” And then he gives them and all of us a warning about the deadly power of sin. “Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble, such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come! If your right hand causes you to sin, then cut it off and throw it away. It's better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.”

You know what, our ultimate assurance in this dreadful battle that we have against sin is this, it's right here in the middle of the chapter that we have a Good Shepherd, who is going to leave the 99 on the hills and go to look for the one that wanders off. Isn't that sweet news to your soul today? It is to mine. I wander off, I'm prone to wander, it's good news to me that Jesus is gonna come get me, and bring me back. That's what we have here.

Now, there are many pictures in the Old Testament of God as Good Shepherd. First one to use it was Jacob when he was placing his patriarchal hands on Joseph's children Manasseh and Ephraim. Remember that time in Genesis 45, it says “Jacob blessed Joseph and said, ‘May the God before whom my father's Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this very day, bless these boys, Manasseh and Ephraim.’” Oh, how sweet is that, he knew what it meant to be a shepherd, he was one. And so he introduces that image, God is my shepherd.

Of course the most famous one is David who himself had been a shepherd before he was a king. Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.” That's our Good Shepherd.

Or then Psalm 95:6-7, “Come let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, we are the flock of his hand.” For me, one of the most appealing is Isaiah 40:11, which gives a picture of this omnipotent God, you know, the one that sits enthroned above the circle of the Earth, and its people are like grasshoppers, this mighty powerful God. But it says of him in Isaiah 40:11, “He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart, he gently leads those that have young.” How sweet is that?

Perhaps the most extended treatment in the Old Testament of this theme is found in Ezekiel 34, that's what it says there, verse 11-16, “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search for my sheep, and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries and I'll bring them into their own land and I'll pasture them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines and in all the settlements in the land and I will tend them in a good pasture. The mountain heights of Israel will be their grazing land, there they will lie down in good grazing land and there they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will tend my sheep, and have them lie down, declares the sovereign Lord. I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong, I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice.”

Look at all the things that God says there that he will do for his flock. He says, I will search for them, I will look after them, I will rescue them, I will gather them, I will bring them into their own land, I will pasture them and tend them, I will search for the lost, I will bring back the strays, I will bind up the injured, I will strengthen the weak, I will destroy the sleek and the strong, by that he means the self-reliant who don't need God. I will shepherd with justice, he says. I will judge, I will make a covenant of peace, I will bless them and I will provide for them. That's our Good Shepherd, friends.

And so, we have the picture of God caring for us, probably the best example of how he cares for us as our Good Shepherd, and how much he knows about our proneness to wander, we find in that great suffering servant passage in Isaiah 53 where it says, “All we like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Well, on whom did the Lord lay our wandering and our straying? Well, he laid it on our Good Shepherd.

John 10, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. My sheep go in and come out, and they find pasture. I'm not like the hired hand who cares nothing for the sheep, and they're scattered. I'm not like that. I lay down my life for the sheep.” And so Jesus takes our sins on himself, our Good Shepherd laid down his life for us. He shed his blood.

Maybe you've never known his love, maybe you've never seen yourself to be what you really are, a sheep constantly wandering away from God through rebellion and through sin. You've never come to faith in Christ. Can I just speak to you directly and plainly what it will take for you to go to heaven? You need to recognize your straying and your wandering from God. And you need to hate it and turn away from it and you need to come to Christ and trust in him, the Good Shepherd who shed his blood on the cross for sinners like you and me. You need to trust in him and find salvation in his warm embrace.

But what I read in Matthew 18:12-14 is that my Good Shepherd is not done going after me. Have you noticed that? He goes and looks for the one that wanders off. He's talking about his little ones being led into sin, and he goes and, as the Good Shepherd, he goes and gets them. Look at Verse 12. “What do you think?” he says, “If a man owns 100 sheep and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the 99 on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off?”

He is promising here, he's going to protect every single solitary sheep of his, all of them. He's not playing a numbers game, and 99% is pretty good. Actually, it's an A-plus. Let's be honest. We're not perfectionistic about these things. Well, we're perfectionistic about some things. I've said this before, I'll say it again. Suppose you're on an airplane and the pilot says, “I want you to know, I've safely landed 99% of my flights in the last year.” 99%. How many crashes was that? Is that two, three, how many flights were there? I would be worried. Or the youth pastor that says, “I brought 99% of the kids back safely from the ski trip, only one of them perished.” And you're the parents finding out about his grade report, and you're thinking, “Well, it's not bad, 99%.” No, you're not wondering that, you wanna know whose child died? Is it yours?

Friends there are some things far more important than all of that, far more important than plane crashes and children not making it safely back from a ski trip, we're talking about eternity in heaven or hell. The Good Shepherd knows his sheep and he's gonna get them all safely through this world. And there is no power in heaven or earth or under the earth that can deter him in that purpose. And that's what he's saying here, that we constantly wander off and he constantly brings us back. He is our Good Shepherd, he's speaking here of the value and worth of every single sheep in his flock. They're all of infinite worth and value to him, and he'll do what it takes to get them safely through.

Now, that brings us the question, what kind of danger are we in? What is the danger of the flock? Well, there is a great external danger and there is great internal danger. External to us, we start with Satan who is portrayed as a ravenous lion, or like a wolf.

In 1 Peter 5:8, “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.” Like a 600-pound beast that can rip you limb from limb. Now you may have very high thoughts of yourself, you may think of yourself as a strong believer. I would urge you to not think high thoughts of yourself, because the scripture says, “If any man thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall.” Think humble thoughts of yourself.

Look what happened to Peter in one night, I say in a few hours, look what the devil did to him. Satan demanded to sift him like wheat and Peter arrogantly stepped out of the safety net that Jesus had provided for him, and he was cannon fodder friends. He was ripped, and if Jesus hadn't rescued him, he would have been lost that night. “I've prayed for you Simon that your faith may not fail and it won't. I'll get you through the night.” But Satan is, he's deadly dangerous.

Ephesians 6, “Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” You're talking about the devil and all of his organized kingdom. An organized system of malevolent wickedness against you. Paul speaks of the schemes of the devil. We're not unaware of his schemes and the plots, wiles. He is called the god of this world. Martin Luther said if we were armed with our own strength, our striving would be losing. We would lose.

So that's one of the dangers of the flock this wolf, and there is secondly the world that Satan has set up. It's alluring, it's enticing, it's distracting, it's filled with all kinds of idols and gravitational pulls and it's constantly beckoning like the siren call to get away from safety and to dash your ship on the rocks. But it doesn't call like that, “Come over here and dash your ship on the rocks.” That's not how it works. It's promising pleasure, it's promising freedom, it's promising good things, it's the siren call of the world.

Well, those are the external dangers, what about the internal danger? Well, it's called the flesh, or sin nature. That's why I began with that illustration of intermittent power steering. You're all over the road, friends, and if you don't think you are then see yourself in the light of heaven and perfection and the angels who always do God's will. Look at the pledges that you make to God, the vows that you make and then break so easily. The intentions you have toward holiness to make progress and how easy it is to be deterred from that, to be distracted from it.

Paul put it very plainly in Romans 7:18-20, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” Oh, don't let anyone tell you that this is Paul in his pre-conversion status. The words “no longer” would mean nothing if that were the case. “It is no longer I who do it,” now that what? Now that I'm a non-Christian struggling with sin? No. He's talking as a Christian who has been made a new creation and still struggles with indwelling sin. It's no longer I who do it, but I do it. It's sin living in me. There's your danger.

The world, the flesh, and the devil. It's been the same. And so what happens? Well, we start to drift, we start to drift little by little by little, we start to drift from Christ. Hebrews 2:1 says, “We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.”

John Bunyan in his classic, Pilgrim's Progress, Christian and Faithful are having a discussion back and forth about apostasy, how it happens. How does somebody drift away from Jesus, what are the steps? These are the kind of things those folks talked about as they walked along the road. What do you talk about? I'm always convicted by the conversations they have in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Boy, they make the most of every opportunity, don't they? There's nothing wrong with talking about the weather and the ball game and all that, but let's make that short and let's get to some significant things. And so what they talk about is: What are the steps by which somebody gradually aposticizes?

Alright, this is what the answer was. First they stop thinking about God, death, and the judgment to come. They don't think about that anymore. Little by little, secondly, they throw off private duty, such as private prayer and curbing their lusts and watching and sorrow for sin and the like. Thirdly, they avoid the company of lively and warm Christians. Don't wanna be around them. Fourthly, after that, they grow cold to public duty, such as listening to sermons, reading, and Christian fellowship, public worship and the like. Fifthly, they begin to pick holes in the coats of some of the godly, to find faults with the believers. Sixthly, they begin to adhere to and associate themselves with fleshly, loose, and openly sinful men. Hanging out with the wrong kind of people. Seventh, then they give way to sinful habits in secret, and they're glad if they can see such sinful habits in any that are counted honest, that they may more boldly do it through their bad example.

Eighth, after this, they begin to play with little sins more openly and more boldly. And then ninth, being hardened, they show themselves finally as they truly are, thus being launched again into the gulf of misery, unless a miracle of grace prevent it, they everlastingly perish in their own self-deceit. Those are nine steps of apostasy, of drifting away from Christ.

This actually does in fact happen to gospel hypocrites. Those are people who make a claim of being Christians, but they really aren't. And so it says in 1 John 2:19, “They went out from us but they did not really belong to us, for if they had belonged to us they would have remained with us. But their going out showed that none of them belonged to us.”

And I tell you, without Christ's vigilance as our Good Shepherd, that would happen to every last one of us. And if you don't think so you don't know faith and you don't know Jesus and you don't know salvation as you should. Do not trust in yourself, but trust in Christ. He is our Good Shepherd.

And now, I wanna speak a word of encouragement to you who are genuinely Christ's sheep. To you who are the elect of God, known of God before the foundation of the world, that that can never happen to you.

Note the actions of the Good Shepherd. He leaves the 99 on the hills and he goes and searches for the one sheep until he finds it.

And note the joy of the Good Shepherd. In verse 13, “And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier about that one sheep than about the 99 that wandered off.” Now the Greek implies it's possible he might not find it. Well, it is possible he might not find the sheep he's looking for, but is it possible that Jesus won't find the sheep he's looking for? I tell you it's impossible. He's just using an analogy, he's talking about a human shepherd and how diligently he searches for one sheep, and how much more then the Good Shepherd will search for you. He shed his blood for you, he's not gonna let you go. And he brings him back.

And he says he's happier about that one sheep than about the 99 that never wandered off. Now, what does that mean? He loves them more? “He loves the straying ones more,” well that's not it. It's got to do with his concern.

Think of a mother who spends her whole night looking after a sick child, a child feverish, very high temperature. And what will she do for that child? She may have four other children, they're all sleeping in their bed, she's not thinking about them. She's thinking about this one child, she's giving that child a bath, she's trying to reduce that child's temperature, giving it medication. She may be in contact with a doctor, a nurse, whatever it takes. And if after a day or so of struggle, finally the child's fever breaks and eventually the temperature returns to 98.6, she's happier about that one child's 98.6 than about the other four who didn't need to return to that health. That's all. That's all.

I remember back in 1987, I was reading about this, about little baby Jessica McClure who fell 22 feet down into a water pipe. I don't know if you remember that, this was years ago. And I remember praying for that little 18-month-old, 22 feet down, wedged in there, and for 58 and a half hours they labored to get that baby out, and they got it out, safe and sound. I remember being happy, just, I didn't even know this baby. I didn't even know who baby Jessica was, I was just happy.

That didn't mean that those workers and all those people that were laboring so hard on that baby Jessica for 58 and a half hours cared more about baby Jessica than any other baby on the face of the earth, that's not it. It's gotta do with the peril that she was in. And once relieved from that peril, what joy there is at the baby's health and strength. That's all.

And so he rejoices; he's glad to have you back. When you've been wandering he's glad to have you back. Like the father of the prodigal son, glad to have the son back. And what does Satan tell you when he's induced the wandering? “God will never want you back, you've been defiled, you can't come back.” Well, that's a lie from the pit of hell, friends. He's glad to have you back. He puts you up on his shoulders and he carries you back. That's how you got back.

And so, note the decree of the Father in verse 14. I'll take it as a decree, is that alright? ESV gives us this, “So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish,” I take that as the will of decree, friends. He has decreed that you will not perish. This is the doctrine of “once saved, always saved,” you can't lose your salvation, and all that. This is a doctrine that's spoken against and attacked by some.

Let's take John Wesley for example, he thought that believing that you could never lose your salvation, no matter how much you sinned, that Jesus would go get you and bring you back, will lead to a lifetime of immorality and wickedness, and God would be dishonored. And so this is what Wesley, the father of the Methodist movement, said. “The sum of all is this,” this is a quote now, from Wesley, please understand, I'm quoting Wesley. And not favorably. Do you guys get that? Do you have a sense that I'm not quoting this favorably? There's a lot to honor about John Wesley, but this is not one of the things that I honor about John Wesley, but I just wanna read the quote, now listen. Just parenthetically, as I prejudice you against the quote, parenthetically, imagine how dreary your Christian life would be if this were true.

Okay, I'm done poisoning you against the quote, just listen: “The sum of all is this. If the scriptures are true, those who are holy or righteous in the judgment of God Himself, those who are endued with the faith that purifies the heart, that produces a good conscience, those who are grafted into the good olive tree, the spiritual invisible church, those who are branches of the true vine of whom Christ says, ‘I am the vine and ye are the branches,’ those who so effectually know Christ as by that knowledge to have escaped the pollutions of the world, those who see the light of the glory of God and the face of Jesus Christ, and who have been made partakers of the Holy Ghost of the witness and of the fruits of the Spirit, those who live by faith in the Son of God, those who are sanctified by the blood of the covenant, may nevertheless so fall from God as to perish everlastingly.” Oh my goodness, I tell you, no.

And I tell you, scripture says, no. Romans chapter 8 verses 28-30 says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him and who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called and those he called he also justified, and those he justified he also glorified.” That's up in heaven, friends. Everyone who begins, finishes. Everyone who is justified is, in the end, glorified.

Or this one, John 6:38-40, “I have come down,” says Jesus, our Good Shepherd, “I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.” That's not 99%, friends. That's none. “I will lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day, for my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”

1 Peter 1:5 says, “We are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that's ready to be revealed in the last time.” Jude 24 and 25 says, “Now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you before his presence blameless with great joy - to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power, and authority.”

Now, you may say, or a Wesleyan or Arminian may say to me, “Yes, but that's from external dangers, right? Never says anything about us wandering away.” Friends, that was always the problem, wasn't that always the problem? That we wandered away? It's not like our Savior said, “I never realized it was this bad, I never knew that you would have such a heart prone to wander. I didn't really know you.” It's like a married couple, “I didn't realize... “ 

Oh, he knows. He knows, he has searched us, he knows us, he knows our proneness to wonder. That was the whole problem. He's not saving the world and he's not saving Satan, he's saving us in the world from the flesh and from Satan, you see it? He knows.

So how does God guarantee our final salvation? Well, he acts constantly on our behalf, that's the whole thing. It's not like, “Stamped. Once saved, always saved. I have the stamp. I'm getting in, see my stamp, I'm in.” Alright? That's not it. It's that he actively constantly shepherds you. He stands at the right hand of God and pleads his own blood on your behalf, he filters your temptations, he mobilizes brothers and sisters around you. And you may dislike them for a time, but he's using them, you know what I'm saying?

He mobilizes pastors to preach sermons, he brings books into your life, he filters your temptations every day, no temptation sees you except what is common to man, but God is faithful and he won't let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. And with the temptation he's gonna provide a way of escape. If you don't take the way of escape he'll come and get you.

And what is the role of the church in all that? Well, we're gonna get to that. In a couple of weeks I'm gonna preach the next passage in Matthew, on church discipline. Sometimes he takes two or three others and they confront you in sin. And you repent, readily. Lest you go to the next level, but that's what Jesus has set up, a structure whereby the wandering can be brought back, brought to repentance, renewed and refreshed. And then at the end of Matthew 18 there's the parable of the 10,000 talents and how we should stand ready to forgive, at any moment, anybody who asks forgiveness of us. Because we've been forgiven so much by God. So he has set up all of the system to restore the sinning Christian.

So what are our responsibilities? Well, first trust in Christ alone. I've already said this. Don't trust in yourself. Don't be like Peter was that night, “Even if all fall away, I never will. There's no temptation that can get me. I could never do such and such.” Don't say those things. Tremble. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, realize the power of sin is deadly. You're in a battle for your lives. Fight sin. That's why Jesus uses language of “cut off your hand, throw it away.” Trust in Christ alone. Trust in Him.

Rest securely in Christ, believe in these doctrines of “once saved, always saved,” but don't trade it in for sin, that's not what it's meant for. Sin is always deadly, it hurts, don't you know? You know that, don't you? It hurts. It hurts marriages, it hurts families, it hurts churches, it hurts individuals, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. And yes he brings you back but, oh, it hurts. And it's ruinous. Don't do it. You don't trade in assurance so that you can have some sin.

Thirdly, guard your heart, protect your own heart. Wander less in 2009 than you ever did before. Okay? “Guard your heart, for from it flow the well-springs of life,” Proverbs 4:23.

Fourthly, repent quickly. Quickly. When the Spirit confronts you with sin, repent quickly. When a brother or sister comes and confronts you, don't dig in your heels. Repent quickly, get back quickly on the path.

Fifthly, it says, watch over one another in brotherly love. That's what our church covenant says. Let's pray for each other. James says, “Whoever turns a sinner back from the error of his ways will cover over a multitude of sins and save him from death.” James chapter 5, the last verse in the book of James. Let's do that for each other, friends. Let's love each other.

And pray for the elders, because this is one of the number one ministries of the elders, is to shepherd souls, to go through the list of members and pray for them and say, “How are they doing, are they doing well?”

And so if an elder calls you or interacts with you and just asks how you're doing spiritually, it's because they're carrying out their God-ordained office, that's what they're doing. Pray for us to be faithful in doing it.

And finally, always be ready to restore and forgive. Any time a brother or sister asks you for forgiveness, the Good Shepherd brings them back and welcomes them, so also should we. Let's close in prayer.

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest one of all?” That was the question the beautiful but wicked queen asked in the 1937 Disney classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She asked it every day. Something a bit strange about that if you ask me, but every day would go to this talking mirror and ask this question, and she would not be satisfied unless she heard this answer, “Oh, my queen, it seems to me, there is none as fair as thee.” But one day the mirror shattered the sick little world of this strange queen, and answered this way, “Famed is thy beauty, Majesty, but behold a lovely maid I see. Rags cannot hide her gentle grace. Alas, she is more fair than thee.” The wicked queen, of course flew into a rage, spent the rest of the movie trying to kill Snow White, her rival.

Now, there's something a little repulsive about this whole scene, I think. Physically beautiful Queen staring into a mirror trying to reassure herself every day that she's the most beautiful person in her kingdom or queendom. The greatest beauty in all the land, you know, got to be the greatest. If we came on this scene in the back of the room and watched it, I think our stomachs would turn with disgust, and revulsion.

And yet are we not beholding ourselves in that scene? And if you don't wanna see it in an animated classic then see it in today's text, as some of the choicest men in history, the apostles of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, were having an argument about which of them was the greatest. It'd be bad enough if it just happened once, but it happens again and again and again. They represent us.

Look at verse one: “At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?’”

It really is a shameful dispute. Matthew actually greatly reduces the whole thing, as he frequently does in his account. The fuller story is told in Mark and Luke. In Mark 9, as they're walking along the road they're privately having an argument about this topic. “They came to Capernaum and when he was in the house, he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the road?’ But they kept quiet. Because on the way they had argued about which of them was the greatest.” I find that whole thing fascinating. Jesus bringing up the topic and asking them the question, and they don't wanna tell him.

Now, as we've already noted before, it's a foolish thing to hold back anything from an omniscient God. He already knows what they were arguing about. And the issue went deeper merely than which of them was the greatest. They were really jockeying for position in the coming Kingdom of Christ. They wanted better positions of power and influence, and their flesh was driving them onto it.

And it was a shameful thing and they knew it, that's why they didn't wanna tell Jesus what they were arguing about. They didn't wanna tell him because it was shameful. It was shameful because the desire itself is so satanic. So much like Satan who wanted to be like God, and ascended and wanted to be like God.

Shameful also because of the timing for Jesus is escalating in Matthew's account, the frequency with which he's telling them that he's about to go and die on their behalf, he's going to go to Jerusalem and he's going to be betrayed. And he's going to suffer many things and he's going to die, and it says in Matthew 17, “the disciples were filled with grief,” but apparently their grief over this didn't last long.

It wasn't long before they were back at it again and arguing about which of them was the greatest. It was shameful because of how arrogant it is. It was shameful because of the example of Christ, who lived as a servant, a humble, meek, lowly servant every day of his life. It was shameful because of how deeply rooted this dispute was and would be still in their lives. Even the very night before Jesus died, they're still arguing about which of them was the greatest. That's why he got the basin and towel and washed their feet. They just couldn't get it. It is very, very tough.

And here we come again face-to-face with the relentlessness of human pride, of arrogance. Augustine said, it is the root sin, every other sin comes from it. It is a relentless commitment to self, self-interest, self-propagation, preening for self, self-promotion, self-feeding. It's what Paul calls the flesh. It is that selfish pride, and God's deep desire in the Gospel is to have it out of us. That it would be rooted out and gone forever. And so in his wisdom he has crafted a Gospel specially designed to destroy human pride. 

How beautiful, how magnificent is the work of God in the Gospel in humbling our pride, destroying it really. It's really a beautiful thing. God across the Scripture declares pride his great enemy, he hates it. So it says in 1 Peter 5:5, And in James 4:6, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” He says in Leviticus 26:19, “I will break down your stubborn pride.” Proverbs 8:13, it says, “To fear the Lord is to hate evil, I hate pride and arrogance.” Isaiah 2:17, “The arrogance of man will be brought low and the pride of men humbled, the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.” And as I've said, God's greatest weapon in this warfare against his enemy, pride is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel exalts as saviour a humble man, a Jewish carpenter whose bloody, ugly, twisted frame on the wooden cross is our only hope of salvation.

How's that for humbling? Are you not humbled by that? That's what God says it took to save you and me. That's very humbling for me. He stood under the wrath of God, he put on display for all time, for everyone to see, what each and every one of us deserved for our sin. Put it on display. Every lash of the scourge on his back; you ought to say, “I deserve that, and worse, for my sin.” Every drop of blood pouring from his veins is a clear testimony to what we deserved under the wrath of God. What you deserve, what I deserve for breaking his law, his holy law, for despising his glory and his honor. For setting it aside as though it were nothing. That's what we deserved, Jesus' death a measure of that, and very humbling for the religionists, the religious among us, is that this is also a testimony of the efficacy, the usefulness of our good works in saving our souls. Answer zero. Of no use whatsoever are our good works, Jesus' death on the cross, a clear testimony of that. It is insufficient.

Only as you humble yourself on the bloody ground around the cross of Jesus Christ will you be saved. That's the only place you'll find salvation and the lesson of this text is you have to keep humbling yourself on the same bloody ground the rest of your life. It's not just one time. Your whole life, or your whole salvation, you must humble yourself at the feet of Jesus, and know yourself to be a sinner.

And this is the wisdom of God in crafting such a gospel. Do you not see it? Isn't it beautiful that we would be so humbled by it? 1 Corinthians 1:23-25, “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.” The beauty of the Gospel in humbling us. So therefore imagine the heartbreak of Jesus in hearing his disciples again and again have the same argument. Imagine it still friends. How heartbreaking is it to Jesus that it takes us so long to learn this lesson of humbling ourselves?

Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven? Well, I know his name, don't you? His name is Jesus, he is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. And how did he get such a lofty and exalted position? Well, Philippians 2, tells us it was because he “didn't 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,” where? “To the highest place.”

It's already taken friends. You don't need to argue anymore. Argument over, the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven is Jesus because he gave more than anyone, he humbled himself more than anyone. He humbled himself an infinite amount, what a journey. From the throne of glory to the cross and back again. And therefore, God exalted him, and he gave him the name that is above every name. And Jesus told us that for the lesser positions in the kingdom, highest one's already taken, we've established that, but for the lesser ones, it's the same recipe friends; the same way.

You wanna become great in the Kingdom of Heaven, then become a servant. You wanna become first in the Kingdom of Heaven, then be slave of all. That's how it happens. And you know what? The greatest person in this room right now isn't even thinking about that question. The greatest person in this room right now isn't wondering whether he or she is the greatest person in this room right now. Not even while I say these words, they know immediately it isn't them. And what they're doing is, they're thinking about how they can serve others and honor God and glorify him, that's what they care about. That's the greatest person in this room right now.

And so Jesus wants to teach us this lesson. And so he gives us an object lesson in the form of a little child. Look at verses 2-4. “He called the little child and had him stand among them, and he said: ‘tell you the truth, unless you are converted…’” I like that a little better. “‘Unless you are converted, and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.’”

Jesus is clearly the greatest teacher in history. He used physical creation better than any other teacher ever. He says, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. Look at the birds of the air,” in order to make a point about anxiety. He says, “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree.” Or he says, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast that a woman took and hid in a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.” Or “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a fisherman that sat down and collected good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away,” or “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a farmer who went out to sow his seed and as he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path,” etcetera. He's just a great teacher using physical creation in his object lessons.

