Two Journeys

Pastor Andy Davis preaches Matthew 13:18-23, contrasting the double-minded man and the single-minded believer, who seeks the
kingdom of God first.

Turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 13 where we'll be continuing our study  on the Parable of the Seed and the Soils. We are asking again, how do you hear?  What is the most powerful sound in history? On August 27th, 1883 out in an island in the Pacific called Krakatoa, a volcano erupted with the most violent eruption that had ever been measured in modern history. Before the eruption, the elevation of the island was over 1400 feet high above the surface of the Pacific Ocean.  But in that morning, that island was erased, to a depth of more than a thousand feet below the surface of the sea; that's 2,400 feet of mountain vaporized and thrown up into the air at an estimated height of 17 miles high. The sound from that volcano is reputed to be the loudest in the history of the human race heard over 1/13th the size of the Earth, a distance of over 3000 miles away in the Rodrigues islands. Can you imagine an event in California from which you could hear the sound here in North Carolina, 3000 miles away? That is probably the loudest sound in history, but is it the most powerful sound in history? The answer is “no”, for the most powerful sound in history is the simple proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Just whispered next to a co-worker, a friend, or a neighbor, or even a total stranger on an airplane, it is the most powerful sound in history, the simple gospel whispered to a neighborhood. 

You know the story of Elijah when he went into the cave at Mount Horeb to see the Lord. The Lord was going to come to him.  The Lord did not come to him in an earthquake or in the powerful wind. Nor did he come in the fire, but in the gentle soothing voice, the still small voice of the Lord. When Elijah heard it, he covered his face. So also, must we be when we hear the simple proclamation of the Word of God, for the kingdom of heaven advances through the hearing of the word, that's all.  So it is for all of you who hope in heaven today, whose sins have been forgiven through faith in Jesus Christ. It is so because you heard with faith, the Word of God, the message of the kingdom. For the third straight week we're looking at this incredible parable of the seed and the soils. Jesus said in Verse 3, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like someone who went out to sow his seed, a farmer went out to sow his seed and as he was set scattering the seeds, some fell along the path and the birds came and ate it up.  Some fell on rocky places because the soil was shallow, they sprang up quickly, but when the sun came up, the plants were scorched and they withered and died, because they had no root. Some fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants.  Still other  seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop yielding 100 and 60, and 30 times what was sown.” Then Jesus challenged his hearers with these words, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Are you ready to hear the most powerful sound in the history of the world today? Is your heart ready to hear the Word of God? There is no more powerful sound than the Word of God. It can transform a family, it can transform an individual, it can transform a nation, it can transform a world. It can usher you from hell to heaven, that is the power of the Word of God. Are you ready to hear it today?

Last week, we looked at the first two soil types. The first soil was the beaten path,hard-packed soil, like concrete.  When the word falls on that soil, it bounces. It makes no indentation at all, no impact on the heart whatsoever. This is the hardened soil. It's the heart of an unbeliever who through sin, through unbelief ,and through wickedness and rebellion is not ready to receive the Word. The devil comes and snatches away what was was sown in this person’s heart, the results of that ultimately unbelief is eternal condemnation in hell. 

The second soil type is the rocky soil, what we call the superficial, shallow, temporary, believer.  In verse 20-21 it is the one who received the seed that fell on rocky places. The man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy, but since he has no root he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away. This is the temporary believer. Is it really possible that there could be such a thing as a temporary believer? The answer is yes. Jesus says in the parallel version in Luke 8, “He believed for a while.” So there it is, Jesus has settled that question.   What  was the nature of his belief?  Was it true “justifying belief”? We know that that would be impossible. You cannot lose your justification, so it's not that type of faith. There's a different kind of faith, a superficial one, an emotional one, one  who has received the Word with joy. He's thrilled, he's excited, he tells all his friends that his life has changed and that he’s found everything that he’d been looking for. It's all here and he starts to get involved in the Christian life, to go to church. He's excited for a while until, all of a sudden, trouble or persecution comes because of the Word. Persecution means the world attacks. Maybe it's a family member, maybe a spouse, maybe it's just somebody who isn't as excited as he is about his new life and begins to oppose him.   Maybe it's the government, maybe he’s thrown in jail, it's difficult, persecution. Or perhaps the trouble is because the Word creates a deep searching of his soul, and he begins to realize that certain patterns of his life are inconsistent with the kingdom, but he’s not willing to let them go. Trouble has come because of the Word. Either way he has no root system, no genuine connection to the vine and so he has no staying power, no ability to survive when the sun comes up and beats down and it gets tough to be a Christian. This plant, withers and dies because it has no root, this is the shallow temporary believer.  There's no genuine understanding in the soul, there's no genuine brokenness over sin, and in the relationship with God, no lasting conversion and love for God. There's no root. 

Now we're going to begin to look at the third type of soil, that is the double-minded man. In verse 22, "The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth, choke it making it un-fruitful.” This is the thorny soil. You've got soil that clearly can support life. It's not the hard-packed soil of the first type,  and it's not even the shallow superficial light covering of top soil, represented by the second type. This  soil apparently can support life and do very well, but it's very much like a garden overgrown with weeds.  Nobody enjoys weeding a garden, but any true gardener knows it is indispensable to a healthy garden. You must weed the garden. Rudyard Kipling put it this way,  “Our England is a garden and such gardens are not made by singing, ‘oh, how wonderful’ and sitting in the shade, while better men than we go out and start their working lives by grubbing weeds from garden paths with broken dinner knives.” If you want a good garden, you have to get out there and weed it.   Get those broken dinner knives and start grubbing out the weeds and if you don't, you won't have a garden. William Shakespeare said, “Sweet flowers are slow, but weeds make haste.”  Fruit and beautiful flowers take a long time, but weeds, they grow quickly.  It is not enough for a gardener to love flowers, he must also hate weeds and so it is in the Christian life. Why the weeding? Because there's only so many nutrients in the soil, there's only so much moisture, there's only so much sunlight and if all of these other plants are towering over that little plant that is trying to grow, it cannot survive. Notice what it says in verse 7, “Other seeds fell among the thorns, which grew up and choked the plants.” Strangled, drowned for lack of air. It's the same word. The seed is choked off from what it needs for life and fruitfulness. The available resources in the soil are getting sucked up by the aggressive thorns. They grow faster, and they dominate the soil,  so that little plant has no chance to bear fruit. 

In the parable what is it that chokes out the seed and makes it un-fruitful? Jesus tells us it is  the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth. Let's start with the worries of life. What does this mean? It's a negative sense of fears and concerns over not having enough to survive, enough to live.  Worries about your physical health. Will I be healthy, will I be alive? Will my family have enough to live on, will we have a roof over our heads, will we have clothes for our backs, food for our bellies? These are the basic concerns of life, physical life. These are the worries of this life connected in every way to the fact that we are created, dependent beings with these needs. We need to be filled three times a day. Have you noticed the phenomenon? It's called getting hungry.  We are created dependent.We may say  that we're not dependent. All we have to do is go down to the grocery store and get everything we need. Oh, how little we know of the agrarian life, how far we have been removed from our dependence on God. Farmers know that they need God in order to survive. The worries of this life is a farmer or anybody who says, "I don't even know if we'll be alive six months from now.” Paralyzed by that concerned,  they can do nothing for the kingdom of heaven. Let's say God calls somebody to quit their job and go over seas as a tent maker, be a missionary in some unreached people group. What do you think is the first thing that's going to start crawling into their mind? Could it be the worries of this life? Could it be concern for family? What about my children? What about me? What about my wife and myself ? We never really liked that kind of food. Or we don't really know if we're going to survive. Will there be enough money? These are the worries of this life. And so the person may at that point, shrink back and may not be faithful in the end. That's the worries of this life.  What will I eat, what will I drink what will I wear? Basic commodities. Then there's another one, the deceitfulness of wealth. With the worries of this life, we're talking about the basic commodities. What you need to survive, this goes beyond that, doesn't it? Will I have the things I've want? Will I have the things I crave? Will I have luxuries? The deceitfulness of wealth is a hungering after luxury. Wealth implies abundance, it says in 1 Timothy 6:10, "The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. Wealth is deceitful, it's a con-artist that leads you away from the true path of service to God, little by little, dragging you away and enticing you. A businessman may wake up and find that his mind is only dominated and saturated with his business. He doesn't think at all about the kingdom of God or about Christ, but only how he can run and make money that day. He runs 60 hours a week to make his business everything that it can be, little knowing that he is way off the path. The deceitfulness of wealth. It's tricky, and in the end, this preoccupation with material prosperity leads to destruction. It becomes unfruitful. Jesus says that the thorns grow up and choke the plant making it unfruitful.

This is a crop failure. And to me, this is a key insight into this whole text. “Unfruitful” means not Christian. They're not a Christian.  What if I see certain tendencies, what if I'm somewhat like the shallow soil? What if I'm somewhat like the thorny soil?  I'll talk to that in a moment, but the final verdict on this is unfruitful, end of story. Being unfruitful, I’d say, they're not Christian, because in order to be Christian, you must bear fruit and so prove yourself to be Christ’s disciples.  In the end, there's no fruit at all because it's choked out. This is the double-minded man who’s thinking about Heaven and thinking also about Earth. The deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things, choke the man making him unfruitful. That's kind of broad, it's actually kind of uncomfortably broad. Desires for other things other than the Kingdom.  This individual wants the Kingdom of Heaven, but he wants the kingdom of Earth more, so he’s choked out  and made unfruitful. True Christians in the end are amazingly single-minded about the kingdom. The Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, when a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy, sold 50% of what he owned to get it. Is that what it says? No. He sold everything he had that he might get that field.

The Kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of incredible value, he went and sold everything he had that he might buy that pearl. Single-minded. Paul says in Philippians 3, “I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” That's perfection in Heaven. Keep pressing, there's a single-mindedness here. “One thing I do.” In Psalm 27 it says, "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to gaze at his beauty seeking Him in His temple.” David was utterly single-minded, he wanted God, he wanted the Son of Man. The true convert is single-minded, but the double-minded man says, “Two things, I seek: I want God and I want Mammon.  I want to serve two masters, I want them both.”  Jesus has already said it is impossible to serve two masters. In the end you will love the one and despise the other. You will make a choice in the end. It isn't just Paul that taught this kind of single-minded devotion to the kingdom. Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 6:33 when he’s talking about not worrying. “Don’t worry about what you shall eat or what you shall drink, or what you shall wear, for your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. The pagans run after those things, but seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all of these things will be added to you as well.” What's “these things”? Something to eat. Something to drink, something to wear. Not luxuries. The necessities that your Father knows that you need. Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, and God will add those things to you. The apostle Paul in 2 Timothy 2:4 taught about being a single-minded soldier. No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs because he wants to please his commanding officer. A civilian affair would be anything that your commanding officer has not told you to do. This good soldier wants to please his commanding officer, he is single-minded, but the seeds sown among the thorns represents a double-minded man. He wants the kingdom some, but he wants the world more and in the end, he is unfruitful. 

I hope you're yearning for the fourth soil. Verse 23 says, “ The one who received the seed that fell on good soil, is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop yielding 100, 60 or 30 times what was sown.” Isn't it interesting that it all begins here in the fourth type of soil with the understanding?  It starts in the mind, he receives the word and he understands it.  He's not the path whose mind and heart are hardened by sin and rebellion so that the seed bounces.  He's not the hardened path, nor is he the shallow soil, that takes it in, and has only had a simple, superficial emotional understanding of the message of the kingdom, nor is he the thorny soil. It's clear to him[the good soil] that the kingdom is worth everything he has to obtain it. He understands the message. Now naturally, we do not possess this kind of understanding. In Ephesians 4:18 it says, "They are darkened in their understanding, and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts." That's us naturally. Naturally, we don't understand the message about the kingdom, naturally our hearts are hard. That's the way we all start. But God the Father has given us true understanding in order that He might save our souls. God the Son gives us true understanding, in order that He may save our souls. God the Spirit gives us true understanding, in order that He may save our souls. God, the father, lavishes wisdom and understanding on us in order that He might forgive our sins. It says in Ephesians 1:7-8, “In Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.” God the Father as well as God the Son gives us this understanding. 1 John 5:20 says, “We also know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true.”

Jesus comes and gives us understanding so we can know.  God and the Holy Spirit have that same ministry as well. 1 Corinthians 2:12 says, "We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us."  God the Father gives us understanding in order that He may save our souls, God the Son gives us understanding in order that He may save our souls, and God the Spirit also gives us understanding in order that He may save our souls. This is the work of the Triune God. If you have come to this understanding of the Word and of the message of the kingdom that it is worth everything you have to receive the forgiveness of sins and freedom on judgment day, then on that day the Judge will sit down there and say, "Not guilty over you. I know him, I know her. They're one of mine."  You are covered in the righteousness of Christ, if you come to this kind of understanding of what Jesus did on the cross. He's not just a man up there, bloody on a wooden cross, no. That is your savior, He's your righteousness, He is your hope, and that empty tomb, isn't just an interesting religious oddity, but it is your hope of triumph over the grave. If you understand this then God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit has worked this into your mind. The good soil is the one who hears the word and understands it. In Luke 8:15, it says the seed on good soil, stands for those with a noble and good heart who hear the word, retain it and by persevering produce a good crop. 

Now, where did you get a noble and good heart? Were you born with it? Ask your parents, they'll tell you the truth, you weren't born with a noble and good heart. It came to you as a gift from God, under the work of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, and by persevering, you produce a crop. Are you suspicious when salesman tell you that something is a 100% guaranteed or your money back?  The more they talk, the more suspicious I get. If you need to talk that much about the guarantee, I worry. But let me give you a guarantee, based on the Word of God. If you are a Christian, you are guaranteed 100% to bear fruit for the kingdom.  If you are born again, if you are a regenerate by the Spirit, if you are a true born again Christian, you will 100% guaranteed bear fruit for the kingdom. 

Shall I turn it around? If you are not bearing fruit for the kingdom, you are not a Christian. It’s important then to find out what this fruit is. What is this fruit bearing that is guaranteed? Jesus said, "I am the vine and you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit, apart from you, apart from me, you can do nothing. And then in verse 8, John 15:8, Jesus said a vital thing. “This is to my Father's glory that you bear much fruit, proving yourselves to be my disciples.” What does that tell you? If you bear no fruit, you are cut off of the vine, thrown away and burned. Jesus says in that image, you're not a Christian. You must, therefore bear fruit. 

From this parable I get two insights. First of all, fruitfulness is guaranteed. Second of all, the level of fruitfulness varies from Christian to Christian. All of the seeds sown in the good soil, produces a crop. Some 100 some 60 or some 30, but in every case, there's some fruit. I mentioned in part one of this sermon that in the ancient Near East, a good yield on a seed was eight to one; if you could get eight seeds back for every one seed planted that was a bumper crop.  Jesus is talking about 100, 60 or 30 times what was sown.  I did some research on soybean farms and the best I could find out is that  for American soybean farmers a good crop is 30-fold. 30 times what was sown. Jesus is saying that's a minimum. The secondary lesson is that not every Christian's equally fruitful. Some are more fruitful than others. Now what is fruit? Evangelicals have too easily focused just on conversions that we would be soul winners, and we're going to go out and win other people to Christ. That is most definitely fruit, but I think fruit is far broader and deeper and wider than that. 

John McArthur gives us a helpful categorization of fruit. There are two types, first, attitude fruit and the second, action fruit. Attitude fruit, and then action fruit. What would attitude fruit be? It's an internal attitude or disposition of the heart. Fruit of the Spirit would be a good  indication of these: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness faithfulness, and self-control. These things are produced by the Holy Spirit, and it is good fruit when God sees them. Look at the commands— To love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your strength, with all of your mind. This is good fruit. To love your neighbor as yourself. As God produces this in you, this is attitude fruit, heart fruit, internal fruit. For example, a love for God's word, a yearning to know what it says, a love for God's kingdom and its progress; a love for God's people and their health and their fruitfulness. A yearning after righteousness, not just for yourself but for your brothers and sisters in Christ, a deep desire that you would be in the presence of God, that you would be able to see him face-to-face. That's the one thing you want more than anything. A yearning to glorify God and all that you do. A yearning to reveal His nature in the way that you eat and sleep and go to work and have your family life. A yearning for holiness, this is internal heart attitude and God accepts it as fruit. So also the negative side, just like we said earlier, if you want a good garden, it's not enough to love the flowers you've got to hate the weeds and so it is also that we have to hate certain things. We have to love what God loves and we have to hate what God hates. A hatred for evil, a war against sin, a desire for total perfection and holiness, grief over sin as intrinsically evil. Not just because you might get caught or it might get expensive or embarrassing, but because it's evil.  A hatred for sin as sin and as evil. God accepts us as good fruit, so these and many other heart attitudes are considered “good fruit” produced by the seed of the Word. 

Then there's action fruit. It's what you do with your body. It's how you go out and live, how you actually move through the world. The way you spend your time, any action that you take. Action for the glory of God and for the spread of His kingdom, that's action fruit, any prayer that you pray. Any cup of cold water given to one of these little ones because he is my disciple. You'll never lose your reward. Any time you go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father as unseen for His kingdom to come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven, that God sees, and you'll never lose your reward. Any time that you act courageously as a witness.  When we feel the fear to witness and go anyway, God is greatly honored.  Fruit therefore is the disciples you make, the people you lead to Christ and then train up in the faith.  Fruit is using your spiritual gifts. If your gift is encouraging, it is to encourage. If your gift is teaching, and you teach, that is fruit. If it is giving and you give generously, and in a spirit-filled manner, this brings great glory to God, this is fruit. Fruit is a happy, holy and godly marriage where husbands love their wives as Christ the Church and where wives gladly submit to their husbands as to the Lord. Fruit is a godly well-ordered home, where the children are brought up in the training and nurture of the Lord and where the children for their part put their own sin to death and submit gladly to their parents, this brings great glory to God.

Fruit is a series of spiritual disciplines done in secret: fasting, prayers, scripture memorization, meditation, witnessing. Other things that you do that no one will ever know. Perhaps the one person you witness to and you never tell anyone about it. This is of great glory to God, and this is fruit. Fruit is also conquering besetting sin in the private battle ground of your heart. Saying, no, to yourself and to your lust and to your sins and triumphing by the power of the Spirit. For a former alcoholic to refuse to drink again and to take each temptation as an opportunity to do battle for God and overcome to him who overcomes the crown of victory is given. Or for a typically angry, irritable, complaining person to not do it this time, and to bring honor to God by being cheerful, when they don't want to. For a young man to keep his way pure and shield his eyes from anything that would cause him to lust, and for a young lady to choose to dress chastely and purely and not tempt her brothers into sin by what she wears. This is glorifying to God. It's for God's people to refuse to be polluted by this world that we live in. James says, “This is religion that our God and Father accepts as pure and faultless, to keep yourself from being polluted by the world.” This and many other things are fruit. Now can you see why I say if you have none of the above, you're not a Christian. You're not born-again, you're dead in your transgressions and sins because you have no fruit. 

What of the variability of fruitfulness? Why the 100, 60 or 30 times? Because God has left it to us as he also works within us. It's a partnership, justification[salvation] is not a partnership. That's a gift. We just accept it, freely. But then, sanctification becomes co-laboring with God, and the more we labor, the more fruit comes.  George Muller, who after he wrestled, and eventually came into faith in Christ, was a 100 fold or maybe 100,000 fold Christian. I was reading one biography about Muller and it listed some of the tangible measurements of his faithfulness. George Muller, opened seven day schools in England. The number of students over 64 years of his life in the day schools was 81,501 students. The amount of money he raised for the day schools over a 64-year total, £109,992, tens of millions of dollars in modern money. The number of Sunday schools that he started in Great Britain, 37, the number of students at the Sunday schools, 32,944 students taught the Word of God through George Muller. The number of Bibles that he gave out or circulated, 1.9 million. How many Bibles have you given or how many portions of scripture have you given? The amount of money raised for Bible circulation was £41,090. The number of missionaries that he personally supported financially  was 115. The amount of money raised to aid them was £261,859, millions of dollars. The number of books and tracks  that he gave out, 3.1 million. The total number of orphans that he cared for, that was what he was known for the best, over a 64-year total was 10,029 orphans. How would you like to have 10,000 kids? The amount of money raised for the orphanage, £988,000. The total amount of money raised and spent by George Muller in his lifetime, £1,498,000. That is hundreds of millions of dollars in modern money. The number of specific answers to prayer that he recorded and wrote down in a note book was over 50,000. The people he led to Christ through his lifetime and through his example is absolutely incalculable. Do you know why? Because all the people he led to Christ, would then go on and lead others to Christ and so on and so on. It's impossible to know all the things that came from his life. 100, 60, or 30 times what was sown. 

What application can we take from the parable of  The Seed and the Soils? First of all, self-assessment. Look inward. What kind of soil are you? Are you the hard-packed soil? Do you hear the Word and blow it off of no interest, no interest at all in the Word of God. Or are you the shallow soil, that hears and gets all excited, but nothing comes of it. Or the thorny soil, that hears and is choked out because of the worries in his life and deceitfulness of wealth. Or are you with a good and noble heart, through perseverance bearing good fruit for the kingdom? Consider carefully how you listen to the Word of God. What do you do when you hear a sermon? How do you get ready for it, ahead of time?  You ask me where am I going next? And so, you get ready and you read ahead of time. Do you come into the sanctuary on Sunday morning ready to hear the Word, ready with like  soft black rich soil, upturned in the heart. Ready to hear and receive the Word. How do you hear? After you hear, what do you do about it? How do you hear the word?  James 1:22, said, "Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves and do what it says.”

Thirdly, yearn for fruit. Do you want  to be like George Muller? Do you want to be a 100-fold Christian? Are you hungry and thirsty for maximum fruitfulness? Are you willing to pray constantly? Do you ask,”Lord help me to make the most of every opportunity today. Lord help me to make the most of this time. Help me to make the most of this time with this relative or friend. Help me to make the most of my Monday or my Tuesday. Oh, God, I want to live for your glory. Help me to make the most of my life. Lord, help me to dig deep into the Word, and not just superficially read it, but really dig in and understand it. Help me to put my flesh to death in my prayer time and really pray with passion for the lost." In the end, time and fruit will tell true Christianity.

When you witness, don't so quickly assure people of salvation because they pray the sinner's prayer. I have sadly seen many people pray the sinner's prayer and never once go to church and never once do anything different in their life whatsoever. Remember this parable when you preach the gospel. And remember that not everyone who prays that prayer is truly born again, but rather lay before them the marks of a truly godly, healthy life and say, “Yearn for these things. Search for them.” Time and perseverance in fruit bearing is the surest mark of saving faith.

This morning we are looking at the Parable of the Seed and the Soils in Matthew 13:18-23.  We come to this parable aware of the gifts of hearing, and also of listening in one sense; they're two different things, both of them, a gift from God. There's an old riddle from the 18th century which went like this. What comes with a carriage and goes with a carriage, is of no use to the carriage and yet the carriage cannot move without it. Do you know the answer? Its sound. Sound comes with a carriage, sound goes with a carriage, sound is of no use to the carriage and yet the carriage cannot move without it. Sounds are all around us, all the time. It's a gift from God to be able to hear it, to have it hit the ear drum, and come into our minds and have us understand what the sounds are, what they mean. Let me rearrange the riddle a little bit. What precedes the kingdom, advances the kingdom, is central to the kingdom and the kingdom cannot grow without it? It's the sound of the word of God.  This kingdom that we've been talking about all these many months cannot grow without the proclamation of the Word.  Romans 10:17, says faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. The very faith on which His kingdom is based, comes from  hearing the word of God. Time magazine was talking about the sense of hearing, and I thought this paragraph was very insightful. Time asked  people to select the most precious of the five senses. "Few people would name hearing, yet of all man's links to the outside world hearing seems to be the essential sense, the one that makes man peculiarly human. How precious hearing is becomes clear when it is lacking. A baby born blind, or insensitive to pain usually surmounts his handicap to lead a useful life, but a baby born deaf maybe lost to mankind.  The first steps of his intellectual development are beyond his reach the sounds of life, his mother's lullaby, the clatter of a rattle, even his own yowl of hunger, remain unknown even worse, he cannot learn to imitate meaningful sounds because he cannot hear them. Unless heroic efforts rescue him, he will never truly master his own language. He will live cut off from the human race. It is hearing with its offspring, speech, that gives man his superlative ability to communicate, to pass along hard won knowledge to make use of that knowledge, and so, to rule an entire planet." That  comment was very insightful, showing the importance of physical hearing, which is the foundation of our gift of speech.

As Christians, we would add  it is through hearing and understanding the Word of God that we enter the kingdom of heaven. It is through speech, through the spoken word, the proclaimed word, that faith springs up in the heart, and people enter the Kingdom. Therefore, the creator of speech, the one who invented it, is standing today and saying to each one of us, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. We come to listen to the Word of God, to try to understand it. In the last 50 years, extraordinary progress has been made concerning the physics of sound — how sound is made, and how it propagates through the air as pressure waves. In my home town of Framingham there is the Bose factory. There they study sound and how it expands and contracts and study the science of the physics of sound. Likewise, in the last 50 years, there's been a great advance in the understanding of the biology of sound, how sound is transferred from pressure waves to neural signals inside the brain through the amazing ear. But we're not going to talk about the physics of sound today, we're going to  talk about the theology of sound. What happens when the ear hears and vibrates with the sound of the proclaimed Gospel? 

 That's what we're going to look at today with the parable of the seed and the soils. I decided it best to divide the parable in half. We're only going to look at the first two soil types this week, and if God gives us the opportunity, the next two soil types next week. We're looking at the first two soils. This parable that Jesus tells, what we call the Parable of the Seed and the Soils, is perhaps his most important parable. Jesus himself said in Mark 4:13 when his disciples came to ask him what the parable meant he said, "Don't you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable?”  Jesus it seems  is giving an importance to this one above the others. This is kind of an entryway parable; if you can understand this, you'll understand all the parables.

I believe the vital issue of the eternity of your soul depends very much on the issues that are raised in this parable. Whether you will spend eternity in heaven, or hell, depends on how you hear the word of God, how you hear the gospel of the kingdom. Let's restate the parable, look at its details, and then try to understand it. Jesus begins in verse 3 and says, “The sower went out to sow.” The farmer went out to sow his seed. This is clearly the evangelist, the proclaimer of the Gospel of the Kingdom. In this case that is Christ Himself.  In later generations, it will be anyone who is sent to preach the gospel. Any evangelist, any humble Christian who seeks to bring his neighbor or his co-worker, his boss or relative to Christ, this is the sower, the one who goes out with the message.

What is the seed? The seed is clearly, Jesus interprets, the message about the kingdom, when anyone hears the message about the kingdom.  The seed is the message of the kingdom. What does this mean? It's the very thing that the whole Gospel of Matthew has been proclaiming, this kingdom of God, the place where God rules, where He is sovereign, where he rules over his creation, things in heaven and earth, visible and invisible. This is the kingdom and more than that, where he is adored and glorified, and worshipped gladly.  This is the kingdom of God,  the kingdom of Christ.  This is where Christ is the gentle, humble, leader of our souls, who bids us to take His yoke upon Him... and learn from him, because he is gentle and humble in heart and will find rest for our souls. This kingdom is the kingdom which must be entered through repentance and faith, because Jesus said, “The time has come, the Kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the good news.” You must repent and enter the kingdom. This kingdom, this is the message. It is the kingdom described in Matthew 13, with a series of seven parables. It is something so valuable that you would sell everything that you had to obtain it.  This is the kingdom.

We have no control over the seed which is sowed;  we couldn't create it. It's something that comes to us right from God, Himself. Just like a physical seed does. John MacArthur put it this way, “The most faithful and dedicated Christian cannot create the word of the kingdom, any more than a farmer or scientist can create the simplest seed. Just as only God creates seeds that reproduce themselves, only God creates the word of the gospel that brings life, the life of his son to a believer.”  The work of the Christian witness, therefore, is not to manufacture a message to create a synthetic seed or to modify the seed given them, but to take the revelation of God, the seed and proclaim it exactly as He has given it. The power of new spiritual life is in the word, just as the power of physical life is in the seed. We have no right to create a seed, nor could we. We merely take the seed that God has given us, and we sow it. We sow it widely. We take the message to the kingdom. 

The focus of this parable however, is not in the sower, is it? It's not really on the seed. The focus of this parable is on the soils, the four different kinds of soils, and each one represents a human being, a human heart and how he or she receives the sown message. How do we receive the proclaimed message of the Gospel? We have four different responses. The first is the walkway, the path, the highway, the hardened soil. Verse 4, “As he was scattering the seeds, some fell along the path and the birds came and ate it up.” The soil is hard, it's packed by constant traffic, it's like pavement. Therefore, when the seed hits that soil it bounces. There's no penetration whatsoever, you could cast a million seeds on that soil and none of them will bear fruit. None, it's a hardened soil. Secondly, you've got the rocky soil. In a lot of places in the near east, there's a rocky substratum of limestone. Like my garden, my yard, it grows white rocks. Have you noticed this? How they just come up out of nowhere?  This is a rocky soil, and on top of it, a very thin layer of top soil. What happens when the seed goes down there is it doesn't penetrate deeply, at all, just enough soil covers it that it can make a start, but it can't go down.  The roots can't go down, there’s nowhere to go but up. This seed will make really spectacular open progress at the beginning, but as soon as the sun comes up, all the moisture is dried up out of that thin layer of soil and the plant withers and dies, because it has no root. The third kind of soil is thorny soil. This is fertile soil for growth. There’s plenty of room for root development, but the problems is that the seed is competing with other plants, thorny plants that bear no fruit, and so there's a struggle going on for the nutrients, for sunlight, and for  water in the soil.  The seed is choked and cannot bear fruit in the end. Finally, we've got the good soil. It’s remarkable what Jesus says about the good soil, it's rich and fertile. It's plowed and loose and so the seed sinks... The seed sinks down into the soil and it bears what it says 100, 60 or 30 times what was sown.  People have studied agriculture in the ancient Near East and said  that a good yield is four to eight times what was sown.  Modern American farmers with the most advanced techniques of fertilization and moisture control can yield a 30 to 50 times harvest. In this parable we’re talking double that at the high end, a hundred times what was sown, or also 60 or 30. After having given us this parable, Jesus then challenges us. He says, he who has ears to hear, let him hear.

