Two Journeys

On Resurrection Sunday, Andy Davis preaches Hebrews 2:9 on how we see Christ, who is invisible, with the eyes of our souls, our faith.

We're taking part today in a worldwide celebration. We're aware of that as Christians. All around the world, Christians are gathering on this day to celebrate this awesome truth, that Christ is risen, that death has been defeated forever. This worldwide celebration is a testimony to some powerful realities. Centrally, the universal problem of death and the fact that we do not have in ourselves the resources to defeat this enemy, but Christ has defeated death for us. Death is the enemy of the entire human race and it is a relentless enemy, which absolutely does not discriminate. It stalks everyone. Death has the final say over everyone's earthly existence, rich and poor alike, young and old alike, beautiful and successful or despised and downtrodden. Any human being who draws breath is held in bondage by this terrible foe. No mighty ruler, no king or prime minister or president or potentates can confidently say, “I am beyond death's reach. I have made a covenant with the grave so that death's bony hand cannot reach me.”   No one can make that statement. Neither can a wealthy Wall Street, hedge fund manager or fortune 500 CEO buy a guarantee of immunity from death's reach. Neither can a new mother look on the fresh sleeping face of her newborn child and say with certainty, "You my child have many years ahead of you." She doesn't know. She cannot be certain and neither can a young man in the prime of his health who visits the health club or the gym every day, be guaranteed of another day on earth beyond this one. The terrors of death enslave, all people.

Hebrews 2:15 speaks of people who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. So if death, the ultimate enemy of the human race, has been defeated, then truly we have reason to celebrate every day. Death has been pressing on people's minds, always presses on people's minds. But recently in our experience everyday life, death has risen up and pressed in on us. None of us will ever forget the grip of the worldwide pandemic through which we have been passing and we hope to soon be through with, from early in 2020 until even this year, the lead story night after night. Many of us know personally, loved ones who have died from COVID. Others came very close to death, right to the brink because of that disease. More recently, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has pushed COVID more from the headlines with the terrible devastation of open warfare and visions of death in the streets. Recently, I saw a very powerful video depicting some of the agonizing details of the war in Ukraine and the sufferings of the people. It focused on the word "was", some of you may have seen it. The narrative went like this in the video. “’Was’” a simple word, merely a part of speech used in everyday life, but it is not that simple for us. Because now the everyday Ukrainian simply cannot say "was" without bursting into tears. This was my home. This was my friend. This was my dog. This was my car. This was my job. And this was my father, showing an older man lying recently struck with a bullet or something lying in the street, while you hear in the video in the background, an agonized voice crying, "Papa, Papa." This was my daughter showing a little girl in a pretty dress loaded on a gurney and being wheeled into a crowded hospital and her father screaming, ‘Hurry, hurry, come quickly,’” translated for us. The narrative continued, the millions and millions of fresh wounds are bleeding with that word "was". Russia has drowned Ukraine in tears and blood in children's corpses. Then the video turned, the turning point of the video. It put the word "will" on the screen and made all these bright promises. “We will win. There will be new houses. There will be new cities. There will be new dreams. There will be a new story. And those we have lost will be remembered and we will celebrate anew. Yes, Ukraine was beautiful, but it will become great.” As I was watching that video, I was thinking about this celebration that would be coming up in a number of weeks. I couldn't help thinking about the dark enemy of death standing over everything we value in this world and saying that same word "was". But then Christ in his resurrection victory standing over us and giving us a future and saying, the word "will" such as John 11, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even though he dies. And whoever lives and believes in me will never die."  Also Revelation 21, "I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, now the dwelling of God is with men and he will live with them. They will be his people and God himself will be with them and be their God. And he will wipe every tear from their eyes and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain for the old order of things has passed away."

So this morning we join believing Christians around the world in celebrating that glorious future that Christ has bought with his own blood and his resurrection victory. We have a “will” that is guaranteed for us through the words of Christ. This morning, our focus is going to be on this majestic text. You just heard Hebrews 2:9 and there it says, "but we see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor, because he suffered death so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone." From that text, as I was meditating, the theme comes, seeing Jesus. The context in Hebrews is powerful. It's one of my favorite books in the Bible for the glory of Christ, the majesty of Christ that shines in that epistle. Hebrews 1 celebrates the infinite majesty of Christ. Hebrews 1:3, "The son, Jesus is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being sustaining all things by his powerful word. And after he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven."  Hebrews 1 gives this glorious vision of Christ, this majestic being.

But then in chapter 2, it addresses the burning question, if Jesus is so glorious and so majestic, why did He seem so lowly, so weak? He was born of a human mother, Mary, in a stable where animals were sheltered. He lived as normal human beings do physically. He got hungry and thirsty and tired. His appearance was completely normal while He lived on earth. Even more shocking than all of that, his weakness, his physicality was his death on the cross, the painful and humiliating death of crucifixion. The author acknowledges that though Jesus is the creator and king of angels in  chapter 1, He was made for a little while lower than the angels or a little lower than the angels while he was on earth. But he did this so that He might become one of us, that He might become human like us, be part of the human family and that He might be able to shed his blood to die for us and set us free from the penalty of our sins from death. Having achieved that saving work on the cross, Christ rose from the dead and is now exalted far above the heavenly realms, so we see Jesus exalted. That's going to be the focus of our study today. 

We begin with this concept of seeing Jesus, and we see Jesus by faith. Look again at Hebrews 2:9, the text says, "but we see Jesus who is made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor." Faith is the eyesight of the soul.  Sight is the most powerful of all of our faculties. Science tells us that we derive 83% of our knowledge about the physical world around us, by our eyes, only 11% through hearing, 3 1/2% through smell, 1 1/2% through touch and only 1% by taste.  83% comes by sight. Therefore, Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, he said, "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be filled with light." That's especially true of the eyesight of the soul, which is faith. If your spiritual eyes are good, your whole soul will be filled with God's glorious light. However Jesus went on, "If your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. And if then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness?"

Another text speaks of the eyes of the heart. Ephesians 1:18, "I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened." What could this be other than faith? What are the eyes of the heart, other than your faith, the ability to see invisible, spiritual realities, past, present, and future? That is the eyesight of the soul, it's faith, the eyes of the heart. Also in that great faith chapter, Hebrews 11, the author defines faith, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things, not seen." Not seen, invisible things. Later in that chapter in Hebrews 11:27, it speaks of Moses living the life of faith, “By faith Moses endured, listen, as seeing him who is invisible.” How do we do that apart from faith? It is by faith that we can see God who is invisible and to see Christ who is for us invisible. 

The text says that we see Jesus and we see him now, but we see Jesus now crowned with glory and honor. But we have never seen Jesus. Peter said in I Peter 1:8, "Though, you have not seen him, you love him. And even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy." We've never seen Jesus. And we don't see him this morning. I hope you're not going to show us the invitation card that says,”See Jesus”, and say that's false advertising. “We're expecting to come to see Jesus and we saw you, the pastor. We want to see Jesus.”  I want to see him too,  but Peter said, “ you've never seen him, and we don't see him now.” He's speaking physically, but seeing Jesus physically never saved anyone anyway. The overwhelming majority of people that saw Jesus physically didn't believe in him. They didn't see him properly. Many think, oh, I wish I could have lived back then and seen Jesus with my own eyes.  I don't deny it. It would've been a great grace, but just understand that most of the people that saw him underestimated him. His physicality threw them off. They didn't understand how a mere man could claim to be God. The reason was, there was nothing particularly attractive about him, physically. Isaiah 53 predicted this in verse 2-3,  speaking of Jesus, “He grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering, like one from whom men hide their faces. He was despised and we esteemed him not." So if you had seen him physically, but you weren't given the gift of faith, you would not have seen him properly. The physical side of Christ alone does not save the soul. To be saved we must see Jesus by faith based on the word of God. We begin by saying, “We see Jesus crucified”.  

This morning we're going to see Jesus crucified. The text speaks of his suffering. Look again at Hebrews 2:9, "We see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels. Now crowned with glory and honor, because he suffered death. So that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone." Jesus tasted death. He drank the cup of death, the cup of suffering. The cup of God's wrath for us in our place.We see him crucified. When the facts of the gospel, the account of his death are read publicly, or you read them privately, you have the opportunity to see Jesus crucified at that time, based on the scripture.Mark's account runs like this, Mark 15, "They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha, which means the place of the skull. There they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him. Dividing up his clothes they cast lots to see what each would get. It was the third hour when they crucified him. The written notice of the charge against him read, the King of the Jews. They crucified two robbers with him, one on his right, one on his left. At the sixth hour, darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, 'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?' which means my God, my God why have you forsaken me? And then with a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last." When you read that, you can see Jesus crucified and see him based on the historical account. He tasted death for everyone. That is for all who would believe in him and trust in him by faith. He tasted death for them because only in that way could our sins be atoned for before a holy God. Sin and death were linked from the very beginning. In the Garden of Eden, the warning was, do not eat from the forbidden fruit because in the day you eat of it, you'll surely die. The wages of sin has always been death, and Jesus tasted death for us all so that we would not have to die eternally.  The real death is what the Bible calls the second death. What is that? Well, first comes physical death and it is appointed. Hebrews 9:27, “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” But what happens after judgment? If you're not a believer in Christ, hell comes after judgment, the Bible calls that the second death. The lake of fire is the second death. Revelation 20:14-15 says, "The lake of fire is the second death. And if anyone's name was not found written in a book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire." So we see Jesus' death on the cross by faith, when the gospel is preached clearly and publicly. 