And so here he calls a little child and has him stand among all of these great men. These great men who've taken a break from their argument to look at this little child, he calls this little child and has him stand among them. An object lesson. You can imagine the awkward pause. The Greek word, “paidion” could be a little infant, but I think older than that, or maybe a little toddler coming in. Not really sure why he or she is there, just there. Looking up blinking at all the little, the big men and just there. Wide-eyed and innocent. It doesn't matter whose child it was. There are universal attributes of childlikeness that Jesus is getting at here. Not one particular child as over or against another especially good child or anything like that. It's none of that, it's just a little child.

The lesson is clear. You need to become like this if you wanna go to heaven. You need to be converted. And the word converted implies, you're not like this. You need to be converted to go to heaven.

Now, we know from the song and we know from scripture, Jesus loves the little children. And they loved him. They felt totally at ease around him. He set them at ease, you could just tell how comfortable they were around him. They can tell when somebody loves them. He would look them in the eyes, he would speak to them gently, he would touch them with his hands, he would pray for them and they would climb up on his lap and they would be around him. He loved to be with them.

And I think in scripture, he looks on all of us as his little children. Later in verse six, he says, “If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,” etcetera. So we're all his little children, all of us. He spoke about the twelve apostles he was sending out on mission, the great apostles and he says if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, he'll never lose his reward. The little ones are the apostles.

Earlier in Matthew when a paralyzed man came, Jesus looked at him and said, “Take heart, son. Your sins are forgiven.” Later in that same chapter. A daughter, a woman who had an issue of blood for twelve years, he calls her daughter. “Take heart, daughter, your faith has healed you.”

Now, Jesus was all of 31 years old. What's going on? Some of these people are probably older than Jesus. Well, it all depends how you look at it of course. John chapter 1, John the Baptist who was what, six months older than Jesus says, he who comes after me was before me because he was before me. He was with God in the beginning, he's the Ancient of Days, we're all like little children to him. We're just little children born yesterday and know nothing.

Now, what are the characteristics of childhood that Jesus is focusing on here, what are the amiable and delightful characteristics of a little child? Well, first of all, we need to be honest, not all the characteristics of children are amiable and delightful. Can we be honest about that? I'm not trying to offend any that are here in our presence today. I don't think they will be offended if they're even paying attention and knowing that I'm talking about them. But they're not offended, even if they knew it.

But not every characteristic of a child is amiable and delightful. Romans 5 makes it very plain that they are descendants of Adam and they have a sin nature, and they have almost no concern for you whatsoever, when they're born. They really don't care about you, alright? And they have, it says in the book of Proverbs, foolishness bound up in their hearts and the rod of reproof has to drive it far from them. We know that they're immature, we know that they're undeveloped, we know that they're self-centered, we know all of these things, but that's not what we're talking about today. Not in this text.

No, there's something delightful, something sweet and amiable and attractive that Jesus is zeroing in on here in these little children. What could it be? Well, it doesn't say. But I think we can have a sense of it. There is a freedom from these kinds of debates. They're not concerned about who's the greatest among them. Not worried about that. So there's a freedom from pride. A willingness to be taught. An obedience. He calls a little child and a little child comes, ready to go. A general stance toward obedience. Readily submitting to clear authority over them. They do what they're told generally, they're ready to believe in invisible beings quite readily, they have a faith like that, there's something delightful.

Michael Card in one of his lullabies, “Come to The Cradle,” said this, “Come to the cradle, come and find peace, alone in the cradle simplicity sleeps, behold perfect wisdom, so gentle and mild.” Listen to this, “In the innocent, upward, trusting glance of a child.” That's beautiful. “The innocent, upward, trusting glance of a child.” It's the faith, the freedom from guile, the freedom from these concerns and the looking to Jesus that I have in mind.

Recently I was on vacation, family vacation late in the fall, and we were at Carolina Beach, and I went for a walk with Daphne, who's with us in Big Church today, I think for the first time. Hi, there she is. And so we went for a walk on the beach and it was just Daphne and I, and it wasn't long before her 45-year-old father needed to put her on his shoulders. I can't carry her very long anymore. So there she is up on my shoulders and we were gonna go to this dock that seemed to be just right there, just seemed to be just right there. But I was noticing the earth was curving as I was walking toward it. And so we were walking along and it just never got any closer. It just never did, and so after a while, I abandoned it as a worthy goal, alright.

She didn't care, she was on my shoulders, we were having a good time. She was pointing at the seagulls, we were just having fun and we walked for probably an hour and it was time to go back and so I decided not to walk on the soft sand. A little bit too much energy put into walking on the sand. So I cut on a boardwalk through onto a street to walk back. And it was a little bit busy street, we crossed the street and we were walking on the sidewalk, and about a couple of minutes into that walk she said, “Daddy, how do we get home?” And I said, “Don't worry, honey, Daddy knows the way home.” She said “Okay.” And she was just pulling on my hair a little bit, lightly, thankfully, and just patting me and then talking about the cars, and about maybe five minutes later she said, “Daddy, how do we get home?” I said, “Don't worry, Daddy knows the way home.” And from then on I heard her say it three or four times, “Daddy knows the way home.” And something came powerfully in me.

The night before Jesus was crucified, Jesus said to his disciples, “You know the way to the place where I'm going.” And Thomas said, “Lord, we don't know where you're going, so how can we know the way?” What did Jesus say? “I am the way.” You don't need to know all the twists and turns of the road ahead, you don't need to know where to turn left and were to turn right. You don't need to know any of that, you just need to be on your daddy's shoulders. He'll get you home. He'll get you all the way home, just stay on his shoulders, and he knows the way. “I am the way,” he's saying. And I was her way that day, she didn't need to know where the address was, I needed to know and I did. And she didn't trouble herself with that at all. And that's the joy of it.

There's something in a little child of total confidence that Jesus is zeroing in on. And freedom from pride, and concern, and selfishness, that's what I think he sees. You know the grace of God is looking for weakness where it can work. It's made strong in weakness. Present your weakness to him. He is your heavenly Father.

And Jesus says very plainly here that conversion is necessary in order to get there. You've gotta be converted to this. Look at verse three and four, “I tell you the truth, unless you change,” it says in NIV, “unless you are converted,” literally, “and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The whole human race is tinted with satanic pride, and we've gotta turn, that's what the Greek word means, actually it's passive, we have to be turned. We have to be converted. It has to happen to us. As Jeremiah put in Jeremiah 31:18, “Turn me, O Lord, and I will be turned, for you are the Lord, my God.” Turn me, oh Lord. Humble me, oh Lord. Change me, oh Lord, and I will be changed. That's the prayer. And unless we are converted, we can never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. We must enter friends, we're not born in the Kingdom of Heaven, we are born again into the Kingdom of Heaven. We must be converted to enter.

Have you been converted? Have you come to the cross? Have you humbled yourself on the bloody ground I described earlier, have you been humbled before the cross of Jesus Christ? Have you found salvation there? Have you been converted and become like a little child, given up all of your ways and your wisdom and your good works and let it all go, and just fall in front of Jesus? Has that happened to you? And if so, praise God. It's not your natural state, and you know it, don't you. You have to be converted to go to Heaven, you have to enter. 

So he says this to these great men who are bickering, and he says you need to welcome a little child. Now he's speaking to them as future leaders of the church, and he's very concerned about them, they are the apostles, and he wants them not to be the mighty rulers, like the rulers of the Gentiles like them. Look at verse 5, “Whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name, welcomes me.”

The word literally means to receive gladly, to accept, to take in your heart. Jesus wants these apostles, someday to be pillars of the church, he wants them to be of a mindset that they are ready to welcome children any time. They're not the great men who walk by with the flowing robes and are too busy for children.

And they were that kind of men by the way, because there was a time that parents were bringing their little children to Jesus to have him place their hands on them, pray for them, and the disciples were rebuking those who brought them. And Jesus, it says, was indignant about it. Indignant with who? With the parents for bothering him? Absolutely not, he's indignant with the apostles for stopping them. “Let the little children come to me,” he said, “And don't hinder them, for such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” And he wanted them to be converted to be changed, not just to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but to be leaders of the church who weren't too busy for children. It's a kind of a man who's not too busy to be stopped by a child.

It means seeing by faith, seeing yourself as not too important, seeing them, the children, as very important. Seeing Christ in them, because he says “If you welcome them in name, you're welcoming me.” Like the sheep and the goats? “I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in.” Well, now it's the children. And if you welcome a little child in Jesus's name, you're welcoming Jesus right in your midst, that's what he's saying. 

And he says, “Do not despise a little child.” Look at verse 10, “See that you do not look down on one of these little ones,” that means to despise them, “for I tell you that their angels in heaven are always seeing the face of my Father in heaven.” So the very opposite of receiving a little child in Jesus's name is to despise them, to look down on them. That's what the high and mighty of our world do. They don't have time for children.

I'm talking about the professional people, the ones that are ambitious for the corner office, you know. The ones that are zealous for the six figure or even worse, the seven-figure salary. Those ones. They don't have time for little children. I'm talking about the worldlings, the ones who don't know Jesus. They scarcely get married, if they do marry, it's not so they can have lots of children, not at all, children get in the way of their plans. I fear that some of that attitude's crept into the church though, like children are not seen to be the blessing God sees them to be. There's a gap between us and God on the issue of children and how valuable they are.

Don't despise them, don't look down on them. They are a gift of God. They always make you smile, don't they? If you just had Jesus, he stood a child here, you'd all start to smile, you just would. It's a beautiful thing. It's an awesome thing then, for parents to be entrusted with the precious heart of a little child, for a short period of time, get to pour the Gospel into that heart. That is a precious thing.

And it's a precious thing for a church like ours to be able to train parents to do that very well and hold them accountable so that they do a good job with it, and to have some ministries in addition to what the parents are doing, to help, ministries like VBS, and Bible for Life and other ministries that happen, those things are beneficial as add-ons to what the parents are doing. The parents, all of us have this great privilege to encounter the little children and to make an impact on them. And sometimes God chooses to speak to you through them, doesn't he?

For it says in Psalm 8, verse 2, “From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise.” Who knows what they're gonna say. And sometimes it's gonna be true. And you wish they hadn't said it. But they just speak almost prophetically. I'm not speaking in terms of spiritual gifts through the Bible, but they just speak as if from God to you. And you have something you need to hear. And woe to the Apostle, or the elder, or the great leader who can't listen to a child because they're just a child. Don't look down on them, don't despise them.

And he mentions that their angels in heaven are always seeing the face of the Father in Heaven. It is from this verse and pretty much from no other, there's maybe one other verse in Acts 12, that the idea of the guardian angel comes along. Their angels, the possessive, like each child has his or her own angel. Have you ever heard of the guardian angel? I know you have, parents sometimes count on the guardian angels like in the crowded parking lot when the three-year-old runs away chasing a butterfly. They'll be counting on the guardian angel at that moment to rescue, and there may well be an angelic rescue at that moment.

I do believe that angels are all ministering spirits sent to serve those who inherit salvation. But I think it goes too far to say that there is an angel assigned to each child, that just goes a little too far. Instead, as I read this verse, verse 10, it's more that the angels that are dispatched to minister to the children, they get free access right to the throne of grace to say how it's going, and when finally that angel reports that that child has entered the Kingdom of Heaven through faith in Jesus, there is more joy, it says, in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repents. They rejoice. God rejoices in the presence of his angels. So these angels, like Gabriel, stand in the presence of God. So how can we despise children? That's the point that he's making. Don't look down on them.

But then Jesus turns more serious and he deals with the question of sin, the temptation of a little child. And frankly, since we're all his little children, our temptation as well. Dealing with the issue of sin.

And again he's speaking to his apostles as future elders, shepherds, saying, “Forget about who's the greatest. Let me tell you what really is the issue here. This little child... That little child's gonna need spiritual shepherding, are you ready to protect them spiritually from sin? Are you ready to protect yourselves from sin?” He turns to the issue of sin. Look what he says in verse 6.

“If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” This is a severe warning against sin, there is not a person in this room that rightly esteems the danger that sin is to him or her, not one. All of us underestimate it. All of us.

J.C. Ryle in beginning his book in the 19th century, Holiness, he said this, “He who would make great strides in holiness, must first consider the greatness of sin.” Anselm of Canterbury, writing in the Middle Ages, sought to answer the question of why God became man, the incarnation. In a dialogue between himself, and a character named Boso, Anselm utters the famous line, “You have not yet considered the gravity of sin.” Because he was reluctant to recognize our need for a savior, this character Boso was unable to see why Jesus had to become a man.

You haven't dealt with how weighty a thing is sin. Well, none of us have. And Jesus in these very sobering verses tries to get our attention that the real danger here is not that you're gonna be bypassed for some job in the kingdom, the real danger here is sin, the deadly danger of sin.

So he talks about first, the issue of causing a child to sin. As children of God, we are constantly surrounded by temptations. Jesus even says, “Temptations are sure to come,” says it right in this passage. We are surrounded by temptations. They are external enticements that link up with our fleshly hearts in a wicked partnership to drag us off the path of righteousness. It's a temptation, it's a pull, a gravitational magnetic pull off the path of God.

Satan has crafted a whole world system to drag us away from pure faith in Christ and he uses human beings to do it. Ad agencies that portray attractive young models wearing sexually explicit clothing, alluring clothing, that promises excitement and pleasure and acceptance and fun, but which hides the effects of the sin: Single parenting, sexually transmitted diseases, poverty, loneliness, unbelief, addiction, and ultimately death. He hides all that, all the fun TV programs hide all that.

“Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin,” said Jesus. It would be better for the people in that ad agency to have a large millstone hung around their neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea than to cause one of my little ones to sin, said Jesus.

Now, I get the feeling here like a father. Imagine you're a father of a five year old and you come upon some 14 year old beating him up. What kind of feelings would be inside your heart as you see that scene? Are you gonna be motivated to do anything about it? Of course you are. What kind of man would you be if you weren't? You would go and put an immediate stop to it. Hopefully, you'd be self-controlled and thereby not have to get arrested for what you do. But you would put a stop to it wouldn't you? I wanna zero in on the feeling before you go, and I want you to multiply it by a billion and then by another billion, and that's Jesus right here.

He's speaking, not just to Satan, but to human instruments of Satan, who set up tempting situations and lure us away from God. He says, let's take a millstone, not one of the little ones that women use in the households, the counter-top versions, that they grind, the little ones. There are big ones that only a donkey or a horse or some beast of burden can turn. That's the one he chooses. It would be better to have your head stuck through that hole and we could row you out to the deepest part of the ocean and push you over. And as you sink down, and as the water crushes you, just realize it would be better if that had happened to begin with than that you had led one of my little ones to sin. 

Because of this kind of language, I say that there's not anyone including me, that estimates properly the danger of sin. But Jesus does, and he says, “Woe to the world because of them.”

He has a rage against them, but then he turns to us individually. He stops talking about the tempters out there, the temptations are coming, they are coming, friends. Are you ready, are you ready for the temptations? Yes pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” But here in this text, he says temptations are sure to come. They are coming, you can't escape them, you live in the world, they're here. Are you ready for the warfare? Are you taking it seriously? It's far more serious than any New Year's resolution, friends. Your very life is at stake, sin wants your life, it's a viper going for your throat. Are you ready for the fight?

And so Jesus says in verse 8 and 9, “If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown in the fire of hell.” He's speaking to his own apostles about the fire of hell. Don't quote too quickly, “There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Fight sin as though your eternity depended on it. Jesus is talking to believers here.

Now, what does it mean for a hand or a foot to cause someone to sin? Clearly, it's metaphorical, clearly. But a right hand is something valuable, a foot something valuable, but there are times that something physically valuable must be cast off. We were in Haiti, and there was a woman there who had had a car accident, serious damage to her leg, she went to a witch doctor, by the time our doctor saw her the leg was far gone. No question about it. If that woman was going to survive, she had to have an amputation. She may have been the happiest amputee in history, she knew that her life was hanging in the balance.

Friends your life is hanging in the balance on the issue of sin. It really is. Are you fighting it? Are you ready? What is it? What causes you to sin? Well, I don't know. I know that there are general things, lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, boastful pride of life, those are the general things.

I know that the internet can be used to lure men into sexual immorality in their minds, so they're not faithful to their wives, that in their hearts they're committing adultery every day. I know that happens. It's great wickedness. Cut it off, throw it away. Oh, but I have to do research. Look, it's deadly, deadly dangerous. Throw it away. And if you can't go to the mall without being discontent about your life, and your clothes and what you can afford, well then stop going to the mall. Just find out what's causing you to lust or greed or covetousness or anger, find out, trace it back and cut it out. Fight it.

Now, I've been giving applications throughout this whole sermon. I just wanna give a couple more.

I want you to notice for yourself how dangerous is your own pride. Don't excuse yourself. Don't say, “If I had been one of the twelve apostles, at least one of them wouldn't have been prideful.” But you just did it, didn't you? “I would have been the humblest of all of them. Of all of them, the greatest in humility.” There's really no way to get it. As soon as you're being humble, and you note it, it's like the old cartoon characters, you realize that you're humble, that you lose it, you're over, it's done, alright. It's a fight.

See the pride in you whenever you're crossed or critiqued, or commanded by an authority figure. Whenever you think you could do a better job than the referee down there in the field and you'd like to change places with him. I was sitting next to a father, Calvin's in a basketball league for seven and eight year olds. One thing I noticed about seven and eight year olds, almost universally, all they do is have a good time. They just laugh and have fun, they just have a great time. They haven't learned yet to argue with the referee or get angry at each other, or the coach, they're just out there having fun. But their folks have learned how to get angry at the ref, I've noticed. There's one father in particular I was sitting near him, and I don't think the ref made a single good call. And it's just pride, humble yourself.

And be converted, be converted. Are these apostles have they already been converted? Yes. Alright, Jesus is speaking to the human race through this text, all of us must be converted, but there's an ongoing work of transformation that has to go on in us to humble ourselves like a little child.

Thirdly, you parents make better use of the time with your children. Teach them when their hearts are tender. Seize the day, it doesn't last long. When they sin, bring them to the law and to the cross. Show them their need of a Savior. Cherish them, love them, realize they really aren't yours, they're God's. God knit them together, he's loaned them to you to disciple them, evangelize them, and disciple them. Do it, make the most of the time, and cherish them.

And finally, I just can say to you: fight sin with everything that you have. Determine against it, not just one or two of it, but all of it, that you're gonna fight it. Cut it out of your life, for the glory of God. Close with me in prayer.

So we turn this morning, 1 Timothy 3:16. Christmas time is here. I guess you didn't know that, couldn't tell, surrounded by the trappings of Christmas, surrounded by the joy of the celebration and all of the symbols that we are so accustomed to, but also surrounded by what I call the great beast of secularism that stalks our joy and our faith, secularism that statements - that are a declaration - that God, if he really exists, if he even exists, is irrelevant to our lives, that he doesn't matter, that he can be left off safely. And I stand here on the pulpit today to fight that. I think that God is the center of my life, the center of my glory and my joy, the center of my Christmas celebration. I want it to be the center of yours as well. And so I stand on one text this morning to do that, to meditate on the greatness of the coming of Jesus Christ and all that he came to do.

Now, many of our feelings and images of Christmas come from culture and not from Scripture. It is Charles Dickens' “A Christmas Carol,” 19th Century, Victorian England, top hats and lamplighters and figgy pudding and all of those things, the roasted goose. It's been a long time since I've had a roasted goose for Christmas, but there it is. Carolers standing on the corner in the streets of London, Ebenezer Scrooge stalking and muttering about humbug and all of those kinds of things, the ghost of Christmas past and present filling our senses with images from that era of history, or perhaps it's that famous poem. That - written by Clement Clarke Moore in 1822 – “‘Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.” Yaddy, yaddy, yaddy - you know all of that? Or Thomas Nast's famous depiction of Santa Claus as a heavy set bearded man with a big sack on his back, loaded with toys, a cartoon of which first appeared in Harper's Weekly in 1862. And some scientific comedian figured out how impossible I'd be for that man to get to every house, he calculated the number of milliseconds he would have to spend and the number of chimneys he'd have to descend and ascend, the speed of light would not be enough to get the job done in one night. Even if you gave him the full 24 hours. So that's how some people spend their time at Christmas time, calculating whether Santa could have done it or not.

It's traditions like Christmas tree, and Mistletoe, and red and green nutcracker sweet, which boggles the mind with sensory input, of people dancing and twirling and pirouetting and rat kings and all kinds of things flowing in, what images and then black and white movies like “Miracle on 34th Street” and “It's a Wonderful Life,” and “The Grinch that Stole Christmas,” which isn't black and white, but probably should have been.  If we could just move it aside, as we finally discover that, you know, even if you take all of the toys away, you're left with little Susie Who and singing a song that no one can comprehend and we all feel good about one another, and that's the true meaning of Christmas. And then there are non-spiritual seasonal songs that assault our senses like “Let It Snow,” and “Silver Bells,” and “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire,” one after the other. I was on one station this past week, 12 consecutive songs that had nothing to do with the birth of Jesus, one after the other.

All of this, it says nothing compared to the spirit of materialism that saturates us and that draws us away, that sense of covetousness and material desires that captured our hearts probably at a very early age. And it's really been hard to fight ever since, the desire for gifts and possessions, and you know the retailers know it very well. And so Christmas season begins earlier and earlier. I didn't know if you knew this, but we're actually starting the celebration with 2010, this one's not for this year, we're already, we've re-doubled, we've lapped ourselves, and it's already up to 2010 now, it starts way before Halloween in some stores. And there it is, as Andy once was talking about a touch of desperation this year, we're finding in the malls and the shops, desperation for materialism. I say that other than the sinful covetousness and materialism, none of these things are overtly bad, they're part of the physical life that God's given us the history and the culture, but they miss the point, don't they?

The point is that Jesus Christ is born as the unnamed angel announced in Luke 2 and Verse 10 and 11. "The angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people today in the town of David. A savior has been born for you, he is Christ, the Lord.'" That's the point. That's the joy. That's our hope, that Jesus is our Savior. And the Apostle Paul knew this very well, when so long ago, he penned the words of our text that you heard read already so beautifully today, "Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, and was taken into glory."

Now, the context of these words, Paul is writing to Timothy, his young protégé in the ministry, to instruct him concerning ministry in the local church. Paul is very concerned about the church that Timothy is pastoring - the church in Ephesus - he's concerned especially about false teaching, false doctrine, those that pervert the Gospel. In chapter three then, he establishes the character in ministry of elders and of deacons, elders especially entrusted with the doctrinal life of the church, and the summation of all of this is found in the words immediately preceding this morning's text. Look at them in verses 14 and 15. 1st  Timothy 3, "Although I hope to come to you soon, I'm writing you these instructions so that if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth." He wants Timothy to know how God wants him personally to conduct himself as a minister of the gospel, watching his life and his doctrine closely, so that he can save both himself and his hearers. He wants Timothy to instruct the people of God how they should conduct themselves in God's household, in the church of the living God. Even more strikingly, he wants Timothy to uphold with great power before the people of God, what the purpose and role of the church is to be in this world, that is, that we are the pillar and the foundation of the truth. And we rightly say that the church is not a building, but a people called out by his name, by the power of the spirit of Living God, yet here he uses architectural imagery. We are the pillar of the truth, that which upholds the truth powerfully strongly. And it ordains the truth and adorns the truth with beauty, and so the people can look at it and see it, it's also the foundation of the truth that which supports and grounds the truth in this sin soaked and confused world.

It's something unchanging, something immovable, and that's something we need in this so-called post-modern world of ours. The people we live with, they're called post-modern, are deeply confused on this very issue that there really can be such a thing as spiritual truth. Absolute, immutable spiritual truth. Transcendent in the spiritual realm. Post-modernism then is the idea that if there is such a thing as absolute truth, it's impossible for any of us to know it for certain, unlike Pontius Pilate, then the post-modern person sits in judgment on Jesus Christ and says, "What is truth?" And then walks away as though there can be no possible answer, though the truth is staring him right in the face in Jesus Christ. Of course, post-modern physicists still believe in the unfolding of immutable physical laws by which they make their living, they hope that they're not changing constantly, hence their PhDs would be out the window, they'd have to go back to school, so they're counting on physics not changing constantly. Post-modern architects still understand that their basic architectural principles by which they build soaring buildings that will not collapse, post-modern surgeons still know where the liver is and where the heart is and the lungs are, and they don't confuse these organs or say it really doesn't matter. Well, they know what the truth is biologically. And it's the church's marvelous privilege to say that there is even more certain spiritual truth than any of these physical truths, and we are the pillar and the foundation of that truth.

That's our job. We get to stand up and proclaim to this secular world of ours that Jesus Christ is born, that he is the Son of God, and that he is the savior of the world. That is the truth. And so the Apostle Paul makes it clear, verse 16, "Beyond all question the mystery of godliness is great. He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world and was taken up in glory." The truth is that Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God, he is the focus of the angel's joyful announcement to the shepherds of Bethlehem. He is the truth for the world, and we have many statements about him.