That's the parable of the seed and the soil. Now we need the explanation. Last time we talked about why Jesus uses parables:  first to fulfill prophecy, secondly to conceal truth from those who will not ask him for it, thirdly, to reveal truth to those who will ask, and therefore, fourthly, to make us spiritual beggars, that we will be humble enough to come and say, “Lord, teach us what the parable means.”  We want our Lord to instruct us, and he does. The first soil type is the hardened unbeliever. Look at verse 19: “When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart.” This is the seed sown along the path. Here we have the hardened heart, a darkened understanding as we've said; the four results, the four soils are four different types of people. Jesus says right away when anyone hears the message, we're not talking about agriculture, we're talking about people. This particular person, hears the message, his ear drums vibrate with the sound, but it doesn't get any further. Why? Because he doesn't understand the message.  It makes no penetration because sin and Satan have worked together to harden his heart. The Old Testament version of this is what you would call being stiff-necked. Jesus speaks of  stiff-necked people.  In Exodus 32:9, the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen these people, and they are a stiff-necked people.” What does that mean? Does that mean I have a sore neck. What it means is, “I will not bow my neck to your yoke. I'm not going to yield to you, God. I'm going to go my own way. I'm going to live my own kind of life. I don't want a king of the kingdom of heaven coming and telling me what to do.  I'm stiff-necked, I'm not going to yield to you.” In Jeremiah 17:23, it says that the people  did not listen or pay attention, they were stiff-necked and would not listen or respond to discipline. Jeremiah also said in 5:3, “O Lord, do not your eyes look for truth? You struck them but they felt no pain, you crushed them, but they refused correction, they made their faces harder than stone and they refused to repent.”

When the gentle king of the kingdom of heaven comes and says, “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, take My yoke upon you and learn from me,” they say, “No, this is the very thing I don't want.” They're stiff-necked, they resist. Stephen summarized the whole generation of Jews before the Sanhedrin, in Acts 7:51, saying, “You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears. You're just like your fathers, you always resist the Holy Spirit.” Being stiff-necked, is the same as having an uncircumcised heart and uncircumcised ears, nothing penetrates. There's a hardness, an unyieldedness to God. Why so hard? What has brought this on? It’s the hardening power of sin under the skillful work of the devil. Sin tricks us. It deceives us, it entices us, and it hardens us to the word of the kingdom.   Hebrews 3:12-13 says, “See to it brothers that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God, but encourage one another daily as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.” Sin is tricky, and it has a hardening effect on the heart. Ephesians 4:18-19 says, “They are darkened in their understanding, and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity they have given themselves over to sensuality, so as to indulge in every kind of impurity with a continual lust for more.”

They're being gradually hardened and become even harder and harder over time. This reminds me of an illustration from the 1960 Olympics. There was a man from Ethiopia named Abebe Bikila. He won the gold medal in the marathon that year. He set the world record for 26.2 miles over the burning streets of Rome, the Appian Way, barefoot. Barefoot. Let me ask you a question, if you ran one mile on the street barefoot what would your feet look like? This man had been running barefoot all his life, and so his feet were tough as shoe leather and he just preferred to run without shoes, and so I would liken the constant rubbing and impact on Abebe Bikila's feet to what sin does to a heart. It just makes it hard. There's no yielded-ness, no interest whatsoever, in the gospel.

 Recently I was on my way out to a pastor's conference in March, in California, and I had the opportunity to sit next to a woman on the flight and we had a lot of time together, more time than she would have liked I think.  It's probably one of the saddest witnessing opportunities I've had in years. I talked to her, asked what she did, and she gave me some kind of a strange answer about herbal remedies or something like that, and I thought, "It's kind of hard to make a living doing that." Eventually she told me that she was in the adult entertainment business, going out to Los Angeles. She said it was the most wicked city on earth, and she was one of the hardest people I've ever talked to in all my life. She had a pleasant look on her face, but she said, "I hate people, I hate life, I hate food, I hate everything." Probably would've said, "I hate you." She didn't even know me, there was a hardness there, and it was tragic, and nothing that I tried would open her up, to the point where she kind of turned her body a little away and started reading and I realized that there was nothing more I could do. There was a hardness to her heart and so I prayed for her. The hardening that I'm describing, especially, takes root in the mind.  It makes even simple biblical truth incomprehensible. 1 Corinthians 1:18, says, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.”

Also in 1 Corinthians 2:14, it says that  the man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them because they're spiritually discerned. Sin hardens the heart, and the devil creates a world, a world system around us to accelerate that hardening, he wants that hardening. He's clever and devious and skillful at bringing it about. So the blessing of the word of God then becomes a curse. I believe that to hear the word of God, to hear the Gospel and reject it makes you just a little bit harder. It would've been better [2nd Peter 2:21] not to have heard the way of righteousness than to hear it and to turn your backs on the sacred command that was passed on to you. It's better not to have heard because the devil is so active. He's active in the hardening. 2 Corinthians 4:4 says, “The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.” Satan does this hardening, but then he's very active at the moment of evangelism. He's mentioned in this text, do you see? When anyone hears the message about the Kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one, the devil, comes in, snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is very discouraging, isn't it? Because you think, well, at least I got a witness in there, at least I planted a seed. Well, if it's of this first category, you did nothing, you accomplished nothing for the Kingdom, because the devil has snatched away what was sown in the heart. It has no cumulative effect except hardening.

The difference is we can't tell from the outside what type of soil somebody is. They may eventually come to Christ so we need to scatter the seed widely. I'm just saying from heaven's perspective, looking down, if it's a hardened soil here, you accomplish nothing today by the preaching of the word, except increase hardening. It says the birds of the air come and snatch up or eat up what was sown. This is the devil, the evil one who comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. Satan uses a lot of tricks to do it. He uses the lust of the present age, the desires that people have for earthly pleasures, and uses the sins of other Christians to do it. You know the woman I described to you a moment ago? I almost hesitate to mention this, but she had as a client a pastor two or three years before that, and she said it was one of the most horrible experiences of her life. It was all she could do to get away from him physically, just to survive the time. I knew when she told me that that  I had zero chance to lead her to Christ.  But, of course, humanly speaking I have zero chance to lead anyone to Christ but I still have hope that the gospel can penetrate. I wanted her to believe. You see how the devil uses this, how hard it's going to be for somebody to reach her with the gospel. Satan will use false teachers to do it. He'll use fear to do it. "What will my friends think if I become a Bible thumper, what will happen to me?" Satan uses procrastination too. "Oh, I can always do that later, some other time, another seasonable moment", and so it's snatched away.

 What are the eternal consequences of this? Well, hell. Eternal condemnation, eternal separation from God in torment. Revelation 21:8 says that  the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death. Unbelievers go to hell [ Revelation 21:8]. This is the tragedy of the hardened-packed soil heart that rejects immediately the word. These people are just simply closed to the Gospel. They may reject with violence and vigor, slam the door in your face, get rude, or they may just shrug and blow it off or make a joke, either way the word has had no effect on them.

The second kind of soil that Jesus talks about is the rocky soil, what I would call the shallow. It is the temporary believer. Put believer in quotes, in one sense. Verses 20 - 21, “The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy, but since he has no root, he lasts only a short time.” When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away. This is what I call the temporary believer. Now you say, "Is that possible? I thought you believed in the eternal security of the believer?" I just discern in the New Testament that there are different types of believers, there's different kinds of faith.

 It is possible to believe in one sense for a little while and then fall away. In the Luke version of this parable, Jesus said, in Luke 8:13, “Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root, they believe for a while, but in the time of testing, they fall away.”  That settles it for me. It is possible therefore to believe for a while and then fall away?  What I believe is that this faith is not the faith that justifies, this is not the kind of faith we heard about in Romans. That we are justified by faith, apart from works of the law, it's not that faith. It's the kind of faith that Jesus encountered when he did miracles in Jerusalem in John Chapter 2. “While he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs He was doing and believed in His name.” They believed in his name, but he would not entrust Himself to them, for he knew all men, he did not need man's testimony about what was in a man because he knew all men.  He knew what was in their hearts. Believing in his name is not justifying faith, so Jesus did not entrust himself to them. They had a different kind of faith. James is the one who gives us the clearest understanding of this. James 2:19 speaks of a faith which does not justify, we could call it demon faith. “You believe that there is one God. Good. Even the demons believe that and they shudder.”  So there's a demon faith that certainly does not save. 

Then there's a work-less faith, a faith that proves as no good works, it's a dead faith.  James 2 also says it does not save. It is possible to believe of a sort and yet not be saved. Therefore, in this case, I find this  soil perhaps one of the most troubling of all the soil type. Probably the most troubling, because this person has such a joyful reaction to the word. They're thrilled, they receive the word with joy, they're excited. That joy is genuine as far as it goes, it's a genuine surge of emotions that comes, and those emotions are usually intense. The plant springs up quickly, it looks like it's making good progress, it looks great from the outside. The person is so filled with exuberance, he tells all of his friends and neighbors and relatives about his new faith. He feels like all of his problems are solved. The very thing he's been looking for all of his life, he's founded at last, and he's telling everyone about it. He's doing all the kind of things you do in church, and he's just so excited he's what we would call "on fire for the Lord", filled with joy.

Now, I want you to understand joy over the Gospel is a good thing, it's a very good thing. Look at Verse 44 in our same chapter, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, when a man found it, he hid it again, and then, in his joy, went and sold everything he had and bought that field.” Joy over the treasure is a good thing. As a matter of fact, if you don't have it, I don't think you're converted. There needs to be a joy over the Kingdom, a rejoicing, a delight that your sins are forgiven and that you're going to heaven. Ever increasingly so. But, apparently, there's a counterfeit joy that's going on here earlier in the chapter.   He receives the word with joy, but he has no root. This brings us, I think, to some of the history even of us as Southern Baptists, as evangelicals, what we call revivalism.  There's different ways of looking at them. In one sense, spiritually and supernaturally a revival is a pouring out of the Holy Spirit on a body of people with great evidence of conversion, all kinds of things going on. It's an exciting time,  but understand what we're praying for. It's a supernatural moving of the Holy Spirit, where by a large numbers of people are genuinely converted. Then in verse 44 you're going to see the joy of selling everything so that you can have the Kingdom. Could there also be some of the false joy as well where people are all excited and they get motivated? Maybe put their hands up in the air, maybe they scream for joy, maybe there are tears coming down their face. How can we tell the difference? 

During the revival, the First Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards was a careful student of these kind of displays. He was fighting a battle on two sides, on one side there was what he called the old lights, the kind of old staunch conservator. They said, this kind of enthusiasm in a religion is a bad thing, it's definitely of the devil. And he said, "No, it isn't." Then there are people on the other side who said it is definitely proof that the spirit has come when you see people jumping for joy and getting all excited or rolling on the ground or weeping or crying out. Edwards, with his careful thinking, said, it is no sure sign either way when you see this kind of joy. It's no proof either way, because we can show right in the text, it happens both with a genuine convert and with somebody who is going to fall away when tested. "I dare not trust the sweetest frame that's joyful state but wholly lean on Jesus's name."  I think it's a good thing when people show outwardly, physically on their bodies, their joy, but I've learned to be careful when we preach the gospel, say, "Oh, definitely they were converted. I saw a tear in their eye." "Well, definitely they were converted, they were so happy after they prayed the sinner's prayer." Only one thing, perseverance over time through all kinds of tests that's fruit-bearing for years and years. That's what I get out of the seed and the soils here. There’s an immediate joyful outburst but what happens to the seed? It has no root system, and therefore it cannot survive. Since the faith has no root, it lasts only a short time.

 When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, the person quickly falls away. Martin Lloyd-Jones told a story talking about the whole invitation system which we in our church have used, and others use, in calling people to an immediate outward visible response to the Word. He was preaching in a church once and there was this man that he had seen come regularly, but this one particular time the man seemed to be emotionally responding very powerfully to what was being preached. Lloyd-Jones was kind of torn in his mind what to do as a pastor. Should he go up and confront him and deal with him at a personal level? He had preached the Gospel, preached the word thoroughly, what should he do? In the end, he felt the Spirit leading him not to, but  to just let the man go that evening. The next day he saw him, and the man interacted with him.  Lloyd-Jones is on his way to the prayer meeting, and the man said, "You know, if you had asked me to come to prayer after that service, I would have come last night."

 He said, "Well, come with me now. Come with me now." He said, "No, not interested. But if you would've ask me last night I would have come. And he said, "You know, if whatever you got last night didn't last one full day, it isn't the real thing. Whatever it was." So there's an immediate reaction and joy, but it has no roots, and when trouble comes because of the Word then you'd say, "What is that?" I think it's of two sorts. Persecution, namely your friends, neighbors. They see you're excited, but they're not excited, and they start to make your life hard. They start to oppose you, they start to persecute you, and you fall away because it's too expensive.  It's got no root system. Or there's a different kind of trouble that comes by the Word. It's the troubling of the soul over the sin that's still in you. You get convicted, then you realize that you need to change your life, that there's sins that you must put to death, there needs to be a whole different way of living, and that's trouble caused by the Word, isn't it? That person has no interest in that kind of life change. In his mind, he has no genuine understanding of the gospel. The part he understands makes him happy, but he doesn't understand the whole scope of the Kingdom. In his soul there's no genuine brokenness over sin, no deep work with the law. Some of this easy decision-ism, it's a light work of the law and the heart, and the person isn't genuinely convicted over sin. There's no genuine relationship with God, that's what it means when it says he has no root. Jesus says that you are a branch, and I'm the vine, you're grafted in. There's a life giving sap that flows through you, and that sap enables you to survive any trial.The very same trial that weeds out the false believer, makes the true believer even stronger. In Romans 5:3-5, it says, “but we rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us.” Te trial comes and it makes the genuine believer even stronger, even more hopeful, but it makes the false believer fall away.

Fall away. What does it mean, "They quickly fall away?" This is the most troubling aspect of all. What's the time frame here? I have no idea. If he had told me that he would fall away within a year, and you could make it a year and a day then you're home free, right? If he had given a definite time frame and if you could just make it past that, it doesn't give it to... He just leaves it open. What it means is you need to continue to walk with Christ, day after day, seeking Him and loving Him, trusting in Him. But as soon as those trials come, for this soil, they quickly, quickly fall away. 

What application are we going to take from this?  I want you to assess yourself. We haven't gotten a chance to preach yet on the thorny soil or the fruitful soil, but you understand this parable. Who are you? Are you the hard-packed soil? Maybe you've been invited to church this morning and you came, but you have very little interest in the word. Oh, I pray that God would soften your heart, I pray that you would be open to the Word, and not blow it off, but accept it as not the word of man, but the Word of God which can save you. If you are the shallow soil, pray that you would be brought into a living, deeply-rooted relationship with Christ.

Matthew 13 is one of the great chapters in the Bible, a series of seven parables of Jesus Christ.  Parables are mysterious and sometimes hard to understand. I don't know about you, but sometimes I wish that He had given a careful interpretation of each of the parables, and not just two in this chapter. But  He's given us the Holy Spirit and through that Spirit, we have the ability to be led into all truth and so we can understand. In this great chapter of seven parables we're immediately struck with a question of methodology; Jesus, why did you teach in parables? Isn't that question voiced for us by the disciples in verse 10 when the disciples  came to Him and asked, "Why do you speak to the people in parables?" That is the question before us this morning, why did Jesus use parables. 

 For me, as a verse-by-verse expositor going through the Gospel of Matthew, I'm struck immediately by a methodological challenge as well. Do I immediately go into the parable, "The Seed and the Soils,” and give you the interpretation, or do we deal with the question of why did Jesus speak in parables? The first thing we have in this chapter is the parable, "The Seed and the Soils," uninterpreted, and then the discussion on why Jesus spoke to the crowd in parables. We're going to begin with that second question first. Nest week we’ll interpret the parable, "The Seed and the Soils.” 

Let’s look at this first question asked for us so beautifully by the disciples: Why do you speak to the people in parables? As with all things in the Scripture, we need to understand the larger context. We're coming here to a new phase of the Gospel of Matthew. We've seen different phases throughout. In chapters 1-3 we see the credentials of Jesus Christ to be the Son of David, to reign on the throne of his father, his ancestor David established through the genealogy. Also, His unique existence as the incarnate Son of God through the virgin birth, and then the visit of the Magi and the flight to Egypt.  All of that established  his uniqueness as both son of man and son of God. He alone is fit to be  the king of the kingdom of heaven right from the start. Also His Heavenly Father  testified from heaven that Jesus was His Son. We have the credentials of Jesus.

Then we see the beginning of his ministry, in chapter 4, as he preaches that central message in verse17, "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."  Jesus has come to proclaim a kingdom, He's going to preach it. Then in the Sermon on the Mount, chapters 5, 6 and 7 we have unfolded for us, so beautifully, kingdom life. What does it mean to be in the kingdom of heaven, right from the start? Matthew 5:3 says, "Blessed are the spiritual beggars for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven."  Jesus gives the kingdom to beggars, and then explains so many aspects of the kingdom life, in straight teaching, directly to his disciples in a beautiful way.  In chapters 8 and 9 He gives one miracle after another, a display of kingdom power, unlike any that had ever been seen before. There had been miracles before Jesus, but nothing like this. A river of miracles, flowing through Christ, nothing that he could not do. No sickness he could not heal, no demon too powerful for Christ. The evidence of Christ's authority as king is flowing through. Then in Chapter 10, He sends out the Apostles as messengers of the kingdom. They're going to go out and preach, and proclaim.  In Chapters 11 and 12, we start to get feedback on the kingdom. People are responding, they're beginning to answer back, they're beginning to see about the kingdom and the responses are negative. Even John the Baptist did not fully understand. "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?" Shattering question, really from somebody like John the Baptist. And then the Jewish cities that he lived in,  his home town, his home area, Capernaum, and Chorazin, and Bethsaida, rejecting him.  Apathetic, marveling at his miracles, but not coming into the kingdom. Perhaps bored or hard-hearted in some way. But rejecting, definitely. Then the Scribes and Pharisees, rejecting actively, aggressively opposing the kingdom. Hating it, fighting against it, saying that Christ is coming in the name of Beelzebub, rather than in the name of His Heavenly Father.  Even his own family didn't believe in Him. His own family didn't accept him. At the end of this chapter, Jesus says, "Even in his hometown and his own house is a prophet not without honor." Jesus is rejected by those who knew Him the best. They did not fully understand. Mercifully, God would work in their hearts later, and that they would come to a living faith in Christ, but the returns were not good.

Now, we're turning, in chapter 13, to the parables. In understanding that, we can start to see why He was teaching and why Matthew brings these seven parables to us so that we can understand  because this kingdom, which is advancing, is a misunderstood kingdom. They didn't understand its internal spiritual nature. The parables are given to teach us, this kingdom which is proclaimed, it's here now, which is advancing, is misunderstood, and therefore rejected. Jesus is going to give these parables in a context of rejection of his message.  The immediate context here in Matthew 13, is a large crowd. Verse 1, "That same day, Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake, such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it while all the people stood on the shore. And then he told them many things in parables, saying, A farmer went out to sow his seed." That's the immediate context, a huge throng of people. We tend to forget how popular Jesus was through His healings. You wouldn't have been able to get close to Jesus. You wouldn't have been able to get in and have a personal interview with him, probably, because there were so many people. Jesus found this to be a physical issue as well. So he got into a boat and separated himself somewhat from the crowd, so that He could have, I think, the benefits of the acoustics across the water. Have you ever heard somebody out in a boat, and they're able to speak in almost a normal speaking voice and it can just carry very well across the water? There's a kind of a scientific explanation for why Jesus did this, but also it's kind of a symbol in a way that there's a problem between Jesus and the crowds. They're not understanding or accepting His message so He's going to speak to them in parables, this mixed group.

The Sermon on the Mount is given to his disciples, but these parables are given to a mixed group of disciples and just people who are there.  He concludes, in verse 9, with a challenge.  “He who has ears, let 'em hear." He's talking spiritual. It's a challenge. Everything therefore in this is somewhat mysterious, laden with mystery. The disciples don't understand it. I think they probably thought it was a missed opportunity. "Here's all these people, a huge crowd, and you give them this? Parable, the seed and the soils, and then you don't even explain it, you don't tell us what it means. Why do you speak to the people in parables?" I think right there, they're displaying their nature as disciples. They have a problem, there's a mystery concerning God, and what do they do as disciples of Jesus Christ? They go to Jesus and ask Him. They are spiritual beggars, and they go to Christ, and He's going to lavishly bless them for that asking. That ends up becoming a key concept.

What is a parable? In order to understand why Jesus spoke in parables, we have to understand what a parable is. The definition John MacArthur gives is right from the Greek, "parable" is the English transliteration of "parabolé", which is made up of two Greek words; "ballo", which means to throw, or cast, or lay down. And "para", alongside. Basically, one thing is being cast out alongside something else. What's going on here is that the physical worlds and those things that we can interact with physically are laid down alongside a spiritual kingdom that we can't understand without its help. The parable is some kind of an analogy from the physical world that helps us understand the spiritual world, according to Christ. The dictionary says that  a parable' is a form of speech, a story, a saying used to illustrate a point that the speaker is trying to make. Therefore, because God, because Christ, wanted to communicate spiritual truth, He's going to give us these analogies, these illustrations to help us understand. We see a great example of it with Jesus and Nicodemus. You remember when Nicodemus came to Him in John 3, and he's interested in spiritual things. Jesus says to him, "I tell you the truth Nicodemus, unless you are born again, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven."  Nicodemus did not understand this figure of speech. He said, "How in the world can somebody my age get back up inside my mother, and be born again? It's not possible."  Jesus says something very interesting in John 3:12, He says, "I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe, how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?" What is He saying there? He's saying, "I've used an earthly figure of speech to help you understand what must happen to you to enter heaven. You must be radically transformed by the Spirit, much like it was when you were born the first time." He's saying, I'm using what you're used to, physical things, to explain something you couldn't understand any other way, namely heaven, spiritual things.

 This was a very common form of Jewish teaching. Forty-five times in the  Greek translation of the Old Testament we have the word, “parable.” Rabbis used them again and again. As a matter of fact, one rabbi was asked, "Why do you speak so much in parables?" The same kind of question. The Jewish rabbis used parables also. Jesus said, "I'll answer you with a parable." He said, "A boy went out to shoot his arrows, and as he was shooting, somebody who came along later noticed that on every tree in the forest where he was practicing, there was a target, and the arrow was right in the center of every target." The man said, "I've never seen such a display of shooting. How do you do it?" He said, "Well, I shoot the arrow first, and then I paint the target around it." That's very clever. Actually, illustrations are important parts of sermons. Charles Spurgeon said, "A sermon without illustrations, is like a house without windows." But he also said, "You can take illustrations too far. If it's all illustration, all story, there's no structure, there's no foundation, there's no truth, there's nothing there but glass, the house will be destroyed." There's a blending, therefore, of a structure, a foundation of strength, something that will last; and then of windows to let light in so that we can see what's going on. There's a balance there.

 I think about that arrow and the trees and the target and all that. I saw a cartoon recently in a pastor magazines, they do this kind of thing. There was a pastor on his knees in his study, preparing for his sermon  and he said, "Lord, please give me a great sermon to go with this incredible illustration."  The sad thing is that that's kind of what's going on in pulpits all around our denomination, and many other places. We'll find a great story and try to find some biblical truth to put around it. Jesus never did that, and that's not what the parables were about. The parables, when finally and rightly understood, become some of the most perfect forms of teaching you could ever have on the kingdom. But they must be interpreted properly, they must be interpreted by Christ Himself.  A parable takes what we're familiar with, the physical world, something like yeast and dough, or a seed planted in some soil, or a fishing net pulled up, filled with all kinds of fish, a treasure or a pearl. It takes something we know to explain something we don't know, and we wouldn't have any other way of understanding it. There's great riches here.

There are in Matthew 13 seven parables. From the seed and the soils, which you've already heard, to the parable of the wheat and the weeds, in which there is seed of wheat mixed together with the weeds. They all grow together, and there's a tangled mess. The harvesters want to pull out the weeds and the master says, "Let both grow together until the harvest." What does this teach us about the kingdom? It teaches that the kingdom advances in a mixed setting. We're constantly surrounded by unbelievers, and we have to make our way in a tangled mess of a world, in which we can't tell the difference, frankly, between the enemies and the friends of the kingdom. Some enemies look like friends and some friends look like enemies. That's the way it's going to be with the kingdom.

Or the parable of the mustard seed and the yeast. Two parables, which basically teach the same thing, namely, that the Kingdom starts small, and grows larger and larger, but there's a difference. With the mustard seed, the growth is obvious and evident. It's outward, you can see it. The yeast, it's hidden, and permeates and moves through. "The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast, which a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it permeated through the dough." This is my favorite parable.  Nineteen words in the Greek, and it explains all of human history, and my life too, that the Kingdom can come in small, and after a while, dominate, and yet, that whole advance is hidden and mysterious.

You see what I mean? The parables end up becoming some of the clearest windows you will ever have to understand spiritual truth. Or, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, or a pearl of great price. It's worth selling everything you have to gain it." But there's a difference again. In one case, the man stumbles across it, wasn't really looking for it, and it takes over his whole life, he's willing to sell everything. In the other case, the merchant is searching his whole life for something. And when he finds it, he recognizes it. We kind of come at the Kingdom perhaps different ways, but both of us ultimately recognize the value, we're willing to sell everything. And the key word is "for joy". We are glad to make the trade because of the value of the kingdom.

Finally, the dragnet parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a net let down until late; catches all kinds of fish. And when the net is full, the fisherman sit down and collect the good fish in baskets, then they throw the bad way." The advance of the kingdom and the history of the kingdom ends in judgment day. At that judgement day, there will be a great separation between those who have entered the kingdom, who are transformed by the grace of God, and those who have not. Seven parables. And when understood properly, they illuminate the kingdom. 

 Why did Jesus speak in parables, why did he teach? The first answer I get out of this text is that Jesus taught in parables to fulfill prophecy. The prophets said he would. He fulfills prophecy in Isaiah and He fulfills prophecy in Psalms. In verse 13 and following, "This is why I speak to them in parables, though seeing, they do not see. Though hearing, they do not hear, or understand." Verse 14, "In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah. You'll be ever-hearing but never understanding, you'll be ever-seeing, but never perceiving. For this people's heart has become calloused, they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise, they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them."  He fulfills prophecy in Isaiah, it's directly quoted by Jesus, Himself. Matthew quotes it also later on, look at verses 34 and 35. Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables, he did not say anything to them without using a parable. Verse 35, "So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet. I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden, since the creation of the world." According to Matthew, Jesus spoke in parables to fulfill prophecy.   Matthew is always doing this, by the way. He's always finding fulfillment: “So was fulfilled,” or “thus was fulfilled,” “what was written”, here and there. Here he finds Psalm 78:2 where it says, "I will open my mouth and parables, I will utter hidden things, things from of old." If you look to that context there, you would see that basically it has to do with the transmission of the tradition of Israel to the next generation, and it's going to be through all kinds of teaching techniques and  some of them would be parables.

If you look in the Old Testament, there's going to be a whole wealth of teaching types. There are Proverbs, wisdom literature, history,  prophecy, and law. All of it comes together in one central message fulfilled in Jesus Christ. For Jesus, the perfect teacher of Israel, it made perfect sense for Him to use parables as well, in direct fulfillment of Psalm 78.That's reason number one, Jesus taught in parables that He might fulfill prophecy.

 Secondly, Jesus taught in parables that he might conceal and judge. What do I mean by that? That He might conceal kingdom truth, and judge the hard-hearted. There is a tone of judgment here. “I’m speaking to the people in parables in order that I may judge them." Look again at verses 13-15, "This is why I speak to them in parables. Though seeing, they do not see, though hearing, they do not hear or understand. In them is filled the prophecy of Isaiah. You will be ever-hearing but never understanding, you will be ever-seeing, but never perceiving. For this, people's heart has become calloused. They hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise, they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them." This is a quote from Isaiah 6.  “And the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord,” and he got his commission." In Isaiah 6:8 God says,  Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” Isaiah says “Here am I, Lord, send me.” Isaiah wants to know, “What shall I tell them?" "Tell them that they're not going to understand your message, tell them that they're going to be judged for their hard-hearted-ness, tell them that you'll have a whole life of preaching and they will not get it. As a matter of fact, Isaiah, they're going to reject you, they're going to spurn you, and tradition has, they're going to saw you in half because their hearts are hard and they're not listening." And it happened.