As I was pondering this theme of seeing Jesus, especially seeing Jesus crucified, I was led to consider the most famous verse in the Bible John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." The most famous verse in the Bible also has the most misunderstood word in the Bible. It's the little word "so". It is so misunderstood. Some people think it means “so much.”  By saying it doesn't mean so much. I'm not saying God doesn't love us so much.  I'm just saying that's not what that word means. Not in that verse. The Greek word translated "so" is "in the same way”.  Two things are being compared. You're right in the middle of a thought with that famous verse, John 3:16, “For in the same way, God loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should and not perish, but have eternal life.” The same way as what? We have to go back to the two verses that precede in John 3. In John 3:14-15 says, "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God in the same way, loved the world," et cetera. It brings us to the story of the bronze serpent.  In the Old Testament one of the great central events of the Old Testament is God's rescue of the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt through the Exodus. He brought them out into the brink of the promised land, but they did not trust God. They did not believe in God. They did not obey God. They did not cross the Jordan river and take the promised land. They were condemned to wander for 40 years in the desert, but God sustained them physically. He fed them with manna, bread from heaven, miraculous, that they collected every day. But these people complained about the manna, “’We’re sick of eating the same thing every day.” They should have crossed over into the promised land, the land flowing with milk and honey, and they wouldn't be eating manna at that point. God wasn't hearing any of it. He judged the nation for their complaining. He sent poisonous desert serpents into the camp, and those serpents bit many Jews, and many died. The people cried out to God for deliverance, they cried out to Moses to intercede for them, and Moses did. He interceded to God, but God said, “ I will not take away the poisonous desert snakes, but I will help the people.” He commanded Moses to make a replica of the serpent out of bronze and lift it up high on a pole and put it where everyone in the camp could see it. This message would then be spread throughout the camp of hundreds of thousands of people, even a couple million people. This vast message would be spread that if you're bitten by a serpent, you should get out of your tent as soon as possible and go look at the bronze serpent, and if you do, God will see your look of faith. He will see it, and He will heal you and you will not die. This is a brilliant picture of the gospel. God was dividing the bitten people into two categories, believers and unbelievers. The believers would live and the unbelievers would die. 

In the same way, God lifted Jesus up on the cross to separate the bitten people into two categories, believers and unbelievers. Who are the bitten people? That's us. That's all of us. We all have the serpent bite on us, on our souls. It is sin. We have the poison of sin cursing through the blood vessels of our soul as it were. And we have limited time, friends. In the wisdom of God, He could have chosen different serpents and different poisons. There are some that'll kill you instantly. That wouldn't do any good, right, because then you have no time to look at the bronze serpent.  God in his wisdom gave a certain kind of toxin that gave you some time, some time to go look at the bronze serpent. How long do you have? He didn't tell us. So what should you do when you're bitten? When you feel feverish, when you start getting hot and you feel the poison? You better get out and look at that bronze serpent. You better look while you have time. And how long do you have? I don't know how long you have. But you're here today under the hearing of the gospel, and you have the opportunity to look to Jesus now by faith, you have that chance. Jesus said in John 6:40, "For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life. And I will raise him up at the last day." Do you realize what He's promising you there? If you just look to the Son now by faith right now, your sins will be forgiven. God will see you looking. You don't have to get up or go anywhere. You just look to Jesus, knowing you're a sinner. You can feel the poison of sin in your life. You know you have violated God's laws, you know that you deserve to die, and Jesus is your only hope. For God in the same way, loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son that whoever looks to him, sees him and believes in him, will have eternal life, they'll not perish in that second death. So that's what it means to see Jesus crucified.

We also this morning, see Jesus resurrected.  How do you do that?  The same way, by reading the accounts of the empty tomb. We get to see the accounts of Jesus showing himself to his beloved disciples. We get to see it by faith when we read the account of John 20, for example, verses 1-8, "Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved and said they have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don't know where they have put him. So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there, but did not go in. Then Simon Peter who was behind him arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally, the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went inside. He saw and believed.”  What did he see? He saw the physical evidence of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. He saw the stone had been moved away from the entrance to the tomb. He saw that there was no body in the tomb. He saw the grave clothes lying, wholly undisturbed in their original position with that sticky resonance, aromatic spices and the myrrh and all that, in which Joseph of Arimathea had wrapped Jesus. It was all there. The head cloth folded up in an orderly way off to the side. This is no work of a grave robber, all of the physical evidence spoke to resurrection, and John was convinced. He saw the physical evidence and believed. His faith at that moment was based on what he saw with his eyes. But then he knew very well, and God especially knew well, that all of us coming centuries later would not have the same privilege. I don't know how long it took Jesus' Jewish adversaries to destroy all the physical evidence, get rid of it, gone. I would say later that day maybe. The opportunity was gone. It would never be again to actually see the physical evidence.  John adds in the very next verse, “ They still did not understand from scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.” By scripture alone we see the physical evidence of Jesus' bodily resurrection. Now you can say, “but pastor, I know I can buy a ticket, a plane ticket to Jerusalem and I can go on a tour. They'll show me the empty tomb.” Do you believe that? Well, which one are you going to go to? I think there's like four of them. And I don't know what to believe if I go see some empty hole somewhere. It's not going to convince me of anything.

 Frankly, you're going to read the Bible and the accounts of Jesus' resurrection and you'll believe or not based on the scripture. That's why John wrote John 20:9, "They still did not understand from scripture that Christ had to rise from the dead." Later we had that even better evidence, which is an actual physical appearance of Jesus before his beloved disciples. John 20:19-20, "On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace, be with you!' After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord." I wasn't there at the time, and neither were any of you. Oh, neither was Thomas. He should have been, but he wasn't. So Jesus comes a week later to convince doubting Thomas of his bodily resurrection. The account is in John 20:24-29, "Now Thomas called Didymus one of the twelve was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him 'we have seen the Lord.' But he said to them, 'Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.' A week later the disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace, be with you.' Then he said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here, see my hands, reach out your hand, put it into my side, stop, doubting and believe.' And Thomas said to him, 'My Lord and my God.' Then Jesus told him, because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed." All of you who are genuine Christians, born again through the power of the spirit are in that category. You have not seen, and yet you believe. You believe that Christ has been raised from the dead. On what basis? Scripture. You read it, and you believe it. There is no other basis to see Jesus resurrected.

 Thirdly, we see Jesus crowned. That's what the text says. Hebrews 2:9, "We see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels now crowned with glory and honor, because he suffered death so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone." Once Jesus' humiliation was finished, God exalted his Son to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name. Christ's present exaltation can only be seen by faith. By reading scripture, we're told amazing things about the present exaltation of Jesus. Scripture probes into the invisible heavenly realms to tell us some things we would have no other knowing. So this is the only source of our heavenly vision, the feeding of our faith by scriptural truth, the same way.

What do we learn about Jesus' present exultation? Go back to the first verse I quoted from Hebrews, Hebrews 1:3 which says, "Jesus is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being sustaining all things by his powerful word.After he had provided purification for sin, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven." That's Jesus' present exaltation. He is sitting down at the right hand of God. Ephesians 1 teaches the same thing, v. 20-23, "God raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given not only in the present age, but also in the age to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way." It's incredible! Jesus is at the right hand of God, ruling the universe. All the powers and principalities and authorities and spheres of influence, both among humans and angels and demons, all the seats of power there are in heaven and on earth are under Jesus's authority. Vastly under his authority, so that if they all combined together in one vast rebellion against Christ and sought to topple him from his throne, they must fail before the tidal wave of his omnipotence. That's the infinite greatness of Jesus's present exaltation.

As God the Father said in Psalm 110, "The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make all your enemies a footstool for your feet. The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion. You will rule in the midst of your enemies."  God, the Father has been doing that. After Jesus' death, resurrection and ascension, He said, “Sit down next to me and watch what I'm going to do.” By the power of the Spirit, He then makes his enemies transformed into friends, worshipers, or crushed by his sovereign power in his own good time. Those are the two options. Isn't it wonderful that we who are Christians were at one point God's enemies by our rebellion and our sins and our violation of his laws, but  now in Romans 5:10, "When we were God's enemies, we were reconciled through the death of his Son." We're not enemies anymore. This is the majestic and powerful work going on all over the world. Christ is winning his former enemies over, and He's melting their hard hearts and bringing them, sweetly and submissively, under his kingly authority. We're glad that He's our king, glad to do His will and to serve him.

Christ's future exaltation is going to be obvious for all to see, we won't need faith for that one.  Now is the time of faith, this is the era of faith. This is where you come to church, Easter Sunday, and you have a pastor saying, “We see Jesus.” It's like, hmm, interesting.  I'm  telling you when He comes in glory, you won't need faith to see Him. You won't need faith at all. The era of faith will have ended. Matthew 24:27, "As lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west. So will be the coming of the Son of Man." Everyone's going to see it.  Then Revelation 1:7 says, "Behold, he is coming with the clouds and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all peoples on earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen." That's the second coming of Christ, no faith needed. But now's the time for faith. Now's the time through faith to have your sins forgiven while there's time. 

 Finally, we see Jesus now and we see him continually. So to all guests, I have already strongly urged you to look to Christ while there's time. I hope you can see the evidence of the snake bite in your life, just understand God's laws. Understand that you're commanded to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself, and you don't. Understand that God commanded you in his Ten Commandments, many things, and you violate them all, in your hearts and perhaps even with your bodies, you've broken God's laws. The poison of sin is coursing through the veins of your soul, and you have a limited time. Look to Jesus now while there's time. It's all you need do. What did the thief on the cross do but look to Jesus and see him as a coming king? Just look to Jesus and your sins will be forgiven. 

Now for all of us who are believers. We're not done looking to Jesus. We still need to look to him. Our faith is a living thing and that living thing needs constant food. You need to feed the eyesight of your soul by taking in God's word. Our vision of Christ can get pretty cloudy sometimes. Like the blind man that Jesus healed in stages in Mark chapter 8, “I see people, they look like trees walking around. And then once more Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes and then his eyes are open and he could see everything clearly.” So it is with us. We need to look to Jesus again and again daily, by taking in God's word and feeding on it. You can see Jesus by faith. At an unusually early age I had cataracts, cloudiness of vision in both my eyes. I ride a bike for exercise. I also listen to earbuds. So one day I was climbing up a hill, deaf through the ear with earbuds and  pseudo blind, through my cataracts. I looked over my left shoulder, didn't see anything, coast was clear.  I crossed the road, the car missed me by feet I think. I would want to say by inches, I felt the whoosh as it went by me.  I needed to do something about these cataracts. The car was right in the center of one of them, I guess, I never heard anything, never saw anything. That's what we can get through sin and through unbelief. Even as Christians, we can get a cloudy vision. We just don't see Christ the way we need to. The author of Hebrews commands us to look to Jesus, to look to him, to persevere in our marathon race of faith, Hebrews 12, it says, "Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. Who for the joy set before him endured the cross scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of God." We're supposed to look to Jesus every day, throw off the weights and the nets of sin that are entangling us, as we run this race with endurance. 