First, it calls the doctrine of Christ, the mystery of godliness, and says that, it's a great mystery. And secondly, it says that God appeared in a body. And third, that he was vindicated by the spirit, and fourth that he was seen by angels, and that fifth, he was preached among the nations, sixth that he was believed on in the world, and seventh that he was taken up in glory, and these are the truths of the center of my Christian faith, and they will be the center of my celebration of Christmas on Thursday, just as they are the center of my life every day.

Let's look at them a little more closely. First, we begin with the idea of the doctrine of Christ, what is called here the great mystery of godliness, and it begins with an interesting statement, "Beyond all controversy," he says. Oh, there have been great controversies about the person and work of Jesus Christ. Satan has vigorously attacked the doctrine of Christ from the very beginning. From the very beginning, Christ's claim to deity is what got him killed. 1st John tells us that it is the focus of Satan's attacks in the church, that Christ has come in the flesh. And throughout the early centuries of the church, the doctrine of the deity and the humanity of Christ were the central battle ground.

In 190 AD Socinianism came along and taught that Jesus was a mere man at birth, but became the son of God at his baptism, he was adopted by God to be the Son of God. It's also called adoptionism, and it is false. Then in the third century, along came modalism the idea that there is one God who appears at different times: sometimes as Father, sometimes as Son, sometimes as Spirit, but just one God, of course. There is a big problem with that. Who is it that Jesus was talking to when he said, Father, and he would speak? And even more scary, who was it that answered him from Heaven? Modalism, again, a lie of the devil. And then in the fourth century, Arianism, the idea that Jesus is God, but with a little “g”, he's a created God, not Jehovah God, not the great God, but a lesser God. Arius taught this thing. Athanasius fought against him, he was the only one of all the bishops to stand against this, this subtle attack by the devil. It's a false teaching upheld even today by Jehovah's Witnesses that Jesus is a created being, a lower case deity. God raised up this man Athanasius and he taught the clear truth about Jesus, which is now the Orthodox faith, and it's captured in the Nicene Creed:

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made; who for us and for our salvation, came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.

Well, that's clear, isn't it friends? That's the Orthodox faith, but God had to raise up Athanasius to fight for every line in that dogma. And then in the fifth century, there was Eutychianism, the idea that Jesus had one nature, the divine nature, clad in the human body. Therefore, he really wasn't a human being, he just had kind of taken over a body, kind of like someone drives a robot or something like that, and again, this was rejected. One attack after the other, that Jesus was truly the Son of God, and truly the Son of Man, both at the same time. Friends, it's an incomprehensible mystery ultimately, but it is the teaching of our faith. There's been a river of controversy about the doctrine of the incarnation, but Paul says here in our text, that there is something "Beyond all controversy," beyond any controversy this, and "that is the mystery of godliness is great." The mystery that we celebrate at Christmas time is a great thing.

Now, when we speak of this word mystery, it doesn't mean like it's something to be solved, like one of those Agatha Christie things or Sherlock Holmes, something like that. You know, those things are exciting. Those are a lot of fun. I love reading Sherlock Holmes stories or listening to them on tape, different depictions of them. Sherlock Holmes, the very embodiment of the modern scientific method applied to solving crimes, he specialized in careful observation of physical details, which gave him amazing insights into the circumstances that would surround some kind of a case or a person. He said, “By a man's fingernails, by his coat sleeve by his boot, by his trouser knees, by the calluses of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression, by his shirt cuffs - by each of these things a man's profession or trade is plainly revealed.” Or take this conversation between Sherlock Holmes and his friend, Dr. Watson in a case called The Sign of the Four, this is what Holmes said to Watson, he said,

“‘My observation shows me that you have been to the Wigmore Street Post Office this morning, but deduction lets me know that when you were there, you dispatched a telegram.’ ‘Right,’ said Watson, ‘Right on both points, but I must confess, I don't see how you arrived at it, it was a sudden impulse on my part, and I have mentioned it to no one.’ ‘Oh, It is simplicity itself,’ Holmes remarked… ‘So absurdly simple that an explanation is superfluous, yet it may serve to define the limits of observation and deduction. Observation tells me that you have a little reddish clay adhering to your in-step just opposite the Seymour street office, they have taken up the pavement and thrown up some earth which lies in such a way that it's actually difficult to avoid treading in it upon entering. The earth is of this particular reddish tint that is only found as far as I know, in that part of the neighborhood. So much is observation. The rest is deduction.’”

 So the key with Sherlock Holmes was careful observation and then logical reasoning. Friends, this mystery cannot be solved that way. Scripture precludes it; it's impossible. Jesus put it this way in Luke 17, verse 20 and 21, Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'there it is.'" God purposely conceals some truths from the human empirical method. They can only be known if he reveals them to us. And the Gospel and all of its mysteries, especially the incarnation of Jesus Christ is one of those things that had to be revealed or we would never have known it. And so it says in 1 Corinthians 1:21, "For since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know him. God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe." It was wisdom from God that we couldn't figure this out by inference and deduction and scientific reasoning. God has humbled us; we must have it revealed to us.

But neither on the other hand, is this mystery like the post-modern mystery religions, even in some emergent churches, which are always talking about mysteries, mysteries, mysteries. And by that, it's like something we can never know or understand at all, this great mystery. New Age religious folks are talking about this. Speaking of mysteries, post-modern pastors intentionally seek to leave their hearers with more questions than they entered with, to befuddle them and to tangle up their minds with mysteries and questions, so that you just leave off all rational process and don't think anymore about anything, but just are caught up in the wonder and the mystery of it all, as though that's somehow a good thing. No, it's not that thing either. There were such mystery religions in Ephesus, it eventually came up into what is known as Gnosticism, where you had to have these secret keys of knowledge, and if you didn't have them then you couldn't figure anything out. It was a mystery religion, and Paul fought it at an early stage, and then later the church would fight it vigorously.

Now, this is instead a rational truth, that couldn't be known about God, but it must be revealed by God. And so Jesus is there at Caesarea Philippi with his disciples, and he said, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?" And they had various options, but then he turns his gaze on his 12 apostles and he says, "What about you? Who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter spoke for all believers when he said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Do you remember what Jesus said next? "Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in Heaven." It's a blessing of direct revelation from God to the individual heart that Jesus is God in the flesh. And we can understand that although we can't reason out all of the implications. Within a few moments Peter was taking Jesus aside and rebuking him for saying he was going to die on the cross. You don't rebuke the Son of God, he never makes any mistakes. And so, that's a good example of how we can't fully unfold all the implications of the things that have been revealed to us. We still struggle with unbelief, but the fact is this is a noble mystery that can only be known if God reveals it directly to your heart, and he calls it here the mystery of godliness.

Now, since everything in this list refers to Jesus Christ, I think this is speaking of Christ as godliness. Could either be one of two things. Either that Jesus was Godly - he was the very picture of godliness, the picture of piety, the picture of holiness in a physical body, it could be that, or the word sometimes means religion, and it could be the mystery of our Christian religion is great. Either way, he's speaking of the greatness of Christ coming into the world.

And he says, "Beyond all question, beyond all controversy, the mystery of this godliness is great." This is a great mystery. Friends, it isn't just a great mystery, it's an infinite mystery, the mystery of Christ. It's great, not because it would take a super genius to figure it out, that's not possible. No, it's great because it concerns an infinite person, the person of Jesus Christ. That Jesus is God in the flesh, that's a great infinite mystery, that he in a little baby body is God the Creator. How can you figure that out? You could be pondering that the rest of your life and never fully understand it, that Jesus perfectly reflects the glory of the Father, and that if you've seen him, you've seen the Father. That's a mystery, that Jesus came to give us a great salvation by the shedding of his blood. That is a mystery, and it is a great mystery. The birth of the Son of God to a human woman. Beyond all question, beyond all controversy, this mystery is great.

And then he gives us six aspects of this great mystery of Christ. And the first that he gives us is that he appeared in a body. Now, the King James Version gives us, "God appeared in a body," and the modern translations take the word God out. Well, don't let that trouble you – the modern translations are from believers, the people that translated believe in the deity of Christ, the whole passage is speaking of the greatness of Christ. They are not denying that Christ was God, they're just saying that the ancient manuscript didn't have the word God in it; this doesn't change a thing. The fact of the matter is, he appeared in the body, and the Greek word appeared means was revealed, as light shining in a dark place. Revealed as he really was, but now in a body, and the whole flow of the New Testament was that Christ was truly God in a body, God appeared in a body, and the Verse therefore presumes Christ pre-existence, he existed before he took on the human body. He can say in John 8:58, "Before Abraham was born, I am." He's the eternal God who took on a body. Or as he said to Pilate – "Pilate said, 'You are a King then?' And Jesus answered, 'You're right in saying that I'm a king. In fact, for this reason I was born and for this, I came into the world to testify to the truth.'" Jesus chose to enter the world, and so this is the great mystery of godliness: that he was pre-existent God and he took on a human body. God appeared in a body.

 Now, many cults deny this central truth. 2 John 7, it says, "Many deceivers who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the Antichrist. The spirit of Antichrist then is denying that God came in the flesh." Islam denies this central teaching. They deny that Jesus is God in the flesh, they cannot conceive of this. They say that it was Judas that died on the cross, and that Jesus was just a prophet, a miracle-working prophet, yes, but just a prophet. The Mormons deny the deity of Christ, they say that he is a created being, the brother of Lucifer. Jehovah's Witnesses, as I've already said, deny that he is God in the flesh; they teach that he is a created being. So this is centrally attacked by Satan. He appeared in the body.

Secondly, it says "he was vindicated by the spirit." Vindicated means to justify, to declare righteous, to be proven, to have spoken the truth. Jesus was vindicated as God by the Spirit of God. And Jesus, I think without question, is the most slandered and reviled human being in history. More people have slandered and reviled and thought blasphemous thoughts of Jesus than anybody that's ever lived. Simeon who greeted Joseph and Mary and the baby Jesus at the temple, "said this to his mother, Mary, 'This child is destined to be, to cause the falling and the rising of many in Israel,'" listen, "'and to be a sign that will be spoken against so the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.'" Jesus is the sign that's spoken against, and amazing how gracious Jesus is to those who blaspheme him and speak against him and who did not understand who he was. Remember, as he's dying on the cross, he says, "Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing." At the core of that statement is, they don't know who I am, or they never would have done this. And yet Jesus is so gracious to former rebels who laid down their weapons of rebellion against him and come into his kingdom, and so, he says in Matthew 12:31, "I tell you, every sin will be forgiven men, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men." The next verse: "Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven." How sweetly gracious is Jesus to forgive us all of that unbelieving blasphemy, when at last we finally come to faith in Christ.

The virgin birth by his mother opened her up to the charge of sexual immorality - the charge that Jesus was born an illegitimate son. The Holy Spirit vindicated Jesus by descending like a dove at his baptism, he vindicated Jesus by driving him out into the desert to be tempted by the Devil, and he made it through without a single sin, and then filling him with power to do great signs and wonders and miracles among the people. He vindicated him by the words he spoke, no one ever talked like this man. He vindicated him throughout his whole ministry by enabling him to do all of these things with great power by the Holy Spirit. He vindicated Jesus by raising him from the dead. This is the greatest vindication of all, the claims of Christ to deity throughout his life were brutally offensive to his enemies, culminating in his trial. When they said, "'I charge you under oath by the living God: tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God?' And he said, 'I am.'"  Well, that was a claim. They didn't believe it. And they killed him, he died on the cross, the Holy Spirit vindicated him by raising him from the dead, and so it says in Romans 1:4, that "through the Spirit of holiness, Jesus was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead."

So, the Holy Spirit vindicated Jesus by raising him from the dead, and the Holy Spirit vindicated Jesus by coming in power on the day of Pentecost and moving the Apostles to preach boldly in Jesus' name. In Acts 2:1-4, it says, "When the day of Pentecost came, they're all together in one place, suddenly the sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. And they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them." In Acts 2:36, Peter said this, "Therefore let all Israel be assured of this. God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ,” vindicated by the spirit of God. The culmination of Peter's Pentecost sermon, "When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other Apostles, 'Brothers, what shall we do?' And Peter replied, 'Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.'"

Thirdly, "he was seen by angels." Angels are created spiritual beings - they're not omniscient. They need to learn the Gospel just as much as we do. It says "Even angels long to look into these things," 1 Peter 1:12.  Angels are constantly watching human beings - watching us right now. We can't see them, but they exist in the spiritual realm, and they were especially watching Christ. They watched his whole life. They were there when he was born, the shepherds were there tending their flocks, and the angel appeared and announced that the Savior was born. And then suddenly a great company, the heavenly host appeared with the angel praising God and saying Glory to God in the highest. They were there at his birth.

They were there when he was tempted in the desert. Angels at the end of that time came and ministered to him. The angels watched all the way through his life. They ministered to him in the Garden of Gethsemane, when great drops of blood came out and he was fit to expire at that moment, and angels came and strengthened him so that he would be able to go to the cross for you and me. Angels were watching Jesus as he stunned them by pouring out his blood on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of human beings. They watched in amazement as God the Father poured out his wrath on his only begotten son, he, our substitute, and they saw all of that, they watched. They listened as Jesus cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And as he breathed his last and spoke those wonderful words, "It is finished, Father into your hands, I commit my spirit." They watched all of that, and then they were there as the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead. One angel even got to move the stone back, so we could all go in there and see it. That Jesus is gone, he's not here. They got to announce, "Why do you," look for the dead, or "the living among the dead? He's not here, he's risen just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay." They were there celebrating. The angels watched all of his life, he was seen by angels.

Forth, he was preached among the nations. The mystery of godliness is great, and what's amazing to me as a pastor and a preacher is that God's entrusted to people like me, the ministry of reconciliation. I would think that if we go back a step, was preached by angel, would have done a better job. What do you think? That the angels would go out there and preach, but that wasn't God's will. Instead, he has entrusted to the church, the ministry of reconciliation, and we get to preach in the nations all of these truths, we get to be the pillar and foundation of the truth in the world.  He was preached among the nations. "You will receive power", he said, "when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth."  When we go out today into the Liberty Street Apartments, I'm going to be thinking about this verse, that the Spirit of God is going to be indicating Jesus through my preaching among the nations, that they get to hear the Gospel. It's amazing to me. The Gospel advances this way.

And fifth, was believed on in the world; even more amazing is that sinners like us can believe something like this. I mean, that God took on a body, that he had hair and nails, and flesh and blood and capillaries and all that stuff, that God took on a body and that he died, he was dead on the cross. God dead on the cross as the enemies say. God dead in the tomb for three days. How is that? It seems foolishness. When Paul took this message and preached it in Athens on Mars Hill. After they heard about it, "they sneered," utter contempt for a message like this, couldn't believe it. But yet there were some there that believed.

He was believed on in the world. The Holy Spirit of God has kindled in us a faith that can never be quenched. He's believed in the world, the Gospel, the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. And through that Gospel, Roman Centurions, like Cornelius, and Praetorian guards like in Philippians Chapter 4, members of Caesar's household, and perhaps even a Roman Emperor, Constantine, bowing before Jesus and acknowledging that he is God in the flesh. That's amazing. Ruthless barbarian tribes from Germania, or the Norseman, the dreaded Vikings, that some of them would actually lay down their weapons and bow the knee to the Prince of Peace and believe in him. Astonishing. That men and women in Japan and China would see in Jesus, not western pollution, but the God of all the world, even of Asia. And brothers and sisters in Christ from Japan and Korea, Vietnam, China, are there testifying. They believe these same things. The cannibals in Irian Jaya would give up their idolatry and wickedness and become Christians. That atheist Marxist professors, that Maoist terrorists, that genocidal African warlords, that suicidal heroin addicts, forsaken, starving orphans, that bored alcoholic CEOs, that former Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, animists and others have actually turned away from all of these lies and found life in Jesus' name.

He was believed on in the world, and finally he was taken up into glory. As he prayed in John 17, Father, I want the glory that I had with you before the world began. "He was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight." And once he passed beyond physical view, he was welcomed into Heaven by the angels and ushered right to his rightful place at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and he sat down on that throne. And since that time, God the Father in his zeal has been making his enemies a foot stool for his feet. And from that throne, he will come back and will enter our world again to set up his eternal kingdom. He was taken up into glory. Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great.

What then is the application for us? Dive into the mystery. All I've been doing with you this morning is just taking each of these six truths and ruminating over them, meditating on them with you. Take them home, take each one like a cherished diadem and look at it. Stare at it. Dive into this mystery. And trust in it.

I'm aware of the fact that at Christmas time, people come back to church, haven't been in a while, wonder if they're going to be welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome to be here. Jesus Christ has come to save sinners. The Apostle Paul said, "Of whom I am the worst." Find in Jesus your savior, and clear away all that secular stuff. All of those secular things, all the movies and the songs, the Christ-less songs, and all the shopping and the decorations clear it away and focus in on this. The mystery of godliness, that is great. He appeared in a body, focus on that, and on Jesus Christ who died for sinners like you and me.

And for the rest of us, can I just urge that you keep Christ the center of this time. I mean, you have to do physical practical things, have your quiet times, every day. Saturate your mind in Christ. As you go shopping - as shop you must - as you go shopping, keep in mind that all of these gifts are as nothing compared to the gift of the only begotten Son of God. Speak of it with your relatives, you're going to be brought together, perhaps with non-Christian relatives. Talk to them again, don't give up hope they're still alive, even at a late stage, they can still believe in Jesus. And for us as a church, let's continue to commit ourselves to preaching these doctrines, the doctrine of Jesus Christ.

I read a story, John MacArthur told, and I'll close with this, of an old church in England, there was a sign in the front of the church that read this, "We preach Christ crucified." But after a time ivy grew up, and obscured the last word. Thus, the motto became, "We preach Christ." A little while longer, the vine grew up a little bit more, and all that said was, "We preach." Wasn't long before the entire sign was obscured entirely and the church died. I think that that vine represents that encroaching secularism, that encroaching unbelief, that can eclipse a testimony like this church. God has lit a lamp in this church and set it up to be a light in this community. Let's preach Christ crucified. He appeared in a body, he died on the cross, he was vindicated by his resurrection. He ascended in the glory and he's at the right hand of God. He's coming back some day to judge heaven and earth. Let's preach those things.

Close with me in prayer.

Every April 15th, I can speak for at least one Christian I know, namely me, struggle with the issue of taxation. And is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? I mean, I must be honest, my struggle isn't necessarily a godly thing. I think it's that I dislike the fact that there's an ever-increasing hand reaching out for my wallet and I have purposes for that money. And so, it's a struggle. So, I'm being really honest with you that it's not a purely theological question that's in front of me at this point but it is a question nonetheless.

And it's something that we have struggled with, that we are citizens of really two kingdoms, two very different kingdoms at the same time. We are citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven and citizens of kingdoms, as Christians, kingdoms on earth. And sometimes it's difficult to reconcile those and to work out how they fit together. And it's even harder for us in our time and in our age as it seems our American culture is going further and further away from Jesus Christ and away from the Gospel. It's even harder for us to say, “Is it right for us to pay taxes to the American government?” Especially when we see legalized abortion and we wonder if some of our monies are going to that issue, going to support things that we cannot embrace as Christians. A culture of death, of shame, and sorrow.

And so we wonder about that question. It's an age old-question. Christians during the time of the Roman Empire struggled with how they should relate to the Roman Empire. They were commanded by law to burn incense to Caesar as though he were a deity, now they couldn't submit to that. But Paul writes in Romans 13 that they should pay taxes to the Roman government, a wicked pagan government. And that they should submit as they could to God-ordained authority.

Well, in all these things, as always, Jesus Christ leads the way. He shows us what we are to do. Our citizenship is in heaven, we're told in Philippians 3:20 and we know that. And we're called on in 2 Corinthians 6 to come out and be separate from the unbelievers. And yet, for all of that, Jesus gives us a pattern of submission to God-ordained authorities, even to wicked authorities, for the higher purposes of God, for the glory of God. And we see it in the issue, strangely enough, of death and taxes, in this account. Those two things that we're told of we'll always have with us. There's nothing certain but death and taxes. Well, as Christians, we know there's a lot more certain than death and taxes but they are certain.

And in the matter of the laying down of his own life, Jesus submitted to wicked government. And in the matter of paying temple tax, Jesus again submitted to wicked government so that he would not cause offense. And so we come to this text to be instructed, so that we can learn how we can be good citizens here on earth and ultimately, good citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The context here is Jesus Christ's final days in Galilee, verse 22-23 it says, “When they came together in Galilee he said to them, ‘The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him and on the third day he will be raised to life.’ And the disciples were filled with grief.”

Now in these final days in Galilee, they're really the final days, heading toward the final days Jesus had to minister on earth. As the gospel goes on in Matthew, Jesus begins to focus more and more of his attention on his disciples and not so much on the huge throngs that followed him. He's giving more and more attention to his twelve, to the apostles. This is probably within easily the last six months of his time on earth.

And he's especially concerned that his twelve apostles be ready for his death, that they would understand his death. And so he mentions it to them again and again that he is going to die. In Matthew 16:21, just a chapter back probably even on the same page there, it says, “From that time on, Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”

And again after the time with the disciples Peter, John and James on the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus coming down the mountain again refers to his death, “Don't tell anyone what you have seen until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.” And they're discussing what does raised from the dead mean. But he's bringing it up, he's bringing up this issue. He wants them to understand the purpose of his coming to earth and that is that he would suffer and die for the sins of the world. And without that death on the cross, Christ would have accomplished nothing of lasting value.

His miracles would have made them a little healthier, or in this case a little bit wealthier. His teachings would have made them a little bit better informed, but they still would have died eternally under the wrath of God. Jesus came to save us from that wrath. To give us eternal life that we might live with him forever. That's why he came and he had to pay the price of his own physical death on the cross.

And therefore Christ's death is not accidental. Now, it says in the NIV that he was going to be betrayed into the hands of men, but I think a better translation might be delivered. New American Standard gives us that in verse 22, “While they were gathering together in Galilee, Jesus said to them, ‘The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men.’” Now, when we think of betrayed, of course, we think of Judas Iscariot, who sold Jesus' his master for 30 pieces of silver. But deeper, we think of Annas and Caiaphas, the high priest, the Jewish leaders who delivered Jesus over to Pontius Pilate and to the Romans. Or then perhaps we think of Pontius Pilate who delivered Jesus up to be crucified.

But I say to you in all of these things, the most important delivering was done by God the Father. That God the Father delivered Jesus up for our sins. In Romans 8:32 it says, “He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him over for us all, how will he not also along with him freely give us all things?” Christ was therefore on Earth to carry out the will of him who sent him, to carry out the will of God the father and he had come to be delivered over to death for us, and that is the Gospel.

It was God the Father who delivered Jesus into Pontius Pilate's hands ultimately. It was God the Father who delivered Jesus up to the cross. It was God's will to cause Jesus to suffer, it says in Isaiah 53, for us, to crush his own son on the cross that we might have eternal life. And it was Christ's will too. Christ acted voluntarily. It was his delight to do the will of the Father though it cost him his very life. He was glad to do the will of his Father, and so he was determined actually, determined to go to Jerusalem to suffer and die. In Luke 9:51 it says, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” He's determined to go to the cross, knowing full well what was waiting for him there.

And just as we will see in a moment with the paying of taxes, Jesus didn't have to do this but he chose to do it for our salvation. It says very plainly in John 10:18, Jesus speaking of himself saying, “No one takes my life from me but I lay it down freely of my own accord. I have the authority to lay it down and I have the authority to take it back up again. This command I received from my Father.” So, it wasn't Judas and it wasn't Annas or Caiaphas, and it wasn't Herod, and it wasn't Pontius Pilate, wasn't even the Romans who actually drove the nails through his arms and his feet that killed him. No. It was ultimately that Jesus laid down his life for us.

And in doing so he submitted to all of these evil men and their evil purposes. He just submitted to them. He submitted to Annas and Caiaphas, he submitted to King Herod, he submitted to Pontius Pilate, submitted to all of them meekly. Like a lamb to the slaughter, so he went.

And we know from scripture that God opposes the proud, oh, but he exalts and gives grace to the humble. And because Jesus humbled himself even to the point of death on a cross therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name. In this way, Jesus is a model of submission to even godless government who are seeking to carry out wicked plans and schemes not for the glory of God, but God had a higher purpose in Christ's death and for his glory and for his purposes, he died.

Well, Jesus mentions it again and though the disciples never quite seemed to get it in the days of his life, before his crucifixion, they were starting to get it. And by this point, they're understanding what Jesus is saying. They don't understand the full ramifications, but it says in verse 23, “The disciples were filled with grief.”

Remember in Matthew 16, just the previous chapter, Peter had rebuked Jesus for even bringing this up. Took him aside and began to rebuke him, “Never Lord, this will never happen to you.” And Luke had made it clear that they had no idea what he was talking about. But here, it seems to be getting through and they're deeply saddened.

Isn't it amazing that they're deeply saddened? I guess at one level it makes sense. But it was for a great joy that will be for all peoples that Jesus came and that Jesus died. And so, they're saddened about the very thing that is necessary to make them eternally happy and joyful. They're saddened by the death of Christ.

So John McArthur said this, “Jesus understood their slow comprehension as well as their small faith and realized they needed repeated reminders, especially about truths that were not only hard to understand but painful to accept. They needed to be prepared for the reality that their Lord was soon going to be taken away from them by death, and that before he died he would suffer and be tormented.” It would not be until after Christ rose from the dead and the coming of the Holy Spirit that they would understand fully all of these things.