In Isaiah 28: 9-10 he talks about some of the feedback he was getting on his message. The people were offended because he had gone from one level of speaking to a more simple level. He says, "Who is he trying to teach, to whom is he explaining his message? To children weaned from their milk, to those just taken from the breast? For it is do and do, do and do, rule on rule, rule on rule, a little here, a little there." They're mocking Isaiah because of the simplistic way that he was teaching them at that point.  What doesn't come across in the English translation is the Hebrew and the way it sounded. It was, "Kabbalab, Kabbalab. Sabbalab, Sabbalab." It's like babble, they were mocking the preached word. God said, "Very well, then... " Stop there. When God says that, sit up and take notice. "Very well, then. If you don't accept my plain, simple teaching, I will speak to you through the lips of a foreign language." Isaiah says, "Very well then, with foreign lips and strange tongues, God will speak to this people. When the Babylonians are walking down the street of Jerusalem, when the temple is burning, when everybody's either dead or deported, and you're hearing the babble of the Babylonians, Kabbalab, Kabbalab. Sabbalab, Sabbalab, and that's what it sounds like, you will know I have spoken to you. Because through those foreign lips, I will communicate that your time has come and judgment has fallen." That's  what's going on here.  Jesus is saying, “You didn't understand the simple, plain message. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Therefore, I will speak to you a little bit more obliquely. And there's going to be a division between insiders and outsiders.”

 This division is very strong in Mark's Gospel. In Mark 4:11-12, when Jesus explains the parables, He tells his disciples, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside, everything is said in parables, so that they may be ever-seeing, but never perceiving, and ever-hearing, but never understanding. Otherwise, they might turn and be forgiven." Do you see that? Inside, outside. The outsiders get the parables, the insiders get the secrets.  There's a strong element, not just of judgment, but of election,of choice, on God's part, and of hardening of the outsiders. What ends up happening is that the parables are told so that the people may be ever-seeing, but never perceiving. Do you see it? The purpose statement's right in there, the parables are told so that they won't get it. The idea is if Christ had not told parables with no explanation, they'd be better off. Now, they're actually even worse. They're actually hardened now, because Jesus told a parable without explanation.  A very clear example of this is in John, chapter 10. When Jesus, after He gives the figure of speech of the good shepherd, "I am the good shepherd," He picks up on these themes in the Old Testament. After He gets done speaking about the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, "And my sheep hear my voice and they follow me and I give them eternal life." The reaction to all of this beautiful sheep and shepherd language in John 10: 20-21, is that many of them said, "He is demon-possessed and raving mad. Why listen to him?" But the others said, "These are not the sayings of a man possessed by a demon." Do you see the division? It's so plain. The parable hardens one group and makes them say, "Jesus is insane,” and it opens up another group that says, "I've never heard teaching like this." It's incredible. Do you see what happens? There's a wider gulf as a result of the parable. As a result,  the people who are on the outside actually understood less about God in Christ after he had gotten done with the parables. They had a worse assessment of Christ because he taught them in parables. Therefore, secondly, Christ told parables to conceal his truth from his hard-hearted enemies as an act of judgement. 

Amazingly though, the exact same words, the same parables were given for a third reason and that is to reveal spiritual truth and to bless His disciples. It's that incredible, the two-edged sword. The same words become a source of revelation, of insight, of windows,  that let light into the kingdom so that we can see the truth. And as a result, we know more about the kingdom now, and we are blessed because of it. In verses 10 through 12 the disciples came to Him and asked, "Why do you speak to the people in parables?" Verse 11, He replied, "The knowledge of the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven has been given to you, but not to them." Then in Verse 12, "Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has, will be taken from him."

In Jesus' time, and really in our time as well and throughout history, there have been things called "mystery religions". Mystery religions work this way: If you were one of the initiates, one of the insiders, you had the secret passwords of knowledge that would enable you to make progress in the religion. Gnosticism's a great example of this, comes from the Greek word, "gnosis", which means "to know". If you have the little key of knowledge, you can open doors and make progress in the mystery religion. Mormonism has an element of mystery religion in it. There's growth and progress if you're one of the inner initiates.  Also in the time of Christ, there was the cult of Osiris and Isis, Egyptian deities. Again, if you had the inside knowledge, you could see the significance to the whole mythological story there, and you would make progress in the religion. Jesus picks up on this word, using the word "Mysterion". The knowledge of the secrets, or the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven has been given to you, but not to them.  There's nothing you can do, it's just knowledge that is given by grace. Jesus, of His own grace, of His own mercy, is willing to just give you the knowledge. "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance." He says, "I'm just here to give it to you, freely." Terefore, He lavished wisdom, and lavished blessing on His chosen disciples. Verse 16-18, "Blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men long to see what you see, but did not see it. And to hear what you hear, but did not hear it." Do you see what's going on here? Not only do you get the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom, but you get parables personally explain to you by the incarnate Son of God. You get a private tutoring session with Christ, Himself, as he sits down with you and says, "This is what it means. I'll give it to you."

The Old Testament prophets and righteous men didn't have that kind of privilege. Whoever wrote Psalm 78 didn't understand fully what he was talking about. I don't think he was able to project to the future and say, "This is about Christ," he just wrote it led by the spirit. They longed to know more, but they couldn't figure it out. They know now, praise God. They're in heaven, and they have fuller knowledge. But he's saying, "You have a great advantage." We 21st century Christians have an even greater advantage. We can look back on 20 centuries of yeast spreading through dough and we've seen fulfillment. Even the apostles didn't have that advantage. We've been able to see the kingdom grow from almost nothing, to take over the world. It's almost finished, too, praise God. We're in a great time to live. We have been given the secrets, we've been given the inside information by Christ, Himself. The parables become a rich and lavish storehouse of blessing.

  Listen, then, to what the parable of the sower means. Tell me,Jesus, what it means. Tell me what the wheat and the tares, thing. What is that, what's going on with that? The treasure in the field. Tell me, Jesus. And so that's the fourth reason, too, that he's given the parables. He wants to make you a dependent spiritual beggar.  He wants to make you non-self-sufficient, he wants to make you puzzled, he wants to make you troubled sometimes, so that you will come and ask him. Not just the parables but the Bible, as a whole, is filled with mysteries. Hard things to reconcile, how one thing could be true in something else and how do we put that together, how do we wrestle with the truths of the Bible? We're troubled by it. Sometimes even new denominations start over those things. We should be humbly, submissively, like servants going to the master, saying, "I don't get this. Tell me what it means, tell me what it means." The parables have a humbling effect on you. They make you humble, they make you ask. "Blessed are the spiritual bangers for theirs is everything," “I’ll give you the secrets, if you just come and ask me." That is something hardened enemies will never do, they'll never go to Him after the Good Shepherd parable and say, "I don't understand, tell me what it means. They won't do that because if they would, they would be told fully and they would rejoice and they'd fall on their face, and say, "Thank you for being my good shepherd." So in the end, this kind of teaching, the parables, divides. Good fish, bad fish. Wheat and weeds. Because we are humble enough to come and say, "I don't get it. Tell me what it means,” He tells us. The parables were given, therefore, number one: To fulfill prophecy. Number two: To harden and judge enemies. Number three: To reveal and to bless disciples. And number four: To make us humble spiritual beggars.

The first one should be obvious, humble yourself and ask. If you don't understand anything in the Bible, or the parables, come to Christ on your knees in your own quiet time, and say, "Lord Jesus, teach me the truth." Do that for years, and He will. Anyone who lacks knowledge, He will give it to them. He is, it says in the Book of Isaiah, "A rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge." You come to Christ and ask Him, humble yourself and be a spiritual beggar.

Secondly, just marvel. These seven parables are like seven gems, each one of them teaching something about the kingdom. Marvel that He's given us this kind of wisdom, this kind of insight. Thirdly, rejoice in your privilege as a disciple, that you have the right and the freedom to come any time and ask Him for truth and insight, and He will give it to you through His indwelling Spirit. Marvel at this privilege as a disciple.

Then, study. Learn each parable, learn the difference between the parable of the mustard seed and the yeast. There is a difference and there's a similarity. Learn the difference between the treasure hidden in the field and the pearl of great price. Work on it, think about it. Finally, some of Christ's parables were given to make you come to faith in Christ, to make you realize you need to enter the Kingdom. You must respond to the Kingdom, you must bear the fruit of the Kingdom or you will be lost. You must have a heart that is soft and yielded to Christ. If you have never given your life to Christ, don't leave without talking to me. Talk to me, "How can I enter? How can I be one of His disciples, how can I have saving faith?" And He will give it to you.

Open your Bibles to Matthew 12 where we're going to look this morning at verses 46-50, Jesus’ mother and brothers. I'd like to begin with a story. In the Old City of Troezen in Greece there lived long ago a princess named Aethra. She had one young son named Theseus, who was her pride and joy, bravest boy in all the land.  Aethra smiled whenever she saw him, whenever she looked at him, but it was a sad smile because the boy had never seen his father who live far away across the sea. One day when she felt he was ready she took her son to a grove that stood behind the temple and led him to a tall oak surrounded by some thick bushes. At that point she sighed and she said, “ In those bushes you're going to find a flat stone. I want you to move the stone and give me what's underneath it.” Well, he was excited with the challenge and pushed his way through the bushes. It seemed like nobody had been there for years. He found the stone, it was kind of overgrown. He cleared away the ivy and started to work at it, but it was a boulder, more than a stone, and it seemed impossible for him at His tender age to move that stone.

He came back and with some disappointment, said to his mother, “ I found the stone. But I don't think the strongest man in Troezen could move it.” His mother sighed an unhappy sigh, smiled at him and said some day you may be the strongest man on Troezen and then you'll move the stone. Every year they went through the same ritual. Years  after year. At the same time she brought him to that stone and said, "Move the stone and give me what's under it.” He never could, but  as he grew into young manhood, he came back excited one day, and said, "Mother I think I've moved it. I think very soon I might be able to get at it and bring you what's under the stone.” He was motivated, and in order to grow strong, Theseus spent all his days wrestling and boxing and training horses and going on the wild boar hunts. All of the things that were needed to prepare him for manhood. It was a great year, and he strengthened himself and his mother taught him and trained him every day with wisdom-wise counsel.

And sure enough, that time of year came around, and his mother bid him to go and move that stone and bring her what was underneath. Mother sensed that this year was the year. He was the strongest man in Troezen; a strapping young man, 18 years old. He also sensed that this was the year,  so he went to the stone and put his fingers around it and exerted it with all of his strength and might felt like his heart would burst within him. Sinus muscles straining and finally, that boulder yielded to His strength, and with a cry of triumph he toppled it over. Theseus had conquered the stone and underneath he found a bronze sword with a golden hilt and a pair of magnificent golden sandals. He took them out and brought them to his mother, who was weeping. He said, "Mother, look what I found! A bronze sword with a golden hilt and two golden sandals." But he noticed that she was weeping, and so it went on and he started to cry too, but he didn't know why. “Mother, why are you crying?”

She said, "Come with me, I want to show you something. They went to the ocean and looked out over the beautiful ocean. She pointed across the water and said, “There across the sea is Attica where your father lives and where the Athenian people dwell. It's a beautiful land, a land with olive oil and honey, rich land, with good and noble people. Theseus, what would you do if you were king of such a land?”  His heart swelling with pride and with a courageous  sense of what he could do. He said, “ If I were king of such a land, I would rule wisely and well in wisdom and in might, that when I died, everyone would weep over my tomb, and say, ‘There lies the shepherd of his people.’ ” Aethra smiled and said, “Your father is King Augeas of Athens. When he went to be king, he commanded me to treat you and train you as a child until you should prove yourself by the lifting of the stone. That task accomplished, you are to put on his sandals and follow in his footsteps. You are to gird on his sword, and you are to slay the dragon and the giant just as he did in his youth, and then present yourself before him and say, ‘Father the stone has been lifted.’ ” But Theseus wept and said, "Shall I leave you? Oh, my mother.”  She answered, "Weep not for me, that which is destined, must be. Grief is easy for those who do nothing but grieve." Then she kissed Theseus, her little boy that she'd raised from infancy, faced him toward the sea and turned and went into the temple, and he saw her no more.

Now, what does that have to do with Jesus Christ, you may ask? When God set-up the world He put a garden in it, the Garden of Eden, and the very first thing He did was form a family. There was a husband, Adam, and a wife, Eve, and the two became one flesh and God gave them a command. “Fill the earth, be fruitful and multiply.”  Seventy-six generations later the Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus.  God entrusted to Joseph and Mary the task of raising Jesus until the time came for him to begin his ministry. It was prophesied through Simeon to Mary, “A sword will pierce your own soul.” It would be a painful work that Mary would do as she would prepare Jesus for His life of ministry, and one of the great mysteries of the incarnation, that Jesus, God in the flesh, should be trained in the ordinary way in a family with a stepfather, Joseph, and with a biological mother, Mary. And the mystery is in Luke 2:52, “and Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man.” Many of those lessons that he learned, he learned from his mother, from his father, from his brothers and sisters too. But the time came for Jesus to begin his ministry, and the time came also for him to put his physical family in their proper place, that they might understand their role and that they might know that the physical family was meant to be only a dim reflection of that which was heavenly.

There was a higher family, the family of God, the kingdom of heaven and only those who know and do the will of his father will enter into it. So we come to this text. Now what's the context of this? It's the advancing kingdom of heaven that we might understand what the kingdom involves. We've seen that Jesus proclaimed the eminence of the kingdom when he said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” and then He unfolded the nature of the kingdom and the Sermon on the Mount and what kingdom life would be like and how we would enter the kingdom. He demonstrated the power of the kingdom through his miracles, a river of miracles. There seemed to be nothing He could not do, and He commissioned the messengers of the kingdom in Matthew 10, the apostles, sending them out that they should proclaim the kingdom, and that the kingdom should advance.

Now, in Chapter 11-12, we have the feedback, we have the human responses to the message of the kingdom. First, John the Baptist languishing in prison in doubt, not really sure if Jesus is the one. Then we have Jewish cities Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum, rejecting the kingdom, not accepting him, not listening. We have in Matthew 12, the opposition and hatred of the Jewish leaders who had hatched a plot to murder Jesus that would in the end be successful. And the summary that is how it will be with this generation, speaking of this whole Jewish nation. The Jewish nation as a whole would reject the kingdom that Christ brought, and the capstone of it all is his own family. His own physical family coming to Him, and Jesus saying, “You want to know who my family is?” Pointing to his disciples, saying, “Here's my brother and sister, and mother, for whoever does the will of my Father in Heaven is my brother and sister and mother. This is the royal family of God.”

Now, as we look at this text, we see first the blessings and limitations of Christ’s physical family. What do I mean by that? Well, what does the scripture teach about Jesus’s physical family? Jesus had a physical mother, and a stepfather. Joseph was Christ’s earthly father by adoption. He legitimized Christ claim to the throne of David, because he himself was a son of David, as the angel said. Probably by now, I think Joseph was dead, and so Mary was a widow leaving Christ the rightful heir to David's throne. It was Christ’s by right, he was the anointed one. Mary herself was also physically descended from David, I think as is unfolded in the genealogy in Luke's gospel. From her he received a fully human nature and from her and also from Joseph and from his family and his relatives and from his hometown, he received his nurture and his training as a human being would.

Christ had brothers and sisters. This is taught, again and again in the New Testament. Matthew 12:46-47, “While, Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, ‘Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.’” Also in another chapter,  Matthew 13, verses 55-56, his hometown folks are in the process of rejecting him there saying, "Isn't this the carpenter's son? Isn't his mother's name Mary and aren't his brothers, James, Joseph, Simon and Judas?Aren't all his sisters with us?” I would think that would be conclusive. It’s not quite that simple as we'll get to in a moment, but also it says in John 2:12, “After this Christ went down to Capernaum with his mother and his brothers and his disciples and there they stayed for a few days.” Now the bone of contention here, is on the use of the word “brother.” Sometimes it can be translated “cousin” in the Aramaic and the Greek, and the Hebrew don't really have a good word for cousin. Frequently, “brother” could just refer to an extended family member. In the King James version of Genesis 29:15 when Laban greets Jacob he says, “Because thou art my brother should thou serve me?” In other words, you're going to work for me, we know that, but I'm going to pay you because you're my brother. Well, he's his nephew, actually, but he calls him brother. But I think when the brothers are listed by name here, four of them specifically, it gives me a strong indication that Jesus had brothers. In Mark 6:3 it says, "Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon? Aren't all his sisters with us, and they took offense at him.”

Therefore, I think the simple way to read this is that Jesus had brothers. Now, you might say, "where did he get them?” Well, use your imagination. Joseph and Mary were a couple. They loved each other, they had children and among them were four brothers, what we would call half brothers of Jesus. Now, of course, the Roman Catholic Church disagrees with this, and teaches that Mary was a perpetual Virgin.  Catholics say that Mary was the ever Virgin Mary, always the Virgin, but this is not taught anywhere in Scripture, and you have to realize that the burden of proof would be on the Catholics to prove it. We would assume that they naturally had children unless the Scripture would teach us otherwise, and it doesn't. And so these were his brothers. That poses an interesting problem. Imagine you were his younger brother, and you acted like the son of Adam, that you were, and you disobeyed your parents, as all sons of Adam do. Can you imagine Mary saying, "Why can't you live like your older brother? He never does anything wrong, He always obeys me gladly.”  You might actually have a building kind of resentment against him. You could never live up to him, he's perfect in every way, literally. What a challenge. But Jesus had this kind of a physical life.  It says  right in the text that Jesus had brothers, and so he did. Bottom line is that Jesus had a family just like you and me. That was part of his sharing in our physical identity, in his solidarity with the entire human race, his physical nature. Now Christ had a godly sense of love and responsibility to his physical family. He was the perfect son, he was obedient to his parents in every way. In Luke 2:51, it says that Jesus went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to his parents.  But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. He was a carpenter it seems just like Joseph was. I've already read the two passages that if you put them together in Matthew 13, it says, "Isn't this the carpenter's son? So that means that Joseph is the carpenter, but then in Mark 6:3, it says Isn't he the carpenter himself? So it seems that Jesus was apprenticed as a carpenter, just as Joseph had been. You could imagine them working side by side, shaping the wood, making a table or chair, or some other piece of furniture.  Jesus learned and grew from those experiences with his father, his physical father, his step-father Joseph.

Jesus taught that we must honor our father and mother in Matthew 15. He destroys the idea of “korban”, of giving a gift to God instead of using it to help your parents. He said You should have honored your father, and mother, as the scripture says, and so Jesus upheld perfectly this command  to honor your father and mother.  He himself practiced what he preached even in his adult years. He is still concerned for Mary's physical well-being as he's dying on the cross. He looks down and sees the disciple whom he loves, John, and he sees his widowed mother and none of his brothers. I think at that point we could surmise the don’t believe in Christ, although after the resurrection, they do. It says according to Acts 1 that they're there. But at this point, they didn't.  Jesus seeing them, He says to Mary, “Woman behold your son.” And then He says, to John, "Behold your mother .” He put them together in effect and from that day forth John took Mary into his home and cared for her.  Jesus perfectly obeyed the fifth commandment, honor your father and mother. He perfectly obeyed it every day of his life.

But Christ also limited the significance of his physical family, and this is one of those texts in which he does that. There's a limit to the physical family, we don't idolize it. We don't say that it is God's final and highest purpose. No, it isn't. The final, and highest purpose is not the physical family, it is the kingdom of God. It is the royal family of God, that's his final purpose, and the physical family is here to teach us about that and to prepare us for it.  Jesus limited the physical family  and put it within boundaries. He does it by it seems a kind of a consistent pattern of gently re-buffing his mother when she takes a role that's not appropriate as in Luke 2:48-49,  when Jesus at age 12 managed to get away from his parents and was in the house of God,  answering and asking difficult questions of the religious leaders there. His parents wondered where he was.  They went back and searched for him and found him in the temple. His mother said to him, “ Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”  “Why were you searching for me?” he's asked. “Didn't you know? I had to be in my Father's house?”  Imagine if you were Joseph, how would you hear that? “Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house.” The King James says, “I had to be about my father's business, I had to be doing my father's things.”

In John chapter 2, when the time has come for him, like Theseus, to go off and begin his ministry, He starts with a miracle. The miracle was at the wedding at Cana, Galilee and Jesus turns water into wine. Who initiates the process? Well, it's Mary. She comes up and says, “They have no wine.”  Right there at the start, He wants to say, “It's not going to be like this. You're not going to come and tell me that we're going to do this or  that. He says very respectfully, "Dear woman, why do you involve me? My time has not yet come." And so in a very gentle way. He says, "Mother, this is my ministry, Now the time has come for me to do this for my Heavenly Father.” In a very gentle way, he speaks very respectfully to her. Another time when Jesus was teaching many things a woman in the crowd called out in Luke 11:27-28, “ Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.”  And He replied, “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” In other words, it's of a higher blessing to hear God's word and obey it than it is to be Mary the mother of Jesus.  We don't tend to think that way, do we? The Catholic church could never understand that. In some places,  they worship Mary and idolize her, put her up to the highest place. Jesus said it's even higher to hear God's word and obey. We also see the unbelief of his brothers as I already mentioned, but you see it most clearly in John 7.  Jesus says he's not going up to the feast and his brothers don't understand. “Don't you know that this is the back water. This is Galilee, up here, nobody follows what's going on in Galilee. You need to get down where the big newspapers, are you need to get down in Jerusalem where everything's happening. Nobody wants to be the leader of his people, hides out, like you're doing.  If you're doing these things, show yourself to the world.”

And then very interesting, the apostle John says, "For even his own brothers did not believe in him." This is a very strong statement and even stronger is s statement to them at that moment, in John 7:7, “He looks at them and says, the world cannot hate you.” Why is that significant?  We'll realize what later Jesus says in John 15:19. “If you belong to the world it would love you as its own." As it is, He's speaking to his disciples. “You do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore, the world hates you.” So what is he saying to his brothers when he says, “The world can't hate you. You belong to it. You're it own, you're a son of the devil, you love the world system, so therefore the world cannot hate you.” A very strong statement on his part. Now, what happened this time? Well, you have to get the whole synoptic picture. It's not all here in Matthew but you have to get it out of Mark. In Mark 3:21 Jesus’ family had heard that the authorities were saying it was by Beelzebub the prince of demons, that he was driving out demons. When they heard this, they were greatly alarmed and concerned for him. Mark 3:21  says, “They went to take charge of Him, for they said he is out of his mind." That's a very significant verse, isn't it? Jesus is over 30 years old and his family has come to take charge of him. He's going to be a ward of the family, this is a fruit of their unbelief. They think he's insane, even his mother is there. Maybe they believe the reports that he was doing miracles by Beelzebub, maybe they just thought he was insane. They knew it was getting out of control, it was getting big and dangerous. Mary, his mother, not fully understanding the kingdom and all that had to happen, probably just wanted to protect Jesus and was there to kind of take charge of him and protect him and take him back into protective custody. No, it can't be.

Jesus is the King of the Kingdom of Heaven, He is perfect and he knows what he's doing. Even if you don't understand,  He's going to advance the kingdom in his way. Jesus taught us more things about the physical family. You remember in Matthew 10 He said, “The kingdom is going to advance, and as it advances, brother will betray brother to death and a father, his child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. All men will hate you because of me. A man's enemies will be the members of his own household.” Then He says in Matthew 10:34, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth, I have not come to bring peace but a sword. For I've come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, a man's enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. Anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me, is not worthy of Me and anyone who does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me.” Do you see the clear ordering in Christ’s mind here? The kingdom of heaven comes first, above any earthly commitment. Husband, wife, father, son, brother, brother all of these are less, and lower than the Kingdom of Heaven. This is the teaching of Christ and in Luke 9, another disciple said, "I will follow you, Lord, but first let me go and say good bye to my family and Jesus said, ‘No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.’”  Now, that seems harsh. But it's a consistent pattern that Jesus has of putting the Kingdom of Heaven first, and every other earthly connection second. The larger issue here is that Jesus belonged to a family of the Jews. He was Jewish and his brothers and sisters, the Jews were rejecting him, his own physical brothers were just a symbol of that, the whole nation was turning against him. How does the Gospel of Matthew began? How does it start? Well, it starts with a genealogy. We gentiles, we think very little of that that was vital to the Jews. They were tracing out his physical lineage to show that Jesus was the son of David, who was the son of Abraham, he was Jewish. But being physically related to Christ is not enough, it's not enough to be Jewish physically related to Christ.

It's not enough. Paul said in Romans 9, "I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart for I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised." And then he says, "It is not as though God's word had failed for not all who are descended from Israel are Israel." So, just because you're physically related to Jesus, it's not going to get you to heaven. Physical lineage is not enough, you have to be born and then born again into the kingdom of heaven. Jesus came into the world as a result of a supernatural miracle virgin birth, but he was born in very ordinary physical circumstances. He had a family, a husband, and wife, who raised their children. Christ’s mother and brothers were his closest witnesses to His life before his ministry began and they did not believe in Him. This shows therefore the blessings and the limitations of the physical family, but they also show how the family lays the groundwork for the higher understanding that the kingdom of heaven is actually a family, it's a Royal Family Kingdom of God.

And that is the greater blessing and limitlessness of Christ’s spiritual family. The central lesson of this text is this. Who are my mother? And who are my brothers? Pointing to His disciples, He said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in Heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” Physical family, therefore is a source of immense joy and security, and blessedness spiritual family is a source of greater joy, and security and blessedness. The essential aspect is that you would hear the word of God and obey. You want to know who are Christ’s mother and brothers and sisters, those who hear the gospel, and obey it; those who hear the word of God and cherish it as it actually is the word of God, which is at work among those who believe around the world. Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven. This is not salvation by works, not at all, but it's a natural out-flowing of a heart that hears and receives the Word and lives accordingly. “Whoever  Jew or Gentile hears the word of God, and obeys it, he is my brother and sister and mother.” This is the higher blessing of the family of God. 

Now, therefore, we learn from this text that the kingdom of God is a royal family. Look at Matthew 17:24 and following, "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. When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. ‘What do you think, Simon? 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,’ Jesus said to him. ‘But so that we may not offend them, go to the lake and throw out your line, take the first fish you catch, open its mouth, you'll find a four drachma coin in it, take it and use it to pay for my tax and yours.’” Now I know you're wondering, where is that in April, when I need it? Oh, that every fish would have a check in its mouth, and I could use it to pay my IRS bill, but this was a special kind of tax. It was the tax, you had to pay in order to go to the temple and Jesus said, "Let's stop and realize what the kingdom of heaven is. It's a royal family. “Do kings charge their sons to get into their own home? No, you are sons of God. You don't need to pay this tax. Ultimately. But so that we may not offend them, pay it. But in the end, in the kingdom, you will have free access to the house of your father. You can come and go because you are children of the King.”  Do you see the logic of Matthew 17, children of the King? The kingdom of God is a royal family. John Calvin said this. Some people say that the Gospel was given to us, to help us understand the world but I say that the world was given to us to help us understand the Gospel, and the family is one of the greatest teaching tools you'll ever find to help instruct what the gospel promises — that when you believe you are adopted into a family and you have a father, and you have brothers and sisters. Every physical relationship has significance. God ordained that all of us have physical mothers and fathers, and that the earth would be filled with the image of God as a result of those marriages.

But every marriage has a higher spiritual analogy, the husband and the wife relationship, is like Christ and the church, a perfect relationship of love and commitment. So also the family reflects higher to the Kingdom of Heaven. There's an immense privilege to being in the family of God.  In John 1:11, Jesus said, “He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God. Children born not of natural descent nor of human decision or a husband's will but born of God. And the word became flesh. And made His dwelling among us, and we beheld His glory. The glory of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth, Jesus took on a human body, that we might become children of God, adopted into his royal family. And so Hebrews 2:11, and following says, "Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family, so Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.” He's not ashamed to call you brother or sister, and He took on flesh and blood, that He might lay it down on the cross in your place as an atoning sacrifice for your sins, that the offense that blocks you being a child of God, might be removed forever. And that you might be adopted into his family that He might be your great and merciful high priest. He's not ashamed to have you in his family. And so therefore, this was proclaimed after Christ resurrection. You remember when Mary is holding on to Jesus and Jesus says, “Don't hold on to me for I have not yet ascended to my father. But go instead to my brothers and tell them, I'm returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. Could it be clearer now that I'm raised from the dead? They are my brothers and my God is theirs and my father is theirs.” They're in the very family of God. And it's perfected in glory, when you get a resurrection body, just like his. You live forever, then will this adoption be made perfect forever. In Romans 8:29, "For those whom God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that He Christ might be the first born among many brothers.” This is the royal family of God, that's what the kingdom of heaven is. It's a royal family. 

Now, there's some advantages to membership. Are you intrigued. Are you interested? What are the advantages to membership?  Well, there's some earthly advantages. Peter said, “We've left our families to follow you, what then will there be for us?” And Jesus said in Mark 10 and following, “I tell you the truth. No one who has left home, or brothers, or sister, or mother, or father, or children, or fields for me and the Gospel will fail to receive a 100 times as much in this present age. Homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and field and with them persecutions, and in the age to come, eternal life. I'm going to give you a personal word of testimony.” I have been all over the world. And I have found people who didn't know me at all before I first met them who have welcomed me into their homes, who have embraced me as a long lost brother. Who have fed me their best food, who have given me clean bedding. Who have prayed for me, in my work, and have sent me off with a blessing, and I never knew him. But because you’re a brother or sister in Christ, you belong to a royal family, and you can reap its benefits now. When we come here to church on Sunday, these are your brothers and sisters in Christ, and they would bless you with what they have physically, they will strengthen you, they will pray for you if you need something, they will give it to you. This is the truest brotherhood there is.  Liberal theology gives a shortcut to the cross. They went beyond it. “We're already fatherhood of God, brotherhood of men.” No, no, no. Only through the cross does this happen, through faith in Jesus Christ we are then adopted into the true family of God.