As I already mentioned in Hebrews 11:27, "Moses persevered as seeing him who is invisible." Christian brother and sister, run your race every day as seeing him who is invisible. Enoch walked with God, and then he was no more, for God took him. Enoch walked with God by seeing him who is invisible. Joseph was tempted by Potiphar's wife, day after day. “Come lie with me, come lie with me.” She pulled on him and tempted him and tried to seduce him. And Joseph said, "How could I do this and sin, commit this great sin against God?" He could see the invisible God seeing him, and he could not sin. Job said, "I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl for God sees my every way and counts my every step." That's what it means to see Him who is invisible. Jacob had a dream at Bethel of heaven open and a stairway with angels ascending and descending. When he woke up, he said, "How awesome is this place? Surely God was here and I did not know it.” How many days do we as Christians live like that? God is here and we did not know it.  I'm urging you to keep looking to Jesus. Romans 10:17 says, "Faith comes by hearing the word." As you hear, you see, and you see Jesus, you see him as the one who is invisible and you live a holy life, that's pleasing to God. Close with me in prayer. 

Father, we thank you for the time we've had to see Jesus this morning in the scripture. Thank you for the joy of this day. Thank you for the joy of Christian fellowship that we get to band together and celebrate and urge one another on to be joyful. Lord, help us to see Jesus by scriptural intake, day after day and by faith, being developed. And, oh Lord, I pray that there wouldn't be a single person here under the hearing of the gospel that would walk out of this place now unconverted. But instead that their sins have been forgiven through simple faith, trusting in Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen.

On Resurrection Sunday, Andy Davis preaches Hebrews 2:9 on how we see Christ, who is invisible, with the eyes of our souls, our faith.

The post Seeing Jesus appeared first on Two Journeys.

 Andy Davis preaches on the book of John and John's eyewitness account of Jesus' crucifixion, establishing a true testimony that every aspect of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection are indeed historical facts. 

 Please pray with me now. Father, as we have had the opportunity to sing songs that meditate on the death of Your Son, it's a sober meditation. It is good for us, O Lord, to meditate deeply and to understand the death of Jesus on our behalf.  I pray that now, You would give us the gift of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in this place. For it is His unique work in this world to exalt Jesus to the highest place in our minds, our hearts, and our estimation based on the Scripture that He himself inspired. We pray now that there would be an anointing of the spirit on me, on my words, and then on all of our hearts so that we can understand the things that we have just heard, and that these truths would burn in our hearts within us, transforming us and enabling us to live, to walk in newness of life. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Psalm 71:15 says, "My mouth will tell of Your salvation all day long, though I know not its measure." All of us infinitely underestimates what our salvation cost Jesus Christ. We underestimate the gravity of our sins and the holiness of God and the heat of His wrath, His righteous wrath, against us for our sins. We underestimate all of these things. Even if we've been Christians many years, even if we love Jesus, we underestimate what our salvation cost Jesus. 

This is a Good Friday observance. For myself, I was raised Roman Catholic, and Holy Week observances were a big part of my spiritual formation growing up.  I remember being an altar boy and doing something called the Stations of the Cross. We would go from place to place in our church. There were stained glass pictures of the final hours of Jesus' life, and there would be readings at each of those. We Baptist, I think, have rightly rejected the elaborate system of holy days and the holy year that was handed down from medieval Catholicism on even to the present day. Baptists  focus on Good Friday, on the death of Christ. Certainly here in this church, we preach Christ crucified every week. It's not a week that goes by that I don't mention the death of Christ for our sins, and it's as it should be. Yet, a Good Friday service like this gives us a chance to slow down, to pause, and to look at specific details connected with the death of Christ that ordinarily we wouldn't mention. This evening we're going to be looking at just some details from the death of Jesus from the gospel of John, chapter 19.

I want to assert right away how important in particular John's testimony is, John's account of the death of Christ, because he was an actual eyewitness of Jesus's death. He was the disciple whom Jesus loved. He was standing right there watching Jesus die. He adds some specific details to our knowledge of the death of Christ that we could have no other way. One of those details is the fact that the soldiers determined that Jesus was already dead, greatly to their surprise, but to confirm it, one of the soldiers drove a spear up into Jesus' side. When he did, blood and water came flowing out. John strongly emphasized this, and he strongly emphasized the eyewitness testimony that that happened. He underscores it in verse 35 of John 19. "The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. And he knows that he tells the truth and he testifies so that you also may believe." That's very serious words connected with this flow of blood and water. The reason this is so important, among other reasons, is that every aspect of Jesus's life, Jesus' death, and Jesus' resurrection from the grave are established in the gospels as historical fact. The role of eyewitness testimony is vital to that. Luke begins his gospel with these words: "Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated…” .  The reason Luke wrote his gospel based on careful investigation of the testimony of eyewitnesses is so that we would know the certainty of the things we have been taught. He means historical certainty, the accuracy of it. John in his epistle, 1 John 1:1, speaks of this also, his role as an eyewitness. "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched, this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. And we proclaim this eyewitness testimony so that you also may have fellowship with us and with God." So it's all based on eyewitness testimony. Peter writes the same thing in 2 Peter 1:16,  "We did not follow cleverly invented myths when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. But we were eyewitnesses of His majesty." Cleverly invented myths, skillfully woven fiction, Peter said, "We didn't do that." Jesus' life, His death, and His resurrection are not cleverly devised fables or myths. They're not fiction or even spiritual parables which when we read them are move or moved morally and spiritually to live a better life. No, that's not what the gospels are about. It's not what the New Testament is about. 

Some of you may have heard of a place called Narnia. It's a fantasy world crafted by an author named C. S. Lewis and written into his books called the Chronicles of Narnia, a fantasy world that four British children, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, reached through a wardrobe, a wooden closet where the clothes are kept. They go further and further back, and suddenly, they're in another world, Narnia. Readers of Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia can derive all kinds of spiritual benefit from the books, indeed they have for decades now. But I certainly hope all of you know it's fiction. It's absolutely cleverly invented myths, fables which are written for a spiritual purpose. The same thing with Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle-earth, with the Shire and Gondor and Mirkwood and Mordor, and all those places. They're all fantasy locations, and Aragorn and Gandalf and Frodo are fictitious characters. I hope you all know that. Some people are so into these worlds that they can forget, and it gets blurry. But they are cleverly invented fables, it's not true, but the accounts we have in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are based on eyewitness testimony. They're history, works of historical fact based on the sober testimony of eyewitnesses.  

As a matter of fact, the apostle Paul testifies concerning the resurrection of Christ from the dead that, "If Christ had actually not been physically raised from the dead," he said, "our preaching is useless, and so is your faith." In other words, if this whole thing that we're talking about tonight is a cleverly devised fable, you shouldn't have come here tonight. I shouldn't be up here talking. My preaching is useless, and so is your Christian faith. It's a strong statement. More than that, Paul says, "We have not been found to be false witnesses about God for we have testified about God that He raised Christ from the dead. It actually happened." And then a few verses later, "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, you're still in your sins, and those who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost." That's how important history is to Christianity. So it really matters whether or not Christ really lived, whether or not Christ really said and did the things the gospels record that He said and did; whether or not Christ really died on the cross, and whether or not Christ really actually rose from the dead. The gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are written based on the testimonies of eyewitnesses who saw Jesus personally. 

Over the centuries, many false teachers have arisen to trouble the church with questions about these very things. Early on there were some false teachers called docetists based on the Greek word “dokein”,  meaning “to seem”, that Jesus seemed human, but He really wasn't. Others raised questions about Jesus's death. Even in the 19th century and beyond, some devised something called the Swoon Theory that Jesus actually fainted on the cross, He just seemed dead. Some theologically liberal scholars have questioned the gospel records as faulty because they contain miracles. They look on them as religious myths. Scholars like a man named Rudolph Boltman tried to go through and demythologize the New Testament, strip it of all of its, clearly, obviously, mythological aspects, miracles, and embarked on the quest for the historical Jesus. Can I just shut that down right now? You want the quest for the historical Jesus, read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There's the historical Jesus. You don't have to go any further. It's all of it history based on eyewitness accounts, and that includes that of the apostle John in the account you just heard read, John 19. John was standing there, watched it happen, and he testified that it happened. Based on these gospel records, all four of them, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we have a strong sense of the truthfulness, the absolute certainty of what we have been taught. Jesus actually lived, fully God and fully human. Jesus actually died. He actually was dead on the cross. He literally died. The effusion of water and blood from His side proves it. Jesus actually rose from the dead, physically, bodily on the third day. Therefore, our sins are actually forgiven. We ourselves will actually be raised from the grave in bodies like Christ. We ourselves will actually live forever in heaven. That's how important this history is. Assurance, certainty, a sense of the certainty of the things you have been taught, that's what we get from meditating deeply on these  historical details. The account of these details gives us an intensification of our awareness of these truths. The account of Jesus' death in John 19 gives us that certainty. The evidence is that Jesus died at exactly the right time that day. I mean within seconds. He died at exactly the right time to fulfill prophecy, to fulfill the plan of salvation that God had made for sinners all over the world in every generation, even from before the foundation of the world. 