That the Son of Man, Matthew 20:28, did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Friends, this is the gospel, this is why Jesus came. Don't forget that. In all of the sensual delights of Christmas, in all of the distractions that they bear, don't forget why Jesus came. He came to give his life as a ransom for you and me. That by his life blood, we might stand forgiven before God.

It will not be long friends before we stand before him and give him an account for our lives. And the blood of Jesus Christ is the only hope that we have of salvation. Trust in him. Trust in him now. Perhaps you have never given your life to Christ, perhaps you don't even understand what Christmas is about. Your mind is filled with all kinds of cultural images about this season. Put them aside and focus on the man on the cross, the bloody sacrifice on the cross, he died in your place so that all of your transgressions might be forgiven. And focus on the beauty of the empty tomb and what it signifies for us, that we can live forever. “Because I live, you also will live.” Focus on that and then come back to Christmas and celebrate it properly.

So Jesus submitted concerning death, he also submitted concerning taxes. The tax collector came, the tax man cometh, in verses 24-25, “After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two drachma tax came to Peter and asked, ‘Doesn't your teacher pay the temple tax?’ ‘Yes, he does,’ he replied.”

So this is Capernaum, this is the center of Jesus' ministry up there in Galilee. And this is the last time that his hometown will be mentioned in this gospel. He's about to depart and go down to Jerusalem to pay for it all. But there he is, still in Capernaum, and so the tax collector comes to Peter, he finds Peter alone. I don't know why Peter was separated from the others, but this is a conversation that just the tax collector and Peter had. They are alone.

Now this two drachma tax was a government approved tax that had its roots or basis in the law of Moses. In Exodus chapter 30, Moses ordained that every Jewish male 20 years old or over should pay an annual tax of half a shekel for the running of the tabernacle. When the temple replaced the tabernacle the tax continued.

Now Christ came to fulfill the law and he submitted to all of the minutiae of the law so that he might accomplish a righteousness for us that will cover us on judgment day. So he came to fulfill the law not to abolish it. It's interesting that the tax collector doesn't come to Jesus directly but instead comes to Peter and asks about the taxes. Now the Greek implies that the tax collector expected that Jesus would in fact pay the tax, but perhaps he thinks he'd forgotten up to this point, busy as he was, or he'd neglected to pay his taxes.

But nothing could be further from the truth. Everything Jesus does he does for a purpose. Peter gives a simple answer, “Yes, he does pay the temple tax.” So Peter, having been with Jesus perhaps a number of years by now, had seen in the past, he had paid this tax. Perhaps he himself was wondering why he hadn't paid it yet.

Now who was it that received this money? Now, there's an interesting question, isn't it? It doesn't say anything in the text about it, but we have to understand who got the money. The high priest got the money. It was the high priest that received the temple tax. Who was the high priest? Well, at this point it was Caiaphas. But the real power behind that throne was Annas. Annas was still the high priest in power though not in name. Of course you know from the scriptures that the office of high priest was supposed to be for life but when the Romans took over, they felt that that was too much power in that very religious land of the Jews and so they would cycle the thing through. But it was always someone connected with Annas that had it during this time.

Annas had it, he was established as high priest in the year 7 AD by Quirinius, the Governor of Syria. You've heard of him, he was the one who was governor during the time of the poll tax, taken by Caesar Augustus. So in 7 AD Annas was established, but then he's removed eight years later because he's just too powerful. Well, that's okay, he gets five of his sons plus his son-in-law to serve in his place one after the other. He's still the power behind the throne.

Now, this family, this household of Annas, they were like the religious mafia, my friends. They were wicked men who controlled the financial aspects of the religious life of Israel. Their corruption took advantage of the law of Moses which required Jews to offer sacrifice at the temple three times a year. Three times a year they were to go up and offer sacrifice and they were to bring perhaps a sheep or a goat or some kind of animal and they would carry it with them or lead it with them on their way to the temple. 

Well, it just so happened as an Israelite man would come there with his sheep on his shoulders perhaps, carried it up there from the field, he would be met by a temple official who would officially inspect his sacrifice to see if it was acceptable. And guess what, it just wasn't. And then the sheep was confiscated. Oh, don't worry, it'll be seen again the next day sold to a different pilgrim. By this time, it's been acceptable now to the temple inspection. I don't know what they did to make it acceptable, but overnight it has become now an acceptable sheep.

But we have over here a pen of pre-accepted sheep or goats you can buy from them, four times the cost. And so they would go and they would pick up these sacrifices, these expensive pre-approved sacrifices.

Of course, their money was no good there, they had to exchange money, only the temple shekel was used on the temple grounds and so right over here you have the money changers. And so they will be happy to change your outlying currency for some temple currency for a small fee, or maybe even a big fee. Josephus tells us that during the time of passover, during the time of Jesus around that time, a quarter of a million lambs were sacrificed. Money was rolling into the house of Annas, huge amounts. And that was just one of the three annual sacrifices, the pilgrimages, that the Jews made.

What did Jesus think of all this? Well, you know very well what he thought of all this. In John chapter 2, as Jesus enters Jerusalem, he comes in there and he sees the cattle and sheep and the doves and all the people selling them, he sees the whole thing, and he sees over here the benches of those exchanging money.

And he goes in over and sits down and makes a whip. A picture of the wrath of God. God is slow to anger but when he gets angry, watch out. The wrath of God at work in Jesus and he overturns the benches of the money changers and he drives out all of those animals and he says, “How dare you turn my father's house into a marketplace?” And it was remembered, “Zeal for my father's house will consume me.” Jesus would do it again after the triumphal entry, he did it twice. And in this way, I think, at the human level, this is why they killed him. He had crossed the mafia's business. He had gotten involved in their money-making machine and he was dangerous therefore, to them.

That's who's gonna get the money. Very interesting, isn't it? Is Jesus still gonna pay the tax despite the fact that these wicked men are going to get the money? Yes, he is going to pay the tax because it was right to do.

Now, Jesus first has a lesson for them. “When Peter comes into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. ‘What do you think Simon?’ he asked. ‘From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes - from their own sons or from others?’ ‘From others,’ Peter answered. ‘Then the sons are exempt.’”

Well, Peter was alone out in the street having this conversation. A private conversation with the tax collector. In he comes to the house and there's Jesus, who wasn't with them out in the street. And Jesus brings up the topic of taxes and tax collecting. I would think Jesus would be a bit eerie to be around from time to time, don't you think? I mean, it's a bit startling to know that you're in the presence of a man who can read your mind. And it says again and again in the accounts that Jesus could read their thoughts. He knew what they were thinking. He knew what was in every man's heart. And so he just brings it up.

Reminds me of another time when Simon the leper had Jesus over and a sinful woman comes and washes Jesus' feet. And the man is thinking, “If this man were a prophet he would know what kind of woman it is that's touching him, that she's a sinner.” And the text says, “Jesus answered Simon and said …” That's a bit troubling, isn't it? Well, let me tell you something, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. He's reading all of your minds right now. He knows your thoughts, he knows mine, he knows whether we live for the glory of God or not, he searches our hearts and minds. It says in Revelation, gives to each one, according to what he deserves.

And so he knew Peter's thought and he brought up the topic, “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes, from their own sons or from others?” Now, what is the point he's trying to make? It's the same point with the cleansing of the temple, it's the same thing. He said when he was 12 years old, and he said, “Don't you know I had to be about my Father's business?” He's right there in the temple, the temple is his Father's house, It was his Father's house.

How many of you pay a fee to get into your father's house? And if you do come and tell me about it, I'll think your father is one of the hardest men that ever lived. It's an idea though, charging admission. What do you think? Every time, think of the money that could be made? Of course, the problem is we're the ones that give the allowance. So, I don't know where it comes from. They're gonna soon be out of money and they're gonna come and hit us up for it, anyway, so I don't think much money can be made.

The fact of the matter is, the principle is the same. We are welcome in the Father's house, we don't have to pay taxes to be in his house. We don't have to pay taxes in his kingdom, and so he's making a point here, even though he's going to pay the tax. He's making a point, I believe about our future freedom in the new heaven and new earth. We'll get to more of that later.

The fact of the matter is Jesus is making a point, speaking of the freedom of the Son of God, and even before that, friends, as Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well, “The time is coming when you will worship the Father neither in Jerusalem or at this mountain. God is a spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” You can worship God anywhere in the new covenant, by the power of the Spirit, you don't have to pay any tax money to do that. Worship is free and you're freely welcome into the very presence of God.

But for all of that, Jesus came to fulfill the law, he came to obey the law. It says in Galatians 4:4-7, “When the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law so that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the spirit who calls out, ‘Abba Father.’ So you are no longer a slave but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.”

So Jesus came to get under the law, to fulfill it completely and rescue us from its dominion and bring us into the full freedom of our inheritance in the kingdom of heaven. Oh, how sweet is that? It says in Galatians 5:18, “If you're led by the Spirit, you're not under law.” And so, we're free at last, from the temple tax. 

But Christ has a second lesson. He doesn't want to offend them. Oh, how fascinating is this? “So that we may not offend them.” He's going to give Peter some instructions. Christ never came to cause people to stumble into sin. The word is related in the Greek to a scandal, to scandalize them, he didn't come to cause them to stumble into sin that was not his purpose. He's not there to draw anyone into sin. And yet in some way, that's precisely why he did come.

For it says in Romans 9:33, “Behold I lay a stone in Zion that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. And the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” Jesus is the ultimate stumbling stone for the human race, but he doesn't want them to stumble over this detail.

For all of that, Jesus is able and willing to offend them when he must. In Matthew 15, he offended the Pharisees when he declared all foods clean, offended them. In John 6, Jesus offended most of his hangers on and groupies by telling them that they had to eat his flesh and drink his blood or they were going to hell. Well, that weeded a lot of groupies out that day. This was a hard saying, who can accept it? And out they went, they were offended by it. In John 8, and Jesus having a discussion with his enemies, talking about Abraham, “Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day, he saw it and was glad.” “You're not yet 50 years old, and you've seen Abraham?” “I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am!” Oh, they were offended at that. They stumbled over that statement, conversation over. Time to pick up stones, and stone him, he's clearly a blasphemer.

Jesus offended the members of his home town by his astonishing claims, teachings and miracles. They were offended by him. They said, “Isn't this Joseph's son and Mary's? We know him, we know his family.” He offended them, by his life and his ministry. He offended the Pharisees by eating and drinking with tax collectors and prostitutes and other sinners. They were offended, scandalized, by it. Finally, on trial for his life, he's before the high priest and the high priest at that climactic moment, when they're unable to get any witnesses whose testimonies will agree. At that climactic moment, he says, “I charge you under oath, by the living God, tell us if you were the Christ, the Son of God?” And he answers, “I am.” And then he quotes Daniel 7, “In the future, you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

Did he not know that this would offend them? Of course he knew. He had come to be the stone or the rock of offense and stumbling. And then he sets it up permanently in the Gospel. The Gospel is a stone of offense, a rock of stumbling for the human race, and so it says in 1 Corinthians 1:23-24,

“We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block, a scandal, to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” And so those that stumble, they fall for eternity, but those that build their lives on that rock, it will stand for eternity my friends, so he is willing to scandalize the human race. But he deeply desires that we avoid giving offense on things that just don't matter.

We should not offend others, for example, by flaunting our freedoms. Our right to eat meat sacrificed to idols, our right to drink wine, our right not to circumcise our sons, our right to go anywhere we please because we're sons and daughters of the living God. So as Gentiles, we now have the freedom to enter the temple grounds? No, Paul didn't teach that. We don't flaunt our freedoms and thus cause people to stumble over them. It says in Romans 14:13, “Make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother's way.” Romans 14:21, “It is better, not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother to fall.”

In terms of missionary strategy, evangelistic strategy, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9, “To the Jews. I became like a Jew, in order to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (Though I myself, am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. And to those not having the law, I became like one not having law (Though I am not free from God's law but I'm under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, in order to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.”

And so, missionaries in foreign lands have to be very careful what they're willing to offend over or not. Is it missionary boldness for a missionary in a Muslim land to make jokes or to blaspheme the name of Muhammad? Is that boldness or courage? Or somebody, ministering in a Hindu land to mock an idol? Is that boldness? Is that courage? I think not, rather preach the cross. Let the cross be the stumbling block. Let the incarnation of Jesus Christ be the stumbling block. Let justification by faith alone apart from works, let that be the stumbling block. Tell the truth about those false religions, tell the truth, but there's a way to do it, that doesn't cause offense, accept the truth of the gospel.

I used to work as an engineer with a man who - But I'll put it charitably, was one of the boldest workplace witnesses I'd ever seen in my life. I will say this, every single day that I worked with him, he was in some argument with some non-Christian over some moral issue. I remember that. Something in my spirit, I admired his courage, I didn't see a lot of love in him. I will say that. I'm not trying to judge him. I'm not, I'm trying to learn how to be a workplace witness but I know how people talked about him behind his back. And I wonder if he could have learned something from Jesus here in Matthew 17, “So that we may not offend them.” Okay, there's a desire Jesus had here, not to offend over things that aren't worthy of offense.

And so he decides he's going to provide for Peter. Now, stop just a moment. Wouldn't you love this at tax time? It's April 15th. Just go fishing friends, just go fishing and take the first fish you catch, and open its mouth, and there you'll find everything you need to pay your taxes. Oh, how sweet would that be, my friends? Oh, how sweet would that be?

This miracle upholds the dignity of Jesus, the Son of God, because by the power of the Father, the taxes are being paid. It also upholds the law, so that he doesn't give offense, it's a perfect answer. How did he do it? By the way, there's no account that it actually happened but I don't need it. Do you? I mean, the Roman centurion said, “You don't have to come, just say the word, and it's done.” Alright? So Jesus has given the word, this fish was caught and the coin was found, friends. Even though, it's not in the account, I believe it.

Well, how did he do it, how did Jesus do it? Answer: I don't have the first idea. I can think of a scenario. Some guy out in a boat stands up and four drachma coin flips out of his pocket, flutters down, kind of bright and twinkling in the sea of Galilee. A big fish comes by, looks like a lure or whatever, looks like something he wants to eat. Anyway, he opens his mouth and swallows it. No? It lodges in his mouth, but it doesn't kill him. He's gotta stay alive, long enough to be caught on Peter's line. So he swims around some indeterminate amount of time, Peter goes to a specific place in the lake, he throws out the line, and this is in fact the first fish he caught. By the way, Peter, most fishermen, there in Galilee they use nets, this is the only fishing pole and line I found in the New Testament. Maybe you can find another one. But out it goes. He's not a fly fisherman though, that won't work. It's gonna go down, and this fish is coming up with its mouth half full of four drachma coin and takes the hook and Peter lands it. Opens up its mouth and there is the coin.

Wouldn't you love to have been with Peter when he did that? Oh, what an incredible thing. Now, you would love for Jesus to do this.

One of my lessons to you today is, he can still do this. As a matter of fact, he can do anything. He is omnipotent. He controls every fish, every coin, every wind that blows, he controls everything. He controls history. Friends, you might be having trouble paying your taxes and you could be walking down a road and you could see a rock in front of you and before your very eyes, it could turn into a diamond bigger than the Hope Diamond, or any other diamond that's ever been and it would pay for all of your taxes for the rest of your life.

God has that kind of power. Well, then why doesn't he do it? The answer is, he loves you too much to do that. Maybe he wants to tell you, “Go back to your job and catch 30 fish, and as you sell them, from the profit you'll be able to pay your taxes.” Is that not Christ's provision as well, friends? And yes, he can provide miraculously, he can still do that and there may be times that he will work in such an astonishing, providential way that you will be on your knees before God giving him thanks. You may be in financial trouble right now, you may be wondering how you're gonna pay for your groceries, you may be wondering how you're gonna pay your mortgage or your rent. You may not have any idea where these things are coming. You may have all those needs met now, but you wonder if you're gonna still have a job a year from now.

Oh, don't be anxious about anything. In everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to the God, to the Christ, who can do this kind of thing with the fish. And then let him decide what he's gonna do, let him provide for you in marvelous ways.

Now, our citizenship, friends, is in Heaven, but we're still here, aren't we? And we need to submit to governments even to evil governments. I don't know the future of our government. I don't know how Christlike or godly or biblical it will be 30, 40, 50 years from now.

I do know this, while we can, when we can, as often as we can, we must gladly submit to God-ordained authorities. When they violate the laws of God, we must stand firm and not yield. But in general, we must give thanks for these authorities and submit as Christ did in this matter of death and also in taxes. Be willing to pay.

Now, having said that, that doesn't mean that we need to vote more taxes for ourselves, alright? We had the opportunity to do that in November, you remember? On the prepared food tax? I will tell you, I voted against it, okay? I don't think that we necessarily have to ask for an ever increasing tax burden. But whatever the government has decided is the tax rate, we must pay it, friends. And pay it with a glad heart.

But having done that, let's realize where we're heading, Jesus wants us to know the full freedom where we're heading toward friends. What kind of world is waiting for us in the New Heavens and New Earth? It is a place where there will be no tax booths on the streets of gold, paying for the upkeep, okay? No upkeep needed friends, no tax money there. You won't have to pay real estate tax on your inheritance in the new earth. It's going to be yours forever. No taxes there, you're not gonna be charged a 5 percent surcharge as you sit at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. You're not gonna get a bill at all, friends, without money and without cost. No taxes. We're heading there and we have even better than that, full access to Almighty God now and forever. Through a new and living way open through the body.

That's why Jesus came, that's why he was laid in a manger, and that's why he was raised in the ordinary physical way, and that's why he died. That there might be a new and living way, without money and without cost into the very presence of Almighty God. That is the Gospel, that's what he has provided for all of us.

And finally, don't be anxious about your financial situation, don't worry about taxes, don't worry about where the money is going to come from. Work your property. Work your field, whatever it is. Work your career if that's what you call it, your calling. Let God provide for you in the ordinary way. And if per chance, you need some extraordinary provision, he knows that too, and he will do so in answer to prayer. Close with me in prayer now.

So turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 17. We continue our study in Matthew, with verses 14-20, and I think it's gonna be helpful for you also, if you could open to Mark 9:14-29. I'm gonna be really looking at both of these passages in order to get a fuller understanding of what happened in that account. So Matthew chapter 17, verses 14-20, and put your finger there and stay also in Mark 9:14-29.

I can hardly imagine what it must have felt like for this young couple, newly married. The man I knew in the first engineering job I had just out of college. Now they were on their honeymoon, they'd been married for just two days, and they had gone to Hawaii for their honeymoon.

They were body surfing there, off the coast of Oahu, when suddenly a particularly violent wave drove this young man head first into the sand of the beach, jarred him violently, and injured him in a way that must have been terrifying to them both. He lay there on the beach paralyzed, unable to move, unable to feel, unable to wiggle his fingers, or his toes. Soon he was whisked away to a hospital, his weeping bride was stunned, wondering if now - they've been married for two days - she was married to a quadriplegic and would be feeding her husband the rest of their married lives together.

And as he lay there in that hospital bed I think their future must have looked bleak indeed. They were not Christians, they didn't know the Lord. It was a devastating time for them. Thankfully for them, he'd merely suffered a temporary shock to his spinal column, a temporary shock to the system, within days he would recover all of his functions, all of his feelings, and went on to lead a normal life.

But I think about that paralysis, that feeling of utter helplessness and I believe it's a picture of us in our sin, apart from Christ. A picture of absolute powerlessness. Now, what is power? Well, there are different kinds of power, there's political power, military power, there's physical power, the power of beauty, there's electrical power, nuclear power, economic power, and others besides. Power is the ability, the force to make a change, make an effect in the world, and people like to see themselves as powerful, that they can make a difference in the world, that they can make an effect.

But the Bible actually portrays us as spiritually powerless, actually helpless, apart from Christ. We are powerless to change our own nature, the nature of our hearts. We are powerless in the face of our own sinfulness, powerless in the face of disease. We have been proven again and again as a race to be powerless in the face of death, the final enemy. We are powerless to throw off the demonic oppression of Satan's kingdom and its opposition to us. We are powerless to improve our spiritual standing with a holy God.

We need a savior. And that is precisely why Jesus Christ has come, amen? Because we are powerless apart from Him. Romans chapter 5 and verse 6 says, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” Oh, feel the weight of each of those words. Christ died for the ungodly. That, my friends, is us; it's you and me.

Now, in today's passage, we're gonna see Christ coming face-to-face again with human powerlessness as he has so many times in his ministry. We see the powerlessness of a boy who is demon-possessed and thrown frequently into the fire or into the water. We see the powerlessness of his father who's desperate to save the life of his tormented son, we see the powerlessness of his disciples who through their lack of faith seemingly can do nothing about it.

But in the end, we see the powerlessness of the demon to oppose Jesus Christ. We see the powerlessness of disease to resist Christ's healing power. We see the powerlessness of darkness to resist the light, the powerlessness finally of unbelief, to resist the faith that Christ intends to give each and every one of us even today. The final lesson on this passage is this: If you believe in Jesus Christ, then nothing will be impossible for you. That is the power of faith.

So this encounter with Christ stands as a timeless testimony to the power of faith to overcome our powerlessness. But let's set it in its context. Here, in this account, we see Jesus and his three chosen disciples going from the mountaintop down into the valley. I told you it was coming. Remember we can't stay up there on the mountain top much as we'd like to do it, we have to come down into the valley.

And so, they're descending from that incredible experience that they had, the mount of transfiguration where Jesus was transfigured before them, and his face shone as radiantly as the sun. And his clothes became brilliantly white, and they had an encounter with Christ that they could never have imagined, and a glimpse of that pure heavenly glory that they will be gazing on for all eternity. They also had an encounter with Moses and Elijah, a true mountaintop experience, but friends it couldn't last. 

So now, they descend down into the valley of humiliation. Mark's gospel as I've told you, records this event with a little more detail than Matthew's, so we are gonna be running parallel, side-by-side. But according to Mark's gospel, Jesus's enemies were there and they were attacking the nine apostles that Jesus had left down in the valley.

They were coming after them, Mark 9:14, “When they came to the other disciples, they saw a large crowd around them and the teachers of the law arguing with them.” These are the scribes, the teachers of the law. They were Jesus' sworn enemies. They had, it seems, orchestrated this whole test, they brought this demonized boy and his father to the apostles to see what they could do. And as usual these scribes, these teachers of the law were looking merely for an opportunity to discredit Jesus, and this time by testing his apostles. Jesus' apostles had miserably failed, bringing temporary disrepute to Jesus and his ministry.

And so we see the plea of a desperate father, look at Matthew 17, verses 14-16. “When they came to the crowd, a man approached Jesus and knelt before him, ‘Lord, have mercy on my son,’ he said, ‘He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. I brought him to your disciples but they could not heal him.’”

So the powerlessness of this man to handle this situation brings about desperation. The love of a father for his son is among the strongest there is in the world. The father's anguish over his son is heightened by three factors: First, this son was an only son, his only child. The only child this poor man had. Secondly, the son was suffering terribly, he was in agony, and his life was threatened every day, and it had been going on like this for a long time. And thirdly, there was nothing the man could do about it, he was utterly powerless before it.

And so this man has great anguish for these three reasons. Now, he had heard of Jesus' reputation as a healer, but now perhaps his faith has been damaged, not destroyed, but perhaps damaged by the failure of his apostles, to drive out the demon.

Now, the son's desperate condition is interesting in the original language, and in Greek, the King James version actually brings it across a little more faithfully. It says there that he was a “lunatic,” and it's related to the Greek word for the goddess of the moon and they believed that epileptic seizures were brought on because they had, in some sense, offended the moon goddess and they would wax and wane with the patterns of the moon and that's what the word literally means. Lunatic.

But clearly the issue here is this man is having seizures. And the man rightly believed that it was brought on by a demon. Now, when we go from the word lunatic to epileptic seizures, we who live in the city of medicine, we may leave out the supernatural impact of the demonic. We may think that demons don't bring about illnesses, but they do, and they certainly do here in this account. This is brought on by a demon. Look at Mark 9:17 and 18, “Teacher I've brought you my son, who is possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground, he foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid.”

Now, I can't imagine what an epileptic seizure would be like. There have been some in our church whose children have suffered through them. Perhaps you yourself have this kind of malady, but I can imagine it would be a terrifying thing to go through this. And the powerlessness of the father watching this.

But even worse, there's a malevolent side to it, a wickedness, a demon, that's bringing it on. And this demon isn't merely robbing his son of speech, the demon is trying to kill him. He's looking for an opportunity. Jesus said that Satan is a murderer, and he was a murderer from the beginning. This demon is just following suit of his dark lord and master, he's trying to kill, to murder, this man's son. 

And he does it by bringing on convulsions resulting in the boy throwing himself often it says, “Into the fire or into the water.” The fire might be a cooking fire in the house or any other kind of fire that might be around the yard. The water could be a river, a lake, a pond, a well. It could come on at any moment. Imagine being this boy's father, you never know if this moment might be his last. There's just nothing you can do about it. It's been going on since childhood, a desperate case.