What kind of application can we take from this? First, concerning your physical family, praise God for the blessings of your family, praise God,  your earthly family is one of the greatest blessings that God ever made. I would urge you just simply stop and thank God for the family. You were born into, or the family God's given you now in your adult years, thank God for it. Realize that Christ is not denigrating physical family here at all, He's actually elevating it by using an analogy to talk about the Kingdom of Heaven. Family is a noble thing. Cherish your family and be faithful to your family obligations. Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right, honor them. Christian parents, your highest reward, your highest blessing, your highest obligation is to lift your children up from being your physical family members that they might be also, your spiritual family members, that you might lead them to Christ.

Don't leave it to others, don't leave it to VBS Sunday school or  any other way, but  evangelize your own children and bring them into a full knowledge of Jesus Christ through the gospel. There is no greater privilege than seeing your children walk in the Lord. God has no grandchildren. Just because you have a godly father or mother, it doesn't mean you're going to heaven. Just because you had somebody who set a good example for you and walk with the Lord, doesn't mean you're going there; you must be born again, into the Kingdom of Heaven. A warning to parents, you probably know it already. Your children may break your heart, they may not come to faith in Christ. We can't compel that new birth, we can't. Realize that your final highest allegiance is not to your parents and it's not to your children or your siblings, it is to Christ and to the truth of his gospel. I'm not promising you that all of your children or all of your relatives will become true spiritual brothers and sisters in Christ. Oh, I wish that it were true, as Paul did. I would give anything to see it happen, but it isn't necessarily guaranteed. Therefore, as Baptists we do not baptize infants, but as Baptists we evangelize our children that they might receive the blessings of the spiritual family.

Concerning the spiritual family, praise God that Jesus is not ashamed to call you a brother. He's going to own you on judgement day, and say he or she is mine, here is my brother. Isn't that something right in the text, “Here is my brother, here is my sister.” That will be worth your soul on Judgment Day, that Jesus would say that he is mine, she is mine, and He will take it very personally when any one in this world helps you along your way. The King will say to those on his right, “Come, you are blessed by my Father, take your inheritance, the kingdom, prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. Whenever you have done for the least of these my brothers, you've done to me.” Therefore, we ministered to the Montagnard, the Dega because they were our brothers and we gave of our material possessions to help them. In the end, the highest blessings are waiting for us that we might see each other perfect holy and blameless and be in the kingdom. Can I ask you a question concerning your own soul? Have you been born again into this family? Jesus said in John 3, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh. But that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." You must be born again if you want the benefits of the kingdom of heaven.

This morning we are going to look at a fascinating passage, Matthew 12: 43-45.  I want to focus in on your hearts this morning that I might try to understand what's going on in there. What do you love? What is your treasure? What are you yearning for? What are you living for?  Back in the 17th century, one of my heroes, Blaise Pascal did a remarkable experiment. He made a tube of glass over three stories tall. He filled it with fluid and put it in a vat of the same fluid and did an experiment on barometric pressure. From those experiments, he understood the pressure in fluids, and eventually we got hydraulic breaks and pistons and hypodermic needles and such out of that thinking that he did. What was fascinating to the people at the time was when you filled this tube of glass full of fluid, and lifted it up, it would drop down to a certain level and they wondered what was in the top. It was a cupped-off ending of a certain shape. It was Pascal more than anyone that helped us really to understand  the concept of a vacuum.  Pascal was also a committed Christian, who loved the Lord and who had a passionate relationship with Christ. It was he who said, "The heart has its reasons that reason doesn't understand,” and  that faith in Christ goes beyond reason. He was a reasonable man, but he went beyond it. The statement, “There is within each one of us, a God-shaped vacuum that only God can fill,” is attributed to him. A God-shaped vacuum. Kind of an odd way to put it, but the idea is that there's this space and emptiness inside us that is meant for God, and only God can fill it.  Others have said nature abhors a vacuum. Nature, or should we say, God, is going to fill that vacuum with something. Question is, what? Is it going to be the lusts of the worldly life that we live in, demonically induced, forced upon us by an evil and wicked world system? Or is it going to be moral reformation and cleaning up your life and worldly accomplishments and achievements? Or is it going to be Christ? It seems to me the text gives us these options.

What I want to say to you today is that demonically-driven lusts and worldly achievements and ethical reformation cannot occupy that space to satisfy you. Only Christ can. Jesus Christ alone can fill that spot in that empty place in your hearts. Now what is the context of this passage? Jesus is in conflict with the Scribes and Pharisees struggling over his ministry. They've rejected Him, they hate him. They opposed the kingdom that He proclaims. They're fighting him, and they come to him with a demand for a sign. Jesus has done an incredible river of miracles, one miracle after another. Probably more casting out of demons, I think, than any other sign.  There were many demons driven out with a word. 

Jesus in Matthew 12, says, "He was binding the strong man in plundering his house." He was coming into Israel and tying up Satan so that He could plunder his house. The Scribes and Pharisees were exactly wrong in their assessment of Jesus' ministry. They ascribed the miracles of driving out demons to the prince of demons, not the Messiah. Jesus is dealing with the fact that Israel, His own people, the Jewish people, are rejecting Him. He came to that which was His own, and His own did not receive Him. He's dealing with that in this text, and what he's doing in these few verses is very complicated. He's reasoning from one individual out to the whole nation. And as it is for one person, one demon possessed person, so it will be for the whole generation, the Jews. He says, "When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, I will return to the house I left. When it arrives, it finds a house, unoccupied swept clean and put in order, then it goes and takes with its seven other spirits more wicked than it than itself. And they go in and live there. And the final condition of this man is worse than the first.” He's been talking about a man, an individual man, and then he says that is how it will be for this generation for the whole nation.  The key word I believe in the whole text is the word “unoccupied.” The demon comes back and finds the house. The man is really unoccupied. There's nothing in there, it's a vacuum. The house is swept clean and put in order. The man's life is together, it's cleaned up, but there's nothing inside. The God-shaped vacuum is not filled with God, it's filled with nothing. So the demon says, "Ah opportunity, seven other demons, flood in and the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That's how it's going to be for the whole nation. What I'm saying today is the demons, with all their lusts, are driving you to those things cannot occupy to satisfy. Secondly, I'm saying that moral reformation, cleaning yourself up with worldly accomplishment and achievements cannot occupy to satisfy. Only Christ can occupy to satisfy.

Let's look  first  at how demons cannot occupy to satisfy. In this text, Christ teaches us about demons. No one knows more about demons than Jesus Christ. Christ actually knows demons better than they know themselves. He knows what they want, he knows their condition. These three brief verses give us a rare and astonishing insight into the spiritual world right from the lips of Jesus.

We can learn about the demonic world this way. You might say, "How can we who are 21st century people believe in demons? We're also 21st century believers in the Bible, aren't we?  Jesus clearly taught about demon, so as a Christian, you're brought to a pass, you can either believe Christ's teachings that there are demons who behave this way, or you can say I reject this but then once you reject that, what do you have left? The Bible teaches that there are demons, and Jesus here teaches us about them. I want to look briefly and quickly at thirteen brief insights about demons and demonic nature. First, Jesus calls them spirits, they are spirits.  They're non-physical; they're not made up of atoms and molecules, and for this reason, they are free from fatigue. They are immortal; they're not constrained by space, thus many demons could inhabit one person. They are spirits.

Secondly, they are called unclean in the NIV. It says, evil spirits, but really the simplest translation would be “unclean.” It implies something of their nature, of their character.  They're corrupt, they're wicked, they're vile, they love what is evil, and they hate what is good. It also implies something of a history of their actions. They've been involved in dirty deeds  for generations. They are despicable, they are evil, and they pollute and make vile everything that they touch. The opposite is clean or pure. For example, Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.”  He also said to His disciples,  "A person who's had a bath needs only to wash his feet, his whole body is clean, and you are clean because of the word I have spoken to you. But not every one of you,” meaning  that Judas wasn't clean. What he's saying is through faith in His Word  we can be clean. We can be clean but these demons, these spirits, are unclean.  They are the very picture of filth from God's holy perspective. God's eyes are so pure, he cannot look at evil. The devil and his unclean spirits are the most vile things in the universe. 

Thirdly, they are able to indwell a man in some way. We don't really understand this, but it's true. Verse 43 says, "When an evil spirit comes out of a man.” Now I don't fully understand what this means, but in some way, the devil, the demon can be in a man. For Jesus says "when an evil spirit comes out of a man," so the demon was in some sense in the man spiritually living with him controlling his thoughts, his actions in some sense, possessing him as if he were his own. They own the way we think and the way we reason, driving us to relentless sin because they are relentlessly empty themselves, but able to indwell a man. Fourth, they are powerless to stay if Christ says to leave. What makes the demon leave? "When an evil spirit comes out of a man."  Jesus is referring to his own miracles of driving out demons. When Jesus says, “Go”, they must go. This is the terrifying power of God the Son. Jesus's word is powerful and demons must obey. 

 Fifthly, they are restless.  Verse 43, "When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it." They're roaming, they're wandering, desiring rest. This is more than just  looking for a new place to live. It characterizes their mental state. They are restless, wandering. They’re unfulfilled, they're not finding what they seek very much like the devil himself.  In Job 1:7, the Lord said to Satan, "Where have you come from?"  His answer, "from roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it.” The devil is yearning for something, roaming, looking for something, restlessly; rest is the very thing he will never find.  

Sixth, they are not omnipresent. In other words, they are here or they are there, they're not everywhere. God is omnipresent; He's everywhere at once, but demons are not. They move from one place to another. They may move fast, they have no fatigue, and no earthly boundaries or borders. They do have spiritual restrictions though.  In Job 1:10, Satan complains about those spiritual restrictions. He wants to get at Job and Satan says, "Have you not put a hedge around him that I can't get at him.” They do have boundaries, but they can move. They're confined one place at a time.  Seventh, they are intelligent, they have a plan. They think about what they want to do. In Verse 44, the demon says, "I will return to the house I left.” They make up a plan, they have an idea of what they want to do, they think it through. Demons are thinking beings, they decide what to do. The devil is spoken of as having schemes. The devil has a plan. Have you not felt this in your own life, have you not been laid low, by a temptation and realized that it was a whole combination of things that led to the point where you were willing to yield to something that morning you said you'd never yield to again, what happened to you? Well, the devil had a scheme, he had a plan, a strategy, and it worked.  They're intelligent, they make plans.

Eighthly, they are self-determined. “I will return to the house I left.”  They're self-determined, they're not under Christ's kingship. They don't submit to His authority at all, they do what they feel best. The devil himself in Isaiah 14:13-14, speaking through a king of Babylon said, "I will ascend to heaven, I will raise my throne above the stars of God. I will sit enthroned on the Mount of Assembly on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds.  I will make myself like the most high. I will, I will, I will.” However in James 4:13-15 15 it says, “You who say today or tomorrow I will go to this or that city, spend a year there carry on business and make money. Well, you don't even know if you'll be alive tomorrow, what is your life? It is a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” That's the very thing a demon will never do. He's not going to say, “If the Lord wills, I'll return to the house I left.” No, he's going to go if he wants; he is self-willed.

Ninth, he is possessive. The NIV leaves this out.  Sometimes it  just does. It leaves out a possessive here in Matthew 12:44. By the way, I love the NIV.  I accept the flaws because it really speaks so powerfully and clearly at other times. But in this case I have to let you know, there's a word left out of Matthew 12:44. The demon says, "I will return to MY house from which I came." It's possessive. It has a sense of ownership. The devil is  very possessive. Remember when he took Jesus to the high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor and he said, "All this has been given to me. And I can give it to anyone I want to." He has a sense of what's his now. This is what makes Christ's expulsion of demons such a great act of power. In Luke 11:21-22 it says, "When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe but when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up the spoils." The demon feels a sense of ownership over his property. He feels like he owns it and he says, “I’ll return to my house from which I came.” 

Tenth, demons are relentless, they are persistent, they come back later. "I will return," he says. The Devil and his angels, don't give up easily.  Have you ever defeated the devil in a temptation and had the feeling that you  would never have to deal with that issue again, and then later that day, or again tomorrow,  he just keeps coming back and coming back with the same temptation.   Even Jesus had to face this. Remember when he defeated the devil out in the desert. It says in Luke Chapter 4:13, ‘When the Devil had finished all his tempting, he left him until an opportune time. “I’m coming back.” What the devil's opportune time is, and what you think yours is are two different things. He's looking for weakness, an opportune time but he returns. His demons are relentless. They don't give up easily. 

Eleventh, the demon is undaunted. He's not intimidated by moral reformation. He's not intimidated by a clean house. When he arrives, he finds the house unoccupied swept clean and put in order... And like I said, he says, "Time to get to work. Everything's looking good, it's all arranged, it's all neat and well-ordered.” He's not intimidated at all by moral reformation that you clean up yourself. No, it's time to mess it up. The demon thrives in bringing chaos where once there was good order. The real issue is that this house is unoccupied. There's no power, no force. There's no Christ in that vacuum, so he's going to flood in and fill it. 

Twelfth, demons are cooperative with other demons. Verse 45, "Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there." They cooperate with other demons to make a monstrously huge impact on the world. They work together, and this demonic cooperation is the essence of Satan's kingdom. It's so essential that Jesus said, "If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself, how then can his kingdom stand?" If demons start fighting one another, there's no kingdom anymore, so they work together. Multiple demons inhabiting one person has already been seen with the demonic hoard called Legion, and they're all in there. Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" "My name is Legion," he replied, "for we are many."

Thirteenth, the demons vary in wickedness, they're not all the same. Jesus says, "He goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself." Doesn't that imply there's some kind of a gradation or order of wickedness?  They're all in rebellion, but they're not all equally wicked.  Some demons are just simply more vile than others. In any case, this moral cleaning up without being converted to Christ results in far greater evil in the end. The final condition is worse than the first.  Jesus says, "That is how it will be with this wicked generation." 

Alright, thirteen things about demons. Why can demons not occupy to satisfy? Demons do occupy people, they also drive and tempt, and entice, and lure, and seduce, and persuade people to join them in uncleanness all the time. They entice people to commit sin so that they will be just like them. Demons want us to be like they are, and enticing us to follow their ways and make us restless, yearning, hungry human beings, always eating but never satisfied. They make us demonic roamers of the earth.   Remember Cain's punishment? After Cain killed his brother, Abel, God punished him and in Genesis 4:12 and following God said to Cain, "When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you, you will be a restless wanderer on the earth." A restless wanderer on the earth. Who does that sound like? It sounds like the devil. Cain said to the Lord, "My punishment is more than I can bear. Today, you are driving me from the land and I will be hidden from your presence. I will be a restless wanderer on the earth and whoever finds me will kill me." Do you see how much Cain is like the devil at this point? 1 John 5 said it was the devil that drove him because the devil's a murderer.  Cain had become demonic in this way.

And so also Israel. When they refused to enter the promised land, God turned them aside and said, "Therefore, for the next forty years, you will roam restlessly through the desert until the next generation comes and they'll enter the land." David spoke of evil men in his day in exactly these same terms: restless, animal-like searching. Psalm 59:14-15, "They return at evening snarling like dogs and prowl about the city, they wander about for food and they howl if they're not satisfied." That's so demon-like. People in evil are hungry and searching for something. The devil is prodding them on, and they are never satisfied.

 The theme is clear: A consistent pattern of restlessness, of roaming, of searching but not finding, of hungering and consuming but never being satisfied, of having no rest, no home. It is demonic to the core. For demons, like people, it's the same thing. There is only one place of rest. "Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Demons cannot occupy to satisfy because they have a yearning, yawning emptiness inside themselves that they're trying to fill, and the world order that they have arranged around us seeks to fill by the same way and it never will. Demons drive people to fill that emptiness with lust, the promise of satisfaction through physical sensual pleasure or with ambition, the promise of satisfaction through earthly power or with entertainment, the promise of satisfaction through mental stimulation apart from achievement. That's my definition of entertainment: the promise of satisfaction through mental stimulation apart from achievement and materialism, the promise of satisfaction through accumulation. These are the things the devils sell, and they do not satisfy, they do not occupy to satisfy. "When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it."

A second theme is that morality and worldly accomplishment cannot occupy to satisfy. When the demon arrives, it finds a house, unoccupied, swept clean, and put in order. The house has been freed of demonic influence, but it's also free of the Lord, it's unoccupied. The Holy Spirit has not entered in, Christ is not Lord there. There's nothing there, it's a yawning spiritual vacuum and it will be filled by something.  The word in the Greek[scholazo] “unoccupied” means literally to have leisure for or be available for, to be free for. It's like a "For Rent" sign or like at a hotel, they've got rooms for rent, it's unoccupied. From this word we get the word “scholastic” or “school.”  It means to be free from labor in order to study higher things: science, math, philosophy, other things. That's why we call it liberal arts. It means you're free; free from earthly concerns so that you can pursue higher things.  But this is my point, the freedom has to be for something, it's not going to remain empty. Christ frees up this man from a demon, and he’s freed up, he’s unoccupied; there's nothing there. No occupant has come to take its place. what does this man do? He uses it for moral reformation. He sweeps clean his house. The spirit was unclean, but this house is swept clean. The effects of the demon's past occupation are over.

Demons bring chaos, they bring disorder and mess, but now that this man is in his right mind, he starts to clean it up his life. But since the house is unoccupied by the Lord, it's nothing more than moral reformation, it's not conversion, not at all. The alcoholic goes to AA and stops drinking, the drug addict stops using the drugs, the user of internet pornography stops doing that, the adulterer breaks off the relationship and stops his bad habits. The spouse abuser, embarrassed by the potential public shame and maybe even conviction by the law, reforms his ways. The driven businessman, about to lose his family and he sees it coming, cuts back on his work life and his travel schedule so that he can spend more time with his wife and children. Cigarette smoker with early signs of emphysema quits cold turkey. The embezzler, terrified of his friend's conviction looks to his own business and cleans it up and starts doing things right because he doesn't want to get arrested. The glutton, afraid of the early warning signs of a heart attack starts to eat better and exercise. The guilty sinner, afraid of the consequences of his life, prays the prayer they tell him to pray, signs the card they tell him to sign, goes to the meetings they tell them to go to, but he's not converted. His life is improved but he's not converted. There's nothing inside. Perhaps he's just simply a Benjamin Franklin-style moralist; early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. He starts to lead a clean life, a life of discipline and self-control, a life of self-actualization, good eating, good exercise, good business habits, making the most of every minute to achieve his goals which he has set for himself.  All of these improvements are in themselves good things, but they're nothing if they're not the fruit of conversion. If it's not because Christ has entered your life, and now for his glory, you want to clean these things up and start living that way. Apart from that, is nothing but a mirage. It's like apples on a dead tree.

Churches in America are filled with these kind of folks. It's a dangerous substitute for the genuine thing. The favorite form of moral reformation is religion, a long list of religious dos and don'ts. If you keep them, you can boast to yourselves of your religious life and your moral purity. Pharisees' houses were swept clean, they didn't break any outward commandments, they offered long showy prayers, they announced their alms giving with trumpets, they fasted twice a week and made a big show of it, but they were unoccupied by the Lord, the indwelling Spirit was not there. They looked good on the outside, but were filthy on the inside. Matthew 15:8, "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me."

Or there could be worldly accomplishment, good order, cosmetic arrangements, adornments.  Once you get your house cleaned up, now you can start dressing it up, make it look good, put some good things in your house, some achievement, some awards, some things you can boast about, some accomplishments, checking boxes along the way, things that you can do. The house, the life, the career, the material possessions, the honors, the accolades and all of it in good working order, but it's empty because the house's unoccupied. There's no Christ. Moral reformation even through religion cannot occupy to satisfy. Worldly organization and adornment through achievement cannot occupy to satisfy. Jesus says, "The last house occupation shall be worse than the first." In the KJV, Matthew 12:45, "The last state of that man is worse than the first, even so shall it be unto this wicked generation."

Did you know that moral reformation and religiosity, as a response to the gospel, without genuine conversion, is worse than if you'd never heard the gospel at all? It's worse! It would be better never to have heard the gospel than to respond that way. 2 Peter 2:20-22 says, "If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ... "  If they've cleaned themselves up, escape the corruption of the world, and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to know the way of righteousness than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. The proverb is true. A dog returns to its vomit and a sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud. You know why? Because it's still a dog,  it hadn't been converted. It's still a sow. You can clean a sow but it's still a sow. It's cleaned up but it's not converted, and it's worse in the end. If you hear the gospel and don't believe, it'd be better for you never to have heard the gospel. What does it say about the future of Israel? Jesus, in effect, said they were demonic, strangleholds all over Israel, and he had driven out demons.  The picture I get is, do you ever play at the beach and you're scooping out sand and the water keeps coming in? And if you can work fast enough, you can keep it dry for a little while.  The demons, I think, had left and  all at the boarders were waiting for Jesus to go back to heaven. The house, Israel in this case, the whole generation was unoccupied, swept clean, it was put in order. The demons were out in other countries waiting and then when Jesus goes, they come in like a flood.

Jesus wept over Jerusalem. He wept over it and he said, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you had killed the prophets and stoned those sent to you. How often I've longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings but you were not willing. Behold, your house is left to you desolate." What would be another word for desolate? Would it not be unoccupied? "For I tell you, you will not see me again." He connects their desolation to himself and he says, "I'm leaving, I'm going. I'm going back to heaven and the demons are going to come in and it's going to be worse in the end than before I came." A tangible, physical evidence of that was the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD.

Christ alone can occupy to satisfy. To say that Jesus Christ can occupy your heart to satisfy you, He can be your treasure and your pleasure. He can fill that God-shaped vacuum, he alone can do it, and he wants to do it. Do you remember what he said to the woman at the well, "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never thirst for the water that I give him will become within him, a spring of water welling up to eternal life." That's the language of satisfaction, isn't it?  “Drink as often as you like, drink again and again for I can occupy you from within you to satisfy you. I can take away your guilty conscience, I can pay for all of your sin, I can give you an indwelling Spirit, I can give you a purpose in life, I can do all of these things for you, I can fill your God-shaped vacuum to overflowing.” Christ, and Christ alone, can occupy to satisfy.

What applications can we make of this? First, moral reformation without Christ leads to hell. Actually, it's one of the favorite ways of getting to hell: Cleaning up but not loving Christ. Secondly, the human heart was meant to be occupied free from bondage to be devoted to God. Understand this, know that your heart has this vacuum inside and it's going to be filled with something. Thirdly, recognize the limits of freedom and choice politically, even religiously. These days with the abortion rights, they speak of freedom to choose as though choice or freedom by itself  is a good thing, and it isn't. It's totally connected to what is chosen. We are unoccupied, and then filled, but filled with what? Filled with demons or filled with Christ? And so freedom to choose and all of that thing, it's good is totally connected to what they choose.

Did you see what happened in Baghdad? Once the people were set free from Saddam Hussein's reign? They went wild, there was looting, there was pillaging, there were vigilante groups, there was murder until finally, law came in and brought restrictions again. Is that what we mean by freedom? Is that America's gift to the world as freedom? It wasn't America's fault, I'm not saying that at all, I'm just saying freedom by itself is nothing. It's totally connected to what we do with the freedom. Do we use freedom for sin or do we use it for God? 

Fourth, does Christ dwell in your heart by faith? Does he? Is he there? Do you see how important a question this is? Ephesians 3:16, Paul says, "I pray that out of his glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." When I was a student I saw a pamphlet called, “My Heart, Christ's Home.”  Is he living inside you? Is he eating dinner with you? Are you fellowshipping with him from within? Does Christ dwell in your heart through faith? Ephesians 5:18, "Do not get drunk with wine which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled, occupied with the Spirit."

And then fifth, have you ever heard the expression, "idle hands are a devil's workshop"? Have you found it to be true that if you're not occupied with something, you're going to be occupied with something else? And that something else is sin. We are meant to be occupied, devoted to the Lord's work. We are most vulnerable to sin when we are idle, unoccupied with Christ kingdom. Idle hands are the devil's workshop. So are idle minds and idle hearts. Fill your mind with pure truth. Saturate your mind with the Scripture, with the word of God. Colossians 3:16, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly." Let the word dwell in that empty space inside. Think about whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, lovely, admirable. Fill your mind with these things. Fill your mouth with pure blessings from God. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your hearts to God.

Ephesians 4:29, "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth, but only what is helpful for building others up." Fill your mind with Scripture and your heart with Scripture. Fill your mouth with words of blessing, with the gospel message for this generation. And fill your days with useful service to Christ. Be very careful as it says in Ephesians 5:15 how you live, “Not as unwise but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil.” In the King James Version, in Luke 19:13,  in the parable of the ten pounds, he called his ten servants and delivered them ten pounds each, and said unto them, "Occupy, until I come." You know what that means? Get busy, work at the kingdom.

One of my big fears for this church is it will just be satisfied and not occupied till He comes. That we would just take in the word and  just take in the fellowship and the good things that are here and we will not, like warriors for Christ, occupy until he comes. We'll just get complacent and satisfied. You've got to get busy in the kingdom. I have to be busy in the kingdom or else that place is going to get filled up with something, and it isn't going to be good.  Jesus Christ came into the world to fill that empty place inside of us. Demons and their lusts and all that can't fill it to satisfy neither can worldly accomplishments or moral reformation. Only Christ can. Do you know him?

 We'll be looking this morning at Matthew 12: 38-42:  The Sign of Jonah.   Shortly after I came to Christ  a little over 20 years ago, I was a junior at MIT.  I was studying to be a mechanical engineer and I came to personal faith in Christ. Shortly thereafter I was given a book by one of my Campus Crusade for Christ friends, Josh McDowell's, Evidence that Demands a Verdict. The book is totally falling apart. I've used it over and over. It's a fantastic book, a book of Christian apologetics. Apologetics is that aspect of Christian mental discipline and study in which we try to make a defense for our faith and present evidence for our Christian faith to an unbelieving world. This book was a great encouragement to me, especially the chapter on Christ's resurrection. It presented the historical and biblical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It talked about the fact, established by the historian Josephus as well as others, that the apostles were proclaiming an empty tomb within one generation after Christ. They're proclaiming a resurrection.

It encouraged me that there was evidence that they were preaching a resurrection because a resurrection is really pretty easy to disprove. All you have to do is go to the tomb and produce a corpse and the religion ends immediately. That tells me also by logic that the tomb must have been empty. As McDowell leads us through the logic of explaining why the tomb was empty, what could have happened to the body of Christ? Different options are put forth but they're all ridiculous except for the resurrection itself. For example, the idea that Jesus merely swooned on the cross, he wasn't really dead and then the cool spices revived him and he kind of pushed that boulder aside and came out and convinced them that he'd been raised from the dead. Or the best answer that they have is the disciples came and stole the body and then died as martyrs, every one of them for a lie. That doesn't make any sense either. If you knew that you had the corpse of Jesus over in Peter's garden, would you die for that? Absolutely not, it didn't make any sense.  As I logically work through all of the possibilities for what happened to the body of Christ, I was satisfied and encouraged that Jesus had risen from the dead. But you know, I already believed it. I believed it from Scripture, and it came to me and I understood that if you believe this book from McDowell, and you don't believe the Scriptures, then you have no genuine faith. Therefore, the strongest evidence in Josh McDowell's book are scriptural text, after scriptural text, of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.   Shouldn't  I be even more encouraged that Josephus or somebody else said that Jesus had risen from the dead?  If I don't believe Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and the apostles, then I won't believe anything. What happened to me is I came to the place where I realized that we accept from the Scriptures the resurrection of Jesus Christ and that is the solid foundation of our faith. It's unshakable, nothing else can come that would tower over the scriptural testimony to the empty tomb, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

There’s a verse  that kind of jumped off the page for me:  John chapter 20 when the disciples go to the empty tomb. It's Peter and John, and they run to the tomb, and they see the evidence for the resurrection. They see the linen cloths that were around his body lying in exactly the position where they had been.  Jesus, in some sense,  came up out of those sticky cloths and just left them in the shape of his body, that's what the Greek implies. His head cloth was folded up off by itself, and  the stone had been moved in a mighty way. Everything in that tomb, all the physical evidence, spoke of resurrection. He's alive, He's conquered death. John, who had reached the tomb, first went inside and  it says, "He saw and believed." But look at the next verse, in the NIV, a little parenthesis but so vital. They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead. Why is that so vital? Because that's all you and I get. That's really probably all the first generation of Christians got. I would say very few of them actually went into the empty tomb. I'm sure that the linens were taken by the Jewish adversaries, probably the next day and they were gone. All we get is a proclamation of an empty tomb, don't we? We get the Scriptures and the combination is enough to save my soul. The Scriptures testify to an empty tomb, and so also witnesses through every generation have proclaimed the resurrection of the dead through faith in Christ, that Jesus is the first fruit from the dead, and that there is a resurrection.

I ask you this morning, is that enough for you? Is it enough to get the scriptural prophecies and open written account that Jesus rose from the dead? To get preachers like me who get up and proclaim it and visibly through words depict Jesus dead on the cross and then on the third day, risen from the tomb. Is that enough? I found that as I went out evangelizing and taking this wonderful apologetic material from McDowell working logically through the possibilities, I would sit and talk to a co-worker, and they'd listen to my presentation and when I was finished, I'd say, "Well, what do you think?" They say, "Well, I think Jesus probably rose from the dead." I say, "Well, that's wonderful." And their face hadn't changed, there's nothing else, it just seems like it makes sense. "Was there anything else? Something else you wanted to talk about?"