Certainly, there were events, human events that led up to His trial, His conviction, and His execution. Satan did in fact put it in Judas heart to betray Jesus, so Satan had a role. Judas Iscariot did, in fact, conspire with the chief priest and the teachers of the law to hand Jesus over to them. This he did by identifying Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane with a kiss. The chief priests and the teachers of the law and the Pharisees did, in fact, arrest Jesus. They did, in fact, bring Him to the house of Annas, the high priest, Annas and Caiaphas, did, in fact, condemn Jesus to death on the testimony... It all happened. They did, in fact, hand Jesus over to Pontius Pilate. Then they effectively pressured Pilate so that he would  finally give in to them and murder an innocent man, a man he knew was innocent. Pilate did, in fact, condemn Jesus to death, turn Jesus over to the soldiers who did, in fact, mock Him and flog Him, spit on Him and beat Him. All of that's true. And they did, in fact, lead Him away to Golgotha where they crucified Him by nailing His hands and His feet to the cross with two other men, two robbers, one on His right, the other His left. Yes, yes, yes, these human actors, all of them did these human things, and they are held accountable for what they did.  However, all of them were merely servants of almighty God carrying out a plan that had been crafted in the mind of God before the foundation of the world. Every one of those details had been planned out before God said, "Let there be light."  

Peter said this in his great Pentecost sermon in Acts 2,  "Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by signs and wonders and miracles, which God did among you through Him, as you yourselves know." 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, nailing Him to the cross.” Do you hear that? He was handed over to you by God, by God's set purpose and foreknowledge, carrying out a plan that had been crafted before the world began. They say the same thing a couple of chapters later in Acts 4. As the church is praying together, persecutions about to ramp up and they're getting ready for it by praying, this is what they said. "Indeed, Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against Your holy servant, Jesus, whom You anointed." They did what Your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. They couldn't be clearer. They were following a script, though they didn't know the script or know that they were following a script. The soldiers gambled for Jesus clothes so that Scripture would be fulfilled. The soldiers didn't get up that day saying, "I think we'll fulfill Scripture today by gambling for someone's clothes." They just gambled for clothes because they wanted them, but the Scripture says, "So this is what the soldiers did because that's what the prophecy said they should do." All of this was crafted in the mind of God before God said, "Let there be light." Before the foundation of the world, God determined to crush His Son to death to save sinners like you and me from hell. That's what God decided to do for us. He established prophecies through the Holy Spirit, and through prophets  so that we could identify, triangulate on this one person, of all the billions that have ever lived. This one man is the savior of the world. The prophecies identify Him.

One of the most important religious customs was animal sacrifice, which was established, I believe, in the Garden of Eden and then carried out multiple times with the patriarchs, Noah after the flood, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob; they all did animal sacrifice. Especially,  Moses at the time of the dreadful 10th plague, the plague on the first born, the night of the Passover when each Jewish family would set aside a lamb, a Passover lamb. There were certain stipulations about it, et cetera. But the laws in Exodus 12:46 about the Passover lamb was that not a single bone of the lamb would be broken. Exodus 12:46, "It must be eaten inside one house. Take none of the meat outside the house. Do not break any of the bones." The same thing in Numbers 9:11-12 about the Passover, "They are to eat the lamb together with uneven bread and not leave of it till morning or break any of its bones." When they celebrate the Passover, they must follow the regulations. Jesus died at just the right instant to fulfill this prophecy. The thing with crucifixion is it's designed for cruelty. It's a very cruel death, it's a very vicious death because there's nothing immediately killing the victims. They were known to linger for days on the cross. When Jesus was dead, Pilate was shocked that He was already dead. The Jewish authorities, because it was a Passover, it was a high Sabbath, they knew that action had to be taken on these three men or they would linger all night, and they didn't want them on the cross all night. So Jesus died just in the nick of time to avoid having His bones broken. He had the power to do this.

 Jesus uniquely had the power over  his life and his death. He said to Pilate, “The reason I entered the world was to testify to the truth.”  None of you can make such a statement. Why did you choose to be born? What was your purpose in entering the world? None of us can say that. We don't have any purpose, we're born. But Jesus chose to enter the world. In the same way, He chose to die. If He hadn't chosen to die, He would never have died. He said this plainly in John 10:17-18, "The reason My Father loves me is that I lay down my life only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have the authority to lay it down, and I have the authority to take it back up again. This command I receive from my Father." That's an utterly unique speech that only Jesus could make. "No one can kill me if I don't want to die, but I'm actually laying down my life." At just the right time, Jesus gave up His spirit and died. He gave up His spirit of His own choice.  John 19:28-30 says, "Later, knowing that all was now completed and so that the scripture will be fulfilled, Jesus said, 'I am thirsty.' A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it and put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant and lifted it to Jesus' lips. And when He had received the drink, Jesus said, 'It is finished.' And with that, He bowed His head and gave up His spirit."  None of us can do that. You can't just pillow your head on your chest and  die. But Jesus had that power to give up His spirit. If He had died even just a few moments later, His bones would've been smashed by the soldiers. It says in verse 31-33, "Now it was the day of preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jews did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have their legs broken and the bodies taken down. Soldiers, therefore, came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus and then those of the other. But when they came to Jesus and found that He was already dead, they did not break His legs." There was a clear Jewish law against leaving dead bodies on a tree overnight. Deuteronomy 21 says, "If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse. You must not desecrate the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance."  Jesus was under a curse by being hung on the cross. As Paul points out in Galatians, "He was made a curse for us. Because of our sins, we deserve to be cursed by God." Jesus took that curse on Himself. The Jewish legalists are trying to avoid the defilement of the Passover by allowing these dead bodies to remain on the tree overnight. The soldiers in conformity with this Jewish demand brought  probably a huge hammer, a mallet or something like that, smashed the legs of the first man, unspeakable cruelty, so that he couldn't push up. So also the other man, smashed his bones, probably sent the body into shock, greatly accelerated death because they couldn't push up, they couldn't breathe anymore, and soon they were dead. But the soldiers came to Jesus, and these were expert executioners, they knew He was dead. There's no doubt. They were surprised, I'm sure, because it's just a short time. But Jesus had fulfilled all the prophecies that He could while still alive, and He pillowed His head on His chest and gave up His spirit. And in this way, the prophecy was fulfilled, "Not a bone will be broken."

The actual physical cause of Jesus' death I think is more violent than we can possibly imagine. It is possible that when that soldier shoved the spear up into Jesus side and the blood and water flowed out, it gives evidence of a level of internal violence inside Jesus that is unspeakable beyond anything we could possibly comprehend. Verse 34 says, "One of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water." There's so much discussion about this blood and water, and there are many themes that one could pick up here. The hymn “Rock of Ages” by Augustus Toplady. "Rock of Ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. Let the water and the blood from thy wounded side which flowed be of sin the double cure, save me from wrath and make me pure." The blood taking away the wrath of God, the water cleansing as it speaks in the Book of Titus, being cleansed from our sins, so I think it's a valid meditation that Augustus Toplady does there. But I want to focus just on the significance of the blood and water physically. I was listening to a sermon by Martin Lloyd-Jones who before he was a preacher was a Royal physician, a doctor. He  cited research done by other medical experts that this flow of water and blood was evidence that Jesus died of a ruptured heart, that the actual muscle of Jesus' heart was shredded. There's reasons for this. It has to do with the pericardium and what happens after death and all that. I'm not a doctor,  I actually called a doctor friend as I was writing the sermon and he said, "We don't really know." So here I am saying I don't really know if Jesus died of a ruptured heart. But one thing I do know, when He was in Gethsemane, He was under such pressure that He sweat great drops of blue blood.  Luke 22:44 says, "And being in anguish, He prayed more earnestly and His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground." What in the world is going on there?  I believe that God revealed the cup to Him at levels and dimensions He had never seen before, and it knocked Him to the ground, and He was under intense mental, emotional, psychological, even physical anguish and pressure in Gethsemane. So much so that it seems, there's evidence, if He hadn't dispatched some angels to strengthen Him, He might have died right there. What could this be other than the wrath of God and the the relational separation, between Jesus and the Father as our sin-bearing substitute that pushed Him to a level of anguish and agony and grief that we can scarcely imagine. Jesus said in Mark 14:36, "Abba, Father, everything is possible for You. Take this cup from Me. Yet not what I will, but what You will." That cup represents the aggressive, pure, holy wrath of God that God feels rightly for all of the sins and violations of His holy laws that we have committed. That's the cup. Psalm 75:8, it says, "In the hand of the Lord is a cup full of foaming wine mixed with spices. He pours it out and all the wicked of the earth drink it down to its very dregs." That's the cup of God's wrath, judgment. Revelation 14:10 says, "He too will drink the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of His wrath."  

There is no man in history who understood the holy wrath of God better than the pure Son of God. Jesus experienced in a way we...  we use these expressions…, but with Jesus it's not just expression, Jesus experienced hell on earth for us. He drank hell for us so we wouldn't have to. It cost Him. It knocked Him to the ground in Gethsemane. It put blood coming out of His pores, and maybe it shredded His heart. I do know this, that the effusion of water and blood proved that it stopped His heart, so at least this much we can say, the flow of blood and water proves that Jesus was actually dead. He died for us. And why is that important? Because we deserve to die. We deserve death. The wages of sin is death. Isaiah 53 says, "Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered Him stricken by God, smitten by Him, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him. And by His wounds, we are healed. We're all like sheep who've gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all."  The soldier shoved this spear up into Jesus' side, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.  John testified, "The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe." Believe what? What are you supposed to believe? Well, in the immediate case, believe that Jesus was actually human and that He was actually dead, and that His death on the cross is an actual atonement for your sins. As Galatians 2:20 says, "I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live. But Christ lives in me. And the life that I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me." That's what you're supposed to believe, that Jesus' death was for you, that you deserved to die, but Jesus died in your place so that you would not have to drink that cup. 

Whether his heart was actually literally ruptured or not, his heart was stopped. He was killed because of our sins. He died. So what? So therefore, we should have a sense of obligation. We should, first of all, realize, if our sins did that to Jesus' body, how much should we hate sin? How much should we hate sin since that's what it cost Jesus? So therefore, we should have a sense of indebtedness to Jesus resulting in personal holiness. Paul makes that point in 1 Corinthians 6, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own, you have been bought at a price. Therefore, glorify God with your body." Do you know what that means, you're not your own, you've been bought and paid for? Jesus shed His blood for you. He owns you. Therefore, be holy. Here it's talking about sexual purity.