And so he comes to Christ for mercy. Matthew 17:14-15, it says, “A man approached Jesus and knelt before him, ‘Lord have mercy on my son,’ he said.” He bows down before Christ as before a king, and he calls him “Lord.” This was actually common. It doesn't mean that he necessarily fully understood who Jesus was, but he certainly understood that he was great and had great power.

However it seems that his faith is already as I've said, been somewhat damaged. Look at Mark 9:22-23. There it says, “If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” Let me read that a little differently: “If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” And let me put a little inflection in Jesus's answer, “‘If you can?’ All things are possible to him who believes.” What do you mean if you can?

If you can do anything Jesus. Well therein lies the rub, friends, isn't it? Can Jesus do anything about your situation? Don't we come to him about the same way? “If you can do anything Jesus please do something, some little thing, let me know that you're there.” If you can. And so we see the struggle of this father.

We see also the plight of the faithless disciples. He says, “I brought him to your disciples but they could not heal him.” The focus here is on the failure of the disciples, literally they had no power to heal, they were powerless before this case. They were stripped, they were exposed, they were weak, they were helpless, ashamed, defeated, humiliated. This was a stinging setback for them.

Realize it was couched as a test by Jesus's enemies. Jesus isn't there, he's up on the mountain, coming down. And so they're kind of left alone, in their own mind, they're far more alone than they really were. It's an especially poignant failure because it's done in front of Jesus' enemies who are trying to discredit his ministry, and Jesus had given them power over the demons to drive them out.

They'd already been over this. They were qualified to do this, they'd been given supernatural power to do this, they'd been sent out to do this. Mark chapter 3:14-15 says that, “Jesus appointed twelve, designating them apostles, that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.” They had the power to do it.

Now, we don't know what they did, and we don't know what they didn't do, but one thing it seems that they didn't do is they didn't pray. Now, this is rather striking when you stop and think about it. Okay, afterward, you know after the account, and we'll come back to this later, but at the end, they come to Jesus, after Jesus had gone indoors they ask him privately, “Why couldn't we drive it out?” And Jesus answers, and I think this is the proper reading: “This kind, can only come out by prayer.” Now just mull that over for a moment. A demon possessed boy is there, and they don't even pray about it. Instead of calling on Almighty God they tried the technique that they had developed on that earlier mission trip. You remember?

They went out and they had that demon thing, that technique down, and that was a great day. This is not a great day. There are great days and there are not great days. This was not a great day. That was a great day. Luke 10:17, “They returned back filled with joy saying, even the demons are subject to us in your name,” what a great moment that was for them, but now they can't do anything. Powerless.

The root issue here is clearly unbelief. In Matthew, “Why couldn't we drive it out?” They asked. Jesus said, “Because you have so little faith.” And we're gonna discuss this more fully in a moment, but the bottom line here is that they failed to trust in God's power working through them, they didn't look to God at all. They felt they were alone 'cause Jesus wasn't there, they couldn't see Jesus.

Well, the overwhelming majority of Christian throughout all history would not be able to see Jesus and would have to trust him not seeing him. Having not seen him, we love him, we're not gonna get to see him. And they needed to be able to rely on Almighty God, his invisible working power, whether Jesus was physically there or not, and frankly for much of the rest of their own lives, they would have to do that.

They relied instead on themselves, maybe like that Ali Baba thing, they were looking for that magic word, “Open Sesame.” If they could just say the right word, the demon would come out. And so, there are Jesus's enemies looking on, and they try to drive the demon out and nothing happens. And so, beads of sweat start to form on the head. They look around at one another the top three apostles had been drafted for some trip that Jesus was on. And so who's in charge? Is it Andrew? Is it Thaddeus? I mean who's gonna step forward now?

Whose turn is it? And so it starts to go badly, and then it gets worse. I don't know what the demon said, but we know in the book of Acts, a demon beat up some people who were unqualified to drive out, the seven sons of Sceva, they got beaten up. And so this is going very, very badly. They begin to argue, perhaps, among themselves, their faith nowhere to be found.

And so Jesus comes down off the mountain. The father encounters him, “I brought him to your disciples. They couldn't drive him out.” And now we get Jesus's response. What an amazing response it is.

“Oh, unbelieving and perverse generation. How long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?” Some commentators say Jesus is talking about his enemies, the scribes, talking generally about the Jews at the time. I think yes, and yes. But do you really think the apostles were not meant to hear that as a rebuke? I think it was for them and for us. Oh, unbelieving and perverse generation, unbelieving, not as though they were pagans, but where was their faith?

How many times does Jesus say, “You of little faith. Why did you doubt?” He says to Peter, “Where is your faith?” What happened to it? Did you leave it behind in this particular encounter? “Oh, unbelieving and perverse generation.” “Perverse” means they've gone off the right path. This shouldn't shock us. Jesus called Simon Peter “Satan” at one point, “Get behind me Satan. You're a stumbling block to me.” Romans chapter 4, speaking of Abraham, it says that God justifies the ungodly, or the wicked. Wicked Abraham. That's what the text says.

The standard is absolute perfection. We are an unbelieving and perverse generation and we stand well-rebuked by Jesus here. Have you ever failed to trust Jesus? Have you ever turned away in unbelief? Have you ever sinned? I really believe all sin is a failure of faith. If Jesus were standing right there, you wouldn't have done it. It's a failure of faith friends, “Oh, unbelieving perverse generation.”

Then he says, “How long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?” Oh, that I would not be a burden to Jesus. Weary of bearing it, he says in Isaiah 1, “I'm weary of bearing you, carrying you along.” How long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?

And then the beautiful statement, “Bring the boy here to me.” Thank God for Jesus. When we look our weakest, our frailest, he shines in his power. There's nothing he cannot do, there's no situation that's going to leave him nonplussed, doesn't know what to do. “Bring the boy here to me.” Not to get too allegorical here, but can I urge you to just do that all the time? “Bring the boy to Jesus.”

Whatever it is, bring the problem to Jesus, bring the struggle to Jesus, bring everything to Jesus. By the end of this sermon, I'm gonna urge you to bring your unbelief to Jesus. Bring it all to Jesus, he'll make it better. He'll take care of it, he will address it, he will heal it, he will show his power. “Bring the boy here to me.”

So we see the power of our sovereign Lord. Look at verse 18 in Matthew 17, “Jesus rebuked the demon, it came out of the boy and he was healed from that moment.” Oh, how crisply are those three statements made! Ding, ding, ding. “Jesus rebuked the demon, it came out of the boy and he was healed from that moment.” Wow! Awesome power, the power of Jesus. 

Now, his power was hidden as he came down off the mountain. He's not radiantly shining brightly anymore. He looks like an ordinary man. The power is hidden again, he's God incognito again. To his enemies, perhaps to that desperate father through his tears, perhaps a little even to his own disciples, he looked like an ordinary man. So the encounter with the desperate father makes sense, in Mark 9 where he says, “If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” “If you can,” said Jesus. Do you know who you're talking to?

Who is He, this Jesus? He's the second member of the Trinity. He's the only begotten Son of God. Through Jesus, God made the universe. By his power he upholds all things in the universe. By the word of his power, he sustains them. Is there anything that Jesus cannot do? If you can. If you can do anything. Oh, he can do everything. He is omnipotent. Christ is the center of God's pleasure. Angels hide their faces before him. We will gaze for eternity on his glory and never grow weary of it. The Apostle Paul, who revealed so much to us of Christ said, “I just want one thing, I wanna know Jesus. I wanna know him. I wanna know his power, the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings. I wanna know Christ.”

And so Christ reveals his power, once again. I say to you, there's not a man, a woman or a child here today that properly esteems the power of Jesus Christ. None of us does. We all underestimate what he can do. We all say, in effect, “If you can do anything, could you help me?” Well, He can do all things.

And so Christ reveals His power. He's already done a river of miracles in Palestine. Should be enough for us. He's already done it, but here's another one. He's all but banished the demons and disease from Galilee for a brief three-year period. Just rebukes the demon, it comes out of the boy and he's healed from that moment.

I like Mark's account, it gives it a little bit fuller. Verses 25-27, Mark 9. “When Jesus saw that a crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the evil spirit. ‘You deaf and mute spirit,’ he said, ‘I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.’ The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out. The boy looked so much like a corpse that many said, ‘He's dead,’ but Jesus took him by the hand, lifted him to his feet, and he stood up.”

Now, the demon, upon seeing Jesus, writhes and convulses. He is in fear of Jesus. He knows what Jesus can do. Oh, he knows the great power. It's the light of the glory of Christ's spiritual being, it's not physical anymore, but the demon's eyes, his dark eyes, stabbed by the brilliance of Christ's deity. And he is in terror of Jesus, as they always were. Afraid that he would send him to eternal punishment before the time. Some day, that demon will be cast into the lake of fire, the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. That's where he's going some day. And so the demon recoils in terror and abject hatred, gives the boy one final kick before he leaves him. The hatred of this demonic power, but he must obey Jesus, amen? He must obey him, because all authority in heaven and earth is Jesus'.

So out he comes. Do you think he ever entered that boy again? I tell you, he didn't. It was a permanent healing of that particular demon. And yet it was just a temporary healing. You know why? Because that boy is now dead. All of the people that Jesus healed are dead. All of them. Their bodies long since decayed, long since turned dust.

All of Jesus's miracles are just signs. They're signs of a future reality when there will be no demon possession, there will be no disease, there'll be no mourning, no crying, no pain, no death. It's all going to be gone. He's going to heal the world through faith in his name and that New Heaven and New Earth will be called rightfully, the Home of Righteousness. Not disease and death and sorrow and sadness. This was just a symbol, a sign of a coming reality. The true healing of every bodily disease and infirmity is the resurrection of the body at the final day.

And so Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, “So it will be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there's also a spiritual body. And so it is written: ‘The first man, Adam, became a living being,’ the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.” Jesus has come to raise you from the dead, not merely heal you of one particular malady.

I believe that there's got to be a small number, or maybe even a larger number than we can imagine, of people that Jesus brought here today, that he might raise you from the dead spiritually. Now. That he might speak a word into your heart of who he is, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And that light can shine in your hearts even while you listen to me talk, as though God himself were making his appeal through you. I urge you, be reconciled to God.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Trust in him for the forgiveness of all of your sins and you will live forever, and you will have a resurrection body, and there'll come a time you won't know any disease, any pain. Death will be a thing of the past. Trust in him, that's the healing he wants to work in you. Oh, let him work it. Trust in him.

Well, the account ends with the issue of faith, the primacy of faith. We've already seen it. Look at verses 19-20 of Matthew 17, “The disciples came to Jesus in private.” Why do you think they came in private? What do you think? A bit embarrassed, I'm thinking. “Jesus, why couldn't we drive him out? What did we do wrong? We gotta go to the technique school again. Exorcism 201. Okay, 101 was only enough for that time. We need to get the advanced exorcism. What did we do wrong? Why couldn't we drive it out?” He said, “Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there, and it will move.’ Nothing will be impossible for you.”

True lesson here is overcoming unbelief. The great enemy here is not the disease of demon possession. There's a far greater enemy than that. That disease and all of the physical diseases cannot condemn your soul to eternity in hell, but unbelief can. To not believe in Jesus is a sin, perishable by death.

So, he's got to heal this issue of unbelief. And again and again, Jesus deals with the unbelief of his disciples. He rebukes them after he rebukes the wind and the waves. He said, “Why did you doubt?” Thomas, you know, after the resurrection, he heard an account from the other apostles that Jesus had risen from the dead. He said, “I'll tell you what, unless I put my finger in his hands where the nail marks were and put my hand on the side, I will not believe it.”

So, a week later, Jesus gave him what he asked for because he was an apostle and he had the right to see it with his own eyes. So, though the doors were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus comes and stands in their mids and says, “Peace be with you.” And he goes right over to Thomas and says, “Okay look, look and see. My hands. Look at my side. Stop doubting and believe.” And Thomas says, “My Lord and my God.” And Jesus says, “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed.”

Is that you today? You've not seen and yet you believe that Jesus has risen from the dead. Good! You believe that, do you believe him for more? Or should I say, do you believe him for less? He who raised Jesus from the dead, can he not take care of your problems, whatever problems you hauled in here today? What's troubling your mind? What's concerning your soul today? God raised Jesus from the dead. What could be greater than that? You trust him for that, but not for your financial problem, not for your job problem, not for the problems going on in your family, not for your academic struggles, not for your struggle with sin. Oh, you'll trust him for resurrection, but not for those other things. How foolish. We are of little, little faith.

So what do we mean by faith? Well, I've meditated on this. Now, faith can be small or it can be great. You can be of little faith or, like the Roman centurion, “I've not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.” So faith, actually, can grow. It's possible for faith to grow. It says in 2 Thessalonians 1:3, “Your faith is growing more and more.” It is possible for faith to grow.

Well, then what is this issue of the mustard seed, okay? They said, “Increase our faith,” and he said, “I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there.’” So in some sense, faith can grow. In another sense, it's not a matter of size or amount, it's a matter of getting out of the way and letting Almighty God do what he intends to do. That's what it is. It is not faith that moves a mountain, it is God that moves the mountain. And he does it by people who will believe in him to do it.

And faith, you know there's all kinds of faith movements. The “name-it-and-claim-it” thing. You know what I'm talking about? “If you have enough faith, you can have anything.” And it reverses your relationship with God, where he becomes your servant and you're the king deciding what's best for the universe. “Please let us know where we're heading, okay. I'm interested in knowing where we're heading as you run the universe.” Aren't you glad you don't run the universe? God runs the universe and he's not surrendering that control to any of us at any time.

What then, is faith? Making God do what you want? Not at all. If God is intending to move a mountain, I mean a literal physical mountain with mountain goats and with shrubs and dirt and rocks, he can move that mountain whether he has you believing in it or not. But the issue is, do we wanna get involved in what he's doing? And if you have even a mustard seed of faith, you can get involved in the great things that God is doing.

And so therefore, I think it's an idea that you take and apply to every situation of your life. An omnipotent God is here and means good for me. He's promised me these things in the Bible, I'm going to trust him and he will do what he thinks is best. That's what faith is. And if it means the literal moving of a mountain, then praise God.

How then, does your faith grow? Be in the Word. Where did faith come from? Faith comes from hearing the Word. Immerse yourself in the Word of God. Memorize it. Saturate your minds in it. And then, the promises you find in it, trust him for those things. Bring them back to God in prayer. “Show him his Word,” said one puritan, “He's fond of his writing." So show it to him. Say, “Lord, you said you would do this. You said that if I'd prayed for wisdom you'd give it to me. Now I'm trusting you to give me wisdom.” Venture out. See God do great things and your faith will grow. It could be that your faith isn't growing, 'cause you really don't need it to grow much. You got it covered, just like the apostles who didn't need to even pray.

Now, I know some of the manuscripts say, “This kind only comes out by prayer and fasting.” I think that's a later addition. You know, we don't have the original Matthew and Mark, and so they're copies. And I think a monk or a group of monks who thought a lot about fasting, stuck it in there. I do think this, that fasting can focus us in prayer. I think it can be helpful. I just don't think it was originally there.

I think it's even more poignant to say, “You know, you need to pray about this. You should have asked God.” And that convicts me. How many problems come, in my life, 'cause I didn't ask God at all. I didn't bring him into the midst of it.

And so, what are the rewards of faith? Well, the moving of mountains. Immense joy when the boy is healed and walks away. When the sinner is converted, the one you've been praying for for all those years, when he or she is finally converted, the joy you get. When the inland regions of China are finally evangelized and Hudson Taylor can look with satisfaction on what began in his lifetime and is consummated right before Jesus returns.

Oh, the moving of mountains. Let me tell you something, the moving of a literal mountain is as nothing compared to this. The Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. Now, that's a bigger mountain than even if the Himalayas were moved a 100 miles to the north or south. And God is moving mountains.

He's doing it in his church, he's doing it in lives all around us. The question is, are we involved in it? When the Berlin Wall fell, you know how many Christians had specifically prayed for an end of communism in Eastern Europe? And they gave thanks to God, that mountain moved. Are you trusting God for anything? Are you trusting God? Are you ready to be blessed by the answers to specific prayer, and to receive the joy that God will give and the glory that he gets as a result? Please close with me in prayer.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a sermon on Luke 17:11-19. The sermon focuses on thankfulness to God and the sin of thanklessness.

I stand before you today a thankful man. I love that hymn we sang earlier. It characterizes my heart. This morning, my heart is filled with thankfulness. Isn't that a great hymn? And being able to say those things to God through faith in Jesus Christ. And if your heart isn't filled with thankfulness right now, it's my goal that at the end of our time today, it will be, that your heart will be overflowing with thankfulness to Almighty God. Even if you walked in here this morning unregenerate, you don't know Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Still, my prayer for you is that your heart would be filled with thankfulness, having found the Savior today, and that you would trust in Jesus Christ and you would find forgiveness of sins, and then a fountain would be opened in your heart of thankfulness that will last for all eternity. So I'm taking a break from our series in Matthew. I felt led by God today to just preach a single sermon on thankfulness.

We just passed a kind of an ambivalent holiday in our secular society—Thanksgiving. It was a number of years ago, I was watching a football game on Turkey Day, they call it, you know. And the commentator, the color commentator, and the play by play guy were wrestling just with the whole Thanksgiving thing, didn't seem to know who to thank. They were aware of the fact that you needed to thank someone, and they came up with the idea that we should be thanking each other for all the ways that we bless each other in our lives. And I'm thinking, "Oh my goodness." 

Even worse was one of those revisionist histories of Plymouth Plantation in which some revisionist historian was saying that the pilgrims got together to thank the Wampanoag Indians for all the help they had given them over the previous year. Now, I don't deny that they probably expressed gratitude to them as they did probably to each other, and that's appropriate to do, but that's not why they gathered. Now, these are the people that sank down on their knees in the wet sand in December 1620, after they survived the rough passage across the North Atlantic and gave thanks to Almighty God that they were even alive. And then a year later, the same thing that they had survived and now there was a good harvest to sustain them. So they knew who to thank and so do you, don't you? I hope you do.

We thank God for everything. All thanks be to God who saved us and loved us. Do we thank God, though, as much as we should? What should we thank God for? Well, what does the scripture say? In Ephesians 5:20, it says, "Always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." So we should thank God for everything. Well, when should I thank God? Well, Ephesians just told us always, but there's another verse as well. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 says, "Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." So we should be thanking God for everything and always. 

But you may struggle with that, you may think, "Should I really thank God for everything?" I came across a story a number of years ago about Corrie Ten Boom, who with her sister Betsie and her father were arrested by the Nazis. They were Dutch, and they were harboring Jewish fugitives, and they were arrested for that, and they were put into the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, one of the worst concentration camps in all of Germany, and it was a devastating trial in their lives and they struggled with it. There were all kinds of physical issues. Corrie and Betsie were in the woman's compound. That area was so infested with lice and fleas that as soon as you walked into the structure, they would swarm on you and begin to bite you. It was absolutely disgusting. It was a rough place, a place of physical torture, place of death, as they well knew.

They would labor long hours for nothing. Occasionally care packages would come and the women would fight like wild beasts to get whatever was inside that. It was a brutal life and very, very difficult, and Betsie was constantly urging Corrie to give thanks to God, to be thankful. Just continually thank God for everything. And Corrie was having a hard time. She was depressed. She was struggling with her attitude, as well you can imagine, and she said, "One thing I will never thank God for are the fleas." And Betsie said, "Corrie, you should even thank God for the fleas. Even for the fleas." Well, they had smuggled somehow a Bible in there, and these women were courageously having Bible studies within their dorm area, and they were risking their lives because they would be executed if they were found with a Bible and having these Bible studies. So they're very timid and very quiet about it, but the longer it went on, they noticed that they were never bothered by the guards at all. As a matter of fact, the guards never came into the women's area.

And one day Betsie came with great excitement to Corrie and said, "I want you to know I've finally discovered the reason why the guards never come in here, the reason is, and I overheard the guard saying, it's the fleas, Corrie. They don't want to get bitten with the fleas, so thank God for the fleas." And from then on, she did, she thank God for the fleas. It gave them an opportunity to have a ministry in the name of Jesus Christ in one of the darkest places on the face of the Earth, maybe in all history, a Nazi concentration camp, and it was the fleas that God used to carve out a place of peace where they could do that ministry. So we should be thanking God for everything. And if we should thank God for the fleas, how much more for those things that are counted by everyone to be blessings? Everyone knows that they're blessings. We should be, above all people, the most thankful, but as I look in my heart, I don't find that attitude dominating all the time, not like it should. I don't find my heart as thankful as it should be, and so they say that you preach the best sermons that you preach to yourself. So I'm just going to preach to myself, and if you all want to listen, that's fine, but I went to Luke 17 because I found there the issue of both thankfulness and thanklessness, and I thought it would be a good sermon to preach to myself, okay? So I'm going to preach this to myself, and as they say, "If the shoe fits, then wear it," alright?

I want to begin by this issue of thankfulness, speaking positively, that we are compelled to thankfulness Now we have this account before us of these 10 lepers, and I believe the foundation of thankfulness is a true appraisal of our desperate condition apart from Christ. That we are desperately needy and we need Jesus now. Leprosy is a good picture of that. It's a tragic illness. And I would say of the ancient illnesses that we know, the most feared above all. They feared this one. This leprosy, it attacks the nerves, it reduces sensitivity, it produces degeneration of cells. Leprosy can be progressive, causing permanent damage to the skin and nerves, and limbs and eyes. Skin lesions, grotesque, are the primary external symptoms, and for Jews in particular, it was devastating. Not only do they have the physical damage caused by this, but because of the great fear of contagion, of infectious disease, and because of the law of Moses, they were cut off spiritually from their people. They were permanently unclean, and so they could not worship in the temple. They could not take part with their families. They were cut off from society. It was a totally desperate situation, and friends, that's where we find the tap root of true thankfulness. Just know how desperate you are apart from Jesus, and combine that with how lavishly you've been provided for in Jesus, and then you have all the ground for thankfulness you'll ever need. You'll be compelled to thankfulness.

I believe that lepers are a picture of ourselves in our sin. I think that all of Jesus's miracles to some degree are really spiritual analogies. They are like living parables. Yes. They display His power and his deity. But he could have done that to anyone any number of ways. He could have done celestial portents, all kinds of things. Instead, he goes to the healings, and I think it's because it just shows us in our sin apart from God, we are like spiritual lepers. We're outcast, excluded, unclean, grotesque. The problem is we don't really believe that. We look with the eyes of flesh and we think that we're pretty good, generally fine, need a little touch up here and there, but generally okay, and I think that's why we're not as thankful as we should be. 

But this chapter, Luke 17, gives a plain demonstration of the healing power of Jesus Christ. Jesus is traveling along the border between Samaria and Galilee, and he comes upon this interesting group of 10 lepers. Again, they are outcast, they're unable to mingle in society, and for that reason, societal barriers have been broken down. You've got at least one Samaritan together with these Jews. 

They don't care, they're all outcasts, and they find themselves desperately needy, and they stand at a distance as they were required to do—a physical reason to protect the uninfected community and also spiritual reason, as I said from the Law of Moses. They were unable to be close but had to cry out unclean, but it's also again a picture of ourselves spiritually. Says this in Ephesians 2: 12-13, "Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who are once far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ." Oh, that's the ground of our thankfulness. So here are these lepers and they're standing off at a distance, and they're crying aloud to Jesus begging for mercy. Look at verse 13, in Luke 17, "Jesus Master, have pity on us." Now, pity or compassion is the most common emotional state ascribed to Jesus Christ. He was a very emotional man. He had a full emotional life, but the most common emotion was compassion. I think that's why He was called the Man of Sorrows and familiar with suffering.

He took on our sorrows, he took on our sufferings in and of himself, the happiest of beings, rich beyond imagination, powerful beyond imagination, sitting at the right hand of God, but he came to earth to take on our miseries, and he was compassionate. And so they're asking for mercy; they're asking for compassion. And so Jesus, moved by compassion, gives them a command, “Go show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded as a testimony to them.” You know, it's an interesting thing as he commands this, that they go and offer a sacrifice for cleansing that hadn't happened when he gave the command, and it's a bit of a faith test as they're supposed to turn and just start to walk, but all 10 of them do. And so they begin walking, and the power of Christ comes silently in the text, so you don't even see it. It just suddenly happens in between this verse and that, but suddenly one of them notices as he's walking that he's been cured, his flesh has been renewed, he's healed, he's cleansed, and he's immediately overwhelmed with emotion, cries out. 

Look at verses 15-16, "One of them, when he saw that 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 he knows that he's healed, but he also knows something else that healing came through a person, it was relational, there was an individual responsible for it. Like the leper, our healing has been mediated to us through the person of Jesus Christ. We owe Him our thanks. We ought to thank him. And the leper knew that. And so he comes back relationally. Didn't your mom teach you this when somebody gives you something, come back and say, "Thank you"? Well, this Samaritan apparently had a good mom that taught him these things. I don't know about the other nine, we'll get to those in a moment, but this one knows that this healing has come to him through a person, and you thank people for things that they do. Our healing has not come to us impersonally, it's not come from a medicine bottle, it's not come from a vending machine. Now, our cleansing, our spiritual healing came when a person named Jesus Christ stood in our place and took our lashing and took our condemnation, our sentence of judgments, and took our ridicule and our spittings, and our crown of thorns, and took our nails and took our death on himself. Jesus died in our place. He suffered under the wrath of God. He shed his blood, and he died for us, that we might have forgiveness of sins.