I saw there was more than just the logical arm twisting that would come from this kind of logical presentation. There had to be more. There had to be repentance at the proclaiming of the word. All of that is in the text we'll look at today. What is the sign of Jonah? It's all of the things. It's the empty tomb, actually in history occurring, that Jesus did it in space and time. The tomb is empty, his body has been raised from the dead. Then we get eyewitnesses, the apostles, who proclaimed it in their generation, wrote it down for all succeeding generations. We then understand from the Scriptures that Christ raised from the dead.  But that's not enough. Having heard this, we then believe, we repent like the men of Nineveh, and we accept the gospel. This is the sign of Jonah, and this is exactly what Jesus proclaim.

 If you're here today as an unbeliever, I want to ask, what would it take for you to believe? I've asked that question, and people are usually animated about that. Well, if God would just send a miracle. If he would just give me a sign, something to let me know he's there and that he's listening to me, some kind of miracle. I've come to believe that no matter what sign is given, no matter what is done, if they don't believe from Scripture, they won't believe regardless the magnitude of the sign. So, we must simply preach the sign of Jonah, the empty tomb, and repentance in the proclaimed word, and that's sufficient for salvation.

A Sign Demanded; A Sign Rejected

The context here in Matthew 12  is of a consistent attack on Jesus Christ by the Pharisees. That's what the chapter's all about, for the most part. Look at chapter 12:2, for example. It says that the Pharisees saw Jesus' disciples going through the grain fields and began to attack him on the issue of the Sabbath.  There are the Pharisees attacking him on what he does on the Sabbath. Again, we see the Pharisees in verse 14, at the end of this attack and after Jesus does a miracle of healing on the Sabbath, going out  plotting how they might kill Jesus. The Pharisees are galvanizing an attack on Christ through unbelief and their plot to kill Jesus will succeed; they will murder him in the end.

 We see the Pharisees listed again in verse 24, after Jesus does an astonishing miracle driving out a demon from a man who's blind and mute. Everybody's astonished  and they say, "Could this be the son of David?" Verse 24: "But when the Pharisees heard this, they said it is only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons that this fellow drives out demons.” The Pharisees are uttering this filthy saying that it is by Beelzebub, by the devil himself, that Jesus is driving out demons. Jesus then teaches them about the unforgivable sin which is  never  to be forgiven either in this age or in the age to come. Again,  the Pharisees in verse 38, "Some of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law said to him, ‘Teacher, we want to see a miraculous sign from you.’” We see their approach being sarcastic, hypocritical really. They come to him with a term of honor, they're flattering Jesus. "Teacher," they call him, it's a title of honor.

In another instance, they also come with this kind of flattery. "We know that you teach the way of truth in accordance with the law. Everything you say is true. We know that you're a man of integrity. Tell us, is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?"  It's a kind of a smooth and tricky way of approaching Jesus, but Jesus isn't fooled for a moment. They come in this sarcastic and hypocritical, self-serving way and  give him this title of honor, teacher. Then they demand a sign from him. It's interesting how Jews, it says, demand a sign.  In 1 Corinthian, the Apostle Paul said that this is what the Jews are looking for, they want a sign. It's woven into their whole approach, they're going to test every spiritual leader by the ability to produce a sign. Apparently, not just one. Jesus was doing a river of miracles, one miracle after another. They come now and say, "We want to see a sign." "Do you mean another sign after the 5000 miracles I've already done?"

It's a fascinating thing. Look at John 6 for example when Jesus feeds 5000 men plus women and children with five loaves and two fish. They come the next day in Capernaum and ask him for a sign. It's an amazing thing. What sign will you do to show us that we should follow you? What will you do? Moses gave us bread from heaven and so Jesus teaches the bread from heaven. They're always asking for a sign. Moses himself was the first that used this approach and it came from God himself, when God called them in Exodus 3 and 4. He said, "You're to go to your people, the Jews, and when you go, you're to take your staff and cast it down and it'll turn into a serpent, then grab it by the tail again, and it turns back into a rod. This is a sign that I'm with you. If they don't believe that sign, then take your hand and stick it inside your garment. When you pull it out, it becomes leprous, put it back into the fold, take it out and it's healed again. This is a sign that they will listen."  In Exodus 4:8, the Lord said if they do not believe you or pay attention to the first miraculous sign, they may believe the second. A sign is a way of signifying that God is with a spokesman and they follow him because of the sign. Samuel, the last of the judges, did a great and miraculous sign. 1 Samuel 12:18, "Then Samuel called upon the Lord and that same day the Lord sent thunder and rain. So all the people stood in awe of the Lord and of Samuel." Elijah did great signs and wonders to testify to the validity of his message.The school of the prophets knew that the power of God that had been with Elijah was now on Elisha when he took his mantle, his cloak, and smacked the Jordan river with it and it split and he walked across on dry land. They were used to and accustomed to looking for miraculous signs.

This particular demand is a severe test of Christ. They're not coming with a heart to believe but they're looking for a sign. Apparently, they discounted all the healings.  They wanted in effect (Matthew 16) a sign from heaven. Well, what would this be? Well, I don't know, maybe you could make the sun explode and then recreate it again or maybe rearrange the Big Dipper if they can see that from Palestine, I assume they can, kinda make the hand will go the other way or do something up in the heavens, something that only God could do. Maybe write your name, or maybe write my name up in the heavens then I'll know that you are a prophet of God. Miracles were not enough. But instead of them exposing Christ to be the fake, the fraud that they thought he was, rather he exposes them. A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign, he says, but none will be given it except the sign of the Prophet Jonah.  What does he mean by generation? This word could be translated a couple of different ways. It could either refer to their race as Jews. This Jewish race, represented here by the Pharisees, is constantly looking for a miraculous sign.  The Scribes and Pharisees were their leaders. They were physically descended from Abraham and were gifted with the Scripture. Despite all that God had done for their race through Moses, through all the prophets, they still didn't believe him. Jesus could be speaking of the entire Jewish race, hard-hearted rebels, or he could be speaking specifically about the Pharisees as the leaders and those who were living in his time who had an opportunity to see the miracles that he was doing, opportunities that no other generation had ever had or would have again.

A wicked and adulterous generation, this generation asks for a miraculous sign. He calls them wicked. It's a very strong word here, very much like what Jesus had said in Matthew 12:34. He says, "You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.”  The heart is naturally wicked and he calls them wicked. Jesus did not study in the school of how to win friends and influence people. He told the truth and went to the heart of the matter  saying, “In your hearts, there's great wickedness through your unbelief, a wicked generation." Remarkably, the fact of the matter is, all of us are wicked naturally apart from Christ. Does that cause you to stumble? Jesus could testify that apart from him, you are wicked, alienated from God, strangers to him, hard-hearted and offended by the law of God and by his holiness. It’s the truth.

If the Pharisees don't accept his diagnosis, they will never be healed because it's not the healthy who need a doctor. It’s the sick. It's not the righteous whom Jesus  came to call, it's the wicked, it's sinners.  He came to call them to repentance. They were offended by this. He strips them bare and calls them wicked. He also calls them adulterous. This comes from a longstanding understanding that the Jews were God's spouse spiritually. The Jews were the wife of God. Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 2:2, "Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem, I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert through a land not sown." There was a spiritual marriage which happened between God and Israel. This marriage language happens again and again, and when they start turning to false gods, to idols, he calls it adultery.  They were adulterous people because they love another and not him. Many prophets made use of this analogy in speaking of  unbelief, idolatry, rebellion, calling it  spiritual adultery. Probably the most stark was Hosea who is told to marry a prostitute. His wife, Gomer,  goes out every night, night after night, a visible living out in depiction of what Israel was doing in relation to God. The real issue is the human heart, isn't it? God has made us for himself said Augustine, and our hearts are restless if we don't find our rest in Him. We're restless, we're looking for something. John Piper says the human heart is a desire factory, we're cranking out desires, wanting all the time, wanting something, and if we fulfill that desire with something other than God, then we are adulterous too.

James 4:4 says, "You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is enmity or hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God." Spiritual adultery is still alive today, even in the church, people who long for earthly things and not for God. Jesus says a wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign, but this demand is rejected. "None will be given it," he says. Jesus is not going to do miracles on demand. He's not going to be their private miracle worker. That would reverse the whole order. Jesus, throughout the whole gospel of Matthew, is portrayed as the king of the kingdom of heaven. He is in charge, he sets the agenda, he decides what he will and won't do. All of his miracles were, in some respects, connected to creation, the creation he'd done with his heavenly Father and by the power of the Spirit, re-establishing what had originally been the order, the creation order. It wasn't just making pink elephants appear in the sky. Or doing some kind of spectacular demand up in the heavens. It wasn't like that at all. He was reversing the curse. He was setting the tone. King Herod wanted to see Jesus perform a miracle. He brought  in Jesus around the time of his arrest. In Luke 23:8, "When Herod saw Jesus, he was greatly pleased because for a long time, he'd been wanting to see him.”  From what he'd heard about him, he hoped to see him perform some miracle.  Could you just do some kind of trick? Was he interested in the truth? Not at all. He wanted to see something spectacular. Jesus will not yield to this approach. He rejects their demand, but he doesn't leave them with nothing. He says, "I will not give a miraculous sign. None will be given it except... " Isn't that just like God? “I’m not going to do what you want, but I'm going to give you enough. I'm going to give you enough to believe. No miraculous sign will be done except the sign of the prophet Jonah.”  

This is the final sign that God has given, not just to that generation, but to the entire world, to the human race, the sign of Jonah, which is resurrection from the dead. Jonah was the reluctant preacher to the Ninevites. God called on him to go preach to the Assyrians. He hated the Assyrians. He didn't want any part of that and ran the other way, got on a ship sailing from Jaffa and was heading out to Tarshish to flee from the Lord. You can't do that. I believe that Psalm 139 had already been written, "Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I go down to the depths, you are there." But Jonah tried to do precisely that, flee from the presence of the Lord, and God by a mighty hand compelled him to go and preach to the Ninevites, these wicked people, the Assyrians, the Nazis of the ancient world, a violent and cruel people.

 Jonah was thrown overboard.  "Take me and throw me overboard," he said. He was not afraid to die. That's not why he didn't want to go to Nineveh. He just hated the Gentiles. He hated them and did not want to see them converted. "Throw me overboard," and God ordained a huge fish, perhaps a whale, something to come swallow Jonah, and he was inside that fish three days and three nights. Now, what is the sign of Jonah? Well, as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man, that's Jesus, will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. What is it? It's preaching substantiated by a resurrection. It's not just the resurrection. How do we know that? Well, the very next thing that Jesus says, "The men of Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonah and now one greater than Jonah is here." If Jonah had merely gone inside the fish and spat back out, that would not be enough. But he had a mission to fulfill and it was the proclamation of the message substantiated by this great sign, that is the sign of Jonah. "As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise, will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it for they repented at the preaching of Jonah and now one greater than Jonah is here.

It's fascinating to me how Jesus links his own resurrection to something as remarkable as Jonah being swallowed by a whale. Perhaps you've heard of Clarence Darrow, the ACLU lawyer who took on the Scopes Monkey Trial and made mincemeat of William Jennings Bryan at one of the most spectacular trials in the history of American jurisprudence. William Jennings Bryan was a fundamentalist, David, taking on the liberal Goliaths. He was at the end of his life; he literally died the next week after the trial. He put himself on the stand to be cross-examined by Clarence Darrow who was a slick city lawyer who had no faith at all and used to mock the Bible, specifically this story. He would say to some witness, "I could as easily believe that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, as to take in that story." Some liberals and others might think that this is a weak point of the Bible.  Could it really have happened that Jonah was physically swallowed by a whale? What is Jesus' attitude toward the Scripture? What is his attitude toward the historicity of this story? Shouldn't that settle it for us? Would he liken his physical bodily resurrection to a myth? To an allegory? To a metaphor? Not at all. Jonah was swallowed by the fish and spat out on the third day. Now when Jesus says, "As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” People have stumbled over that as well, and they said, "This must be an error." Jesus was crucified on a Friday, he's up on a Sunday. And so we celebrate worship on the first day of the week.  How is that three days and three nights? But they neglect that in the Jewish way of thinking, any part or portion of a day is called the day and a night. You say, "Well that doesn't make any sense." Well, if you own a rent-a-car company, it does. Have you ever gotten a car back an hour late? What do you charge for? A day and a night. They don't care. Ten minutes late and you get the whole day. It's all the same to them. Fact of the matter is Jesus links his physical bodily resurrection to what happened with Jonah and he says, "The Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth." Some say this testifies that Jesus went down to Hell and released spirits found in prison. I think it's basically saying that he'll be dead. Any more than that, I think the text would have to be supported by other places.   But the fact of the matter is Jesus says, "I'm going to be dead. So my death and my resurrection." That's the sign of Jonah. As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a large fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. So what is the sign? What did they get, that wicked and adulterous generation? They get the disciples on the day of Pentecost, standing up filled with the Holy Spirit and proclaiming and preaching in this way. Speaking of Jesus, Peter said, "This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge, and you with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross, but God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him." In  Acts 33: 2, "God has raised this Jesus to life, and we," [the apostles], "we are all witnesses of the fact." That's the sign of Jonah.

 In living color right in front of them, on the day of Pentecost, they get human messengers proclaiming an empty tomb that Jesus had physically risen from the dead. And what was Peter's application that day? The same as Jonah's when he preached it in Nineveh. Repent, repent repent. When they heard this, they were cut to the heart. This is the Pentecost, Acts 2, "They were cut to the heart and said, 'Brothers, what should we do?' And Peter and the other apostles, replied, 'Repent each one of you and believe in Jesus and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.'" That's how the sign of Jonah works, physical evidence proclaimed by the apostles and then preached with a single application, "Repent that your sins might be removed." This is the sign of Jonah.  Without it, we have no message. We have nothing to say to the world. If the resurrection didn't occur, if Jesus never came up out of the tomb, we have no gospel at all. First Corinthians 15:14, "If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." Then Jesus gives Jewish unbelievers a warning. He says, "The men of Nineveh will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah and now one greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here."

The fact of the matter is this generation would get the sign of Jonah and they would not repent. Instead, the Pharisees and teachers of the law would try to squelch the evidence. When the guards came and told what had happened, an angel came, moved the stone, we looked and he was gone. They didn't know what to do. They said, "Well, we'll pay you," and they paid money to the guards to say, "We fell asleep and the disciples came and stole the body." It doesn't make any sense. Guards set on guard duty are executed, not paid off. They knew there was nothing that they could say. They would not believe. The root issue is in their hearts. They would not accept the testimony of scripture, not just that they didn't understand from scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead, they would not accept. They rejected from scripture that Christ had to rise from the dead. Jesus told the parable about this, the rich man and Lazarus.  The rich man lived in luxury all the time and there was a poor man at his gate and he wouldn't help him. They died. The poor man Lazarus went up to Abraham's bosom, up to heaven, and the rich man is languishing in Hell, in torment. He asked Abraham, "Could you please send Lazarus to come dip his finger in the water and cool my tongue? Please." "No, we can't. We can't get to you. There's a great chasm here." "Well, could you send Lazarus back to my brothers to warn them so that they don't also end up in this place of torment? I have five brothers. Send them back." And Abraham replies, "They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them." Then comes the voice from Hell, "No, Father Abraham, that's not enough. We need more than the scripture. It's just not enough to have the Bible. We've got to have something else. They will believe if you send Lazarus. They'll listen."  And Abraham responds, "If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not listen even if someone rises from the dead." And so it happened. Jesus rose from the dead on the third day and sends forth witnesses to preach the fact, and they did not believe. Gentiles  repented at the preaching of Jonah. I mean, Jonah, hardly a paragon of virtue. Jonah, the one who's running away from God, they repented at his preaching. “I’m the incarnate Son of God and you won't repent. We have something greater than Jonah here. We have a greater message. 

We have a greater Gospel message, don't we? A greater messenger. They had the rebellious Jewish prophet, Jonah. We get the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, with all of his miracles and a greater salvation. The Ninevites received a physical salvation from deliverance from all of their woes and griefs, perhaps in eternal salvation. We get eternal life, adoption into the family of God, a greater sign. Jonah was spat out of a whale. Jesus rose from the dead. In every way, something greater than Jonah is here. The  Queen of Sheba down in Southern Yemen traveled 1200 miles over burning sand with a huge caravan of spices and riches and other things. She was very wealthy, but she heard a reputation of a Jewish king who could answer hard questions and there was a hunger in her heart for wisdom.   She wanted to know. She was hungry for the truth. She travels about the distance from here to the Mississippi over burning sands to test Solomon with hard questions, ranging possibly from biology to botany, maybe mathematics, astronomy, certainly theology. There was nothing she asked that he couldn't answer. She was overwhelmed, astonished at the wisdom of Solomon. Nothing was too hard for him. And yet someone greater than Solomon is here now,  Jesus Christ. Solomon studied and described plant life, Jesus created it. Solomon's kingdom was physically wealthy beyond description, gold and silver as common as stones. Jesus has eternal wealth beyond any description. All things belong to him. Solomon's wisdom penetrated deep in dark mysteries and he wrote a thousand proverbs. Jesus is omniscient, infinite and perfect in wisdom. Solomon's glory was temporary and physical. Jesus' glory is eternal and spiritual and perfect in every way. Solomon worked his people close to death in building his great building projects. But Jesus' yoke is easy and his burden is light and He went to death for us. Solomon became an idolater and committed spiritual adultery like many of his generations, led astray by his wives. Jesus died for Solomon's sins. Solomon died and was buried and his kingdom shrank little by little until its glory was gone. Jesus died and was buried and raised on the third day, and his kingdom grows and has been growing for 2,000 years, and of the increase of his kingdom, there will be no end. One greater than Solomon is here now, Jesus Christ.

The Gentiles are going to condemn the Jewish unbelief. They're going to rise because everyone is going to rise. Jesus' resurrection is merely first fruits from the dead, but he has stated very clear in John chapter 5, "The time is coming when all who are in their tombs will hear his voice,” [Christ's voice], "and come out. Those who have done evil will rise to be condemned, and those who have done good will rise to live." Jesus is the judge. They will rise and the Ninevites, those Assyrians, and the queen of the South, will condemn Jewish unbelief because they repented far less than the gospel message through Jesus Christ. 

What do we get in our generation? Do we get the empty tomb? Well, yes and no. We don't get to go look at the empty tomb. We don't know where it is. We don't get the physical artifacts of Jesus' resurrection. What do we get? We get a gospel message. We get a preached message, what Paul calls the power of God and the wisdom of God proclaimed. 1 Corinthians 1:22 and following, "The Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but 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.” A power greater than Jonah's, a wisdom greater than Solomon's in Jesus Christ. The sign of Jonah continues to this very day, and those of you who are Christians know in your heart that God raised him from the dead on the third day and you're trusting it, aren't you? That some day because he lives, you also will live eternally.

 Now what application can we take from this? First to the unbeliever, I wanna ask a simple question: What would it take to convince you that Jesus is God? Is not the proclamation that you've had this morning of the empty tomb of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, according to the Scriptures, enough to save your soul? What could be greater than that? To the evangelists among you which should be all of you, preaching the gospel, can I urge you to stick to the sign of Jonah? The fact that Jesus died on the cross and that he was raised from the dead on the third day according to the Scriptures. Can this not be the deposit entrusted to us that we get to proclaim to the ends of the earth, the empty tomb of Jesus Christ? 

 And to all of us who are believers, can we delight enough in Christ, is the power of God and the wisdom of God powerful enough to raise you from the dead, wise enough to sit on his throne and rule the universe forever? Christ is greater than Jonah. Christ is greater than Solomon, his kingdom greater, his wisdom greater. His promise is greater and it's our treasure. On that, we put our trust. What practical application can we take from this? Follow the example of the Ninevites. If you're a believer in Christ, can I urge you to repent? If you're not a believer in Christ, can I urge you to repent? 

 It's about repentance, isn't it? Not just the time you heard the Gospel preached the first time at the Billy Graham crusade and you walked forward. Not just then, but every day. Every time you hear the word preached, repent. Every time the Spirit convicts you of sin, repent. Be a lifetime repenter until he takes you home and glorifies you and you won't need repentance anymore. Repent like the Ninevites did. Ask the Lord to search you by his spirit and show you sin, and like the Ninevites. Repent and follow the example of the Queen of Sheba. She traveled over 1200 miles to look for wisdom, and you've got greater wisdom right here in the 66 books of the Bible. She's willing to get up and to load up a caravan and travel over the desert to get it. Are you willing to get up early in the morning, open the Bible, study it more than you have, memorize it, meditate on it, let it saturate your mind? Are you willing to do that? Follow the example of the Queen of Sheba. She traveled over land and sea to get the wisdom of Solomon, and one greater than Solomon lives inside you if you're a Christian.

We'll be continuing our study in Matthew looking at Verses 30-37 on the eternal significance of words. On a recent trip, I had the joy of hearing my little baby Calvin speak what I think was his first sentence. It was “truck bye bye”. I was so excited about that.  I was thrilled that he was putting thoughts together and then it occurred to me, what an unbelievably long journey he has ahead of him, an unbelievably long journey to become fully lingual in the English language. The Oxford English Dictionary, the authoritative dictionary, the English language exists in twenty  volumes. Half a million words are defined in the Oxford English Dictionary. That's unbelievable. That's a long journey for Calvin or for any of us, but words are an incredible gift from God, aren't they?  The ability to speak, to understand abstract truth from sounds that we hear, words are a gift from God. In our day and age, there's a modern kind of deluge of words, kind of like an avalanche of sorts. We stand under it all the time, all kinds of information flowing to us, constantly through words. There are more means to communicate words today than ever before.

Have you ever been in a check-out line and think somebody was talking to you and you begin to turn and answer and they're talking to somebody who's not even there by means of a cellphone? I find myself irrationally being offended by that, as though my company weren't good enough for that person. Never met them before in my life, but they're talking to somebody who's not there. You know what I mean, in saying that, there's a deluge of information. Something happens around the other side of the world and that same moment, really that same instant working at our desks through the Internet, we can find out and read all about it through email, cable and satellite TV, making the world a small place. Never before in history have so many words been flung out across such a wide space. The question then is if words are so plentiful, how can they be valuable? How can they be precious? Are they of any value? Do our words have any significance at all? The text we're looking at today, says absolutely, yes, words are of eternal consequence.

 The state and destiny of your soul will be revealed on Judgment Day by the full catalogue of words that you have spoken in your lifetime. In the hands of Jesus Christ, the perfect judge, He will be able to determine accurately and perfectly the state of your soul by the things you've said. In this text He says by your words you will be acquitted and by your words, you will be condemned because there's an intimate connection between what you say and the nature and state of your heart.  We're going today to understand the eternal significance of words.

As I mentioned at the beginning, words are a great gift from God, because our God is a verbal God. He speaks words from the very beginning. He created through words. When He said, "Let there be light,"there was light. God's word is powerful. Psalm 33:6 says that by the Word of the Lord the heavens made their starry host. By the breath of His mouth, language was given to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The gift to humanity of words is first demonstrated by Adam naming the animals as each one came by. Earlier, God had commanded Adam that he was free to eat from any tree in the garden, but he must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when he eats of it, he will surely die. This warning was given to him by means of words, verbal communication, a warning from God. A commandment. Adam's first quoted words were a love poem. The first time a man speaks in the Bible, he's praising God for his wife. An incredible thing this, at last, “is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called Woman for she was taken out of man.” It reads like a poem in the Hebrew. It's a gift from God. But with the fall, as we fell into sin, the gift of language became perverted, and in many senses, is wicked now. Words are used to pierce and to hurt, to crush and to destroy. Words are used to drive husbands and wives apart. Words are used to boast and brag as slaves of pride. Words are used to make wicked plans to lay traps, and make plots and schemes to plunder or murder the innocent. Small wonder that Paul focused on human speech when he was cataloging sins in Romans Chapter 3, and zeroed really in on the speech process.

When he says in Romans 3:13-14, "Their throats are open graves, their tongues practice deceit, the poison of vipers is on their lips, their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness”, we reveal the sinful wickedness of our heart in its natural state by how we speak, by the way we talk.  James picks up on this, in James 3,  where he says, “The tongue is a small part of the body but it makes great boast. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue is also a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body it corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire and is itself set on fire by hell.” All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and creatures of the sea are being and have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil full of deadly poison. 

What is the context of Christ's meditation on words? Why does he talk here about words and about what we say, and judgment connected with words? The context has to do with His enemies making a concerted attack on him in Chapter 12:14.  After Jesus heals on the Sabbath, his enemies arrange to plot against him to murder him. They're going to kill him. As I've mentioned, their plot will be successful in the end, they will murder Jesus.  They're using words to make this plan. In our account here, Christ heals again and the Pharisees blaspheme greatly. Look at Verse 22-24. It says, “They brought him a demon possessed man who is blind, and mute and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see.” Here's a man who under a demonic influence has been robbed of the gift of speech.  He cannot communicate by words. It's been stripped from him by this demon, this in-dwelling demon, and Jesus heals him so that he can both talk and see. All the people are astonished and speak this question, "Could this be the son of David?" Out of their heart, they're speaking and wondering, thinking about Christ, considering the evidence for his deity, considering the evidence for his claim to messiahship. I believe it's because the power of the Holy Spirit was so evidence in that miracle. In some respects, you think a kind of an ordinary run-of-the-mill miracle. Jesus did all kinds of things like this, but I think there was something unique at this moment, a sense of the power of God present. The Holy Spirit was very thick in his presence there so that it says that people were astonished, literally “beside themselves” it says in the Greek. They were outside themselves with astonishment and they asked: “Could this be the Son of David?”

In verse 24, when the Pharisees heard this, they said some words at this moment, and those words will never be forgotten. Ever. What do they say at this moment? “It is only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that he drives out demons.” They took their tongues given them as a gift from God. The tongues made to be a river of blessing and of praise for God, and they used those tongues to curse God's anointed Messiah and to call him a demon.  These were not merely idle words. They reflected the depth of the Pharisees’ heart, it's what they really truly believed about Jesus. They reflected the depth of their rebellion against God and against Christ. These were words that were spoken and once spoken could never be retracted. And as a result of that, the state of their heart of unbelief against so clear an evidence of the deity in the presence of Christ, through the Holy Spirit, would never be forgiven. Never. 

Jesus talks about the significance of words. First in our text, we see that words reveal  our relationship to Christ; you're either with him or you're against him. Verse 30, "He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters." There is no gray area when it comes to the kingdom of Christ.  Jesus leaves us none here. You're either with me or you're against me.  That kind of thinking is very unpopular today.  If a political leader will make a statement that you're either with us or you're against us, you get hammered. This is that kind of black-white thinking that I thought we were out of. We're post-moderns. We tend to see a little bit of truth in every view point, try to understand everybody's view point. To some degree that's a good thing, but when it comes to Christ, when it comes to his kingdom, you're either with him or you're against him, he's left no gray area whatsoever. Nowadays, we think you can be both a Christian and a Muslim at once., but of course, we cannot.

Words don't have as much meaning as they used to have. Things get all blurry and a little bit hard to understand, but Christ rejects this way of thinking, forever. Remember, in Matthew chapter 10, when Jesus was training his apostles, and He was going to send them out on their mission, He said, "Do not suppose that I came to bring peace. I did not come to bring peace but a sword for I've come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.”  And then He said this, "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, anyone who loves a son or daughter more than Me, is not worthy of Me and anyone who does not take up his cross and follow Me, is not worthy of Me.

Jesus allows no gray area whatsoever when it comes to the Kingdom of God. This is highlighted by a mirror statement he makes here in verse 30, and then one also in Luke chapter 9. Here in Verse 30, we get, “ He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters.” But then in Luke 9, John came to Him having seen somebody trying to drive out demons in Christ's name, and John says, “Master, we tried to stop him because he's not one of us,” and Jesus says in Luke 9:50, “Do not stop him, for whoever is not against you is for you.” Two sides of the same coin. There's only two kingdoms. There's the kingdom of Christ and the Kingdom of the devil. If you're in the one you're not in the other, if you're in the other, you're not in the one. It's impossible for there to be gray area in this matter.

There are two kingdoms at war. The last time we saw that the devil has a kingdom. In Verse 26, Jesus says, “If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand?" Clearly, Satan has a kingdom. Christ has a kingdom too. As we looked earlier we saw that the advance of the kingdom of heaven is done by spiritual violence. Not physical violence, not by the sword, not that way, but in the spiritual realm. It is a very violent advance, and it's opposed every step of the way by the devil. He's not going to give up any territory; not a single soul whatsoever will he give up willingly. It has to be taken from Him, and Christ will take it and has been taking for 2000 years. Therefore there can be no neutrals in this war. No, it's not possible. Jesus doesn't allow room for neutrality in this matter.  In World War II as Nazism was covering continental Europe, Switzerland maintained neutrality right in the center. They wanted to maintain their boundaries and not get involved. Sweden maintained neutrality. Spain maintained neutrality during World War II, but in this war neutrality is impossible, Jesus says so. You either with me or you're against me.

Christ's mission in verse 30 states that he who does not gather with me, scatters. So, Jesus came to gather what had been scattered. He has clear marching orders from his heavenly Father. In Luke 19:10, “The Son of Man came to seek and save what was lost.” Jesus is here to gather what had been scattered. Now recently we've seen in the news, a part of the country called tornado alley. You've seen some of these images of a home just rendered almost as though it had exploded. In some case, I think, that's what does happen. The pressure builds and it just explodes and things are scattered over a miles and miles of area. But the power and damage to scatter of a tornado is nothing compared to the power and damage to the scatter of sin. Sin has been scattering for a millennia.  Jesus is God's response to the scattering of sin. He came to re-gather and put back in good order, what God had originally arranged and put it in even better order because the eternal state's even better than the garden Eden. Praise God for His grace.