Also, we should realize that Jesus bought us and, therefore, we should live for others. We should witness to others. We should evangelize others. This is the very point that Paul makes in II Corinthians 5, "For Christ's love compels us because we're convinced that one died for all and, therefore, all died. And He died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again." There's an obligation we have. Because Jesus died for us, we should stop living for ourselves and live for Him and for others. The context there is evangelism, that we're ambassadors and that we should share the gospel with lost people. Personal holiness and evangelism, both of them flowing from a sense of indebtedness or obligation we have to Jesus.

I'll close with this story. Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf was a German nobleman born in the year 1700 into a life of ease and privilege. He was a good man in that sense, a moral man, a Christian, who was seeking to live a good life. But one day as a teenager, he was arrested by a powerful painting at an art museum in Dusseldorf. It was by Italian master Domenico Fetti, and it was called in the Latin, “Ecce homo”, which is what Pontius Pilate said, "Behold the man."  It depicted the crucified Christ in agony on the cross. At the bottom of the painting was this caption, "All this I have done for you. Now what will you do for Me?" He stood there looking at this painting and was dissolving in tears. He had a mystical powerful experience right there looking at that painting. He resolved that for the rest of his life he would serve Christ and serve others. He became the leader of the Moravians at Herrnhut. The Moravians were leaders in Protestant missions long before William Carey, sending missionaries to the West Indies. A tremendous movement of Moravians, all of it flowed from his commitment to Christ. "All this I've done for you. Now what will you do for me?" Christ's death does indeed pay our debts. So in that sense, we're free from debt. But there's a biblical sense in which we are indebted also. We're indebted to Christ; to live for Him who died for us and to live for others who need Him. As Isaac Watts put it so powerfully in his hymn, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” the final stanza, "Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine demands my soul, my life, my all." 

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank You for the chance we have tonight to meditate with more detail than usual on the death of Jesus for us. Help us to hate sin. Help us to love Christ more than we do. Help us to live for His glory more than we do. Help us to be willing to put sin to death because we've learned to hate sin because it cost Jesus all of that agony. Help us to know that we are forgiven in ways that are deeper and richer than we can possibly imagine. And Lord, help us to go again and again to the cross for the power to live for others. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Andy Davis preaches on John's eyewitness account of Jesus' crucifixion, establishing Jesus' life, death, and resurrection as historical facts.

The post The Overwhelming Death of Christ appeared first on Two Journeys.

In this episode, Wes and Andy discuss the workings and heart of the early church: the preaching of the gospel, and the self-sacrificial generosity of people.

The post Acts Episode 11: Powerful Church Life, Discipline for Sin appeared first on Two Journeys.

In the sermon on Mark 3: 7-19, Andy Davis expands on this summary of Jesus’ earthly ministry: the physical and spiritual healings; the evidence of Christ's deity; and the twelve apostles' call.

Turning your Bibles to Mark chapter 3, we continue our study in this incredible gospel. As we look at Christ’s powerful ministry just summarized, kind of a summary statement that the gospel of Mark gives us here. Throughout Jesus's ministry, he was surrounded daily by huge crowds, huge crowds crushing him, invading his personal space, demanding ministry from him, especially healings. Most of these people had, it seemed far less interest in his preaching, in his doctrine, than they did in getting their bodies healed or getting their stomachs full. Jesus knew their hearts better than they did. He knew that a mob is fickle, that nothing of lasting consequence happens by unruly self-focused crowds. A crowd, then a short time later, the crowd dissipates and it soon throngs after some other fad. Jesus himself personally thinned out such a crowd. In John chapter 6, right after the feeding of the 5,000, the people came back the next day for another physical feeding, and Jesus urged them to lift their eyes heavenward and also inward to the health of their souls. He said in John 6, "I tell you the truth. You're looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not labor for the food that spoils, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the son of man will give you." And they asked him, "What must we do to do the works that God requires?" Jesus answered, "The work of God is this, to believe in the one he has sent." Jesus wanted them to feed on a different kind of bread, to feed on his atoning work, his body and his blood given up for sinners, given up in death for the forgiveness of their sins. So in John 6, he turned up the heat and taught them this shocking statement. John 6:51, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." Oh, by the end of the day, that huge self-focused, worldly minded throng had been greatly thinned down. John 6:60 says, "On hearing it, many of his disciples said, ‘This is a hard teaching, who can accept it?’ And from that time on many of them no longer follow Jesus.” Jesus was not surprised by that. He did it on purpose, to thin down that crowd.

Now in the account we're looking at today, in Mark 3, we come to another throng, a massive pulsating crowd that was following Jesus, I think for similar reasons. We also come to a remarkably efficient summary of Jesus' earthly ministry. We have that huge crowd. They're desperate only for physical healing, not really aware of what their true needs were, the salvation of their souls. They represent the vast mission field of the world, the teaming millions of lost souls who need forgiveness far more than they need any earthly thing, more than they need physical healing, more than they need material prosperity, more than they need their stomachs filled with bread, more than they need any sensual pleasure or earthly blessing. Forgiveness of sins, reconciliation with almighty God, that's what they need. Teaming multitudes, crowds and crowds of people pressing in on Jesus, physically crushing him, wanting healing, and for the most part, it seems not anything more.

We also have in this account, terrorized demons who know the truth about Jesus and who are falling down before Jesus and are screaming right theology at Jesus, from their infinitely wicked beings, screaming at Jesus, "You are the son of God," and Jesus forbidding them to speak those holy words. They are the hidden enemies of the gospel of Christ, the hidden enemies of the advancing kingdom of Jesus Christ. The servants of Satan from whose dark kingdom, souls must be rescued from invisible chains that are holding them.

Thirdly, in this account, we have the calling of the twelve apostles, chosen by Christ to lead the worldwide advance of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Twelve ordinary men who change the future course of the world by the power of God and by the simple ministry of preaching the preached word. This chapter and this section that we're walking through today captures these basic elements that's going on even to this present day. This is how the kingdom of Christ is spread from a small upper room one day in one city in Jerusalem, and moved out even to the ends of the earth. By the time Jesus' ministry will have finished, by the time all the work is done, there will be a multitude greater than anyone could count from every tribe and language in people and nation, no longer a mindless pulsating, earthly minded crowd, but changed from a mindless earth focused mob to a glorious heavenly congregation. 

It begins with the mission field, crushing crowds needing healing. Look at verses 7-10. "Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lake and a large crowd from Galilee followed. And when they heard all that he was doing, many people came to him from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, and the regions across the Jordan and around Tyre and Sidon. Because of the crowd, he told his disciples to have a small boat ready for him to keep the people from crowding him, for he had healed many so that those with diseases were pushing forward to touch him." So Jesus withdraws. He withdraws to the sea with his disciples. Why? Well, it's because of the determination of his human enemies to kill him. Jesus had flouted the ironclad grip, the authority of the Pharisees in their legalism over the Sabbath. He'd allowed his disciples to pick heads of grain and rub them together in their hands and eat them on the Sabbath and defended it, and he defended it in shocking terms. He claimed to be the Lord of the Sabbath, something only God could say. No one else in history could ever make such a claim. " The Son of Man is Lord, even of the Sabbath," [Mark 2:28].

Then the next Sabbath, that seems the very next Sabbath in the next account in Mark's gospel, Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath with a shriveled hand in the synagogue. He did it right in front of men who are determined to catch him in some faults and find accusation, and accuse him and arrest him. He defended it with a clear question, Mark 3:4, "Which is lawful on the Sabbath, to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?" After healing this man, this was the reaction of his enemies in Mark 3:6, "The Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus." Verse 7, "Jesus withdrew, Jesus withdrew to the Sea of Galilee." It was not yet his time to be arrested and brought to trials,  it was too early for that. He works a strategic retreat, knowing the mind of his enemies, knowing what they intended, he retreats. He gets away from them, temporarily kind of turning the heat down under the pot, lest it boil over too soon. 

But along with this, we have a huge crowd following. By this time Jesus' reputation as a healer has spread far and wide. This was openly asserted in Mark's gospel, Mark 1:28, "News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee." A few verses later, Mark 1:32 says, "That evening after sunset, the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon possessed and the whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases." Later in chapter 1 after healing the leper, Jesus commanded him, "Remember not to tell anyone." Instead, the man went out and spread the news everywhere. In Mark 1:45, as a result, Jesus could no longer enter town openly, but stayed outside in lonely places, yet the people still came to him from everywhere, huge crowds thronging around Jesus. Then back home in Capernaum, in Mark 2 again, the word spread again, and crowds thronged so large that as you remember, the four friends bringing their paralyzed friend to Jesus, can't get close to Jesus, can't even get near him. They had to destroy the roof to get the paralyzed man down in front of Jesus. Mark, 2:2, "So many gathered. There was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them." So huge throngs. Again, Jesus healed the paralyzed man and linked it to his authority to forgive sins. “So that you might know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he said to the paralyzed man, ‘Rise and walk,’ and the man did. He took up his mat and went home.” 

The reaction is again huge. In Mark 2:13, a large crowd came to him and he began to teach them beside the lake. Then later at Levi's house, a huge crowd of tax collectors and sinners gathered, and there seemed to have been a massive revival there as many of them turned to faith in Christ, but again, a huge throng. So by the time we get to today's account, the news about Jesus as a healer is spread far and wide, and even larger crowds are coming. Look again, verses 7-10, "Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lake and a large crowd from Galilee followed." Verse 8, "When they heard all he was doing, many people came to him from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, and the regions that crossed the Jordan around Tyre and Sidon. Because of the crowd, he told his disciples to have a small boat ready for him to keep the people from crowding him for he had healed many, so that those with diseases were pushing forward to touch him."