Are you trusting in him today? Do you know him as your Lord and Savior today? I could be speaking in a crowd this large to many who have never trusted in Christ, who are here in an unregenerate state, and you're in great danger. You may not know that you're in great danger, but the Scripture testifies that you're in great danger. Jesus' sufferings are a picture of that, so we have a sense of what we deserve for our sin. We deserve hell, and Jesus came that we might not have to suffer, that there would be no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Oh, I ask you, trust in him. I already said openly what my hope was for you, that you would walk out of this place today with a heart filled with thankfulness to Jesus Christ. Trust in him. You don't even need to do any good works. You don't need to go anywhere. You can just sit there in your pew and listen to the Gospel. Jesus died for you. Call on the name of the Lord, and you will be saved. Trust in him, and your sins will be forgiven.

Well, that's the ground of my thankfulness, and my ground, my reason for thankfulness is far greater than the Samaritan's. I'm not saying he's not going to be saved or his faith didn't also bring him spiritual salvation. I'm just talking about his physical healing. His body was cleansed of a certain disease. He was, as a result of that, allowed to come back into human society and to go on with his normal life as a Samaritan. What did we receive, brothers and sisters? We received full forgiveness of all of our sins, past, present, and future. We are welcomed by Almighty God. We have a place waiting for us in the new heaven, the new earth. We will sit at table with Jesus Christ. Our souls have been cleansed of sin. We're not slaves of sin anymore. We can tell sin to take a hike authoritatively the rest of our lives, and it'll do so. You watch and see. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. You've been given that authority. Oh, and a thousand other spiritual blessings. Our reason for thankfulness is infinitely greater than the Samaritan's, but he did what he was supposed to do. He went back and said thank you to Jesus. Have you done that? Do you do it every day? 

So I come to the second part of this sermon convicted, and that is convicted of thanklessness. There is a problem of thanklessness right in the text. The parable or the story, sorry, ends on a distressing note—the problem of thanklessness. Look at verses 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, why didn't it occur to the other nine to turn back and give Jesus thanks for what he'd done? Why the thanklessness? Could it be the same root is always the same root, is all of our problem – self-centeredness? "Look at me, I'm cleansed, I'm healed. I can go back and be with my family. I am happy. I'm going to go show them myself to the priest. I am I am, I am." Focused on his own individual situation. Forgets about the one who gave it to him. And so off they go, forgetful. 

Perhaps at a deeper level, we do not thank God because we think we deserve the blessings that he's lavished on us. By this way of thinking, any adverse problem, anything that causes us difficulty is an aberration, something noteworthy. We talk about it much. It's called complaining. And we don't expect them, like there's some strange thing that's come in our life. We expect the good; we're shocked by the bad. The good things we get, we feel that we've earned them or deserve them in some way, and we forget how totally dependent we are on God for life and breath and health and everything else. I know it happens to me. I forget that we depend on God to send the rain to the farms, so that the vegetables and the animals that we eat for food can grow and survive. A farmer knows. I'm not saying every farmer is a believer in Christ. I'm just saying they know that they're dependent on forces they can't control. But we think, we surmise that there's a constant stream of food supply to Kroger and Food Lion and all that. We don't need to worry; it's always going to be there. And so we run under the problem in Deuteronomy 8, when God said to Moses, “Beware, when you enter the Promised Land and you begin to eat food, a harvest that you didn't plant and drink from vineyards you didn't plant and live in homes you didn't grow, that you will forget God and think that you deserved it all.” I think that's a danger for American Christians. I think that may be one of the reasons we don't give thanks.

Now, thanklessness, I think is a great sin. It's a greater sin than we think it is, and a measure of that is the prominence that it plays in Romans 1-3. Now, in those chapters, the Apostle Paul is laying the groundwork for the universality of sin. Everybody has sinned. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Culmination statement in Romans 3:23, there is no one righteous, no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away. Universality of sin, Romans 1-3, so that we need a savior. But right at the beginning of that whole section, it says in Romans 1:21, "For 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." They should have thanked God for his physical creation. They should have thanked God for his eternal quality, for his invisible nature. They should have been thanking God, but they didn't. It's a great sin, thanklessness. We do not love God. We do not think about God. We do not cherish God as we ought to, and apart from Christ, people live lives ignorant of all of his many blessings and hardly ever think of him at all, and we as Christians, sadly, have the same habits of thanklessness. We just forget.

Jesus stands over this thankful Samaritan, wondering about the rest of them. "Were not 10 healed? Now where are the other nine?" Does He really notice that kind of thing? Is he that meticulous in his observation of what is given and what is not given? Oh yes, he is. You remember when he's watching that elderly widow putting in the two copper coins, he's watching what's put in. He's watching still, friends. He's still noting what gets put in and what doesn't, and He's paying attention to who runs back and throws themselves down at his feet and says, "Thank you, Jesus, thank you, thank you for what you've given me." It matters, he notices it. And so the thanklessness is exposed. 

Now, what do we mean by thanklessness? How does it reveal itself in everyday life? Well, let's start with grumbling and complaining. I've already mentioned it. Do you ever do it? I'll confess that I do it from time to time. It's called anti-worship. You know what I'm saying? It's the opposite of worship. Instead of praising God, you're complaining about some earthly circumstance. And whenever you complain, you're exposing a root thanklessness in your heart. Whenever you speak words of murmuring against God, you're displaying a lack of thankfulness. So also, whenever you covet the blessings given to another person, when you see their happiness, their successes, their honors, their possessions, and you're jealous of them, you are betraying a root thanklessness in your heart for the things God has given you. We also display ingratitude in our pride, whenever we boast about our achievements or our possessions or anything that God's given us. We forget a basic rule in Scripture. Corinthians put it very plainly, "What do you have that you didn't receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?" I'm going to ask a different question. If you did receive it, why don't you thank him for it? Is there anything in your life you have you didn't receive, and if you did receive it, then why don't you go and thank him for it? 

There's two different ways to hear that, by the way. You could hear it in a condemning, convicting sort of way. "Why don't you do it?" Or more of a suggestion for the future, "Why don't you go give thanks to God?" Let's hear it that way, alright? Because God is forward-looking, and so therefore, I'm brought to the need for repentance. I want to repent from this sin. I want to give thanks. I don't want to be forgetful. You know how it is, you wake up in the morning, you do forget to have your quiet time, you forget to thank God that you're just alive that day. You get in the car and you forget to thank God that you have a car. You arrive at your destination, forget to thank God that you got there safely. You go to the bank and deposit your paycheck and forget to thank God that you have a job and you have that money so that your basic needs, some of your wants are met, and you have some money to give to others to the needy. Forget to thank God for these things. Pass another birthday, forget to thank God that he gave you another year.

We're self-centered, thankless throughout the day. Even excessive grief during trials can show thanklessness. We should be thanking God for the fleas. We should be thanking God for the trials, because by doing that, we are praising God who gave them to us. The trials, we need them. "Count it pure joy," said James. We should be thanking God for these trials. And instead, we lament bitterly, and I'm not saying it's wrong for us to grieve over the loss of a loved one, I think we should. I'm just mindful of, for example, the funeral sermon that George Muller preached for his wife, his beloved wife, his partner in ministry. He cherished that woman, and he got to preach her funeral sermon. That's hard to do, to minister the Gospel, and he got up and preached her funeral sermon in his text with Psalm 119:68, "You are good and do good." And the text came down in three parts, three-part sermon. "The Lord was good and did good first in giving her to me to begin with, and secondly, in leaving her so long to be with me all those many years, and third, the Lord was good and did good in taking her from me to be with him in heaven." Now, that's a thankful sermon, isn't it? In the midst of a profound grief, he's thanking God for all of those things. That is convicting to me. It trains me to learn how to bear up under suffering and trial with a thankful heart.

And so, therefore, I think the text is calling all of us to repent. Don't judge those nine that ran off happily to the priests. Find yourself there, that's all. Let Jesus' question search your heart. "Were not 10, where were the other nine?" I wonder if there's almost a heavenly arithmetic here, that I give thanks to God for nine-tenths of the blessing or one-tenth of the blessing and I don't for nine-tenths, I wonder if that's what it is. I don't even know if I make it to 10%, that I thank God for 10% of the blessings. So I'm convicted of thanklessness. We're also commanded to thankfulness. This text isn't just giving us an interesting story saying, "Oh, isn't it nice that the one came back?" There's a hidden command here that we ought to thank Jesus for what he's done. 

But we don't need hidden commands, we are commanded to be thankful in many places in Scripture, many, many places, we are commanded to give thanks. Now it starts with a heart of thankfulness. And out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. You say, "Thank you God for," such and such. But it starts in the heart. You recognize that you're a sinner saved by grace. You recognize you don't deserve any good thing, and then you start to see what God has given you, and it just starts to move. And after a while, you just can't help yourself. You're going to say, "Thank you God for these blessings."

So what are these commands? Well, 1 Thessalonians 5:18 I already quoted. It's right there in your outline, "Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." I don't think it could be any plainer, friends. Give thanks in all circumstances. Or this one, Hebrews 12:28-29 says, "Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire."

You're receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. Every physical blessing you have in your life can be shaken, can be taken. But we are receiving a kingdom that can never be shaken or taken. It's a gift of God. It's an eternal place, the new heavens and new Earth. We're receiving it as a gift by grace, so we ought to be thankful, says the text, and if we are thankful in that way, that's what the word "so" means, so worship God acceptably. That's acceptable worship if we're thankful to God for the kingdom were receiving. Oh, give thanks to Him. Or this one, Psalm 107:1, "Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love endures forever." Colossians 3:17, "Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." It covers every moment of your life, your prayer life, [Philippians 4:6] "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God." This is how we should pray. This is how we should work, and this is how we should live. 

Now, what is the consummation of thankfulness? When and where will we finally be consumed in thankfulness? Well, you know the answer. That's in the heavenly realms, right now, that's what they're doing up there. The spirits of righteous men made perfect. What are they doing? They're on their faces giving thanks to Christ. What are the 24 elders doing? What are the living creatures doing? What are the angels doing? It's just an effusion of thankfulness. Constantly thanking God for who he is and for what he has done, the greatness of their God. They see it so clearly. Revelation 4:8-10 says, "Day and night they never stop saying, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.' Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne and who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and they worship Him, who lives forever and ever." 

They give him thanks and praise. And in the future, the new heaven, the new Earth, there's going to be the assemblage of people from every tribe and language and people and nation standing around the throne, and they'll be dressed in white robes representing their purity through faith in Christ. And they're going to be there, giving thanks to Christ. Listen to Revelation 7:11-12 says, "All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and glory and power and strength be to our God forever and ever." And that countless multitude dressed in white was joining them in that thanksgiving. That's where we're headed, friends. Oh, we'll be cured of thanklessness then. We will be outside of ourselves, no longer self-focused. We will see what Jesus did, we will see how much he deserves our thanks and praise, and we'll never stop thanking him and giving him praise.

Well, what is the content of our thankfulness? What should you say? What do we say? I want to thank God. What should I thank God for? Well, there's just so much. We already learned in Ephesians 5:20, we should be giving thanks for everything. So that's a start, isn't it? But you might say, "That's a little vague – everything?" Well, I mean, just try it. If you're really blank, just look around the room and start praising God, but I mean get beyond the furniture, you know the chair, the carpet, my shoe, my computer. Alright, but yes, you can thank God for all those material possessions, but you've been trained better than that theologically. Start lifting your eyes, start ascending in your mind to spiritual blessings. As it says in Psalm 103:2, "Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits." So I included in your bulletin this morning, a Thanksgiving sheet that I did some time ago, one page front and back of really small type, which I'm having a harder and harder time reading. Thank God I'm having a harder and harder time reading it. But to thank God for Walmart and $7.95 glasses that you know, they feed my glasses habit. I'm addicted to Walmart glasses, I buy them every time I go. I just keep losing them, and then they keep popping up again, thanks be to God. All kinds of things to say thank you to God, but there it is. 

I broke it into categories—thanking God for himself. Start there. Thank God for who he is, his own nature. Thank God for his holiness, that God is perfectly separated from all evil and high above all His creation. Thank God for his immutability, that He never changes. Thank God for his love of righteousness and his hatred of wickedness, that he's that kind of God. Thank God that he has the power to accomplish all his holy will and that there's no power that can stand against Him. Thank God for all of those things. Thank God for his eternal plan, that before the foundation of the world, he crafted a plan that includes your personal salvation, and nothing's going to stop that. Thank God for that. Thank God that nothing surprises him. There's no twist or turns in the road that He didn't foresee or calculate. Thank God for his eternal plan. 

Thank God for his mighty acts in history. Let's start with creation. God spoke and they came into being, all the physical things of the world—the sun, the moon, and the stars, this beautiful planet we live on with all of its creation. Thank God for each one of those things. He made each one of them by his mighty power in his wisdom. Thank God also for those special acts of salvation in history, what we call redemptive history, how he rescued Noah in the flood, and how he called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans, and he made a promise to him that through his offspring, all peoples on Earth will be blessed. And thank God that he rescued the Israelites out of bondage by Moses and by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and how he made the water wall up on the right hand and the left. Thank God for those things. He's the same God now. He's not going to do that today, I don't think. He's free to do anything he wants, but he did it then, and he's the same God. Thank him for doing it. Thank God for all of these mighty acts in redemptive history. 

Thank God for Jesus Christ, that God sent his only begotten Son, born of a virgin, who lived a sinless life, who did great miracles like the one in our text today, to display his compassion and his power. Who taught great things such that they said, "No one ever spoke like this man." Great teaching, Sermon on the Mount, the parables, all the things he taught. But especially that as I've already told you, he died in our place, our sinless substitute. Taking on the wrath of God, he died, he shed his blood. Thank God for all of that. Don't let a day, don't let an hour go by, where you don't say, "Thank you, Jesus, for Calvary. Thank you for shedding your blood. Thank you that I'm forgiven today because of you." The most courageous act in history in Gethsemane, "Father, if it's possible, let this cup be taken from me, yet not as I will, but as you will." He drank that cup. The most courageous decision ever. Thank him for it. It's right to give him thanks.

Thank him for his mighty resurrection and his promise, "Because I live, you also will live." Thank God for your future, thank God for your future in Christ. Thank God for the Holy Spirit, the indwelling Spirit. Is what I'm saying to you making any sense to you? Do you feel anything moving inside? Do you want to give him thanks? Well, then, the Spirit is at work in you. Is the scripture making sense to you? The Spirit's at work illuminating his truth. It's because of the Spirit that you're a Christian today, and it's because of the sovereign activity of the Spirit, that new brothers and sisters in Christ are being added to the church all the time. Praise God for it, the mighty power of the Spirit, and thank God that the indwelling spirit is just a deposit guaranteeing our full inheritance in the future. Thank God for the Holy Spirit. 

Secondly, you can thank God for his spiritual blessings. I broke these into two categories, those you have now, already, and those you don't have yet. And you can thank God for both. Alright, thank God for the spiritual blessing you already have for the Bible. Thank Him that you have this book that speaks the truth, and that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you can understand what he says. Thank God for our local church. Thank God for spiritual gifts. Thank God for brothers and sisters in Christ who watch over one another in brotherly love in your life. Thank God for all of those things, spiritual blessings you already have, and thank God for those spiritual blessings you don't have yet. That's most of them friends. Most of them are in the future. Your best days are yet to come. Thank him for that. Thank God for the bodily resurrection. You're going to have a resurrection body free from any disease, or pain, any decay. Thank God for that. Thank God for your future. And the new heaven and new earth. I can scarcely imagine what it's going to be like. 

And then you've got your temporal blessings. Yes, you should thank God for them. No, they're not as significant as those spiritual and eternal blessings that we have, but they are significant. So thank God for his provision for your bodies, for the health that you have, for your daily food, for the physical beauty of the earth. Thank God for each of these things. Thank God for your families. For marriage, husband and wife relationship, for a sustaining Christian marriages through forgiveness and love and renewal by the Spirit. Thank God for children, which I wrote marvelous, fascinating, challenging, and rewarding gifts of God. Amen. Amen and Amen. A gift of God, thank God for it. I just love what happens to the faces of people when children walk in and they'll just start to smile. Oh it's sweet, isn't it? That's a gift of God. Thank God for it. And thank God for society, that we live in America. It's a blessed country, and the blessings have come from God. We can't take credit for them. We ought to thank God for them, and thank God for the order and the peace of our society. And yes, there are problems, of course, there are problems. But thank God for the blessings, that's all. And thank God for the desire of your heart. God's given you more than you can possibly imagine. Many, many things that you love that are part of your life. Thank God for each one.

Finally, I just want to urge you to be committed to thankfulness. Make this a habit. If you don't like this sheet, I don't know how you could not like it, but if you don't like it, make your own. Okay? What kind of person wouldn't like that sheet? Come and talk to me. You need help, all right? But if you don't like the sheet I made, then make your own, okay? Make your own, but use it, just focus every day. It's a commitment. Psalm 7:17, "I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness."

It's the decision you make. Psalm 56:12, "I am under vows to you, O God, I will present my thank offerings to you." You just make a commitment. I made a promise to say thank you to God every day. I'm going to do it. So just, I urge you, practically get up in the morning, begin your day on your knees thanking God that you're alive, that you're a Christian, that you have forgiveness of sin. Start there. Have your quiet time saturated with thankfulness. Then move on through your day looking for ways to thank God. During your quiet time, scour the scriptures for things you can thank God for, just find them. Blessings flowing with a heart of thankfulness, and especially work on your mouth. Restrain your speech life when tempted to complain, then thank God instead. When tempted to boast, thank God instead. When tempted to covet, thank God instead. When tempted to murmur about the trials you're going through, however bitter and deep, thank God for them instead. They are fitting you for heaven. Thank God. Close with me in prayer.

Father, I thank you for this time that we've had to be together. Thank you for the Word of God. Thank you for the way it tells us the truth. Father, make us mindful of our blessings. Make us thankful Lord, and we can ask this, Lord, because every disposition of our own hearts that's gracious and godly and good has come to us from you, so we thank you for that. Lord work in us the spirit of thankfulness. I pray that when unbelievers or outsiders, non-church members come in, they would just say, "This is a thankful place. It's a happy place. The people just are constantly saying, 'Thank you,' to God for his many blessings." I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

I'll never forget my intensely mixed feelings as I sat there on the top of a mountain in Acadia National Park at the end of a long weekend. I had slipped away from my regular work as an engineer and had a weekend - this is before I was married and I used to go there. It was a good long drive from Massachusetts, but it was well worth it, still one of the prettiest places I've seen on God's earth. I think it was the combination of the rocky low mountains right on the coastline of Maine that just made such an impression.

And I've seen some impressive mountains since then. More dramatic I think than that, but still, the beauty of the place was just ravishing to my heart. And I remember sitting there and just seeing sail boats in the harbor down way below me and seeing a hawk circling below me, just riding the thermals, and feeling the wind on my face and that smell, that fall smell of leaves, wet leaves on the ground. And seeing the sunset, and the colors changing, so dramatic. And I didn't wanna leave because I knew that in a few minutes, I'd have to go and get in my car and drive five hours, and the next morning I'd be at work again and I'd be depressed and I'd be discouraged and I didn't wanna go back 'cause I'd had a wonderful time in prayer and in the word and it was a true mountain top experience.

And it was very refreshing to me, and I think it's good in life to have mountaintop experiences, isn't it? To be able to be there, to get away, to see the power and the beauty of God in creation. The hard thing about them is that they come to an end. And that we can't live there forever.

Now, I say to you that those mountaintop experiences are essential to the Christian life. We need them, we need to get away, we need to retreat 'cause there's still miles to travel, there's still suffering we have to go through, there's still sanctification battles we have to fight with our indwelling sin. There's still the effort of bringing lost people to faith in Christ, and they don't wanna come when you first meet them. Eventually they'll thank you for your sacrificial efforts in reaching out to them with the gospel, but there's still some hard things we have to go through.

And so we need those mountain top experiences, those retreats to give us a glimpse of the future world that awaits us and how ravishing it is and how beautiful. And what kind of peace and happiness will be waiting for us there in heaven. John Bunyan, I really think, understood this very well and in his classic on the Christian life, The Pilgrim's Progress, he weaves in masterfully, I think, the rhythm of the Christian pilgrimage from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City.

Extremely difficult trials face Christian, but they're also mixed with places of refuge and refreshment. Very wise, Bunyan sees the need for that in the Christian journey. Now, the sweetest of these moments of rest was a vision that Christian and Hopeful had from the Delectable Mountains. There they were in the Delectable Mountains and on a particular mountain called Clear, they were able to look through a special telescope to see the very gates of heaven.

Well that's what I was hoping would happen for us today. That you could look through the clear text of Scripture and see the very gates of heaven, the glory that awaits us. I really think this is why Jesus did it. Why he showed a glimpse of his celestial glory to those three apostles, Peter, John and James that they would have a glimpse and I think it's why he moved Matthew to write it down. But I tell you no mountaintop experience that I've ever had in life is like that one. What would you have given to be there, to see Jesus in some of his heavenly glory, an experience that would transform your life, and to hear the voice of Almighty God speaking out of a bright cloud? Oh, you would never forget it. And say these words: “This is my Son, my only Son whom I love, with him I am well pleased, listen to him.”

Oh how much they longed to stay there. Oh, how much they yearned to set up something permanent there, and not have to go down off that mountain, but they could not. And by the end of the account, they're walking down the mountain side talking about Jesus' impending death. And in the very next account, it's the apostles pretty much at their faithless worst. And there's just miles to travel, miles of suffering.

But my yearning for you today is before you travel your own miles this week, whatever suffering awaits you that you pull apart just now, and that you gaze into the face of Jesus by faith in the text and see there the glory that awaits you. That you will someday see him in his full resurrection glory. And that you yourself will be glorious, and you'll be free from death, and mourning, and crying, and pain. Just as last week, we had a glimpse into Hell when Jesus said, “What would it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” This week we have a glimpse into Heaven when we see the transformed face of Jesus Christ, the transfiguration of Christ.

Now some have called Jesus in his incarnation “God Incognito,” God in disguise. People, I think, have always delighted in stories in which some great personage, some king or emperor takes off his kingly robes and comes down and mingles with the people in disguise, and they don't know who he is, and he hears things said, and learns some things like the Prince and the Pauper, something like that.

Now I think no story in literature of any royalty coming and mingling is anything like the incarnation for the infinite journey that Jesus traveled. As you heard in Landis' prayer, he who is rich became poor for our sakes, he left the throne of glory and came down to dwell with us. Charles Wesley put it in his Christmas hymn, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” This is what he said, “Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see, hail the incarnate deity.” “Veiled” means somewhat in disguise. You needed faith to see him, he looked like any other man. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. Wesley says, “Mild he lays his glory by, born that man no more may die.”

Now for Christ to be glorious was his normal state from eternity past. The strange thing was that he chose to lay that outward visible glory aside when he came to earth. But this was essential to his plan of salvation for the human race. It had to be. For he had to appear as a normal human being in order that his enemies might kill him. They would never have killed him if they had known who he was. If he had been in bright radiant glory all the time, they'd be terrified on their faces in front of him at every moment and he never would have died. I mean look what happened the night that they arrested him. All they had to do was just say, “Who are you looking for?” “Jesus of Nazareth.” And he says, “I am,” and they're on the ground in front of him. That's just him saying his name, how much more than some of his heavenly glory. So it was essential to his plan. He came to lay down his life as a ransom for many and so he would never have been killed if he had not laid aside that outward visible glory.

Furthermore, it was essential to our salvation. We had to believe in the word of God, we had to see him just as a man and trust that what he said was true, what Scripture said about him was true. And the Scripture had to be sufficient to lead those apostles to faith in Christ and to any that saw him. Who learned, as the apostle Paul later said, from now on, we don't know Jesus in a fleshly way just by the eye, but we once knew him that way. We don't know him that way any longer. But we've come to believe by the Scripture that Jesus is the Son of God. By direct revelation from the heavenly father, that's how we're going to be saved.

And furthermore, there'd be no living people left on the face of the earth if Jesus had shown his full glory because he said to Moses, no one can see me and live. It wasn't Jesus' purpose to come in and kill everyone, that everyone would be slain by his glory. For it says in 1 Timothy 6:16, that God alone is immortal and lives in unapproachable light, And so Jesus had to turn off his glory entirely, and even here on the Mount of Transfiguration, he doesn't show everything. They couldn't handle it.

And so Christ came into the world as God incognito, God in disguise, but for one unforgettable occasion, he reclaimed some of his heavenly glory to show to a select group of his disciples, his apostles, a taste of his greatness. Look at verses 1 and 2, “After six days, Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them, his face shone like the sun and his clothes became as white as the light.”

So some of his heavenly glory reclaimed just for a brief time. Now Christ was always glorious even the day before this display. It was a glory of the mind, a glory you had to see by faith. As I said, in Isiah, he had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. That wasn't the attraction, that wasn't the glory. It was the glory you had to see by faith, with eyes of faith. And so the apostle John writes in John 1:14, “The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only who came from the father, full of grace and truth.” Now, this is a glory of the mind, a glory of faith, not a glory of the eye. He looked like any other man, really.