Jesus puts back into good order what the devil desires to throw into disarray. This is what Jesus did and if you are with Him, you're going to gather with him. But if you're not with them, you're going to be scattering; you're a force for scattering. Jesus is working through the world and gathering what was scattered. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” Jesus says in Matthew 23,  “you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I've wanted to gather your children together as the hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But you were not willing."  This is language that the Jews would have known. Isaiah has often prophecied of the re-gathering of the Jews back to the promised land which we believe is still yet to be fulfilled in many ways. The Jews are going to be re-gathered. What's amazing, though, is that the Apostle John applies that to Gentiles too.

Remember the discussion between Caiaphas and all the others? They're trying to figure out what to do with Jesus.  Caiaphas, who was high priest that year spoke up and said to his friends and cronies, 'You know nothing at all.   Don't you know it's better for one man to die than the whole nation perish not?" John comments this way in John 11:51. “Caiaphas did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year. He prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation (verse 52) and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God to bring them together and make them one.” That's incredible. We Gentiles are the scattered people of God.

Christ is gathering us together. That's his work. That's his mission. He's in the world gathering and he's been doing it for 2000 years, gathering us together. Stop for a moment, right in the middle of this sermon and do a little self-diagnosis. Am I using my words to gather with Christ or not?  How do we gather with Christ, we speak the gospel, we proclaim the good news to those who haven't heard. Am I gathering? First of all, you can't gather with Christ if you haven't been gathered yourself. If you're not a Christian, you cannot be gathering by definition, you're scattering just by the way you live your life. You're scattering away from... away from God, away from the center. You are the centrifugal force of sin fleeing the center which is God in Christ. The sinner causes everyone to run the opposite direction, scattering. So I ask, are you gathering with Christ, are you holding and bringing in through the preaching of the Gospel and by the way, you live your life, are you attracting people to Christ, speak more about that toward the end? The Pharisees were on the wrong side. Their words revealed their hatred for Christ. They hated him and they scattered away from Christ every chance they got. They sought to run people away from Jesus so that they would not believe, and the whole time, they thought they were serving God. 

 Secondly, words reveal, therefore, resistance to the Spirit (verse 31-32). Christ zeroes in now on the very words that the Pharisees spoke. They are immensely significant. Christ is here in this text about to speak the most terrifying statement He makes I think anywhere in the Bible.  The issue of words is what really brings this whole passage together.  Verse 31 and 32, "And so, I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come." Before we get to the negative part about the unforgivable sin, let's not skip too quickly over the word of grace that Christ spoke at the beginning—“ I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven man.” This doesn't mean every single solitary sin, for then Hell would be empty, but it means every category of sin, every type of sin will be forgiven. This is very encouraging. The nature of our God is to forgive. He does not treat us as our sins deserve, but rather richly blesses sinners who call on him in faith.  Abraham's lying is forgiven. Moses' murder is forgiven. David's lust and adultery and blood guilt, forgiven. Jonas' rebellion and running the opposite direction from the will of God for his life, forgiven. Manasseh forgiven for passing his son through the fire as an offering to Molech. Incredible what God will forgive. Augustine, forgiven for his fornication, Luther forgiven for his blasphemy, when he said to his father confessor, "Love God? I hate God." Forgiven for that. Forgiven. John Newton, forgiven for his slave trading and his dissolute drunken life. All manner of sin and blasphemy will be forgiven. Heaven is going to be filled with repentant adulterers and fornicators and homosexuals and liars and thieves and murderers. It's going to be filled with those kinds of people, for God delights to save them.

He is a forgiving God. Specifically, blasphemy against the Son of Man will be forgiven. How many people have you ever heard take the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in vain as though it were nothing. I used to work with a guy, a Christian, who got so weary of this kind of talk being around his fellow workers. They were saying “Jesus Christ” and they weren't speaking words of praise. They were using it like a swear word. He got so weary of this that he decided that every time he heard it, he would say, "Praise his holy name.” You know, somebody hit their thumb and say, “Jesus Christ.”  He would say, “Praise his holy name. Praise his holy name." After a while, that guy stopped. I remember working on an assembly line with a guy and he  blasphemed Christ's name and then realized,  "Oh, that's that weird Baptist ordained guy that has that Bible study. Sorry." I said, "I'm not your judge. I'm not going to be sitting on that throne on Judgment Day, but there is a judge and he hears you all the time. Just remember that when you speak that word." This is the name of our savior, and Jesus says specifically blasphemy against the Son of Man will  be forgiven. Peter calls down curses on himself the night he denies Christ; he blasphemed the name. Paul specifically lists this among his own sins. He said, "I was a blasphemer because I didn't understand. I did it in ignorance." But he blasphemed the name of Christ, and all of that will be forgiven.

But there is such a thing as an unforgivable sin, a sin you can commit that will never be forgiven either in this age or in the age to come. Now people are always concerned about this and they wonder, "Have I committed the unforgivable sin?" John Bunyan asked that question. The devil used to insinuate and whisper in his ear because  John Bunyan was a blasphemer before he was converted. "You have committed the unforgivable sin. You will never be forgiven either in this age or the age to come." Well, I can't speak absolutely authoritatively, but I sense that if you're intensely worried about committing the unforgivable sin, you haven't committed it. I see something different at work in this text here, something else going on, and it has to do with the context in this text. Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit does an incredible miracle, and people have a sense of the presence of the Holy Spirit, so thick you could cut it with a knife. You could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit there, and they're astonished and they wonder could Jesus be the son of David? It’s in the context of the ongoing ministry he's been doing, the preaching, the proclamation of the Word, all the teaching he's been doing. No one had ever heard teaching like that, the authority and the power, and then the miracles, a firm and solid basis for faith Jesus said. Believe on the evidence of the miracles he said. And they look at all of this evidence right in their face and what do they conclude? It is by Beelzebub, the devil, that he does these things. 180 degrees the opposite direction. I think that's the unforgivable sin.

 The spirit of the Lord was on Christ anointing him to do this ministry, and they blasphemed that work by concluding exactly the opposite. It should have told them that Christ was God and that he was savior. Instead, they conclude that he's a devil and a deceiver. Why is it unforgivable? Because  there's nothing left that God will do, they've seen it all. They've heard the Gospel. They've seen the miracles. They've seen the incarnate God in the flesh, and there is nothing more that God will do for them. William Hendriksen puts it this way: "For penitence, they substitute hardening. For confession, they substitute plotting. Thus, by means of their own criminal and completely inexcusable callousness, they are dooming themselves. Their sin is unpardonable because they are unwilling to tread the path that leads to pardon. For a thief, an adulterer and a murderer, there is hope. The message of the Gospel may cause him to cry out. 'Oh, God, be merciful to me, the sinner,' but when a man has become this hardened so that he has made up his mind not to pay attention to the Spirit, he has placed himself on the road that leads to perdition."  Hebrews 10:26-27 puts it this way: "If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sin remains, but a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God."

 Thirdly, words reveal true character. Verses 33- 35, "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good," Jesus said, "or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him." So words reveal the true character and nature of the tree. If you're a good tree, you're going to bear good fruit. Imagine you're walking through the woods and you're not an expert on tree, and you see in the spring a tree. It's got some leaves and maybe some little flowers on it. Could you tell what kind of tree it is? Probably not. I couldn't. But when it starts to bear its fruit then you know it's an apple tree, it's a pear tree. You can tell by the fruit.

Jonathan Edwards said that character lies in the affections, what you love, what you hate.  I think it relates to this text. You tend to store up inside you what you love. The things you love, you store up lots of it. You take in lots of it and store it up. The things you hate, you don't. Unbelievers love this world and the things in the world. They feed their minds on worldly things. They treasure them up inside because they are a treasure to them. Entertainment fills their minds. They store up movies and videos and TVs, TV programs and sports and games and worldly entertainment.  Ambition fills their minds. They store up top ten strategies on how to build a successful business or how to retire at age 40 as a millionaire. That's what they store up. Lust fills their minds and they store up images and experiences of sensual pleasure.  Self fills up their mind and they fill up their minds and their hearts with what they like, their opinions, their desires, their goals, their aspirations. That's what they feed on all the time. And then out of that, they speak. Out of what the heart has filled itself up with, the words pour out. Verse 34, "You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good?" That’s fruit. "For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks." Therefore, it is impossible for an evil man to speak anything that God considers good. Impossible. Even a simple statement like, "Well, that was a wonderful meal. Thank you very much," is not spoken out of faith for the glory of God. It is impossible for an evil man to say anything that God accepts as good.

Now, it is God's special work to make an evil tree good. Isn't that wonderful that God can take an evil tree like me and make me good at my essence. I can't do that to myself. I can't change what I am, but God can. This is the glory of regeneration. The glory of conversion is that He can make a tree good.  He gives us a command, "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good." But we can't obey the command. Only God can. Only God can make an evil tree good. And praise God, He's doing that today around the world. He's making evil trees good by the power of the Holy Spirit, transforming them from within so that “if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)  All of a sudden we love new things and different things than we used to love and we hate things we used to love. We've been transformed. And out of that new nature, we speak many things. In Romans chapter 10, it says, "The word is near you." What word? The word of the message, the word of the kingdom, the word of God is near you. It is in your mouth and in your hearts. That is the word of faith that we are proclaiming, that “if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved”, "for it is with the heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with the mouth that you speak and are saved." I believe the two texts go beautifully together. God transforms us by his spirit, and out of that new nature, we speak words of faith right at the beginning, what someone called a sinner's prayer.  We say, "Oh God, be merciful to me," the sinner. "Oh God, I'm sorry for who I am. Oh God, thank you for Christ. God thank you that he died in my place on the cross. Thank you that he rose again." The tree has already been made good, and it's speaking good words, words of sorrow over sin and words of faith and trust. 

Make a tree good and it's going to say things like that. It's going to call on the name of the Lord, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. The new creation speaks faith to God the father and he keeps speaking it the rest of his life.  And as a result, we start to treasure up a new vocabulary. We love God, and so we treasure up words about God. We love Christ, and so we treasure up words about Christ. We love the kingdom of God and we treasure up words about the kingdom. We want to talk about these things, and out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks, and therefore, finally Judgment Day reveals the eternal significance of words. On that day, Christ with a full record of every word we've ever spoken, will most accurately and perfectly judge your soul. He knows who you are by what you've said. Verse 36- 37, "I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken, for by your words, you will be acquitted, and by your words, you will be condemned." 

Now, if you've heard me preach any length of time, I've mentioned that sermon, that text 30 or 40 times. It teaches me of the meticulous and careful nature of Judgment Day.  Remember that our God with him a day, one single day, is like a thousand years. He studies every tiny motion and inclination of the heart as though it went on for centuries. He just knows you totally and he remembers everything, every word written as it were with an iron stylus in a permanent tablet. He's not going to erase history. And so, every careless word we spoke and we will give an account. In a way, it's a terrifying thought, isn't it? Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account. So even careless words, like that off-color remark I made eight years ago, that one, yes, the insult that I curled unheard by anyone else at that driver who did that to me, God heard, everything, every careless word. What I said to my spouse last night, yes. Every careless word, you will give an account. Do you need a savior? Yes.  All of us need a savior.

 I need a savior because my words would condemn me if God hadn't made the tree good and transformed me so that I've also spoken words of faith and trust in Christ too.  He's changed me. But it's such a mixed thing, isn't it? In the book of James, "Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, it should not be." But there it is, a meticulous accounting because it reveals the nature of our heart. Do even Christians have to give an account for their words? Yes. 2 Corinthians 5:10 says, "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done in the body, whether good or bad." But praise be to God, there is a justification through faith in Christ for us sinners. By speaking out of the fullness of the heart, faith in Christ, we are justified and we will not be condemned for those careless words we have spoken. Peter isn't and neither is Paul. We will stand with them as redeemed sinners.

 What kind of application do we take from this? First, do your words, the catalogue of your words, show you that you are with Christ or do they show that you're against him? There are only two options, not a third. You can't be neutral. You're either with Christ or against him. Do the catalog of your words show that you are a Christian, that you have trusted in Christ as your Lord and Savior?  

Secondly, do the catalog, the listing of your words, show that you are gathering with Christ, evangelistically gathering, speaking the word that is the only power of salvation for a sinner? Do your words show that you are evangelistic? Simple test. When was the last time you opened your mouth and spoke gospel truth to somebody you knew was an unbeliever? Just think about it that way. When was the last time you spoke the words of the Gospel to somebody you knew was an unbeliever with the hopes that they would be saved? Are you gathering with Christ? And in a bigger sense, how is your life? Is your life putting the Gospel on display? Is it gathering and causing people to be attracted to Christ or is it repelling people away from Christ? 

Thirdly, what do your words show about your true character? If we had an opportunity to read a transcript of your words from the last week, what would they show about you? A full transcript now, not a selected or edited one.  Jesus has the full account. What would they show about your character, what you love and what you hate?  What are you feeding your mind so that out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks? What's going in? Is the word of God flowing in or other things?

Fourth, ask God to watch your mouth since he is anyway, isn't he? Psalm 141:3 says, "Set a guard over the door of my mouth, O Lord. Keep watch over the door of my lips." God, keep me from saying things that dishonor you. Ask Him to help you. Let your conversation always be filled with grace, seasoned with salt so you can answer anyone properly. Let it be filled with the word of God. If anyone speaks, you should do it as one speaking the very words of God. Speak that way.

Finally, get ready. Get ready every day for Judgment Day.   What I've said to you here is true. You will give an account for your words, and if you give an account for your words, you'll give an account for everything, absolutely everything, every inclination of the heart, every action of the body. Everything, you will give an account. Get ready for it. Prepare yourself for it.

We are resuming our study in Matthew, looking at verses 22 through 29.  There are few types of stories that at least for me are as appealing or exciting as heroic rescue stories. There are fairytales in which the prince, endowed sometimes only with courage and with cleverness, is able to rescue the damsel in distress. In real life also there have also been heroic tales and it is encouraging for us to read them, to look at the valor, the heroism, the willingness to sacrifice, even to lay down lives so that hostages may be rescued.

For example, there’s the experience of the Navy Seals in 1991 as a civil war was raging in Somalia and the warlords had surrounded the US embassy in Mogadishu. There were frantic calls from the American ambassador there to get them out. There were a number of civilians or families and other diplomats from foreign countries. Our country sent the Seals in undercover of darkness. When they arrived, it was not a moment too soon because already there were rebels and insurrectionists climbing the walls of the embassy that very night armed to the teeth.  The Seals went in and basically held that perimeter until helicopters could come in and rescue 281 hostages, and not a single soldier, and not a single hostage lost his life that night. It was incredible valor and heroism, and done by the Seals. You never hear about it, they don't want you to know about it, but this is the way that they act, a heroic rescue. Some military rescues are done just when the battle lines advance far enough to overtake POW camps or concentration camps. That happened recently in the Iraqi War as we just advanced so quickly that we were able to rescue some POWs, and a number of you, I'm sure, saw direct answers to prayer, as some of you were praying for the POWs that they would be set free, and so they were.

The same thing definitely happened in World War II as the battle lines advanced beyond the place where the concentration camps were, and the horrors at last of Nazi concentration camps were exposed to the world as these emaciated victims were hugging and kissing their liberators, freed at last from tyranny. Some rescues involve not a military conquest but just the heroism perhaps of running into a burning building to rescue heroically some that are surrounded by flames and have no other way to escape. You remember what happened in 9/11 when policemen and fire were willing to rush into an inferno. It'd be no other way to describe what was happening at the World Trade Center but incredible courage and valor.

The annals of history are filled with heroic rescues, but there is no greater rescue in all of history than the one that was done for your soul by Jesus Christ, if you're a Christian, this morning. Jesus Christ went against great opposition, the kingdom of the devil, took Him on and all of His strength against His will, plundered you and brought you over into the kingdom of light. You were rescued from a kingdom of darkness. The story that we're going to look at today, the account of the miracle that Jesus did, shows very, very clearly, I think for the first time in Matthew's Gospel, the two kingdoms that are at war with each other. They're opposite kingdoms, and opposites attack one another. For example, in our text, Matthew 12:26, Jesus speaks of Satan and says, "If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself, how then can his kingdom stand?" So Jesus ascribed to Satan a kingdom of sorts. Then look at verse 28, "But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you." In verse 26, Satan's kingdom, in Verse 28, God's kingdom, and the two are opposites and they attack one another.  The beautiful news of the gospel is that Christ's kingdom is far stronger than Satan's kingdom, and that He is able with great authority and power to plunder Satan anytime He chooses. That's what we're talking about today. Jesus says in verse 29, "How can anyone enter a strong man's house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man, then he can rob his house?" That's what's been going on now for 2,000 years. 

The last time we talked about Matthew's gospel, we talked about the incredible gentleness of Christ.  He is of a kind that a bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick, He will not snuff out until He leads justice to victory. In His name the nations will put their hope. Christ advances His kingdom through an irresistible gentleness with us. That's how He deals with us at the human level. But in the spiritual realm, there is warfare, there is immense warfare, violent and vicious. And as a matter of fact, if we had our eyes opened and could see even what was going on now in the spiritual realm, even around this room, I think we would be cowed into terror, it'd be difficult to even move.  God shields us as the sheep that we are, as  the little children that we are, so that only occasionally can we feel the impact of that spiritual battle which He sees all the time.

There is a warfare going on in the heavenly realms, and this text that we're looking at today opens it up for us so that we can look at it. The context here is of a powerful sign that Jesus does, a miracle.Verse 22  says, "They brought to Him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him so that he could both talk and see." This is an opportunity for Satan's powerful kingdom to be exposed, to be brought to light. Indeed, whenever Jesus did these kind of exorcisms or driving out a demon with a word, Satan's evil kingdom is exposed to some degree. We can see in the five-sense world some evidence of these spiritual beings called demons. Demons are powerful spiritual beings. Just as there are angels, there're also demons that rebelled, that joined Satan in his rebellion, and they fell and they're in opposition to God, and they together comprise Satan's kingdom. They are around us all the time and they really are that with which we have to do as we seek to advance the Kingdom. In Ephesians 6:12 it says, "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." So that is Satan and his kingdom, or we could say the devil and his angels. As Jesus says in the sheep and the goats, He says, "Depart from me, you who are cursed," this time speaking to speak to people who have joined league with Satan in his kingdom. He says to them, "Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels."  His angels are demons and they joined him in his rebellion. They are Satan's henchmen. They're in some kind of a structured order. Satan's kingdom is orderly, powers and principalities and hierarchies of structure and order.

 What is demon possession? What was going on with this individual?  A demon can possess a human being in this sense to indwell them and to kind of take over their personality to a point where they really don't have any choice in the matter whatsoever. They so thoroughly dominate that individual that they become somewhat of an incarnation of evil. Jesus has already driven out many demons, in Matthew Chapter 4, and then again in Matthew 8.   Many demon-possessed people were brought to Jesus, and in every case, he drove out the spirits with a word.  Jesus has the power to do this. Demons are powerful beings. I am troubled sometimes by our understanding, or really lack of it, of the spiritual realm. The fact of the matter is that demons are fallen angels, and your view of angels therefore might color your view of demons. Angels are immensely powerful beings. In Daniel chapter 10, Daniel is by the great river of the Tigris and he looks up and it says, "I looked up and there before me was a man dressed in linen with a belt of the finest gold around his waist, his body was like chrysolite, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and his voice like a multitude." That's an immensely powerful angel. It says, "Daniel was the only one who saw the vision, the men with me did not see it, but such terror overwhelmed them that they fled and hid themselves. So I was left alone gazing at this great vision, I had no strength left, my face turned deathly pale and I was helpless." Now, this is a good angel, and Daniel is prostrated before it, just powerless even to speak.

The angel explains to Daniel, that he had been dispatched from heaven as an answer to Daniel's prayer, but it had taken him twenty-one days to get there because there was battle in the heavenly realms. There was warfare in the invisible heavenly realms. It says "The Prince of Persia opposed me." If this angel could be opposed by one of these demonic figures, how powerful must that demon have been? He couldn't get past him until the Archangel Michael came and assisted him. He said, "There's no one else that helps me, only Michael who came to assist."  I guess the implication is all the other angels were engaged in warfare of their own, they couldn't be removed from the line, and so he had to battle it out for twenty-one days in the heavenly realms. Do you see what I mean about the invisible world around us and all the warfare that's going on? To some degree, aren't you glad you don't see it? How would you even carry on your lives? How would you sit down to dinner if you saw what was going on in your kitchen? How difficult that would be.  God is gracious to us. We cannot see what's going on, but we must believe in Scripture that this is happening. Luther put it very well when he said, "For still our ancient foe, doth seek to work us woe. His craft and power are great, and armed with cruel hate, on Earth is not his equal. Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing? Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God's own choosing, thus ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He, Lord Sabaoth His name, the Lord Almighty, from age to age, the same. And He must win the battle."  Spiritual battle is in the heavenly realms. Luther was well aware of it. 

There  are different types and effects of demon possession.  We've already seen how Jesus took on the Demoniac of the Gadarenes. Remember the demon inside named himself Legion for there were many; so many demons can inhabit one person. Jesus drove out that demon with a single word, "Go," and out he went. That demon-possessed man was so violent that he was ripping to shreds chains of iron. He couldn't live among people, absolutely out of his mind berserk, and living out in the tombs and hurting himself, dashing himself against the rocks, that was him. This second demon-possessed man is of a different order, rather kind of meek and mild. It says then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute. They just kind of led him as you would, a blind man. He seems kind of docile and quiet. There's different levels  it seems of these demons and of demon possession.  Jesus heals the man completely. When Jesus heals you, you're healed. He drove out the demon and healed him, so that he could both talk and see; an incredible display of power. Realize before Jesus came to do miracles, there's no record anywhere of anyone ever giving sight to blind people. It seemed that this miracle was reserved for Christ alone who is the light of the world. It’s an astonishing miracle. As a result, all of the crowd is astonished. The Greek word is very strong here. They're almost outside of themselves. It doesn't seem that this is all that great a miracle compared to the others.  The people were stunned almost into silence. You get the feeling of being amazed. There's a story of Martin Lloyd-Jones when he was preaching a revival in Wales and the spirit of God was so powerfully present during that time, just there in a mighty way, that when he finished, no one moved in the congregation for about half an hour, they just sat there stunned. It was just a sermon, but it wasn't. It was event in which they were interacting with the living God. I think the spirit was just so powerfully present at this moment that everyone was in awe. 

The people who saw the miracle began to toy with a very dangerous question. They asked in the negative in the Greek, "This couldn't be the son of David, could it?" The NAS has it right in the translation. They're willing at least to ask the question. Later on in John's gospel in John Chapter 9 with the story of Jesus healing the man who was born blind, that kind of question can get you thrown out of the synagogue. By this point they had, I think their defense arranged. If you even asked the question or came to the conclusion that Jesus was the Son of David, He was the Messiah, you would be evicted from the synagogue. But they're toying with the question. When the Pharisees hear this, they begin to lash out. They make an accusation.When the Pharisees heard this [verse 24], they said, "It is only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons." They just, in effect, shot off their own leg to save themselves, so they thought, to get out of the trap that Jesus's miracles had put them in. They were stuck. John Piper uses that analogy, he talks about the Samaritan woman at the well, and Jesus brings her to a realization of her sinfulness by pointing out her adultery. Jesus says, "You're right in saying 'I have no husband', for the man you now have is not your husband and you've had seven others." She says, "I perceive that you're a prophet, and while we're talking about my adultery, let's talk about the proper place of worship." That's called changing the subject. It's known as a red herring. Piper says a trapped animal put in a trap will chew off its own leg to escape. The Seminarian woman mangles the flow of conversation so that she can change the subject. That's exactly what the Pharisees are doing here. They're trapped, they're put in a box, they don't know what to do with Jesus, they hate him, but they can't deny what he's doing, and so they don't know how to deal with it, so they come up with this rather shocking conclusion. I think the spirit of God was so powerfully present there that the people were astonished and amazed and didn't know what  to say. There was a sense of amazement there, and in the midst of that they say "It's only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that he drives out demons". It's astonishing.  

The word Beelzebub is related to the word “Beelz. You can kind of see it in the first four letters, it's Beel, the Lord of the flies, or perhaps of dung. It's a Jewish insult for a demon god. It's really the name of Satan. They accuse Jesus of being a con artist working undercover for Satan's kingdom. He's an undercover operative for Satan's kingdom and he's doing his miracles by Satan's power and the whole thing is a big trick, the whole thing a big ruse. Now in one sense, it is possible, it is plausible, because evil people can do miracles, they do in the Bible sometimes. For example, Jannes and Jambres, these magicians opposed Moses and were able to mimic some of his miracles at the time of the Exodus. In Deuteronomy 13, Moses warns the Jewish people and says, "If a prophet or one who foretells by dreams comes among you and if he performs some kind of great sign or wonder but then says, 'Let us follow other gods,' gods you have not known, then do not listen to him. God is testing you to see whether you'll be faithful." It is possible that a demonic kind of figure could do a miracle. Certainly at the end of the world, you who are God's children, be warned because the anti-Christ will be able to do great signs and wonders, false miracles to deceive even the elect, if that were possible. So be warned, be ready, that just because someone can do miracles doesn't mean that they're from God. This is therefore a very deadly serious accusation.

It is very serious to accuse Jesus of doing miracles by Beelzebub. What was their logic? How were they thinking?  Their major premise in life was that they personally were righteous, right with God and made the rules so that others could be right with God, and therefore, anyone who disagreed with them was, by definition, wicked.  That's the major premise. They're righteous and everyone who opposes them is wicked. A fact is that Jesus constantly broke their regulations on the Sabbath and other things. What was their conclusion then? Jesus was wicked. They've already figured that out. They start with their own righteousness and they reason based on that that Jesus must be wicked. The second phase of their reasoning; anything done supernaturally can only come from one of two sources. It can only come from God or the devil. In this they are right. So there must be only one of two possible explanations for a miracle; it's either from God or from the devil. But we've already proven that Jesus is evil and wicked, right? So therefore, His miraculous power must come from the devil. Do you follow their logic? Every single point was right except their original premise. What was their original premise? That they were righteous, in need no savior and that everyone who opposed them was wicked. That was their flaw. They started with their own self-righteousness, and from there they ended up lost.  

How does Jesus defend himself? He does so using logic, using experience, and he does so with a statement of power.  First, logic, verse 25 and 26. Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, "Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand?" Now, note, right from the beginning in verse 25 Matthew doesn't miss an opportunity to say, "Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them... " He wants you to know as the reader that Jesus is divine. He has supernatural power to read minds. This is established again and again in the gospels. He frequently will engage in a debate with somebody's thoughts. “I know what you're thinking. Let's go ahead and deal with that question that you're bringing up in your mind.” He establishes this deity of Christ. His logic is that a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. The simple way of looking at this is that anybody who drives out a demon must be from God. It’s really hard to justify that because in Matthew 7, it seems that people drive out demons and end up in hell. The seven sons of Sceva do it, and they're none of God's.  And so how can it be?  It really has to do with common way of thinking. A civil war destroys the country.  If you get a country divided and in factions and they are ripping themselves to shreds, when it's done, there may be nothing left of the kingdom.  Many times in Europe, Europe has been rent to shreds by what we call wars of succession. A king would die with two equally qualified sons. That's a big problem if you don't have rules and regulations, so the British have very clear delineated lines of succession, who's next and how it all works so that they can avoid these kinds of wars of succession.

The American Civil War is still the bloodiest war that we ever fought as we really tried to rip ourselves to shreds over this issue of slavery. Abraham Lincoln, when he accepted the Republican nomination for US Senate in June of 1858 actually quotes this verse and he says, "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other." The point is that this kind of a major civil war is a disaster for the kingdom.  Christ's point is not that Satan is not capable of a ruse or a trick or a con. That's not what he's saying. What he's saying is.” You're missing the scope and scale of the damage that I'm doing to Satan's kingdom.   I am ravaging it from one end of the country to the other.”  Everywhere Jesus went, he was driving out demons. Everywhere Jesus went he was healing people. Even more significantly, everywhere he went, people were repenting from sin, trusting in Him and walking over into repentance and righteousness like Zacchaeus that tax collector who had been plundering everybody. When Jesus comes from then on, Zacchaeus’s different. He's been plucked from Satan's wicked kingdom and now he's righteous. Jesus is doing serious damage. Imagine to try and understand Jesus's way of thinking. Imagine during the Cold War, a CIA operative in Moscow was suspected of being precisely that, and he's brought in. The Russian government wants the spy to prove his loyalty to communism. They might ask him to do something that only somebody who hated the United States would do. Realize that at a low level,  the spy would be willing to keep up the ruse. So he might be willing to do some minor damage against the United States. But if they said, I want you to launch this missile that will sink this aircraft carrier, he won't do it. Because the damage to the country is far greater than any benefit of his spying could ever do. So he'd be exposed at that moment.  Jesus said, "It's the scope of the destruction I'm doing to the kingdom that makes your argument false. If Satan is divided against Satan like this, his kingdom is destroyed." In 1 John 3:8, " The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work," and that's what He was doing. He was laying waste to the devil's kingdom. 