We see the diversity of this huge crowd. They're from Galilee, his hometown, they're from Judea and Jerusalem, the Southern part of Israel.  Jews, no doubt hearing what Jesus was doing, wanting to come, then from Idumea and the regions across the Jordan around Tyre and Sidon, its listed there, it's a mixed crowd. Almost certainly many Gentiles are included at this point. The region of Idumea was Southwest of Judea, basically made up of Edomites, descendants of Esau, the Greek name for Edom. Tyre and Sidom were merchant cities, port cities, Gentile regions on the Mediterranean shore. The size of the crowds are huge and it's a mingled group, probably Jew and Gentile together. The text calls it a great multitude, and there's an urgency in the crowds. The people were crushing Jesus, they're pressing in on him. Remember that Jesus ordinarily liked to heal individually by touch. There's no account of Jesus doing mass healings, and so it seems like he did it one at a time, this real bottleneck where he wanted to interact with people, even to touch them. Sometimes people would be healed just by touching his garments, like the woman with the bleeding problem that we'll read about, God willing, later in Mark 5. Then again in Mark 6:56, it says, "Wherever he went into villages, towns or countryside, they placed the sick in the marketplaces and they begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched them were healed." This huge throng of people threatened to crush Jesus with their urgent needs, and it's pretty obvious what their motive is, pretty obvious what they want. They want physical healing. When you're hurting, when you're sick, when you're dying, when you're disabled, when you're crippled, blind, leprous, paralyzed, or a loved one is any of those things, it seems like there's nothing else you care about but having that pain alleviated, nothing else matters. 

And here's Jesus. Remember the elements of his healing ministry that we zeroed in on a number of weeks ago. Jesus' healing ministry was successful in every case, it was universal. There was no one he could not heal. There was no disease he couldn't address. It was effortless. His physical healings were effortless, instantaneous. People were healed instantaneously as though they had never had the malady at all. The leper skin is instantly restored. The man with the shriveled hand, it's like his hand was always working normal and fine. As I said, his healings were personal. He wanted an interaction with them. This is big. His healings were free, he didn't charge anything. He said to his disciples when he sent them out to heal, "Freely you oversee, freely give," and the healings were varied. He handled different cases, different ways. It was something different every time. That was Jesus' healing ministry. Their urgency bordered on rudeness, born from desperation, verse 10, "For he had healed many so that those with diseases were pushing forward to touch him." When the crowd is wanting to crush him, they're falling in on him, falling down in front of him, pulling on him, pleading with him, pulling on his garments. That's what it was like, desperate and sad people. Jesus, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering, drinking in all of that misery as if absorbing it like a sponge into himself. It was difficult for him and his disciples to do anything normal, for him to eat or rest, or take a break, or do anything. It was impossible.

Jesus' priority in all of this as we've seen is his preaching ministry. The disciples, the followers of Jesus, they knew. They were there for more than the healing. Maybe they'd been healed already. They weren't there for healing. They weren't there for feeding. They were there because they wanted to hear the word of God. They hungered for the word of God. They knew that no man spoke like this man. No one had ever taught like Jesus and they wanted it. They wanted to drink that in, and this was definitely Jesus' priority as well. All of the healings, as spectacular as they were, all of them were temporary. And there's no promise that some other malady or some other injury might not come to you next week or next month or next year, we're still under the curse of Adam. We're still under the curse of misery and sin and death. All the healings were temporary, though they were real healings. The preaching of the word of the kingdom was the essential. That was the healing needed by all these sinners, though their felt needs made them desperate, their felt needs made them come. Jesus knew their true need was the ministry of the word. He commanded his disciples to get a boat ready for him. Look at verse 9, "Because of the crowd, he told his disciples to have a small boat ready for him to keep the people from crowding him." Sitting out on a little boat in the lake gave Jesus the twin benefit of some space, physical space away from the crowd, keeping the crushing crowds at bay, and it also facilitated preaching through the acoustics, the sound reverberating off the surface of the water. More people could hear him preach, and we're going to see that again in the next chapter, chapter 4.

All right. So that's the crowd. Let's talk about the enemies, the seething demons needing restraining. Look at verse 11 and 12, "Whenever the evil spirit saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, 'You are the son of God,’ but he gave them strict orders not to tell who he was." Again, the demons, again, the unclean spirits. This has already been a big theme in Mark's gospel, and it's going to continue to be. Demons are spiritual beings, they're fallen angels or rebellious angels. Here in the text they are called unclean spirits. They're filthy, they're vile spiritually, they're polluted. They're morally dark beings, twisted in their inner beings, and Jesus's authority over them is strong evidence of his deity and the power of his kingdom. Not only did Jesus rule over the physical realm over every disease and sickness among the people. He also ruled effortlessly over demons, over the spiritual realm, the supernatural realm, for every demon was terrified of Jesus. They're terrified of him, which I find greatly encouraging. Don't you? How terrified demons are of Jesus. I just want to hide behind Jesus; just get behind him because the demons that are still active, though we don't see them, they didn't retire after Jesus ascended to heaven, but they're still invisibly active doing their mischief, but they're terrified of Jesus in these gospel accounts. They fall down before him. They clearly acknowledge his power over them. They have no recourse but to beg for his mercy in many cases. What are they afraid of? They're afraid of him and they're afraid that he's going to torture them before the appointed time. They fully expect to be tortured in the lake of fire. None of them are in the lake of fire now, no being is. That's in the future, but there is this place called the pit, Tartarus, or the abyss, that is a place of demonic torture, or torture of demons, and they're afraid of it. So we have in Luke 8:31, "They begged him repeatedly not to order them to go into the abyss." The word just literally means “bottomless”, it's a place of torment. II Peter 2:4 says, "For if God didn't spare angels when they sinned, demons, but threw them down into Tartarus, and deliver them to be kept in chains of darkness until judgment." These demons have freedom to roam and cause mischief, and they're afraid that they're going to lose that freedom, and they're going to be tortured before the final punishment that they certainly will have, so they cry out before him. They're shouting, yelling, screaming. They're unruly and seething, churning rebels, no peace, no serenity, nothing but seething rage, but they get their theology right.

Their doctrine is right about Jesus. They shout out, "You are the son of God." They have no doubt whatsoever about his identity. Earlier, the demon in the synagogue of Carpenium had said, "I know who you are. The holy one of God,” testifying to Jesus' perfect moral purity as sinlessness. They knew he had never sinned. Later in Mark 5, the demoniac of the Gerasenes, legions of demons will say this, he shouts at the top of his voice, "What do you want with me Jesus, son of the most high God? Swear to God that you won't torture me." They're so afraid of Jesus, but they're getting the theology right. James talks about this in James 2:19,  "You believe that there is one God, good. Even the demons believe that and they shutter." So they get their doctrine right and they're terrified.  Jesus silences these demons, verse 12, “He gave them strict orders not to tell who he was.” They're on a gag order, they're silenced by the sovereign power of Jesus. They're not allowed to talk about him. Why is that? They're saying the right things, but Jesus does not want demons as his mouth pieces. He doesn't want demons as his representatives, so he silenced them. He's going to send out the apostles to preach. They're going to be his official representatives and so also the entire church.

So we come now to them, the messengers, ordinary men who are appointed. Look at verse 13-15, "Jesus went up on a mountain side and called to him those he wanted and they came to him. He appointed twelve, designating them apostles, that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons." This is Jesus' long range plan. While demons were forbidden from speaking his name and his kingdom, the twelve apostles would be commissioned to do precisely that and to proclaim in Jesus name, the forgiveness of sins. These apostles would at the human level be the foundation of the church that would come. Paul says in Ephesians 2:20 and 21, “The church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord." That's built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets it says. These apostles were sovereignly called, appointed by Jesus. 

He went up on a mountain side. Well, why is that? As usual, it was a place of isolation for him, a place of prayer, a place where he could have intimate fellowship with God. He went away from the throngs to pray. Luke 6 tells us at that time, he spent the whole night in prayer. He spent all night in prayer, Luke 6:12 and 13, "One of those days, Jesus went out on a mountainside to pray, and he spent the night praying to God. And then when morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them whom he also designated apostles." He spends the night in prayer, I find this convicting. If the perfect and pure son of God needed time in prayer before making a vital decision, how dare we be prayerless before the big decisions of our lives? How dare we say effectively by our prayerlessness, "I got this one, God. I know what to do.”? When we're weak, then we're strong when we take it to the Lord in prayer. The Lord spent all night and then conferring with his father, he chose the men he wanted and he's summoned them by name to come to him. John 10:3 says, "My sheep listened to my voice.”  The sheep listened to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. John 10:27, "My sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me." He calls them and they come to him, and he appoints twelve. He designates them to be apostles. These men could not take such an honor upon themselves. It was not for them to call themselves apostles, but they had to be chosen and identified, and designated by Christ for this role.  Jesus said to the twelve in John 15:16, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last."

 Jesus' choice of them was most certainly based on his knowledge of them, his knowledge of their hearts and in what they would become. Out of all the crowd that was following him, he knew all of them, all of them individually and perfectly. Remember the account at the end in John chapter 1, where he meets a man named Nathaniel. When Jesus saw Nathaniel approaching, he said of him, "Now here is a true Isralite in whom there is no guile. He is exactly what he appears to be, there's no deception in this man." Nathaniel had never met Jesus before and he said, "How do you know me?" And Jesus said to Nathaniel, "Before Philip called you while you were sitting under the fig tree, I saw you. That's how I know you. That's how I know you have no guile in you. I saw you." He is the one who has eyes of blazing fire and feet of burnished bronze. He sees us and knows us, and Nathaniel's blown away. He said, "Rabbi, you're the son of God. You're the king of Israel." Jesus said, "Because I told you I saw you under the fig tree you believe, that I'm the son of God, the king of Israel. You're going to see greater things than that. You're going to see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” What a great first conversation to have with Jesus, but the core of it is, “I saw you and I know you.”