There was glory in Jesus' miracles. After Jesus changed the water into wine, which really isn't a visually spectacular miracle. You just had to kinda know the context. You had to be with the right people. If you were just one of the guests you would have just said, “Boy, this guy is kind of a dunce. He gives the bad wine first, and then later comes the good wine.” I mean, that's all you would have thought. It wasn't dramatic glory, but Jesus showed his glory to those who knew. And so it says in John 2:11, “This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.” So in his miracles, there was glory.

There would of course be the greatest display of this kind of glory ever, and that's in the cross. There was no bright radiant shining light at the cross, But there, in full display all the attributes of God in the person of his dying Son. The wrath of God, the love of God, the righteousness of God, the glory of God. And so Jesus often spoke of his being lifted up, his death as his glorification, when the Son of Man is glorified, that's at the cross. But again, no bright radiant shining light like the angel had when he announced that today in the city of David, a Savior is born, Jesus Christ the Lord. There was a radiant shining bright light around that angel. Jesus had turned that off.

Now after Jesus' death and resurrection, he would return to heaven, and he would receive back all of his rightful glory and his place at the right hand of Almighty God. The very thing he prayed for in John 17:5, he asked his Father, “And now Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” Oh, what a bold prayer that would be if Jesus wasn't the son of God. For it says in Isaiah, “Almighty God said, ‘I give my glory to no one, I share my glory with no one.’” Oh but he shares it with his son, because the son is God. And so Jesus asked for the glory back.

But now here for this brief moment on this Mount of Transfiguration, he lets some of his glory shine. Now again, this is a transfiguration not a transformation. Jesus never changes. We've already heard that this morning, he's the same yesterday and today and forever. He never changes, he doesn't improve, he doesn't get worse. He's no more glorious when he shows that visible glory than before, a moment before, when he hadn't shown it.

Now Christians who have come to faith in Christ. Now we're different, we're being transformed from glory into glory, 2 Corinthians 3, we're being transformed in ever increasing glory and Romans 12 says we're transformed by the renewing of our mind, that's us, we're looking for a transformation. We were dead in our transgressions and sins and we're hoping to spend eternity with God, glorious in his presence, now, that's a transformation.

This isn't a transformation, this is merely a transfiguration. And the account focuses on Jesus' face and on his clothing, just what you could see of him. And so his face shone like the sun and his clothes became as white as the light. A picture of transcendent supernatural glory. Now they knew that Christ was great. By this time, Peter had already made his confession that he was the Son of God. But they didn't know it like they needed to. The knowledge was shallow; it was superficial, they had to get deep and rich.

So they knew he was great because of his miracles, his teaching, his personhood, they knew that he was unlike any man they'd ever met. And that's why they were willing to leave their fishing nets and follow him, change their whole life. They knew that, but they didn't know him. That's why the apostle Paul who had already revealed so much, the apostle of the Gentiles said, “I wanna know Christ. There's more to know, there's more about Jesus I wanna know.” There's more about Jesus, I want you to know. That's why I'm preaching today that you would know him better. There's more to know. And so they didn't fully know him, they had therefore on the Mount of Transfiguration, a physical view of his supernatural glory, his transcendent greatness.

Now. There were some chosen witnesses up there on the mountain. Don't you wish you'd been one of them? We'll get to that later, you weren't, neither was I. That's okay, It's all right that we weren't. But there were these chosen witnesses.

First, we have these three chosen apostles. Now out of all of the mass of Christ's followers, out of all of his disciples, he chose 12 men to be his apostles, that should be with him and preach the gospel and learn from him. One of them was a devil, Judas, chosen for a specific purpose and the plan of God, but these were the chosen apostles. But out of those 12, he chose these three, Peter, James, and John, to go with him up the mountain. Very few therefore are chosen for this intense privilege.

Now, someone asked me this week, we were talking about it and said, “Why do you think he just chose those three?” And I think he chose three out of the 12 to show personal intimacy to each one of them. Personal intimacy. They had an experience that no one else got. And so there was a personal intimacy with it with them. Matthew wrote it down so that we would all universally recognize that personal intimacy is waiting for us in heaven. So the account is for all of us. The experience was just for them, you see, and we're going to have our own experiences in heaven. Oh, how much I'm looking forward to that. Personal time with Christ. Oh, there'll be plenty of time. How about eternity? We'll have plenty of time. Somebody said to me. Well, there's this huge multitude of people from every tribe and language and people and nation. Yes, but it's still a finite number, infinite time. There'll be enough time. You and Jesus, alright, to have time. So there's this intimacy there on the Mount.

So also in church history, very few have been chosen by God to have special glimpses of the glory of Christ. God showed them some things that he doesn't show us. Reading an account some time ago about Jonathan Edwards, and he used to go out regularly walking in the woods to meditate and to pray and to seek the face of God. But there was one particular time in 1737, and this is what he said, “As I rode out into the woods for my health, in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place as my manner commonly has been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view that was for me extraordinary, of the glory of the son of God, as mediator between God and man, and his wonderful, great, full, pure, and sweet grace and love and meek and gentle condescension. This grace that appeared so calm and sweet, appeared also great above the heavens. The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent, with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thoughts and conceptions which continued as near as I can judge about an hour, such as to keep me a greater part of the time in a flood of tears and weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul to be, what I know not otherwise how to express, emptied and annihilated; to lie in the dust, and to be full of Christ alone; to love him with a holy and pure love; to trust in him; to live upon him; to serve him, and to be perfectly satisfied in him and sanctified and made pure, with a heavenly purity.”

Oh, for an hour like that. Have you ever had something like that happen to you? 'Cause I never have. I've had some good prayer times, I've had some touches from God but nothing like that. Laying on the ground for an hour annihilated by the presence of Christ. Just a select few were chosen for that kind of blessing. But you know it's a foretaste for all of us, we're all gonna get it, we're gonna get far better than Edwards got out in the woods in 1737.

Spurgeon longed for it, which encourages me 'cause here’s a great man of God. He said, “I never had anything like that happen to me.” This is what Spurgeon said he said, “I must confess, I envy some saints whose biographies I have read who have seen the Lord far better than I have, and I aspire, I hunger, I thirst to see as much of him as can be seen on this side of the river of death. Why should not we all do so? Eyes are meant to see light, and spiritual eyes are meant to see Christ.”

That's why he opened up that site within your heart that you could see Jesus. “Mark this, then you huge crowd of church goers,” said Spurgeon, “Out of 12 apostles only three saw the transfiguration.” Well, Spurgeon gives us some advice there. Seek it anyway. You never know, who knows God might be gracious to you and show you something that'll lay you on the ground for an hour, but in any case, you ought to seek it, that you might know him better.

Now, we could guess perhaps at why Peter, James and John were chosen. “Peter was chosen because he loved his Master so much,” some have said, it's just a theory. “John was chosen because his Master loved him so much, and James because he would be the first of all the apostles to be martyred,” so goes the theory, I don't know. Does Peter love Jesus more than John does? Does Jesus love John more than he loves Peter? Who can say. All I know is those are the three that Jesus chose. He is the king, he can do what he wants, and so he chose those three.

And the three would stand together as in effect legal witnesses. Every matter is established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. And so, they were witnesses, eyewitnesses of the glory of Christ. And you ought not to wish to have been there too much. Don't focus too much on that. You're really not at any great loss. You might be surprised by those words, but that's what Peter told you. 

In 2 Peter chapter 1, this is what he says. 2 Peter 1:16-19, he says, “We were eyewitnesses of his majesty, for we received honor and glory from God, the Father, when the voice came to him from the majestic glory saying, ‘This is my Son whom I love, with him I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.” But listen to this. “And we have the word of the prophets made more certain. And you will do well to pay attention to it as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your heart.”

What is he saying? It's better to have Scripture than to have that experience, experience fades. You're trying to remember what happened, what really happened up there on the mountain, even if you'd been there. It's better to have the Bible, it's better to have the indwelling Spirit teach you the glory of Christ from the pages of Scripture. It's better. Besides which, you're gonna get better than that in heaven anyway. So don't be too jealous of Peter, John and James that they got to see it. That's the purpose of God, that they would be eyewitnesses of his glory.

Now this was a place of retreat, a place like no other, I think, a place of retreat. Matthew tells us, it was a high mountain, and that they were there by themselves. Peter calls it a sacred mountain. In any case, it was a place of sweet retreat away from the maddening crowd and the duties and responsibilities of life. Jesus couldn't or wouldn't have done this in front of the huge crowd. This was a personal, private thing, an intimate thing.

So often I think we miss times of sweet fellowship with Christ because of the busyness of life. I actually think American Christians are proud of their busyness. Corrie Ten Boom said, “Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” Barren means empty of fruit. And so we don't take the time to get away, we're proud of our schedules. Proud of the frenzy of it all. And we don't take the time to get away, like Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, and just listening to his teachings. We're more like Martha bustling around, and thinking, Jesus doesn't care about us. “Don't you care that I'm doing all the work here and here she is just sitting at your feet?” 

We should be more like Mary and sit at Jesus' feet more frequently. In Mark 6:31-32 it says this, “Because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat. He said to them, ‘Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.’ So, they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place.”

Do you ever do that? I don't just mean your morning quiet time, you go into your room and close the door and pray to your Father, that's important day after day, very important, but I mean get away. Walk through the woods, as Edwards did. I'm not promising what Edwards said happened to him, in 1737, but just that you would walk through the woods, and pray, and seek His face. Go to a mountain, go to the ocean, go somewhere beautiful and focus on Christ. This is an application point right in the middle of the sermon. Get away and have a spiritual retreat. Perhaps fast, focus on Christ, be renewed, be refreshed as they did. This was a time of retreat.

Now, of course, Peter wanted to build some permanent structures up there. Okay, he wanted to build those little shelters. We'll start with just three, we'll get to that in a minute. But I think he just wanted to be there, and that's a good thing to just wanna be there, but you know you really just need to come down off that mountain at some point.

So two lessons: Mountaintop experiences, I think, are essential to spiritual health. You need to have them regularly. But secondly, mountain top experiences must end at some point, so we can finish our work here on earth. So I would say that to you.

Now, there were two other witnesses up there on the mountain, they were heavenly witnesses, but they were there. Peter, James and John were not the only ones. Suddenly two other witnesses appeared, verse 3, and began speaking with Jesus, “And behold there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.”

And Luke tells us more about them, their appearance, and their conversation, in Luke 9, 30, and 31, “And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.”

Now they're called men, no different from us except that they were dead and now glorified in their appearance. That's to testify to the resurrection of the dead, they are absent from the body, but present with the Lord. Matthew 22:32, Jesus said he is not the God of the dead but of the living. Now, I want to say something. I believe that neither one of these men had their resurrection bodies. I think that happens at the end when Jesus comes in glory and at that point everybody gets the resurrection body at the same time. At the last trumpet the dead will be raised, imperishable. But there they are, they are spirits of righteous men made perfect, it says in Hebrews 12. And so, they're talking with Jesus, Moses and Elijah.

Now, what was the topic of their conversation? What were they talking? Again, it's Luke that tells us. It says literally in the Greek they were talking about Christ's “exodus,” NIV translates it “departure,” and that's a right way to translate that word. When I was in Greece, I saw the word “Exodus,” like we call it “exit” which is just the Latin form of it. But exodus, I think there it is, the exodus, just a kind of a glowing sign in the dark. So it's just the departure. But I have a feeling it was more than just that, don't you think?

I think they're talking about Jesus' Exodus, the fulfillment of the Exodus. He is the fulfillment of Moses. He's the one that comes and takes his people out of bondage to sin and death and leads us to the promised land, of heaven, the Exodus that he's about to accomplish in Jerusalem through his death and his resurrection. That was the topic of their conversation. We're not gonna waste time with trivial topics in heaven and so Moses and Elijah give us a good example of some good fellowship. Let's talk about something really meaty, Jesus's Exodus that he accomplished in Jerusalem. Oh, there's a topic.

Why Moses and Elijah, why not Abraham, why not Isaac, or Jacob or Joseph? Why not Daniel or Job or any of the others, why Moses and Elijah? Well, some commentators think it has to do with the Old Testament's testimony to Christ because Moses represents the Law, and Elijah was the head of the prophets. He was the leader of the school of the prophets and perhaps, in his own personage and the impact he had, the greatest of all the prophets.

And both of them talking to Jesus about his crucifixion and resurrection gives us, I think, a symbolic picture of the Old Testament's testimony to Christ. Jesus said in Matthew 5: 17, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. I came to fulfill Moses, I came to fulfill Elijah.” Romans 3:21-22, speaking of the righteousness that saves us, the gospel message, it says, “But now, a righteousness from God apart from law has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ.” There is no difference for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace. The Law and the Prophets testified to Jesus.

But then comes the greatest witness of all, Almighty God. And he's gonna speak some words here. Oh, what would it be like to hear the voice of God speaking? The overwhelming voice of God? Look at verses 4 through 6. 

It begins with Peter's statement. I find this remarkable, isn't Peter encouraging for us? Peter, Peter, what were you thinking? In verse 4, “Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it's good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters - one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

Peter in all of his bumbling genuineness, he represents us sinners in the presence of majesty and greatness. I love what it says in Mark 9:6, “He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.” Now, there are two different categories of people. Some people who don't, when they don't know what to say, they don't say anything. And then there are other people who when they don't know what to say something, okay? Peter's in that other category. He didn't know what to say, and he went ahead and said something.

“Lord it's good to be here, if you wish, I'll put up three tabernacles - one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah.” He didn't know what to say. So there it is, this is one of the great, great moments in redemptive history. This is the incarnate Son of God. He is showing his heavenly glory on earth in advance of his second coming, and there are Moses and Elijah who had left the earth, a long time ago, and they're up there in heavenly glory and they're talking and here are the three elect apostles, and they're there and Peter has something he wants to say. That's so encouraging, isn't it?

Ecclesiastes 5 says this, “Guard your steps when you go to the house of God, go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools who do not know that they do wrong. Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth so let your words be few. Much dreaming in many words are vanity. Therefore stand in awe of God.” I think often of that, Ecclesiastes 5. In other words, be careful before you speak to God, don't go flippantly into his presence, think about who you're about to speak to, and be careful what you say.

Well, Peter's message is, “Let's stay here a while.” The booths, I think, he wanted to make were reminiscent to the Feast of Tabernacles. Peter however, I think betrays perhaps a bit of a false understanding. He'd already testified that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, but I don't think he really understands what that means. And so he's gonna make three booths, one for Moses, one for Elijah, one for Jesus, three kind of equal booths. They are no way equal personages as Moses and Elijah would readily tell you.

Jesus is infinitely above them in glory and greatness and splendor and power. He is God in the flesh. And so I think Peter still has some understanding about who Jesus really is, don't we all? That's the purpose of my whole sermon that you would see the greatness of Jesus, how great he is, above, infinitely above Moses or Elijah or any representative we would choose to put up next to Jesus. He's the greatest man that ever lived. And God wants them to know that.

And so he comes in this cloud, this bright cloud envelops them. Verse 5-6, “While they were still speaking a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my Son whom I love, with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!’ When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground terrified.”

The clear message of the cloud, the bright cloud is this, the deity of Christ. Jesus is bright and radiant. The cloud is bright and radiant. The voice comes out of the cloud speaking, “This is my Son.” He is God the Son, the deity of Christ.

And we see also the delight that God has in his only begotten Son, “This is my Son, my only Son, whom I love,” it is the greatest love there is in the universe, the love of God the Father for God the son. One of the most important lessons of the Bible, and we have to get this one down. God is happy. He's a happy being. He's a delighted being.

1 Timothy 1:11, John Piper gives us a beautiful translation of that, NIV says, “The glorious gospel of the blessed God,” that's good, I like this translation better: “The good news of the glory of the happy God.” That's what “blessed” means. He's happy. Don't you wanna spend eternity with a happy God, not a grumpy irritable God? He's a happy being, and a large part of his happiness consists in eternal fellowship with Jesus. He really loves Jesus, he loves to spend time, Jesus makes him happy. He brings him delight.

In his book, The Pleasures of God, John Piper writes this, “A great part of God's glory is his happiness, and it is a glorious thing for God to be as happy as he is. God's glory consists much in the fact that he is happy beyond our wildest imagination.” And he argues, Piper does, that the happiness of God is first and foremost the happiness in his Son. From eternity past, God the Father has had the joy of staring into the face of his only begotten Son and seeing a perfect reflection of his own glory there. He loves Jesus, he loves him.

And what's so mind blowing for me is that's where I find my salvation, in the love relationship between the Father and Son. We, through faith in Christ, get united with Jesus and then he loves us as much as he loved Jesus. Can you even believe that? Listen to what Jesus prayed in John 17:26, “I have made you known to them, Father, and I will continue to make you known in order that,” listen, “The love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

Oh, we're heading to a place where God the Father is going to love you and accept you and welcome you as much as he loves and accepts and welcomes his own Son, if you have faith in Jesus. That's mind-blowing, incredible thought that the key to all that is simple, you have to hear Jesus speak now by faith, you have to hear his word, you have to hear him speaking and believe it's him speaking to you, and if you don't, you'll never get there. Spoke of that last week, you will lose your soul, but if you can hear Jesus speak you'll be saved. And so the cloud, the bright cloud speaks, “Listen to him,” listen to him.

It says in Romans 10:17, “Now faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ, if you hear the word of Christ, you will be saved.” Jesus put it this way in John 10:27-28, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me, I give them eternal life and they shall never perish.” So, basically, with all due respect, stop talking, Peter. Listen to Jesus, listen to his word. Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God.”

Now as God speaks to them out of this bright cloud, the effect is the same as it was back in Mount Sinai when God descended there in a cloud and spoke to them: Fear. They're on their face, trembling. They're terrified of Almighty God. They said at that time at Sinai in Deuteronomy 5, 25, “We will die if we hear the voice of our Lord our God any longer.” He is eternal, we are temporal. He is infinite, we are finite. He is Almighty, we are weak. He is creator, we are creature. He is holy, we are sinful. He is God, we are human. And so they're on their face before God trembling.

But then Jesus comes, verse 7-8, and touches them, “‘Get up,’ he said, ‘Don't be afraid.’” And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus. Hearing only Jesus at that moment, seeing only Jesus. We see the compassion of Jesus. I prayed for this, that you would feel Christ touching you today.

That's what he does, he comes over and he just touches 'em, drives away the fear. Perfect love drives out fear, he just comes and touches them, and speaks gently to them and they don't need to be afraid anymore. And he gives his most common command - 14 times in the gospel is this command - “Fear not,” “don't be afraid. Again and again, he says this. And so when they look up they see only Jesus. 

Charles Spurgeon wrote a whole sermon on this text entitled “Jesus Only.” They look up and there's only Jesus. Jesus only, Moses is gone, the Law has been fulfilled in Christ, Christ is the end of the Law. Elijah's gone, why? Because the spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus and so his work is done. All you have left now is Jesus, the embodiment of the Law and the Prophets. We have Christ, and he's all we need. Even the cloud is gone, because Jesus says in John 14, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” Even the bright cloud is gone, don't need that either. Just have Jesus. Jesus only.

Is that enough for you today? Is Jesus only enough for you? I speak to Christian and non-Christian alike. To the non-Christian is Jesus alone enough for you, his blood shed on the cross for you, that you might have forgiveness of sins, is that enough for you? His resurrection is that enough for you to cling to him, and trust in him, Jesus only, your righteousness, your Savior, only Jesus, not your own good works, not religion, not anything else, just Jesus, Jesus only. And I speak to you Christians is Jesus only enough for you? You have him, what else do you need? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up, how will he not give us all things? Jesus is greater than all things, is he enough for you?

The Father means for us to realize that Jesus' voice speaking by the spirit from the Scripture is sufficient for life and godliness, everything we need in Jesus' voice. The Father means for us to understand that Christ's righteousness is all we need. Jesus only, it's enough for you. The Father means for us to focus our minds in Christ and Christ alone. He'll never be jealous of his Son, never, he wants you to focus on Jesus. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Jesus is the door for the sheep, Jesus is the good shepherd, Jesus is the bread of life, and the spring of living water, inside you. Jesus only, enough for you. 

And so, I'm advocating here the Christ-centered life. Hebrews 12:2, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.” focus on him and hear his voice.

Well, the account ends ominously, verses 9-13: “As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, ‘Don't tell anyone what you have seen until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.’ And the disciples asked him, ‘Why then do the teachers of the Law say that Elijah must come first?; And Jesus replied, ‘To be sure, Elijah comes, and will restore all things. But I tell you, Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but have done to him everything they wished. And in the same way, the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands.’ Then the disciples understood that he was talking to them about John the Baptist.”

Well, it's over now. The mountaintop experience is done. They're coming down the mountain. Mount of Transfiguration was temporary. The shelters that Peter wanted to have built would have been temporary. Jesus means something better, he wants you to have a lasting eternal place, “In my Father's house are many rooms. I'm going there to prepare a place for you.” But you know what he has to do? To prepare a permanent place for you in the presence of the glory of God, he's got to pay for it, he's gotta pay the price, he's got to shed his blood on the cross, he's gotta pay for your sins and mine, and the price is infinite.

And so he's gotta get down off that mountain, gotta come down and he's gotta die, and he's talking about that with his disciples as they come down. He says, don't tell anyone what you've seen until after he rises from the dead. And now other disciples don't know what he's talking about. They're puzzled about rising from the dead. It says in another Scripture, “It's hidden from them,” they don't understand it, they can't fathom why Jesus would die and rise again. It was hidden from them. 

And so they focused instead on a theological question. There's Elijah, he's still up in heaven, looks like. But according to Malachi, according to the scribes and Pharisees anyway, Elijah comes first, and then comes Jesus, and we never saw Elijah. So what happened with that? We're just curious about that one text.

Well they're referring to Malachi, the very last verses in our Old Testament. It says, “Behold I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord, and he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers; or else I'll come and strike the land with a curse.” Even today, at the Passover, many Jews keep an empty chair for Elijah, waiting for Elijah to come. But he's still up there, in heavenly glory. So what's going on with that? They wondered about it. 

So Jesus says, Elijah has come. He already came. “It's true that Elijah will come and restores all things, but he's already come.” It says in Luke 1: 17, this is the angel speaking to Zechariah, John the Baptist's father, “He will go on before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, and to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

Now, before Elijah went up to Heaven, Elisha his helper asked for a double portion of his spirit, and the cloak fell down. And it represented a transfer of the spirit from Elijah to Elisha and then he went on and struck the river with that cloak and the miracle working power was with him, you see. That same spirit then, not miracles, but the spirit of Elijah was with John, John the Baptist. And so in that sense, Elijah had come back. And he was a picture of the suffering that Jesus would undergo. They have done to him everything, they wished, they put him to death and in the same way, the Son of Man is gonna suffer at their hands.

So what application can we take from this? Well, first and foremost, just know, your thoughts of Christ are too small. Labor on that. Meditate on that. Just say, “Jesus show me yourself. I wanna know you better.” Get away, I've already given you an application. Have a retreat, get into a beautiful quiet place, and let Jesus minister himself to you.

Meditate secondly, on the glorious future that Christ promised all of us, no matter what experiences you have here on earth. If you are a believer in Christ, you're heading to a place where you will see glory, and be glory, both, that's where you're heading. And let that drive out any of the worries and concerns that you came into this place with today. They are small compared to the future glory that God promises us.

Thirdly, know that earthly mountain top experiences, however pleasant, are temporary. Seek them, yearn for them, but just don't try to live in them.

We've got sufferings still to go through. Our infinite journeys, both of them are journeys of suffering, personal holiness is a journey of suffering. You wanna put sin to death, you will suffer, if you wanna try to lead people to Christ and plant churches, you'll suffer, okay, that's what he has for us, we've gotta get down off the mountain and do the work that God has for us, to do. But as often as he gives you a chance, go back up on the mountain and be refreshed, and let the Lord show you his glory again. Close with me if you would in prayer.

This morning we're looking at Matthew 16:26-28. I wanna begin by asking a question, a question asked by the novelist Leo Tolstoy and that is, “How Much Land Does A Man Need?” It's a short story that he wrote in 1886, James Joyce called it the greatest story ever written. It's a story about a Russian man named Pahom who had ambitions to improve his lot in life and back then in Russia, the most valuable commodity economically was land, real estate. The owner of a large tract of land was inevitably wealthier than one who owned less and one who owned no land at all was a peasant, a beggar living at the whim of a landlord. Now Pahom yearned for more land and therefore with it, more prosperity. At the beginning of the story, he boasts to his wife, “If I could have more land I wouldn't fear the devil himself.”

The Devil sitting behind the oven hears this and snickers. He says “Alright fine, we'll have a battle. I'll give you plenty of land and by that means, I will get you into my power.” As the story unfolds, Pahom hears about a tribe of people in the rich fertile valleys of the east, a people named the Bashkirs. Though he can hardly believe it, he hears that these people are selling large tracts of land, for very little money. Incredible bargain. So he travels overland to the Bashkir region and he meets the chieftain. After drinking some tea and going through some social rituals, Pahom gets down to business. He declares his desire to buy some land. The Bashkirs readily agree and Pahom asks for the price, they say strangely 1000 rubles, per day.