In the second argument, Jesus uses experience. Verse 27: “By whom do your sons drive out demons?”  Jesus said. “If I drive out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your people drive them out so then they will be your judges?” Now, it's hard to understand. I don't really know if they're disciples, I think “sons” means “disciples”. Disciples were actually driving out demons, but think of it this way. Let's say Mr. Pharisee, that you had a disciple who actually did drive out a demon. What would you say? "Oh, what a glorious teacher I am, and look at my disciple. Look what he can do. I'm so proud of him, like father like son." It's evidence and proof that God is with him. Jesus is saying it's only fair then if you ascribe to your own disciples proof that God is with you through the driving out of demons, why do you deny it when I just destroy Satan's kingdom? Do you not see what you're doing? He uses experience with them.

Thirdly, he uses power. Verse 28, "But if I drive out demons by the spirit of God then the kingdom of God has come upon you." This is really a word of warning. The Kingdom of God has come upon you. You have to deal with the kingdom of God, you have to deal with me as the king of the kingdom of heaven. It's in effect, a warning. Jesus says, "I drive out demons by the spirit of God." From the beginning of His miraculous ministry, Jesus stood in front of his fellow townspeople in Nazareth and he said, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, and to give sight to the blind, and to give walking ability to the lame; all of that by the power of the Spirit of God."

He says, "That's happening now. I am here and by the power of the Spirit of God, I'm driving out demons, and so therefore the kingdom of God is here. It is upon you now." Notice this is the first time that we've had a clear indication, a clear statement from Jesus, that the kingdom of God is here, now, and that was 2000 years ago. So the kingdom of God is here now, today, and yet it's not here because we pray in the Lord's Prayer, "Your kingdom come.” May your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So the kingdom is an already not yet kind of thing.  It's already here, but it's not yet here. Therefore, it's started and it's advancing, it's growing. When we get to the parables of the kingdom in Matthew 13 we'll see the growth of the kingdom explained. The kingdom has come, it is here now and it is growing; it is getting established. Jesus says, "I advance my kingdom through violence in the heavenly realms. Through violence, I advance my kingdom. I bind the strong man and I plunder his kingdom." Look at verse 29, "Or again, how can anyone enter a strong man's house, and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man, then he can rob his house?"

Yesterday I was reading in the newspaper a letter to the editor in the Durham paper and there continues to be a debate about the propriety of the United States having engaged in war in Iraq and back and forth. People are still saying even in the Democratic debate last night in South Carolina that some of the candidates feel that we should have brought Sadam to the negotiating table, we should have worked with him, talked to him, try to negotiate a settlement, this kind of thing. I will say this, that God will never bring Satan to the negotiating table, ever. He has nothing to negotiate. He's going to dominate his kingdom. He's going to keep advancing that kingdom until he has conquered it and destroyed it and there's nothing left. Nothing. There's no negotiation possible with the devil, none. Jesus says He’s going to plunder him. He’s going to bind him and plunder him, and Satan can't stop Him. That's what he's saying; it's a matter of warfare and He’s not going to negotiate with the devil. The kingdom of Heaven is advancing forcefully and it's continuing to move. The kingdom of Satan is fighting back violently. It does not want to give up even a single soul to Christ, not one, and yet we keep getting saved, more and more of us around the world. How many will be saved today? 

The kingdom of heaven is advancing forcefully and Satan is fighting back violently. He really believes this world is his. He really does. When Jesus was tempted, the devil took Him to a high mountain and showed Him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor, and he said, "All this is mine," for a while. "All this is mine for it has been given to me and I can give it to anyone I want. So then, if you'll just bow down and worship me, I'll give it to you."  Jesus said, "Away from me, for it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.'" But the devil has a sense of ownership and so in 2 Corinthians 4:4, he is called god of this world, he kind of owns it. That's the house, the world, and Jesus comes and takes on the strong man, the devil, and He overpowers him. He binds him up and He plunders him. A good example of this is in Luke 13:16, when Jesus healed on the Sabbath. Do you notice how many times Jesus healed on the Sabbath? He's just tweaking the Pharisees' initial pre-supposition, again and again, "We're self-righteous. You should not do such-and-such on the Sabbath." "Well, here I am again, doing it on the Sabbath. What are you going to do? “Might I urge you to challenge your pre-supposition? Maybe you're not righteous, maybe your laws are not perfect, maybe they're just laws made by men. Maybe you need to repent and come to faith in Christ.”  Anyway, He heals on the Sabbath, and it's a woman who's hunched over and kind of bound by some kind of a paralysis or something, and Jesus ascribes it directly to Satan. Jesus says, "Should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for 18 long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?" He says, "Woman, you're loosed, you're set free from Satan and his power." Oh, the power of Christ to set us free, not just physically, but spiritually. He breaks the power of canceled sin, He sets the prisoner free. That's Jesus Christ, His kingdom advances powerfully and Satan is therefore plundered.  In Luke 11, the parallel passage here says, "When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up the spoils."

So there we were huddled, wicked, sinful, just like the devil, rebellious against God, dead in our transgressions and sins, unable to change the situation, and suddenly light breaks in, Christ comes. He rescues. He transfers us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, and all glory to Him, and there was not one thing the devil could do to stop it. That's our salvation, rescued from the devil. Christ has been doing this for 2,000 years. He didn't just want to win one victory, like He won the major victory at the cross, but He wants to enjoy the unfolding of the victory. For 2,000 years, you've been enjoying it. As the gospel has marvelously spread from shore to shore, every tribe and language and people and nation, people coming to faith, and all the marvelous stories as a thing unfolds, and all of it to His glory. It's marvelous, this defeat of Satan that's been going on for 2,000 years.We have displayed here for us, an act of power, of raw authority of Jesus Christ, an act of violence in the heavenly realms. 

What application can we take from this message, from this text? 

 First, just stand in awe and worship Christ for His power. Just take this text and say, "Thank you, Lord. I praise you for your awesome power." Just worship Him for His power. There's no disease that He cannot cure. There's no demon too powerful for Him to drive out with a word. There's no effort on His part. There's no mind that He cannot read, and there is no false doctrine that He cannot refute. There's no combination of demonic powers that can stop Him from doing what He wants to do. That's the power of Christ.

Secondly, understand how Christ's kingdom is advanced by aggressive conquest, not in the physical realm, but in the spiritual. Nothing good in this world is given to us by the devil. Everything must be taken by force. Do you understand that? The devil doesn't concede anything. Therefore, we have to understand the nature of spiritual warfare that must go on for the kingdom of heaven to advance. He's not going to give up an inch of territory. No one can be saved. No one unless the devil is bound and restricted from what he's been doing to that individual and stopped from doing that, so he cannot blind that person's mind anymore. You can't be saved unless that work is done.

Thirdly, I want you to see the incredibly destructive power of self-righteousness. Jesus calls this kind of display of self-righteousness acted out through unbelief, the unforgivable sin.  It's incredible that self-righteousness will bring you to hell. The Pharisees thought that they were righteous. Beware that the same thing doesn't happen to you. If you're sitting in the pew right now listening to me, and I ask you, "On what basis do you think you're going to go to heaven?”, if your answer has anything to do with your good deeds and the good person you are, then you're in danger of falling into the same pit that the Pharisees displayed, self-righteousness, trusting in your own righteousness. Don't do it. Trust in the righteousness that Christ alone can give through the cross. Trust in Him.

Fourthly, if you have trusted in Him, you are a Christian. Rejoice and give thanks for your salvation. Do it today.Two weeks ago, we celebrated Easter. Celebrate Easter, celebrate the resurrection victory. Celebrate the fact that you were rescued from the dominion of darkness and brought over into the kingdom of Christ.

Fifth, get busy advancing the kingdom. Get busy advancing the kingdom through force and power in the spiritual realms. First, through prayer. Paul says after talking about spiritual force of evil in the heavenly realms, and spiritual armor that we should wear and all that, he says, "With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints." We don't pray enough, brothers and sisters, and I think, therefore, we don't see all the fruit that we should. We are not the witnesses we should. We're not seeing as many people baptized as we should. It's not going to come easily. It's going to come through trusting prayer, understanding these kinds of things, warfare prayer, you could call it. Now I want you to understand, I'm not advocating all the things in the spiritual warfare movement. There are some real problems there, but I do believe that we underestimate the demonic element that surrounds us.  Our struggle is not against flesh and blood. It's not that individual but realize that that god of this world has blinded that person, and we need to pray and trust against that force. Christ is sufficient and powerful and He will succeed.

Take your Bibles and look with me if you would at Hebrews 2. We'll be focusing on two verses, verses 14 and 15, taking a break from our series in Matthew to zero in on the triumph of Jesus Christ. I often wonder what it would have been like to have been there that first Easter morning, to be with the women that saw the angels, that saw the first evidence of Christ's resurrection. To look at the Roman soldiers that were lying like stones on the ground, terrified because of the angel that had come to move the stone. I wonder what it would have been like to be with Peter and John as they ran to that tomb and looked in and saw what they alone were privileged to see compared to us, they being eyewitnesses, apostles of his resurrection, that they might see the actual physical artifacts of his resurrection, to look at the cloth that covered his body, to look at the cloth that had been wrapped around his head and to see it, and to know that they still didn't understand from scripture that Christ had to rise from the dead but that they would soon be witnesses, even at the cost of their own life, witnesses of this very fact around the world. Wouldn't that have been something?

But you know, whatever joy there would be in seeing that is nothing compared to the joy that you will have when you see him face to face, looking at him as a lamb who had been slain from the foundation of the world, and realize that those wounds bought your passage to heaven. And so, it's a great privilege to stand in front of you and get you to think today about the treasure that we have from the cross and from the empty tomb. And we're only gonna consider one part of it, and I'm gonna zero in on this one concept in Hebrews, namely that Christ's resurrection has and should free every child of God forever from fear of death. That we're not slaves anymore to fear of death. 

A long, long time ago, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales and it's a story of a number of pilgrims that were traveling on their way to Canterbury and each one got to tell two stories. And there is one in particular that I found noteworthy, and it was “The Pardoner's Tale.” This is a religious man who goes around proclaiming the gospel, and he had a story to tell. It was a tale of three highwaymen who had just found out that their fence, the man that they sold their stolen goods to, had died of the Black Plague, and his family as well.

So the fence, his wife and his children all had died of the Black Death. And they were indignant about this, furious as a matter of fact, and they resolved that they were going to hunt down Death and kill him. They're gonna chase him down. One of them said this, “I don't see what gives death the right to go carrying off anyone. If you ask me, it's about time that some brave soul stood up to death and put an end to his carryings on or should I say carryings off. Let's take an oath, friends, not to rest until we've tracked down this Death fellow and stuck a knife between his ribs. Think of what the mayor and the parish will pay if we can bring Death's corpse and lay it down here. Besides, how many purses do you think he's captured along the way? He must have quite a walletful by now.” So motivated by pride and by hope at gain, at greed probably, they tramped off full of indignation, ready to hunt down Death and kill him, then no one would have to fear Death anymore.

Well, as they travelled, they saw an old man up ahead of the road and they had a sense that this might be death, and they went up and they asked him if he was Death. And they looked at him, but then they realized just how feeble he looked, he looked old and wizened, and it seemed there's no way he could have this kind of power. And the man answered, he said, “I wish I were dead, be freed from the burden of this old body that I carry around all the time, but actually, I just saw Death over there by that oak tree. If you hurry up, you can catch up to him.” Well, they went over to the oak tree and they didn't find Ceath there but they tripped over a pot of gold, a huge pot of gold, the wealth of seven lifetimes. And they immediately forgot their errand, their mission, and started thinking about how they would divide the plunder, the gold. And they sent the youngest one into town to buy some wine to celebrate where the other two stayed behind. And as he was gone, the two of them said, “You know, it'd be much better to split it two ways rather than three. So I'll tell you what, let's jump this guy when he comes back and then we can just divide it two ways.”

Meanwhile, the younger one's in town and buys three bottles of wine but he gets to thinking about his two partners, and he buys some rat poison and pours it into two of the bottles but marks his own bottle very clearly. It's very late at night by the time he comes back and finds his former partners there, and he's already drinking from his marked bottle of wine. The two of them jump him and kill him with a knife, and then take the two unopened bottles of wine and begin to celebrate. In the morning, Death came to reclaim his pot of gold. He wrapped it up in the miserable rags of his decaying cloak, close to his gappy ribs. The three corpses under the oak tree made no move to stop him and he left them to a wealth of flies and crows before continuing his endless journey. The heavy pot of gold weighed light in his arms for though his bones were dry and his muscles were like the withered tendrils of a grape-less vine, his strength was immense for he could carry off the biggest or strongest of men even though like any man or beast, he could never carry off himself.

Now that would take someone stronger than death, wouldn't it? That would take the man, Christ Jesus. That would take him, Jesus Christ, to conquer death and he had to pay a price to do it, didn't he? He had to die. And that's what we celebrate today. We celebrate the death of Death in the death of Jesus Christ, and we celebrate the triumph that we have through Christ that we will never fear death again.

Now, as we look around the world, we see a lot of things that unify cultures. The world is getting to be a smaller place, isn't it? And little by little, we start to see those things that are common to us. There are differences, that's true, differences in food, differences in customs and culture, differences in dress, in world view and in architecture, certainly these things, but there is this one unifying factor, the inevitability of death.

If you were to go to the distant mist-covered valleys of Irian Jaya, a mysterious island which is huge and has many uncharted areas, do you think you would find a valley somewhere where people have found the secret to conquering death? I'd tell you no. Or if you went into the outback of Australia, would you find a small group of aborigines that had that secret whereby we could live forever? The answer is no. Suppose you went up to the northern country of the Laplanders where the Finns live, do you think that those frozen people have found also the secret to surviving death, living forever? The answer is no. How about in the teeming metropolises of Asia, do you think you could go down an alley and find an old oriental man who knew something about herbs and special homeopathic medicines, and he would be able to tell you the secret of living forever? You know the answer is no.

No matter where we go all over this sin-cursed world, you're going to find the same thing and that is slavery to death. We're all under the same death sentence and there is no escape apart from the gospel of Jesus Christ. So also in history, it's not like the secret at one point was known and now we've lost it. Ponce de León was searching for the waters of eternal life down in Florida and he never found them. He found many other things and eventually became the governor in Puerto Rico, but he never found the waters that would enable you to live forever.

And we in our 21st century technology, we're seeking a way that we can defeat death through surgery, perhaps, or through certain types of medicines and all of this hasn't done one thing to extend our life beyond the 70 or 80 years that God has ordained. The fact of the matter is that death is inevitable, and our text shows us the only way we can escape fear of death and that is through faith in Jesus Christ.

Now I'm gonna look at four things this morning out of the text. The first is that fear of death is natural, and I would say appropriate, for those that are in slavery to sin. Fear of death is natural for slaves of sin. Look at verse 15, it says that Christ came to “free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”

Now from the beginning, it was not so. Death was not originally part of the plan in Eden for Adam and Eve. Spurgeon put it this way, “It is a very natural thing that man should fear to die for man was not originally created to die. When Adam and Eve were first placed in the Garden of Eden, they were in such a condition that they might have remained there for myriad years if they had kept their integrity. There was no reason why unfallen man should die. But now that we have sinned, the seeds of corruption are in this flesh of ours and it is appointed unto man once to die. Yet as if the body knew that it was not according to the first decree of heaven that it should go to the earth and to the worm, it has a natural reluctance to return to its final bed.”

What Spurgeon is saying there is that it doesn't feel like the way it should have been. We have a sense of a yearning to go back to Eden in one sense. “God has,” it says in Ecclesiastes 3, “set eternity in the hearts of men.” And so, we have a sense that we should live forever, and that death is really a shockingly unwelcome intruder, very much like the explosion that took the lives of the men and women on the Columbia, so there's a sense of explosion and a ripping into life when death intrudes. A sense that it's wrong, it's unwelcome.

Why is death therefore a source of terror? Why a source of fear? First, because of death's power. The grip of death cannot be broken. When death has a hold, it cannot be broken. There's a sense of the pillage of death. What does death steal from us? It takes everything earthly from us, relationships and possessions. It steals from us what is most precious. The pain of death also; we could be afraid of the very process of dying. What's it going to be like? What's it gonna feel like to actually go through the process of dying? Then there's the permanence of death, the fact that it can't be reversed. The things that are lost through death are lost forever and we can't get them back. The loved one is gone and we will never see them again in this world. But above all these, I think, there's the penalty of death, isn't there? For it is appointed unto man to die once and after that judgment. And I think that, in our heart of hearts, is what we fear the most or should if we're slaves to sin.

Now, fear of death can be of some benefit in the world. I think it gives incredible courage to men, let's say on a battlefield, to strive greatly because they don't want to die or it gives ingenuity to drug manufacturers to find a way that we could defeat a disease like SARS, for example, or some other disease and it gives them motivation and a drive, probably the greatest use of the fear of death is to bring people to saving faith in Christ, that they might realize that they're under a death sentence and that life is uncertain. They don't ever know when they're going to die and so they should today close with Christ, to come to faith in Christ because they don't even know if they'll be alive tomorrow.

But I say to you that fear of death is natural and appropriate to those who are slaves to sin. Verse 15, Christ came to “free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” That's a strong word, isn't it, that we were slaves to fear of death? Why is that? Because the wages of sin, according to Romans 1:32, are well-known. Romans 1:32 says, “Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” And so they feel, inside their hearts, a death sentence for their sin. They know that they deserve it. Now they may harden their heart, they may steer their conscience but inside they know that there's a death penalty for sin.

Romans 2:15, Paul says, “Since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.” So there's a sense of fear of death because they know they're under a condemnation, that the law speaks against them. It speaks wrath and punishment. Hebrews 10:27 speaks of “a fearful expectation of judgement and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.” This is what they fear, this is the fear of death and it's natural for those that are slaves to sin, it's appropriate actually.

Now, some worldly people do what they can with the fear of death. They'll use philosophy, they'll use bad theology or false religion, they'll use humor, they'll use many things to try to escape their fear of death.

I’ve witnessed to people before that I thought should be afraid of death. I've talked to them of the gospel and they didn't know Christ and had no interest. And they were absolutely fearless, had no concern whatsoever for death. I thought they should have. I don't know what philosophy or way of thinking has gotten them to turn away from this natural fear of death but they do it.

Greek philosopher Epicurus said, “Men, believing in myths, will always fear something terrible, everlasting punishment as certain or probable. Men base all these fears not on mature opinions but on irrational fancies. So they are more disturbed by fear of the unknown than by facing facts. Peace of mind lies in being delivered from these fears.” Epicurus would say through philosophy, through realizing it's all a myth. Yes, we die but after that, there's nothing, there's no judgment. Don't worry about what your conscience says, don't be concerned about that. And so, through philosophy, they can get rid of fear of death.

Some do it through humor, like Mark Twain. Mark Twain said that we should go to heaven for the climate and to hell for the company. Well, that's clever Mark or Samuel. But the fact of the matter is, there really isn't any company in hell. It's a place of darkness, a place where there's nothing good, a place of suffering, and there's all good things in heaven. But he's trying to dispense with it through humor. It's very funny. What is he saying? He's saying, “I don't like church people.” That's what he's really saying. “I don't like being with them, I like to be with those like me but I'm kind of afraid of that heat thing that is going on there in heaven or in hell. So I'd rather be in heaven for the climate but I'm gonna go to hell for the company.” That's what he's saying. And so, he's dispensing with the fear of death through humor.

Others do it through a way of thinking like the kamikaze pilots of World War II who were sure that they would have a glorious death if they would die that way in battle or Islamic fighters in a jihad will go right into heaven if they will die on the battlefield. And so, they dispense with fear of death through bad theology or bad understanding. But fear of death is natural for slaves of sin.

Second, the devil held the power of sin and death. It speaks in verse 14, “of him who holds the power of death, that is the devil.” Now the devil has power to murder the body directly, he has that power. If the Lord permitted him, he could kill you today. Jesus said in John 8:44, “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” And putting together what Christ just said a moment ago, he's a murderer and the father of murderers. The Greek word there is man-slayer. He kills human beings.

And so, when he came in the book of Job to the throne of God, God had to restrain him from this, you remember? He said, “You can take any of his possessions but you can't touch the man himself.” And Satan had to obey God's command. And then the second time, Satan comes back and says, “Skin for skin, a man will give anything he wants for his life, anything he owns for his life.” And so, God says, “Okay, you can touch his body but you can't -” Do what? “You can't take his life.” Does that not clearly imply that the devil has power to murder? He has the power to kill physically. And so therefore, I think the devil is behind every murder that there's ever been.

In one sense, he's responsible broadly for every death that there ever has been because death entered the world through sin, and sin entered the world through the temptation of the devil. And so, he's the father of everyone that's ever died, of every infant that's died in a third world country of starvation or of a lack of medical care, of everyone that's ever died of AIDS in Africa, of every young man in one of our cities that dies in a gang sling, a drug-related incident. He's the murderer of every 68-year-old man who dies of a heart attack. In one sense, the devil killed us all. He had the power of death.

But he also has the power to murder the soul indirectly through temptation and sin, doesn't he? You see, the devil's under a sentence and he knows it. He knows his time is short, and so he's under the sentence of hell, of the lake of fire, and what he has been doing is drawing us into his condemnation. He did it right from the garden, to draw us into his sin, into his rebellion and into his condemnation. And in this way, he seeks to kill the soul.

The world system around us is designed to entice us to follow him that we might also be like him, a sinner. Therefore, it says in 1 John, chapter 2, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. For everything in the world, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, comes not from the father, but from the world.” And also, it says in James 1:14 and 15, “Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then when sin is fully-grown, it gives birth to death.” And so, the devil seeks to be a soul-murderer as well. The devil's greatest goal of all is to keep people from understanding the gospel by blinding their minds so that they cannot understand or see the light and the glory, the knowledge of God in the face of Christ, so he seeks to murder their souls that way.

And you know, his power is too great for any one of us or all of us put together. Martin Luther knew that in “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” This is what he said, “For still our ancient foe, doth seek to work his woe, his craft and power are great, and armed with cruel hate, on earth is not his equal. Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing.” And so the devil held the power of sin and death.

Thirdly, Christ destroyed the devil in order that he might deliver the slaves. Now this is the beauty of it all. If you stop and think about it, we have, as Christians, two great religious holidays: Christmas and Easter, what I call Resurrection Day. The two are joined in this text. Do you see it? Christmas, we celebrate the incarnation of Christ, that he came to earth and took on a human body. Look what it says again in our text, verse 14 and 15, “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death that is, the devil and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” And so at Christmas, we celebrate that Jesus took on a flesh-and-blood body.

At Easter, we celebrate why he did it, that he might lay it down on the cross and take it back up again through the empty tomb. And so we see the two together. But there are steps to this, how he destroyed the devil. The first step was a heavenly commitment that Christ made to love us. He set his love upon us. His passion was to rescue his people from sin and from death. I was reading recently a quote from Dorothy Sayers, who lived earlier in the 20th century, talking about the seven deadly sins, and she zeroed in on the sin of sloth. And this is what she said, “In the world, it's called tolerance.” That's a popular word these days, isn't it? Tolerance. “But in hell, it's called despair.” Now listen to what she says about this tolerance. “It is the sin which believes in nothing, cares for nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and only remains alive because there is nothing it would die for.”

Does that characterize some of your neighbors? I think it does. This is an apathetic age we live in. We're always showing our coolness by saying, “Oh well, it doesn't matter.” Just life goes on. There's nothing we would die for. How different is Christ from that. How passionately different is Christ from that whole list. I'll go over the list, but put Christ in. Christ believes in the Father's glory for his children. He cares for his children. He interferes with the devil's power of death. He enjoys the eternal consummation of his children in glory. He loves his children enough to take on flesh and blood, he hates sin and death, he finds purpose in his father's plan, he lives for his children, and for all of this treasure, he is joyfully willing to die. That's the passion of our Christ. And it started in heaven before he ever took on a human body. And so he had to share with us, since the children have flesh and blood, he also had to have flesh and blood. He wanted to be with us. And what that meant was taking on weakness, taking on fatigue, taking on hunger, taking on temptation, taking on all of these things, and ultimately, taking on mortality, taking on death.

And so Christ does all of this. He shares in our flesh and blood, he partakes in it. It's one of the things that knits us together, isn't it? Around the world. John F. Kennedy gave a speech on June 10th, 1963, at American University, a very famous speech during the time when he was addressing the escalating Cold War with Soviet Russia. And this is what Kennedy said, he said, “For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's future, and we are all mortal.” Jesus stepped into that mortality. He took on flesh and blood. He did it for a purpose that he might destroy the devil by dying.

Now recently, I was doing a Bible study with my kids, and we were going over the story of Samson. We actually read the whole story of Samson on one Saturday. It was very enjoyable. I mean, Samson's quite a character. But on the way to his wedding, do you remember the story? He sees a lion there, a lion jumps at him, and he attacks the lion and kills it. Sometime later he walks by and the carcass is there, and inside the carcass, there's a swarm of bees and they've made honey in the carcass. Now that is strange, isn't it? Would you have eaten the honey out of the carcass? I wouldn't have done it, but Samson did. He scooped it in his hand and got some honey out and was eating it as he went on his way and gave some to his parents, but he didn't tell them where he'd gotten it from. Good thing, they would have - I guess that was before germ theory, so they probably would've kept eating. But it's just a strange thing, very strange.

As a matter of fact, it's so strange that it gave Samson an idea of how to plunder his enemies, the Philistines. He said, “Okay, I'll make a bet with you. I'm gonna tell you a riddle, and if you can answer my riddle, then I'll give you 30 changes of clothes, but if you can't, then you have to give them to me, 30 changes.” They said, “Tell us the riddle.” And do you remember his riddle? “Out of the eater, something to eat, out of the strong -” What? “something sweet.” How did they do with the riddle? Very poorly. Very poorly. They had to nag his wife until finally she got it out of him, and then the whole thing went that way.

But I started thinking about Samson's riddle. Isn't that what Jesus has done at the cross and at the tomb? Out of the eater. What eats us? The corruption in the grave. It destroys us, it takes everything we have, it destroys everything we have. Out of the eater, something to eat. And what is that? The bread of life, that we might have eternal life and live forever. And out of the strong, what is stronger than death? Well, the Bible says love is stronger than death. Something sweet, eternal life. Isn't that wonderful, Samson's riddle? Bet you never heard another interpretation of Samson's riddle, but there it is. Christ is able to destroy the strength and the power and the plundering of the grave, but he only does it one way, by submitting to it. He goes through it.

Now his body isn't corrupted, that's protected by Psalm 16, but he's going to go through that grave and out of it comes a triumph, and in this way, he destroys the devil. How does he destroy the devil? By taking from the devil any accusation he can launch at us at judgment day. All of those sins have been paid for, every last one. We're justified through the blood that Jesus shed on the cross. And so it says in Romans 4:24, “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification,” Verse 14, “so that by his death, he might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is the devil.” And so Jesus is the living one, he holds the keys of death and Hades, and he lives forever and ever. Christ the conqueror has won the victory, and he's given us the spoils.

What is the fourth point? Well, fear of death is unnatural, therefore, for the children of God. It's unnatural. Now, I didn't say it's unheard of. I've actually seen children of God die poorly. I don't understand it. I don't understand it. I don't know why it is. Why should we die poorly? We should be ready to die. We should be eager in one sense to die. Reluctant as Paul was in Philippians, that his earthly service and the benefits that come to earthly people would end, and that's reasonable, but glad to go in the presence of Christ. Because Christ has set his eternal love on us as his dear children. Because Christ was willing to be a partaker with us of our flesh and blood nature. Because Christ, gladly, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, scorning its shame. Because Christ thereby destroyed the devil and all of his accusations against us, and we are free forever from condemnation because of his death, because Christ has therefore delivered us from the devil's dark kingdom, because of all of this, fear of death is unnatural and inappropriate, wrong for a child of God.

Now it still happens, you've read Pilgrim's Progress, you know there's two that cross the river, Christian and Hopeful, and one of them does very well, Hopeful, and one of them does very poorly, Christian. He can't feel his feet under him, and he's struggling, and before they even get in the river, they ask the angel, “Is there no other way?” They said, “There's no other way. You've gotta go through it to get to the Celestial Kingdom. You've got to die.” And he said, “Well, how deep is it?” And the angel said, “I cannot tell.” He said, “What do you mean you cannot tell?” He says, “It'll be deep or shallow to you in proportion to your faith in the king of that place. The stronger your faith is, the easier the process.” And so Hopeful is going right through, and Christian is all he can do, not to be swamped through doubt and despair and through the false accusations of the devil. So it is true that Christians sometimes die poorly, but they don't need to. They don't need to.

A year ago, I read a series of quotes about how some of our brothers and sisters have died and I wanna finish with those. Spurgeon said, “Every day Christ is overcoming death, for he gives his Spirit to his saints, and having that Spirit within them, they confront death with songs. They face death with a calm countenance and they fall asleep in peace. ‘I will not fear thee, death. Why should I? You look like a dragon, but your sting is gone.’ For these saints, to die has been so different a thing from what they expected it to be, so lightsome, so joyous, they have been so unloaded of all care, have felt so relieved instead of burdened, that they have wondered whether this could actually be the monster they've been afraid of all their days. They find it a pin's prick when they feared it would be a sword thrust. It is the shutting of the eye on earth and the opening of the eye in heaven.” Isn't that a great quote?