Negatively, the same thing with the teaming crowd, that pulsating crowd, he saw them and knew them too. At the end of the next chapter in John's gospel, John 2: 23-25 says, "Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast. Many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name, but Jesus would not entrust himself to them because he knew all man. And he did not need man's testimony about man for he knew what was in a man." 

Before he chose his twelve apostles, he didn't do references. He didn't call up the references. "Can you tell me more about Peter? What kind of man is he?" It'd be an interesting conversation, but he conferred with his Father and he made this choice. Now these twelve, all of them are sinners. They're quite an interesting lot, aren't they? Don't you praise God for how messed up these men were?  They're faithful, it’s true, but they also constantly just didn't get it. We're going to walk with them through some of their trials. They're ordinary men, nothing special about them in that respect, sinners saved by grace. But by the power of the spirit, these apostles would turn the world upside down for Christ. They would be world-changing men. There were twelve of them, not an accident that there were twelve. The number should call to mind the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve patriarchs of the nation of Israel. This was to be the new Israel, a nation of believers. They were designating apostles, which means “sent ones”, emissaries, ambassadors sent out from the king, and he would commission them that they should go out into all the world. He said in John 20:21, "As the father has sent me, even so I am sending you." They're sent ones, they're apostles. At the end of this gospel that we're studying, Mark 16:15-16, "He said to them, 'Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. Whoever does not believe will be condemned." That's the commission they're going to be sent out to.

There are two aspects of his ministry. He appointed twelve, designated them apostles, that they might number one, be with him. Then number two, that he might send them out to preach and have authority to drive out demons. So first, they had to be with him. They had to live with him, walk with him, observe him, learn from him. They would eat with him. They would suffer persecution with him. They would listen to how he interacted with other people, with the rich and the poor, with the powerful and the weak, with women, with children, with the Pharisees and Sadducees, with tax collectors and sinners, and lepers and Roman centurions and their servants, and synagogue rulers and their daughters. They would see all of these things. And yes, they would learn by example, how to live, how to pray, how to do all those things. But they also were like little mini camcorders, just recording the things that happened. They were eyewitnesses and based on their testimony, do we know anything about Jesus of Nazareth at all? The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all of them are based on the eyewitness testimony of the apostles. Jesus said this to the twelve in John 15:27, "You also must testify for you have been with me from the beginning. You were there when all those things happened, you were eyewitnesses." Luke is not one of the apostles, but he wrote his gospel based on apostolic testimony. Luke said in Luke 1:1-2, "Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word." So we have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John based on the eyewitness account of the apostles, or again, as John the apostle said in 1 John, 1:1, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at, and our hands have touched, this we proclaim concerning the word of life." Everything's based on historical fact. It's based on things actually having occurred in space and time. These ordinary men would be charged with being the witnesses to the son of God. Then they would be sent out to preach and have authority to drive out demons, and by these means, Christ would build his worldwide kingdom. 

What were their names? They're very familiar to us. Look at verse 16-19. These are the twelve he appointed: Simon, to whom he gave the name Peter, James son of Zebedee and his brother, John, to whom he gave the name Boanerges which means sons of thunder, Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, son of Alphaeus, Thaddeus, Simon the zealot, and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him. In all the lists of the twelve apostles, Simon Peter is always listed first. The name Peter is a nickname, “Rock”. He was a natural born leader. He was impetuous, occasionally a “speak first, think later” kind of person, but he also would be the first to testify among the twelve that Jesus was the Christ, the son of God. He would have to be deeply humbled of his pride, broken down by God, and then built back up and restored by Christ, and then used in a mighty way on the day of Pentecost to preach that sermon that led to the conversion of 3,000 people, Simon Peter.

Then you've got James and John, brothers, sons of Zebedee, called the Sons of Thunder because of I think their boldness in wanting to call down fire on a Samaritan village that would not let Jesus pass through, like modern-day Elijah, "Lord, do you want us to call down fire on that Samaritan village?" Jesus rebukes them, but he also gives them this nickname, “Sons of Thunder”.  James was the first of the twelve to be martyred, beheaded by wicked King Herod. John would write five books in the New Testament, including the priceless gospel of John, and the incomparable book of Revelation, the close of the cannon, and then his three epistles, first, second, and third John, and he's known as the apostle of love. An amazing work that God did in John to transform him in that way, but these three, Peter, James, and John were the inner circle of the twelve. They were the ones that were selected and went with Jesus up on the Mount Transfiguration.  They were the ones who are called apart from the other twelve to be with him in Gethsemane, and to be with him in his final hours on earth, Peter, James, and John, the inner circle.

Then you've got Andrew, Peter's brother. He was known for constantly bringing people to Jesus. Everywhere he is, he's bringing people to Jesus. Wouldn't it be great to be an Andrew in our present day? Then there's Philip from Bethsaida, same hometown as Peter and Andrew. He was the one that would say, "Show us the father and it's enough for us,” when Jesus would say, "Don't you know me Philip, even after I've been with you all this time?" Then you've got Bartholomew, who was led to follow under the influence of Philip in John 1:45. Most likely, many scholars think that he was Nathaniel. Don't know for sure, but it's quite possible, the very Nathaniel I was talking about earlier was indeed Bartholomew. Then you've got Matthew, also known as Levi the tax collector, who we were introduced to a few weeks ago. Then you've got Thomas, called the twin. He's very famous, isn't he? The doubting Thomas.  He missed the bodily appearance of Jesus raised from the dead, and said, "Unless I put my finger in the nail marks and put hand in the side, I will not believe in the resurrection." A week later, Jesus came and gave him the privilege that he wouldn't give to any of us, which is of actually touching the body, the resurrected body of Jesus. And why is that? Because he's one of the twelve, he's an eyewitness. Jesus said, "Go ahead and do it. Touch my wounds, touch my body, touch me and see. The spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see, I have." Then he said, "Stop doubting and believe," and Thomas did. He said, "My Lord and my God,” and Jesus said, "Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet to believe." 

And there's James, son of Alphaeus, very little is known about him. You got Thaddeus, very little is known about him, we’ll find out in heaven. There's some traditional stories about them, but not in scripture. Then you have Simon the Zealot, all we know is the zealot. That would be he's very nationalistic,  a Jewish man who hated Roman domination of the Jews in their own promised land, and who without the grace of God would probably have wanted to kill Matthew the collaborating tax collector, but instead they were brothers in the gospel, Simon the zealot. Then always, in all the lists of the twelve apostles, Judas Iscariot comes last and always, he's identified as the traitor, the one who betrayed Jesus, and that was no surprise to Jesus. Jesus knew him like he knew every man. He says at the end of that account in John 6 that I began this sermon with, when all those people are going away, he said to the twelve, "You don't want to leave too, do you?" And Peter said, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." Then Jesus said this, "Have I not chosen you the twelve, and yet one of you is a devil?" Not “one of will become a devil later”, “one of you is a devil right now." These are the twelve, and isn't it amazing that Jesus could change the world through twelve such ordinary men as this? If God can use them, he can use each of us. 

Briefly, let's take some lessons from this. First of all, isn't it going to be exciting to see the huge crowds, the throngs of self-focused, focused selfish people transformed up in heaven to passionate, eternal worshipers of the glory of Christ? That's the work that goes on, frankly, in each one of us. We come to God with selfish motives, and we're transformed to thinking higher ways. We're transformed to care more about our souls than we do of our bodies. Isn't it marvelous that the miracles that Jesus did, the accounts that we read about are foundational to our faith?   I love this, John 20, "Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this gospel, the gospel of John. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God. And by believing, you may have life in his name.” My faith gets strengthened every time I read these accounts of Jesus' miracles. I don't need him to heal me physically. I don't need him to heal my loved ones physically. I pray for it. I yearn for it, and so we should, and we have prayed for each other through the COVID era and through other occasions. There have been chances to trust God for healing, but whether he does or doesn't, Jesus has done enough to convince me that he's the son of God and that I can trust in him for the salvation of my soul, because foundationally, I'm convinced the real healing that I need and that all of you need is spiritual, not physical.  Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick, I've not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”[ Luke 5:31,32]. 

Next, as I already said, let's celebrate Jesus' absolute power over demons. They're still active. You can't see them, but how many of your headaches and your depressions, and your discouragements, and your temptations, and the bigger things in your life are mediated to you by the malevolent power of demons. We underestimate, all of us underestimate them, but we're told in Ephesians 6, "Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.” Let's be strong in Jesus, the triumphant powerful king of the kingdom of heaven. Be strong in the Lord and his mighty power. Let's put on the full armor of God so that we can take our stand against the devil's schemes, “for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark age, and against the spiritual force of evil in the heavenly realms." Those are demons, friends, and they're opposed to us. So let's rejoice and delight in Jesus' absolute power over demons.

Then finally, let's delight in these twelve ordinary men who preached a simple gospel. Just think this week, if Jesus can use Peter, he can use me. If Jesus can use Thaddeus, of whom we know nothing, he can use me. All you have to do is speak the words of the gospel. The same gospel that saved you, that God sent his son into the world to live a sinless life, to die an atoning death on the cross, to shed his blood for sinners like you and me, and God raised him from the dead on the third day, and by repentance and faith in Jesus, our sins forgiven. We get to proclaim that message this week. Let's go ahead and invite people to church and say, "We're going to be celebrating the resurrection victory of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ."

Close with me in prayer. Father, as we turn our attention now to the Lord's supper, we thank you for the feeding that we've already had. We thank you for the simplicity and the truth of the word of God, the gospel of Mark. And father, I pray that you would sustain and strengthen us, not just by the ministry of the word, but now mysteriously and powerfully by the ordinance of the Lord's supper. And we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

A summary of Jesus’ earthly ministry: physical and spiritual healings; the evidence of Christ's deity; and the twelve apostles' call.

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The Sanhedrin, unable to refute the incredible miracle done by Peter and John, and afraid of the people’s reactions, commands the apostles to stop speaking in the name of Christ.

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Peter and John are arrested for preaching Jesus Christ and His resurrection. The next day, at their trial, Peter gives an incredibly bold defense of their healing in Jesus’ name.