Pahom doesn't understand what this means, “Per day?” “Yes,” they answer, “for 1000 rubles, you can have as much land as you can walk around in a single day but you have to begin at sunrise and you have to return to the same spot by sunset or else your money is forfeited to us.”

Well, Pahom that night is filled with greed. He's thinking that he's in good physical condition. He can walk around a pretty big tract of land, so he's excited. He thinks he can walk around at least 35 miles in a day. He'll have 150 acres for plow land, he thinks and all the rest will be for grazing all of his head of cattle that he is most certainly going to own. So he agrees to the price, he wants to start the next day and they agree to do that.

At sunrise Pahom stands ready on the top of a little hillock. The Bashkir chief at sunrise drops his hat on the ground as both the starting and the finishing place for his race. Pahom has to return to that hat by sunset or forfeit his thousand rubles. So he starts off and his greed drives him on quickly throughout the morning as he goes along the first leg of his journey and as he goes the land just seems to get better and better, richer and richer, better looking rivers and copses of trees and he just wants it all but then he starts to realize, I've bit off a lot here and so he thinks it's about time, it's getting near noon to make his first turn, so he digs a little hole to mark the place as was agreed and he turns but he starts to realize that he's behind schedule, the sun's already at the top of the sky, it's the heat of the day, it's actually past noon now and he starts to pick up the pace. He's getting hot, he takes off his coat, he's moving along and he decides enough on the second leg, and he digs a hole to mark the second marker. By now, it's actually mid-to-late afternoon and he thinks he's in trouble, and he actually is. So he starts to travel faster and faster, marks the third spot as quickly as he can, and turns for home.

By now, the sun is getting a little bit orange in the western sky and he is pushing as hard as he can. Actually he's running at top speed whatever energy he has left late in the day. He comes over a little bit of a hill and he sees that hillock where he began but it still seems distant and now it's a race for time. He goes as hard and as fast as he can but he's got that last little rise to go just as the sun is dipping over the horizon, he dives and grasps the chieftain's cap, just in time.

Well, the Bashkir people are elated. They're just laughing and celebrating, “What a fine fellow. It's the largest tract of land we've ever seen in a single day.” And they're celebrating and they go to raise him up but there's blood coming from Pahom's mouth, you see, he's dead. The exertion killed him and so the Bashkirs take a shovel and they dig a six foot long stretch six feet down in the earth and that's the answer to the question: how much land Pahom needed, just enough to bury him.

What an interesting story. What a parable on life, on ambition, on what really matters. What do you really need? I think Jesus asked two searching questions in our text. It gets to a deeper issue even. Pahom forfeited his physical life, Jesus goes even deeper than that. He asked this question, “What would it profit a man, if he gained the whole world and forfeited his soul?” And then he asked a second question: “What would a man give in exchange for his soul?”

At the end of your life of achievement, you will stand before Jesus Christ and you'll give an account of every careless word you spoke and you'll give an account of your life and the issue hanging in the balance on Judgment Day will be this: Where will your soul spend eternity? Will your soul spend eternity with God in heaven or will your soul be tormented for eternity in hell? That is the question.There is no third option and Jesus is speaking this to make sure that we don't lose our souls in a fruitless pursuit of things that don't matter at all.

Now, let's understand the context. We're in the Gospel of Matthew, returning there after about a year and a half. The gospel of Matthew is the presentation of Jesus Christ as the king of the kingdom of heaven, that's the theme of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is the King of the Kingdom of Heaven. So the gospel begins with a genealogy, establishing his right to rule as the legitimate, the legal heir of David, the son of David.

But then in chapters two and three, with his birth, a birth account and then with his baptism and the statement made by Almighty God from the sky, we see established also Jesus is the son of God. So he is the son of David, the son of man, and he is also the son of God and those are his personal credentials to rule over the Kingdom of heaven.

And then we see his personality and his attributes established in his miracles at the end of Matthew chapter 4. He does signs and wonders, and so the power of his kingdom established by his miracles. We see also the wisdom of his kingdom established and his teachings, the Sermon on the Mount and the parables and all of the great utterances he spoke as no man ever did. And we see also the character of the King of the Kingdom of Heaven, the purity, the holiness, his compassion, his mercy. We see all of that put on display.

But in this section of Matthew, he has turned his gaze and Matthew has through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to us as the readers to people to see whether we will enter the Kingdom or not. We have to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and so there are many teachings concerning this. That we have to be able to in Matthew 16, make Peter's confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. And after Peter makes that confession, Jesus warns his disciples, in verse 21 of this chapter, “From that time on, Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the chief priest, elders and teachers of law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”

This is devastating for them. They did not expect a suffering Messiah, still less a dead Messiah. Could not understand this and it was very difficult for them, and Peter again acting as spokesman for what they were all thinking, just could not understand how that could work and took Jesus aside, if you can actually believe this and rebukes Jesus. Quite a moment in redemptive history. Peter, the chief among the apostles, rebuking the Son of God.

Jesus turns and rebukes him back and says “Get behind me, Satan. You're a stumbling block to me. You do not have in mind the things of God but the things of man. You're thinking like a man, not thinking like God would have you think.” 

Now Peter's immediate motive was selfish. He figured that he was in line for a key position in this new kingdom. Did not understand the Kingdom of Heaven, didn't understand it at all. But he knew that Jesus dead leaves him in a bad way, having left his fishing business and all that and being one of Jesus' right-hand men. And so he can't imagine Jesus dead because he can't imagine himself dead either. And so he's really thinking like a human. His mind is focused on earthly things, earthly power, earthly achievement, earthly pleasures, that's what he's thinking about, that's what's on his mind and so Jesus gives this incredible call.

Verse 24 and 25, Jesus said to his disciples. “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me, for whoever wants to save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” “Don't live for this world,” he's saying to Peter. “Don't cling to things in this world. Don't hold on to your life, let it go. There's another world that's coming and we're gonna live for that world. In this world, we're gonna have trouble; persecution and difficulties and suffering. In the next world, I will establish forever my perfect kingdom. Don't live for this world. Deny yourself. Be willing to die as I'm going to die.” That's what he's saying.

Stop finding your life in earthly things. Jesus then turns up the intensity even further, the call on the disciples is that they realize that anything that hindered them from entering the Kingdom of Heaven must be dispensed with, just as Jesus earlier said, if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. So he wants to give the disciples a sense of the immense worth and value of their future life, more significantly of their souls.

And so he says this, “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or What will a man give in exchange for his soul?” Now, from this text, I'm gonna focus on two questions, two issues. And that is the world and what it means to gain it and secondly, the soul and what it means to lose it.

And then I'm gonna ask Jesus' two questions and seek to answer them. “What would it profit a man then if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” and secondly, “What would a man give in exchange for his soul?” I wanna sharpen these questions to a fine point. I wanna urge you to be sure that your soul's final state will be in heaven and not in hell. I believe that's why God brought every one of you here today, including myself; that we would have a strong answer to that question by faith. That we would know where our soul is going to spend eternity. It's not an academic question. There could be no more important question that you face today than that.

Where will your soul spend eternity? Will you be welcomed into heaven or will you be cast into Hell? One of those two will be your future. And to help you, I will focus on the final inducement that Christ makes. Verse 27, “The Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.” Judgment Day is coming and the glory of Christ and the eternal value of your soul will push out every other issue from your mind. I wanna heighten that so you can make the wisest possible choice. 

So let's start with this issue and that is the world and what it means to gain it. Jesus said, “What would it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?"”

First of all, let me say no one has ever been able to do it. I mean, to gain the whole world. Many have tried but they've never been able to pull it off. Jesus is clearly using hyperbole here, an exaggerated statement to make a point. The fact of the matter is, many empire builders of all ages have sought to control the world and it has eluded all of them but they have run the race, haven't they? They've certainly tried.

The largest contiguous empire in the world in terms of land mass that there ever was, was that of the Mongols, the Mongolians. It reached its peak in the year 1260. It was 12.8 million square miles, larger than the Soviet Union, five times larger than the empire of Alexander the Great. However, for all of that, it represented just shy of 25 percent of the world's available land mass. They got a quarter of it and they had it for a few years, then it started to shrink, as all empires do. And so that's it, that's the number one of all time.

Others have tried to control certain aspects of the world. Certain commodities, or certain economic features. John D. Rockefeller for example, over 100 years ago, controlled through Standard Oil over 90 percent of the petroleum business of the world. Now, imagine what that would be worth today, if you controlled 90 percent of it.

For that reason, some people estimate that Rockefeller's personal wealth when adjusted to 21st century standards, is the greatest in history, approximately $320 billion. Incredible amount of money. He had 90 percent not 100 percent 90 percent of the oil business and he had it for a little while.

In recent years, some have tried to corner the market one way or another. In the 1970s, Nelson Bunker Hunt and his brother Herbert came very close to cornering the market on silver. That doesn't mean owning all the silver in the world, just means controlling it. They'd accumulated huge amounts of silver and by September of '79, the price had risen from $11 an ounce to over $50 an ounce. At that point, the Hunts controlled more than half of the world's deliverable silver but they didn't have quite enough money and the whole thing collapsed and in the end, they filed for bankruptcy so they tried just to control the silver and they couldn't even do that.

See, these are just some of the ways that individual human beings have sought to control just small portions of the world and no one has ever been able to do it but Jesus is saying, even if you could gain the whole world, even if you could do it, and if you lost your soul, it wouldn't be worth it. It wouldn't be to your profit.

Now, the world is attractive, admit it. We're not gonna stand up here and purely say, in a philosophical or theological way, “There's nothing in the world that attracts me. There's nothing here I like. I am so other-worldly that I have no earthly concerns.”

Now, I know that Psalms 73 says beautifully. “Earth has nothing I desire besides you.” That God is our portion, he's our final reward, and I understand that thought but let's be honest, God has created a beautiful world and there are desirable things in this world. There's the beauty of the earth, the pleasures of food and travel and entertainment. Hobbies, a good novel, an absorbing board game or an athletic event. There's the value of the esteem of other people. The joy of earthly success in business, academics, athletics, these things are desirable and it's wrong for us to say that there's nothing in them for us. That there's nothing attractive in this world, it just isn't true and all of these things should be received as good gifts of God. We would lie if we said that these things meant nothing whatsoever to us. God created all of these things richly for our enjoyment, he says, but any of them can become idols, they can just take over so they become the focus of our hearts and of our lives. They become an idol.

And ultimately, if we're gonna use that language, ultimately, the attractive pulls of the world are all empty. They're not going to satisfy our souls deepest longings. There's the pull of power. After Alexander the Great conquers whatever he could conquer and his army was compelling him to turn back and enjoy what he'd conquered, never lost a battle, and he sat down and wept that there were no more battles to fight. Come alongside him and say “Alexander, look at all the battles you've fought and won.” It's not bringing him any happiness, he's miserable. He's got to have more and more and more and more and more. The pull of power. It's empty.

How about the pull of wealth? There's Croesus, who lived in the 6th century BC. His land happened to have some of the richest gold mines in the world, therefore he was the richest king in the world. Had all of this gold, didn't make him happy and it was very attractive to Cyrus the Great of Persia. Heard about it, very interested in it. Came and conquered it, captured Croesus and was going to burn him to death. How happy is he now, concerning his wealth? As he's just about to be burned to death, doesn't bring any satisfaction. Actually, the richer you are the more worries and the more trouble you have in life.

What about wisdom? If only you could have wisdom, if you could have all of the wisdom. Well, Solomon went down that road for us and what does it say in the book of Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes 118; For with much wisdom comes much sorrow. The more knowledge, the more grief. Students can testify to that. The more knowledge I get, the sadder I get, or at least the pursuit of knowledge anyway, brings grief. Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived until the time of Christ and it brought him nothing but misery and sadness.

And then there's fame. I think no one can have the kind of fame that's available to us in this modern age. Think about it. Through the internet, through digital photography, through even YouTube, your privatest moments can immediately become world famous. Not that you would want that. More infamous, I would think. We can become quickly infamous but not very much quickly famous, I'm thinking. But I remember during the Barcelona Olympics, the first dream team, the basketball team, Michael Jordan was walking down the street of Barcelona and came to a building, a seven-story building that had a Nike poster of himself that covered the entire side of the building and so, the camera pulls back until it can get the whole poster and you can't even see Michael Jordan, the real one. He's tiny behind this dwarf photo of himself dunking. Worldwide fame, okay? But yet it's pretty pathetic to see athletes and movie stars and others try to hold on to that fame as age starts to take away the capabilities that gave it to them in the first place. They come back for one more Tour de France or they come out of retirement three times or they just can't let it go, because they're not satisfied, they can't live in the past, they can't hold on to it.

What about beauty? Look at all the movie starlets and the surgeries they're willing to go through and they're willing to risk their health to maintain their beauty. And you can see an aging starlet as she no longer gets the phone calls she used to get and others have taken her place and she's in some abandoned hotel room and commits suicide like Marilyn Monroe. Didn't bring any ultimate satisfaction and happiness. These things are not meant to be ultimately satisfying to our souls or the reason for our lives.

And then there's Satan, who in the story of “How Much Land Does A Man Need?” is willing to stand and make a trade with you. Now, he's not offering to peons like you and me, the whole world. He offered that only once to one person, you remember who it was? He offered it to Jesus. “I'll give it all to you, the whole thing, if you'll just bow down and worship me.” And Jesus said, “Away from me, Satan. For it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”

So he offered it to Jesus but he's willing to make trades. Like Dr. Faustus, who traded his soul to the devil in that story to get supernatural power and pleasures. For 24 years he had it and then at the end of the story he tried to rescind the offer, make the trade back and couldn't do it and came to a bitter end.

And so in common speech, we think about somebody with an extraordinary ability, like Paganini who could play an entire piece on one string. He would purposely break three of the strings on the violin and that would leave just one string and he could still play it on the one string and they said he sold his soul to the Devil to get that ability. We use that kind of expression. Well, it's a myth.

You can't sell your soul to the Devil. He doesn't have that kind of power. What's he gonna do with it when he is screaming in pain in the lake of fire because that's what it was made for? He doesn't have any ultimate power in this matter but he does have the ability to tempt us to lose our souls as well.

And so he's constantly pulling on us to trade our souls for something temporal, something temporary. Some pleasure, some power, some material possession. Something and so that's the world and what it means to gain it. What is the soul and what does it mean to lose it?

Well, your soul, it's more than merely your true self. Some people say that what this means is that the power of sin is such that, eventually, you just lose your true self. You won't be true to yourself, you'll be corrupted, you'll be transformed, you'll become a different person. And what good would it be if you kind of lost who you really were in the quest for power and fame and all that? Well, that's true, that does happen but that's not what Jesus is talking about.

And it's more than merely your physical life and here, you've got to kind of track through acts of Jesus, a changing of the use of the Greek word. In verse 26 he says in the ESV, it says, “What would it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?” that's what the ESV gives us. Jesus said, “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it.” I think there he is talking about physical life, but here it's deeper than that.

Here he's talking about, not merely that you're going to die, like Pahom after running around that huge tract of land. What good was it for him to gain that big tract of land and die? He can't do anything with it. And so that's true. We can't take it with us and so what good is it if in gaining it, you then die? There are a number of people that press and press and press in their work lives, then when they retire and seek to enjoy their wealth and they can't, they die soon after because of all the exertions. I think that's true as well but that again, is not what Jesus is talking about here.

No, no. He's talking about your soul. That's that immaterial part of you that is able to relate to God, to love God, to serve God, to trust in God, to yearn for him. That's what the soul is and according to this, your soul is in jeopardy. You can lose your soul. That soul is eternal. That's not some trick of Greek philosophy as some have thought, the immortality of the soul as some Greek philosophical concept. That is false, it's a biblical concept.

God will uphold your conscious existence for eternity. Once he creates you, you will be upheld by God for eternity, either in heaven or hell. You can't cease to exist. Keep that in mind if you're ever toying with the idea of suicide. As Hamlet said, “To sleep, perchance to dream. Ah, that's the rub.” I might not stop existing after I come out of the body. No, you don't.

So the immortality of the soul is a biblical concept and according to this, your soul, our souls are in jeopardy. The soul itself is in peril and grave danger for Jesus speaks of the possibility this soul could be lost. What does this mean, to lose your soul? This is a terrifying prospect and how can I combine words and tone of voice and physical demeanor to give you a sense of the seriousness of what it means to lose your soul? What can I say?

Later in this Gospel, we have a picture of Jesus as a Judge of all the earth and all the nations are gathered before him and he separates them, one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats and he puts the sheep on his right, the believers and he puts the goats, the unbelievers, on the left and he says to those on his left, “Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Friends, that's what it means to lose your soul. To hear those words spoken about you on that final day.

And what is that like? The eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, what is that like? How can we conceive it? It says in Revelation 14, “He too, will drink the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb and the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever.” There is no rest, day or night, for those that are cast into hell. For those that are condemned, for those that lose their souls, there's no rest.

Luke 16, the rich man is in agony in hell. He's in torment, yearning for Lazarus to come and cool his tongue with some water. That's what it's like, it's just a picture of somebody eternally lost.

Now, how is the soul lost, how can we lose our souls, what happens? Well, Jesus seems to pit the pursuit of the world, a love for the world, against the welfare of the soul. The seeking or the gaining of the whole world here, is the enemy of the soul but deeper, the issue is, what does your heart yearn for?

The real issue here is sin. It is by sin that we lose our souls. As Jesus will make it plain, souls are lost by Judgment Day's assessment of their life and their behavior. Look at verse 27, “The Son of Man is going to come in the glory of his Father with his angels and then he will repay every man according to his deeds.”

So the great issue of your life is simply this; will I lose my soul? And to make this clear, Jesus asks these two piercing questions and both focus on the horror of Judgment Day.

Verse 26, “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeit his soul?” Gain and loss are like business terms. They are Greek business terms here. Has to do with weighing value. What is the value of this, the setting of the price on that? The economics of the matter? Has to do with relative value and worth and the clear implication, this is astonishing. Is that the value of a single human soul is greater than that of the material possessions of all the world. Meditate on that. You came in here today, the possessor of something, a possession of greater worth and value than all the gold, the silver, the diamonds, the real estate, the Fortune 500 companies, the pleasures and privileges of this world, more than all of that put together. Your soul, worth more than that.

And it isn't just your soul. It may help your self-esteem to meditate much on that, fine. Let your self-esteem be helped by considering, “I am created in the image of God. My soul is worth more than the entire physical world.” But it's not just you, but 6.8 billion of us and the same is true of every last one of us. There is not a single human being on the face of the earth for whom it would be a good exchange if they could lose their soul and gain the world. No one.

There might be an orphan waif on a pile of garbage in Rio de Janeiro, picking through trying to find enough calories to make it through the day, that person would not be wise to trade their soul to gain the whole world. Neither the president or CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Wouldn't be wise for that person either to trade their soul to gain the whole world. It doesn't matter if they're a professor in a German institution of higher learning or somebody with Alzheimer's. A human being's soul is worth more than the material possessions of the entire world. Therefore, to forfeit, to lose that soul is the most foolish thing a person can ever do. It is the most devastating mistake a person can make.

It's a question of exchange too, the second question. Look at verse 26, “Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” Again, the language of commerce, of making an equitable trade.

Imagine it's Judgment Day and Jesus has done his separation and there you stand in the group you were put in and you come to find out that Jesus is speaking these words about you, “Depart from me, you who are cursed. Into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and drive out demons, perform many miracles?’ and he'll say, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evil-doers.’”

So you find yourself in that group and, like it happens in Matthew 25, you may argue with the judge and think it's unfair but your status will remain unchanged and then the judge dispatches an angel, for it speaks of being cast into eternal darkness. It's a very personal thing. And so an angel comes and takes you to the precipice and you can look down into the lake of fire.

Alright, freeze right at that moment. Let's say possibly, you still possessed all of your earthly possessions, what percentage of them would you give at that moment in exchange for your soul? If you still had them to give and you won't because they're not yours anyway, they’ll have all been taken from you but suppose you did. “I'll give up to half. I'll give up to half of all I possess that I not be thrown into eternal hell.” “Alright then, 90%. I'll hold back that 10% though.”

You won't hold back anything. Imagine then the foolishness of exchanging your eternal soul for anything earthly. You say, well you've been thinking about becoming a Christian but you're afraid of what your friends will think, what effect it will have on your career, what effect it will have on your fun, what effect it will have on your moral life. You're afraid of these things.

Alright well, let's collect those things and there's some value or worth you think in each of them. Are you willing to trade your soul for those things? That's the question Jesus is bringing to you here and of course, it will be too late then. There'll be nothing that you can do. The question, the matter, has been decided. You may not want to go to Hell, I tell you, no one wants to go to Hell but you will be cast there if you're not a believer in Jesus Christ.

So therefore, the time to face these questions is now, today. Today is the day of salvation. “In the time of my favor I heard you, in the day of salvation I helped you. I tell you, now is the time of God's favor. Today is the day of salvation.” Face the question now. My job, as a preacher, is to make it vividly come alive to you. To clearly portray Judgment Day and in a moment, to clearly depict Christ crucified, the only salvation for your soul. That's my job, but yours is to come to this point. Reason it out.

Jesus gives us two compelling reasons to make the wise choice. First, the coming judgment. Verse 27, “The Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.” This is the dreaded Day of the Lord. Christ is going to return in glory with the armies of Heaven. Jude 14 and 15, “Behold, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” That is the coming of Christ in power.

It's a heavenly invasion and can I tell you that the poll numbers leading up to that won't matter to Jesus? Do you know he's actually going to be King of the earth, whether we want him to be or not? Did you know that? He's not submitting to a popular election. Amen and Amen. He's just coming. He's coming in power to reign. The real election will be what happens with you and now is the time to decide that issue. But he will be King and he will reign forever and ever.

So he's coming and he will reign and the judgment will be on all sinners who have not been forgiven and they will give an account, the court will be seated, the books will be open. “And I saw the dead,” Revelation 20, “great and small, standing before the throne and the books were open. Another book was opened which is the Book of Life.” Oh, that your name would be in the Book of life, that you would repent of sins and trust in Christ, that your name would be written indelibly in the Book of Life. Oh, that that would be the case today. And “the dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books."

That's the first reason to make a wise choice, the second is the coming glory. Look at verse 27, “For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels,” verse 28, “I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” The kingdom is coming with glory. I believe that mysterious statement there has to do with the Mount of Transfiguration. We'll deal with that, God willing next week. When some who were standing there actually got to see Jesus made glorious. His face shone like the sun, his clothes became whiter than light and Jesus said in Matthew 13, the parable of the wheat and the tares. “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” Oh there's a coming glory. You don't wanna miss it. You don't wanna miss being in that glory and seeing it. I'm coming in my glory and my kingdom is gonna be glorious. Oh, don't miss it.

So what application can we take from this? Well first, just repent and come to Christ, if you're not a believer. Repent and come to Christ. Jesus Christ was nailed to a cross, we sang about it right before I came up to preach. The cross of Christ is the power of God for salvation. The message of the cross, the power of God for salvation. Look to the cross, look to Jesus whose blood was shed. Your sins can be forgiven, you can stand forgiven today at the cross and for the rest of your lives. And not by works but by simple faith. By the imputation, the gift of his righteousness, God will see you as perfectly righteous in Jesus for the rest of your life. That's your only hope, look to him and he will forgive you.

Now, I assume the majority of you consider yourselves Christians. You came here today believing yourself to be a Christian. That's a good thing. I'm not trying to undermine your assurance. I'm not trying to pad the statistics of those who will come forward at the end of the service. You know I don't seek to do that. But understand, who did Jesus speak these words to? To his apostles. Don't excuse yourself from the potency of these words, of dealing with the weight of them.

Make your calling and election sure, be certain that your soul is saved and forgiven through faith in Christ, that you're living in a right way and then look at what's going on in your life, look at the health of your soul. You may not forfeit your soul but you can actually wage war against your soul. It says in 1 Peter, there are lusts that wage war against the soul. Are you waging a war against your soul, right now? Don't. Put it to death by the power of the Spirit.

Thirdly, meditate on the infinite worth of every single human soul. It will help you to see people differently. You won't be so rude to them or irritable toward them. You're dealing with eternities. Each person you deal with is an eternity in Heaven or Hell. That's what you're dealing with. Feel the weight of that. Deal with it seriously. That's the key to the abortion question. That's the key of the abortion question, the value and worth of a human soul, of a human being. That's what it is.

Meditate on the infinite worth of human souls and meditate on the correspondingly small value of the whole world. It's small, it's a small value so why do you want it so much? “Well, I don't want it.” Yes, you do. More than you should.

Put it to death, deny yourself, take up your cross, follow Jesus, don't have earthly ambitions, don't seek great things for yourself in this world. Seek to serve a great King who's coming in a great Kingdom, seek that.

And then finally, be active in seeking and saving the lost. Part of the reason that I preach like this to believers, I hope and trust is that you will know how to preach to the unbelievers in your life. That you'll be able to take these things and press them home to the unbelievers you know and I don't, who aren't sitting here today and who might be years away from sitting in a church. Talk to them. Talk to them about their soul. Ask them Jesus' question: What good would it be if you gained the whole world and lost your soul? Ask that question to somebody and trust that God will use the Word of God to save them. Close with me in prayer.