Thomas Goodwin said, “Ah, is this dying? How have I dreaded as an enemy this smiling friend.” William Preston, “Blessed be God, though I shall change my place, I shall not change my company.” So much for Mark Twain, he's gonna stay in the same company, right on into heaven. Charles Wesley, “I shall be satisfied with thy likeness, satisfied, satisfied. Oh, what a beautiful way to die.” Adoniram Judson, this is probably my favorite quote, “I'm not tired of my work, neither am I tired of this world, yet when Christ calls me home, I shall go with the gladness of a boy bounding away on the last day of school.” Remember that feeling, final day of school? The joy of being free. So that's what it's gonna be like for me. John Pawson says, “I know I am dying, but my deathbed is actually a bed of roses. Heaven for me has already begun.” And then one other, William Everett just said, “Glory, glory, glory,” for 25 minutes till he died. Don't you wanna die like that? So filled with faith and trust in what Christ has done at the cross and at the empty tomb, that you go right into the presence of God with, it seems almost hardly a hitch.

How can we do this? How can we conquer fear of death? First, you have to be a Christian. I mean, there's no escaping it. You've got to be a believer in Christ through faith or none of the encouragement I've given this morning is for you, none of it. You've got to come to Christ.

Secondly, you have to consider that the devil's power over you has been broken forever. It has no right to accuse. Christ's blood has been shed and all sin is forgiven. Thirdly, therefore, we should value the blood of Christ as sufficient forever to cover all your sins and those with a thousand worlds besides. It's enough. You're justified.

Fourth, you should look on death as the finish to a race well run. And then fifth, you should run the race well. You should keep your conscience clear and do the things that God's commanded you to do. Be faithful to use your spiritual gifts. Run the race well with endurance, lay aside the hindrances of sin and that which so easily entangles us.

And sixth, you should grow constantly in Christ-like character. 2 Peter 1, it says, “Therefore my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure, for if you do these things, you will never fall and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Seventh, celebrate frequently the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ on your behalf.

And eighth, saturate your mind in scripture. Just keep going over the promises of God again and again, and you will face death unafraid, unafraid. And any burden that the actual process of death brings you through, Christ's power within you will be more than sufficient to meet.

Well, what should we do with such a fearlessness? Now that we're this fearless, what should we do with it? Well, I think we should be willing to lay down our lives for Christ here on earth. I think a very specific example, I know that some of us are considering going overseas even to Asia as missionaries. And you know, you've heard in the news about SARS and the danger there is, and I'm not saying we should or shouldn't go, that's going to have to be a decision that we make, but we should be unafraid, unafraid. That's all I'm saying. It gets very specific, doesn't it? We have to be willing to lay down our lives as witnesses for Christ, even to face unafraid something like SARS, the great unknown. And that's just a symbol, isn't it, for anything that would hold us back from being witnesses for Christ and serving him in this world. With this fearlessness, our brothers and sisters in Christ have conquered the world up to this point and so shall we.

We're going to look primarily at one verse this morning, Matthew 12:20. I'm sure that many of you were following the events of this week. When the coalition forces moved into Baghdad, they did so on the strength of over-powering military force, M1A1 Abrams tanks, total air superiority, and Marine detachments and all of that. The reason is because that’s the way that earthly empires rise and fall. That's how it happens. And so, it has been. We saw the toppling of a regime this week, the pulling down of Saddam statue, a good indication of that, but that's how the coalition forces rode into Baghdad. How did Jesus ride into Jerusalem? Interesting, isn't it? The contrast. I've said before, "You can't do much militarily from the back of a donkey." It's really not much you can do, you're pretty low to the ground, you don't move fast. They're not very smart or willing, and so it's really not a good tool for conquest that way.  Yet there was a greater force in the gentleness of Jesus than in all the military force that we've ever seen in history put together, greater force for the conquest and the pulling down of an evil empire.   "Do not be afraid O daughter of Zion; See, behold, your King comes to you gentle and humble riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey." A gentle conqueror. Now, that's an anomaly, something we can't figure out, but he has that kind of power, doesn't he?

I have the great joy of standing before you, proclaiming one of the most encouraging messages I've ever heard in my life.  I've thought about this for 18 years and feasted on it all this time. I related two weeks ago that I used to go out on Sunday afternoons and just find a pleasant place outside under a tree maybe, and I would just read the scripture. but I'd read other things.  One day I came across a sermon by a Puritan named Richard Sibbes called,” The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax."  I've never forgotten what I read there because there is portrayed a gentle Savior who doesn't give up on sinners like me. He works with weak building materials, like me, to build an empire, a kingdom that will last forever and ever. That's encouraging because I see my sinfulness, I see my brokenness, I see my weakness and to know that there's a savior who can use someone like me, and that He doesn't give up on me. He's so wise and careful and perfect in how He deals with me in my sin, and how He works with me is encouraging. Do you ever feel, yourself, like a failure, in your Christian life? Do you ever feel the weight of your own sin like you're useless to God, that you're going to be disqualified, that God could never use someone like you? Do you ever wonder how you're going to survive decades more temptation in this wretched world and make it through? Do you ever wonder about those kinds of things? Have you ever been grieved to your heart over the mixed nature of your walk with Christ? Has it ever bothered you that you're not more undivided in your attention for him?

That's wonderful, as a goal, but let me tell you something, I am not totally consumed for Christ. There's not much “totally” in my life, not the way it should be. It bothers me. It bothers me that I'm not totally sold out for Jesus. 

This text is for you, the savior of this text stands here for you as your gentle conqueror, as your Savior. It's a triumphant message, "The bruised reed, He will not break, and the smoldering wick, He will not snuff out until He leads justice to victory. In His name the nations will put their hope." What a message, what a message. We could never have put this together, could we? This is not coming from the imagination of a human being, it's not the way we do things. But it is the way God does things. The basic idea in this text is that Christ is powerful enough to be gentle with sinners like us and triumphant in the end. He's powerful enough to use broken, sinful people, like you and me, to build a kingdom that will last forever, but there's a little secret in here that isn't obvious in the text. He is our Savior, an oasis of gentleness in a harsh world. It is a harsh, world isn't it?  Governments are harsh, sinners around us are harsh, false religious systems are harsh and tear us down. The devil and his angels are harsh and vicious, relentless. It’s a tough world, and Christ is an oasis of gentleness. He stands before you and says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart". “That's the way I conduct my business. You'll find that my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

That same Savior says this: “A bruised reed I will not break, a smoldering wick, I will not snuff out, until I lead justice to victory". What's the context? We looked last week at it.  I'm not going to spend a lot of time this week on context, but I just can't preach on a single verse without setting it in context. The context overall in Matthew's Gospel is the kingdom of heaven, and Christ is being portrayed right in the center, as the king of the kingdom of heaven with his credentials laid out before us. We've talked about it, his genealogy establishing him as the son of David, his baptism as the son of God, and the miraculous events of his birth also as the Son of God. He's the son of David, the son of God, he calls himself son of man. We have the incarnation, the God man who is setting up a kingdom, and He does it by means of miracles in Matthew 4, and then again in Matthew 8 and 9, just one after the other. There seems to be nothing he cannot do. His is incredible teaching as we had in the Sermon on the Mount, the greatest sermon that's ever been under Jesus' proclaiming.

The Sermon on the Mount beginning right from the start, "Blessed are the spiritual beggars for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Right from the start, speaking this way. We see that He's the king of the Kingdom of Heaven. But then in chapter 11 and 12, we begin to get returns. We begin to get human responses back to that kingdom. How are they responding to Jesus? It's not good. He's being rejected actually. Even John the Baptist doubted and wondered if he was really the one who was to come. Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum, Jewish cities rejected him, not interested, even though all of his miracles had been done there. Then in Matthew 12, we have the religionists, the Jewish leaders, the Scribes and Pharisees, these powerful people attacking him because he's too gentle on the Sabbath. He's breaking their rules. He's healing people on the Sabbath and they're attacking him.

In verse 14 of Matthew 12, you'll notice that they, on the Sabbath, plot to kill him. They're going to seek to kill him. As I've mentioned before, they will succeed, won't they? That's what we think about this week, the death of Jesus on the cross. There was a human aspect to that, and it was the hatred and the jealousy and the opposition of these Pharisees, so Jesus aware of their plot, withdraws. He pulls back. He doesn't go on the offensive. He doesn't attack. If he had wanted to do that, he could have done it right from the start. Twelve legions of angels would have been sufficient to wipe them out. He didn't need the angels, but that wasn't his approach. Instead, he's gentle and as he pulls back, all of these sick people come to him and he heals them.

Matthew, with the eye inspired by the Holy Spirit, sees their fulfillment. He's always seeing fulfillments. When Jesus rides on the donkey, it's Zechariah, that's being fulfilled. When Jesus heals all of these weak and sick people, Matthew sees a fulfillment. In Isaiah 42 he said, "Behold, my servant. Look at my servant, my chosen one, the one I love and whom I delight. I will put my spirit on him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations. He will not quarrel or cry out.” No one's going to hear his voice in the streets. "A bruised reed, he will not break and a smoldering wick, he will not snuff out until he leads justice to victory in his name in which the nations will put their hope.”   Jesus is not behaving the way you're supposed to behave. If you're going to set up a big powerful kingdom, it's not the way it's done.  And as a matter of fact, his brothers struggled over this, didn't they? They gave him some PR advice. “The things you do, Jesus, come here, Jesus, the things you do are amazing, but let me tell you something. You don't seem to realize how people think. If you want to set up a kingdom, this is not what you do. This is the big feast time." [John 7] “You go down to Jerusalem, to the big population center, and you find the strong movers and shakers. You get them into a coalition, and you move and nobody's going to be able to stop you. We've seen what you can do. We've seen the power you have. Nobody who wants to become a public figure act like this." Even his own brothers did not believe in him says the scripture.  They didn't trust him, not just in terms of his miracles, but in how He's going about building his kingdom. He's not doing it that way, and He's pulling back. He's doing it a different way. He says, "My kingdom is not of this world. I'm not going to enter Baghdad or Jerusalem or any other city the way that the armies do. That's not what I do. I build my kingdom a different way and I'm going to win.  I'm going to be triumphant. I'm going to do it with gentleness," and so He does. 

Now what is a simple explanation of the one verse? There's the context.  "A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out." What does that mean?  We have to understand what a bruised reed is and what a smoldering flax or wick is. Simple description is, we've got descriptions here of worthless, useless frailty, isn't that what you've got? With a bruised reed and a smoldering wick, these are pictures of worthless, useless frailty, obnoxious frailty even. Reeds were used for many things back in Jesus's day. They would use them for writing because they had little tubules.  Or you could use them for playing music, a musical instrument. But I can tell you right now, they will not function well in either way if they're bruised, creased or maybe ripped a little. 

I was speaking earlier to somebody who knows some things about finances. What do you think is the market value for a bruised reed? It's a picture of worthlessness. When you have a bruised reed, what do you do to it? You throw it out and you get another one, one that works. Jesus doesn't throw it out, he works with it. He doesn't break it. It's not completely severed in the end. He uses it, works with it.

What about a smoldering flax?  A ceramic dish, which would have a combustible oil, olive oil perhaps, and then there would be the wick and the wick would go down... Have you ever... You've seen a hurricane lantern, perhaps that would wick up the oil, take it up and then you would light it and it would glow and it would give lights to the house. Well, what is a smoldering wick? It's one it seems in which there's impurities. Something's wrong with it. It's not just giving out light, it's giving out obnoxious fumes, smoke. It's smoldering. Now how expensive do you think a new wick would be? Throw it out. Stamp it out, throw it out and get a new one. It's a picture of worthlessness, of rejection and of frailty and uselessness and he doesn't do it. He doesn't throw it out. He doesn't extinguish it.

He works with it until it's not smoldering anymore because he's going to bring justice to victory. He's going to keep working with it. That's the idea. The idea is of Christ's gentleness and patience. You really think we're talking about bruised reeds and smoldering wicks? We're talking about people, aren't we? We're talking about people, and he works with sinners who are very much like bruised reeds and smoldering wicks. He works with them until he's finished. And when he's finished, his kingdom has come, and it's glorious. That's the basic idea. He's very patient. He's wise and gentle and working with sinners until he's finished with them. And what is his destiny in the end? He's going to succeed, isn't he? Until He brings justice to the nations, He's going to win, He's going to be victorious. He's going to do it His way, in a way that we never would have done. He's going to do it His way and, in the end, He's going to be victorious.

Last time we focused much more on the big picture, worldwide. I want to zero in on you as a child of God. He's going to win in your life, isn't that encouraging? He's going to keep working on you until He's finished with you, if you're a child of God. We're going to look at four encouraging doctrines. First whom Christ chooses, secondly how Christ bruises, thirdly why we smolder now and fourth how we will shine forever for eternity. We'll look at that and that's going to be the meat of what we're going to look at. And then we'll go briefly into some quick descriptions of Christ and of us and apply it.

 First: Whom does Christ choose for His Kingdom? The basic idea here is that Christ chooses worthless, broken people to enter His kingdom, and He gently binds them up and uses them to advance His Kingdom without destroying them. A bruised reed He will not break. The Scripture here, I believe, is calling us bruised reeds. That's what we are.   In a way it's offensive if you really stop and say, "I don't think of myself that way, I don't like to think of myself as a bruised reed." Well, that's what you are. You're not a mighty oak, a strong redwood. No, not at all. You're a bruised reed. Think of what Paul wrote in first Corinthians 1:26, "Brothers think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were influential, not many were of noble birth, but God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God shows the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of the world, and the despised things, and the things that are not to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before Him." Is there going to be any boasting in the Kingdom of Heaven?  Oh yes, there'll be boasting, but it won't be about us. We'll be boasting about our Savior Christ. The one who can build a kingdom out of bruised reeds and smoldering wicks. They are feeble, they are weak, they're bruised reeds, no one enters the kingdom, healthy, strong and mighty. No one.

 How do you enter the kingdom?  Blessed are the spiritual beggars, the destitute, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Jesus said it this way, it's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. What kind of surgical precision would it take to work with a bruised reed and not break it? Isn't that incredible? We've already decided we're not going to throw it out, but now we need to work with it. How are we going to bind it up? How are we going to make it right again? The wisdom, the gentleness, the precision to work with sinners until they're strong and healthy, this is incredible.  Christ chooses bruised reeds. He chooses to work with them. And if you say, "I'm not in that category," then you don't need a savior. You don't need a savior; you don't need Jesus. But you know you do. You know you do.

Secondly: How Christ bruises. Now you say, "Wait a minute, I thought we're going verse by verse. Show me how Christ bruises in this text." I'm telling you already, it's not there. But I know from scripture and I know from personal experience that He's the one that does the bruising. He is the one that bruises. Christ is the one who works in us and He does it for our own good. He does it to break us of that wretched demonic pride that will sink us to hell if it's not broken. That self-reliance, that has us able to do it on our own, where we don't need a savior. He's got to bruise us, He's got to pierce us, He's got to wound us, so that we give it up. So, we stop relying on ourselves and what we can do and our good works and all that.  He's got to bruise us. We are kind of in the machinery of this sinful world bruised by sin, aren't we? There's just a machinery, you imagine farm equipment and just getting wrapped up and just bruised by the sinful machinery of the world, it happens, and it hurts, sin bruises us. We can be bruised just by being in this sinful world.  We can be bruised directly, individually by the sins of others, other sinners can bruise us. An abusive spouse could bruise us. An abusive tyrant, dictator who's ruling, your nation can bruise us. A wicked criminal who puts a gun to your head and steals all your possessions can bruise you. Ordinary sinners day after day in the office, in the neighborhood, they just bruise us. But then again, we bruise them too, don't we? We're bruising each other, and this is what sin does. But I want to look beyond that to look specifically into how Christ bruises sinners. What does He do? Well, He does it for a different reason. He does it to save us. He does it to break us down so that we recognize we need a savior. We must be in effect stricken in our hearts or we will never turn to Christ. We need to be somewhat pierced; we need to be made spiritual beggars. You have to realize that you are a ptochos, a beggar. [Matthew 5:3], or you won't come to Christ and ask. Luke 18:13, "The tax collector stood a distance, he would not even look up to heaven but beat his breast... " [There's a piercing there] “and said, "God be merciful to me, the sinner."

That's not our natural state, is it? You have to kind of be worked to that point. That's not where we usually are. He went home justified. So, He's got to bruise us to get us to that point. Through the convicting work of the Holy Spirit, Christ bruises us most severely. In John 16:8 it says, "When He, the Spirit comes, He will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness, and judgment." And He bruises us when we read the scriptures, as unconverted people. We're reading the scriptures and we begin to see the sin in our lives, and we begin to cry out against our situation. We feel the wrath of God, the condemnation for our sins, and it's pressing on us like a weight, a sense of guilt. Bunyan and Pilgrim's Progress begins with Christian with a heavy weight on his back and a book in his hand, and he cries out, with a lamentable cry saying, "What shall I do?" There's a sense of that bruising that's going on. He's hurt because of his own guilt. Well, who's doing the bruising? It's Christ through his spirit. He bruises us when he makes it clear how devastating sin is by not shielding us and protecting us from its devastating consequences.

The Prodigal Son, when does he come to himself?  When he's slopping pigs and they won't even give him any of the pig food. That's when he says with enlightened self-interest about to kick in here. “This is a terrible way to live.” Well, that's a bruising isn't it? You just go down and down, until you hit rock bottom and you begin to say, "I need a Savior.  What's going on in my life?" It’s Christ that's bruising you, he's waking you up to the damage that sin does. When it's time to convert us, He lays us low again by the preaching of the Word.  Peter stood up at Pentecost, and proclaimed a powerful message of salvation through faith in Christ and also of the threatened wrath of God against those who would not repent and when his neighbors, fellow Jews, heard him, they said, in Acts 2:37, “They were cut to the heart.”

That's a kind of bruising, isn't it? Who did that cutting? It's the cutting of a surgeon. They said, "Brothers. What shall we do?" And Peter said, "Repent and be baptized." This is very noticeable, especially during times of revival. During the Great Awakening, George Whitefield went out into the fields to preach and he went down to the coal miners. I've told you this story before, I just love it. They are not used to going to church. You need nice clothes and all that. It's just for wealthy people. They didn't go. He went out to them out in the fields and began to preach and these were some of the roughest toughest, hardest characters you'll find anywhere in England. They were drunkards, they were violent men, criminals, many of them, and yet they wanted to hear Whitefield. Anybody who'd come out and preach in the field is at least a spectacle. Well, as he would preach, the fear of God came upon them and the conviction, the work of the Holy Spirit, and as they heard him, you could see the tracks of their tears, literally, on their soot-covered faces, the breaking and the pain of conviction of sin and a yearning for forgiveness. That's a bruising work, isn't it, that Christ has done? He's made them ready, and they want Christ.

So then, we came to faith in Christ. Is the bruising work over? No, really just beginning, in some ways. Now He really starts to work on us. By the indwelling Holy Spirit, He begins to make us hate sin. How does He do that? He bruises us. He convicts us. He does it primarily by means of the Word of God. Hebrews 4:12-13 says the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates. It pierces us, even to the dividing of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight, everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account. That makes me feel uncomfortable with sin. He's piercing, he's bruising us so that we will hate sin working on us. He bruises us through His providential control of circumstances in our lives, He's controlling, he's got all the knobs and levers at his disposal. He can do anything he wants to your life. And so therefore, if you love perhaps material possessions, too much, does He have the power to tweak something here, so that you don't love them as much? Yes, he has the power to do that.

He bruises us through control of circumstances. Are we given to anger, and conflicts and temper? Maybe we have an interaction, we lose a good friend. We come back to God and we say, "What happened there?" and He convicts, He bruises. Yet Christ is very wise in how much and how far He bruises us.  It says the reed will bruise but it will not break. He knows how far to go, doesn't he? He's very wise in this. Deuteronomy 32:39 says, "See, now that I myself am He. There is no God besides me, I put to death, and I bring to life, I have wounded, and I will heal." Did you hear that? Deuteronomy 32:39, "I have wounded, and I will heal."  Christ bruises us, He works on us so that ultimately, we rely only on Christ. Sibbes put it this way, "Like a frail vine leaning on a mighty oak, so are we trusting in Christ."

Thirdly: why do we smolder now? First of all, you can't smolder if you're not on fire. There's got to be some spark, there's got to be some light, and so we've got to have the light of grace, we've got to have come to faith in Christ, to smolder. He who said, "Let light shine in the darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. We have the light of grace, the fire is on, He's ignited us, but we're smoldering. There are impurities there, there's a mixed alloying element in there.  Now, grace starts small, doesn't it? In the soul, it starts small and then it grows and grows. The joy is that nothing can extinguish that spark, nothing. Christ started it, and Satan can't put it out, but he’d loved to do it. He'd like to take your spark and just stomp on it. He'd love to pour water on it. Remember at Interpreter's house in Pilgrim's Progress there's an image of a bowl. I've talked about this before with fire and it's a picture of the work of grace. There's this fire and there's the devil pouring water on it, a fire hose, just anything he can to put it out, but it just won't go out. Why not? Because behind the wall there's Christ feeding oil into the bottom and He keeps it going. The grace of God, nothing is going to extinguish it. 

A bruised reed, He will not break, and the smoldering wick, He will not snuff out, but yet we smolder. why? Because we're in a mixed condition. We want to pray, that's the spark of grace, we get tired of prayer. That's the smoldering. We want to give financially, and then some thoughts creep in, and we don't give like we would like to. The spark of grace and the smoldering. We want to witness, of course we do, so we go to witness training, and then the time comes to share our faith and we pull back. That's the light, the spark and then the smoldering. It's just the way it is in our Christian life and it's in the Bible too. Remember the man who came to have Jesus heal his son, and He said, "Do you believe I can do this?" And he said, "Lord, I do believe." That's the spark of grace, what's the next thing he says? "Help my unbelief." There's the smoldering. That's us. "Lord I believe, help my unbelief." Remember in the Book of Revelation. To the church at Ephesus, He said, "You have right doctrine, you're living well, you're doing all these good things, but I have this against you, you've abandoned your first love." So, there's a mixture going on there.   Peter says, "You are the Christ, the Son of living God." "Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah." A moment later, he is rebuking Christ for wanting to go to the cross. Isn't that us? Isn't that you? Spark of grace but then some smoldering.  Christ is very skillful in dealing with you. Are you at present totally consumed with Christ? Totally consumed. That's what you've been talking about, are you? Or are you smoldering? Are you some fire and then some smoke?   You see, but Christ is able to work with you until you are totally consumed. Because the fact of the matter is, He's not going to stop, fourthly, until we shine forever. He's going to keep working on you and in you until you shine like He does. It says in the Book of Hebrews that our God is a consuming fire.  Christ prophesied and said, "Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father." He's going to work with your fire until it's glorious, until it's perfect, and there's no smoldering left. We will shine forever and ever.

Now, briefly, what can we see in our Savior? Seven aspects, first Christ is gentle. Only a gentle savior could properly deal with a frail reed dangling by a thread. If you feel like damaged goods, know that Christ is gentle enough to take you in His arms and bind you up. Only a gentle savior could blow lightly on a smoldering wick until it's a stronger flame. He's the only one that can do that. And so, Christ is gentle. Second, Christ is patient. Only a patient savior could put up with us mixed, smoldering half-hearted creatures who sometimes love and serve Him and sometimes rebel right in His face. He's the only one that can do that and put up with us, only a patient savior could stay with such a gentle approach to worldwide conquest until he wins in the end.

Thirdly, Christ is wise. Only a wise savior knows how to deal with each one of you individually, dealing with you perfectly like a skilled surgeon to know what you need right now. He's the only one that can do that, He knows what you need. Sometimes He knows that we need to be gently encouraged and sometimes He knows we need to be thrashed soundly, and He knows the difference. I don't as a pastor. I pray for wisdom but only Christ has that wisdom, He knows what to do. Fourthly, Christ is gracious. Only a gracious savior could be willing to die on the cross for all of your smoldering sin. He's the only one who'd be willing to do that, to suffer under the wrath of God and shed His blood for sinners like you. Only a gracious savior would be willing to work and put up with us moment by moment, even long after we've come to faith in Christ until He leads justice to victory. Fifthly, Christ is powerful. Only a powerful savior would be mighty enough to use a frail bruised reed to conquer the evil empire of the devil. You will be perfect, you will be righteous, and He sees it, He sees you differently than you even see yourself.  He's essentially optimistic, hopeful, looking ahead, because He knows nothing's going to stop the work that He's doing in your life. Seventh, Christ is holy. Only Christ, a holy Savior could refuse to allow you to stay bruised and smoldering. He's not going to leave you there, He's not going to keep you there, He's going to keep working with you until you're holy.

Now, seven characteristics of the saved. What are we like? What does this teach us about ourselves? First of all, that we are naturally worthless apart from Christ. I stumbled over that word a little, I thought, "Do I need to change that?" Until I found it in Romans Chapter 3, "There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God, all have become worthless." That's what sin leaves us, it leaves us of no worth to God, worthless.  I know that Christ said, "We are worth more than many sparrows." So, in one sense, we are worth much, and so He died for us. But in terms of what we intrinsically are as sinners, worthless to God, that's the way we start naturally. Secondly, we are feeble or weak because of sin. We are actually very poor building material. It's not top-grade A quality stuff off the top shelf, that's not us. So, we are too feeble and weak really to build a kingdom out of on our own. Thirdly, we are unimpressive for building a kingdom, we're not a promising building site. Christ said, "A fool builds on sand." Well, He built on us. He's the only one that could do that. 

Fourth, we are mixed, for we burn by grace. We have a spark of grace in us if we're born again. Now, don't misunderstand me, if you're not born again, none of what I've said applies to you except the things that He does to bruise you to bring you to Christ, now that applies. But if you are a child of God you are mixed, that means you have a spark of grace and nothing will put it out, nothing, and so we burn by grace. We love God now, we love His heaven, we love the Word of God, we love His people, we love to pray, we love to worship, we love these things.   But fifth we are mixed, because we smolder with impurities. We don't love God enough; we don't love to pray enough. We don't love the fellowship of the believers enough. The very things that we tell God we hate, and we'll never do again, we do again later that day. That's grievous, isn't it? That's just the way it is. And so, we're mixed. Sixth, we survive, we're still here. I came to Christ 20 years ago, and I'm still a Christian. Why? Because I'm so strong, so mighty, so powerful? This text tells me the truth. No, because He is determined to save me, and He's never going to let me go. I'm still here. Praise God, I'm still a Christian, because of His grace in me.  Seventh, this is my favorite. Do you see it? We're destined for glory.  He's not going to give up until He leads justice to victory, He's going to bring us to heaven, and nothing's going to stop it.

What applications can we take from this? First of all, be humble. Look at that list of characteristics of the saved. It's not a great resume, is it? So, be humble. You are a bruised read, you're not a mighty oak, you're a smoldering wick, you're not a raging fire totally consumed "for Christ". Although, we want to be, it's not what we are and so be humble.   Part of being humble is stop looking to yourself to accomplish anything.  We'll get to it in a minute, trust in Christ, but be humble enough not to look to yourself. 

Secondly, be essentially optimistic about yourself, not about what you can do, but what Christ is doing in you. Do you realize how important that is? The devil wants you discouraged so that you give up, stop fighting sin, but you need to be essentially optimistic, because He is going to work in you and will never stop working in you. You can take on any sin in your life, with Christ's help, and conquer it. There's no sin in your life that's not part of your inheritance to have it gone. It’s just not part of the deal that Christ says, "Well, I can conquer every sin, but that one in your life”— no way. So, be essentially optimistic. In the end, all of your sins will lie dead at your feet; you'll be sinless and pure in heaven. Praise God, it's encouraging.

Thirdly, be trusting completely in Christ. First of all, don't rely on yourself. You can't do anything. We already covered that one. But second of all, trust his wisdom in doing things to you. When you have financial troubles, you lose a job, realize this is not an accident. It's come to you through the wisdom of God. When you are having other struggles, family difficulties, problems raising a child. Seeing something you really want and you're praying, and you're just not getting the answer that you want. Health problems, it just goes on and on and it doesn't end, and you keep asking. Trust that Christ is doing something in you, trust Him completely. Let Him work his work in you.  He's not going to break you. He's not going to say, "Oh, I went too far on that one. How did that happen?" It's not going to happen. He knows how to work in you, pushing you farther than you'd push yourself, that's true, but He knows what He's doing in your life.

Fourth, be gentle with others. Christ is gentle with you. Be gentle with others. Be gentle. I want us to be a church that gets involved in helping other people to grow. I do, I think we need to get involved, but let's not be an in-your-face church, a harsh kind of church that's in your face. Every time we're told to go to a brother or a sister in sin, we're told to be gentle, every time. It's like taking something from somebody's eye. "Hey, let me get that out you." "Oh, no please, I want your help but be gentle with me." Christ is gentle. He's gentle with you, be gentle with others, as you help grow. And join in Christ's work in your life, be tougher with yourself, than you've been in terms of sin, you're not going to break. Paul says "I beat my body and make it my slave; I'm not going to tolerate any sin. I'm going to be strong with myself as Christ is and, in the end, he's going to be victorious so I'm going to stand firm against sin in my life."

One final thing be holy. Can I tell you something about a sermon like this? It's dangerous actually, isn't it? You know how this sermon is dangerous? ‘Because we sinners take... this is like $100 check from our father, and we go out and blow it on sin. It's true, be warned that the devil will use this kind of an encouraging message to make you want to say, "Well, I can live any way I want. I'm going to be victorious in the end". How tough a path does you want in order to get to victory? How much discipline do you want from your Heavenly Father? Okay? No, be holy. That's what he's working in your life. Don't use this and trade it in for sin. But just know how much God loves you, and how gentle he is.