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Pastor Andy Davis unfolds Revelation 10, pointing us to the reality of God’s glory in both the physical and spiritual realms. 

Father, we bow before your throne of grace, acknowledging that apart from you, we can do nothing. And Lord, we desire that this time be richly blessed, but we know that it'll only be blessed if you send forth your Holy Spirit, the same spirit that inspired John so many centuries ago to write the Book of Revelation. Be with us now to interpret it and to apply it to our hearts. We pray in Jesus name, amen. 

Turning your Bibles to Revelation chapter 10 to continue your incredible study in this book. The Book of Revelation, the apocalypses, the unveiling, pulls back the veil between the physical and spiritual world like no other book of the Bible. Now that veil is pulled back and as we peer into the invisible spiritual world, we can see more things there than we could possibly have conceived with our unaided imaginations. Certainly the most significant reality that we can see by the Book of Revelation is the glory of God. The triune God, God the Father seated on a throne of glory. God the son, Jesus Christ, pictured as a high priest robed and walking through the seven golden lamp stands and also as a lion, ready to roar out with power, as a lamb looking as if it had been slain. And God, the Spirit pictured as a sevenfold lamp stand blazing with the fire of holiness and of truth. The triune God is a central reality of the invisible spiritual realm that surrounds us every moment and no book of the Bible so powerfully reveals the hidden nature of God's glory like the Book of Revelation.

But that's not all that the Book of Revelation unveils about the spiritual realms, for there are awesome created beings that we would never have known about if we did not read them in this book and that includes beings we commonly call angels. We're going to look today at a mighty angel that brings a scroll to the apostle John. The context here is that the apostle John is on the island of Patmos off the coast of modern day Turkey, exiled by the Roman empire for his bold faithfulness in preaching the gospel. On that tiny rocky barren island the apostle John was worshiping by the spirit on the Lord's day, and he had a vision of Christ ministering to the seven churches. Christ entrusted through John letters to those seven churches that make up Revelation 2 and 3. Then John is commanded by Christ himself to ascend through the sky, through a doorway open for him in heaven to learn about the future. John was empowered, supernaturally empowered by the spirit, to ascend in a vision. He passed through that doorway into the heavenly realms, and immediately saw a throne in heaven with someone seated on it, the central reality of the universe. That throne is a throne of almighty God, the father, the creator and ruler and sustainer of the entire universe. God, the creator is worshiped in heaven in Revelation 4 by the twenty-four elders and by four living creatures and by a hundred million angels. In the right hand of God, there is a scroll sealed with seven seals and Jesus steps forward, the lion of the tribe of Judah, looking like a lamb that had been slain.  Christ alone has proven to be worthy, Christ alone worthy to take the scroll and to break open its seals. When he had taken the scroll, all of heaven breaks out in cascading worship of Christ the Redeemer. Revelation 5, celebrating Christ the Redeemer whose blood purchase for God, people from every tribe and language and people and nation. Then Jesus began breaking open those seven seals, one after the other and as He did, events began unfolding on earth. The four horsemen of the apocalypse bring false peace and war, famine and death. The martyrs who were slain would be slaughtered for the word of God under the altar crying out for vengeance. And with the sixth seal, the end of the physical universe. At the end of chapter 6 the terror-filled inhabitants of the Earth seek refuge and they cry out. The great day of the wrath of God and of the Lamb has come and who shall be able to stand? Who shall be able to stand in the day of God's wrath?  Revelation 7 answers that question. The redeemed are able to stand in the day of God's wrath. The redeemed sealed from every tribe of Israel and from every nation on the faiths of the earth, a multitude greater than anyone could count from every tribe and language and people and nation are able to stand in the day of wrath. Then the lamb breaks open the seventh seal, which gives way to the seven trumpets and the first six of these seven trumpets sound in Revelation 8 and 9, resulting in terrifying judgements on the vegetation. Green growing things, on the oceans, on the fresh water, on the sun, the moon and the stars, a demonic hoard is unleashed to torment the people like a plague of locusts and scorpions. A demonic army of 200 million to slaughter one third of the Earth's population. 

So we come to Revelation 10,  and before the seventh trumpet sounds a vision of a mighty angel and a little scroll, and the recommissioning of the prophet John to speak future words of sweetness and bitterness that we desperately need to hear and even to eat. Listen now to Revelation 10, "Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven and he was robed in a cloud with a rainbow above his head and his face was like the sun. And his legs were like fiery pillars. He was holding a little scroll which lay open in his hand and he planted his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land. And he gave a loud shout like the roar of a lion. And when he shouted the voice of the seven thunders spoke. And when the seven thunders spoke, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven say, 'Seal up what the seven thunders have said and do not write it down.’ Then the angel I had seen standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to heaven, and he swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created the heavens and all that is in them, the Earth and all that is in it and the sea and all that is in it and said, 'There will be no more delay.' But in the days when the seventh angel is about to sound his trumpet, the mystery of God will be accomplished, just as he announced to his servants, the prophets. Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me once more, 'Go, take the scroll that lies open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.' So I went to the angel and asked him to give me the little scroll. He said to me, 'Take it and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, but in your mouth, it will be as sweet as honey.' I took the little scroll from the angel's hand and ate it. It tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour. Then I was told, 'You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, languages and kings.'"

So we begin in our exposition with the mighty angel described in verses 1-4. Who are angels? What does this word mean? The word literally means “messenger”.  Angels are created spiritual beings who have not a physical experience or existence as we do,  no birth, no aging, no death. There are spirits, not flesh and blood. There are good angels who obey constantly the will of God, and then there are wicked angels called demons led by their wicked king, Satan. Their activity in the Bible throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament is in some sense, summed up in Hebrews 1:14, "Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?"

What are the benefit of studying angels in scripture? First, understanding more of the complexity of the invisible spiritual realm that God has made. Secondly, knowing how protected we are, that angels fight for us and they keep us from being tempted and they keep us from being attacked beyond what we can bear. And thirdly, they give us servants of God to imitate in their passionate prompt, heartfelt obedience, so that we can fulfill the statement we constantly make in the Lord's prayer, “may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The angels are the ones obeying God in heaven. All right fine, but what are the dangers of focusing on angels? Many false depictions, artistic depictions of angels drive me crazy.  I mean, you've seen these pictures. Are there any female angels in the Bible? I don't know. There may be one in Zachariah, a couple in Zachariah, but other than that, no. It seems like they might be warriors, but they're always depicted either as little babies that need a diaper change or beautiful women with flowing hair. But in any case, the problem is starting with the artist's own imagination and not with scripture. People are tempted to worship angels for their glory. Even John was tempted to do this twice at the end of the Book of Revelation and Satan zeros in on this, and even as we are told, Satan masquerades as an angel of light [ II Corinthians 11:14].  All of the false religions in the world are propped up by demons who are god and goddess impersonators because those who worship idols are really worshiping demons and that's the danger here.

How are angels especially active in the Book of Revelation?  Seventy-three of the 188 mentions of angels in the New Testament are found in the Book of Revelation. That's a huge percentage, since Revelation is all about the unveiling of the invisible spiritual realms. It's not surprising at all that angels figure so prominently in this incredible book. Angels are depicted around the throne of God, worshiping him continually. This is the most powerful activity and delight of angels. Angels are directly active in the Book of Revelation in unleashing the wrath of God on the Earth. For example, in Revelation 8 and 9, angels sound the seven trumpets bringing terrifying judgements on the Earth. Later Revelation 16 shows angels pouring out bowls of God's wrath on the Earth and celebrating his justice in what He's doing. Perhaps the most important role of angels up to this point in redemptive history has been their activity in delivering the word of God to the people of God, something we generally don't think about. We do believe as evangelicals in the inspiration of the scripture by God through the Holy Spirit, but angels are depicted in some sense as messengers or deliverers of the Word of God to Earth.  For example, in Revelation 1, an angel was tasked to bring the Book of Revelation itself to John. The law of Moses, it says was put into effect through angels, both Paul and Steven tell us this. Angels carry messages from God to the prophets, and that's exactly what this angel is doing here in Revelation 10. He's carrying a prophetic message in the form of a scroll to John. There is also, I believe a clear parallel between this incredible chapter Revelation 10 `and Daniel chapter 10. If you remember in Daniel, Daniel's a prophet and God sent an angel, a mighty angel to bring him a revelation of the future of Israel of what would happen and it's depicted in Revelation 11 on into chapter 12, or Daniel 11 on into Daniel 12. This angel is so overpoweringly glorious that Daniel's on the ground laid out unable to breathe. It knocked him to the ground in terror.

We get that same kind of glory here with this angel, look at verse 1-3, “Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven. He was robed in a cloud with a rainbow above his head and his face was like the sun, and his legs were like fiery pillars. And he was holding a little scroll, which lay open in his hand. And he planted his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land and he gave a loud shout, like the roar of a lion.” The text describes him as “another mighty angel”, in other words, he's like some of the other incredible angels John has already seen so far in his vision. John describes him as mighty, he is powerful, a warrior able to make war. He's coming down from heaven. This means John is now no longer in heaven in his visions, but he's back down on Earth and the angel comes down to where he is. He is robed in a cloud. Often in the Bible, clouds represent the impending judgment, the wrath and judgment of God, the storm clouds of God's judgment,  yet there is a rainbow above his head, above the head of the angel. This of course, hearkens back to end of the flood in God's promise. His face was like the sun, again, the sense of a radiant brilliant heavenly light. Angels shine like the sun and glory. His legs are like fiery pillars. This must remind us of the pillar of fire that protected Israel from Pharaoh's army and then led Israel through the Red Sea and through the desert. He's holding a little scroll laying open in his hand. The delivery of the scroll is the purpose, the focus of the entire vision. It is his reason for coming down from heaven to interact with John. It is called “little” but it's impact on the world is incalculable. It's like the relationship between a tiny mustard seed and a vast tree that grows from it. How can we calculate the impact of the revelation that the angel came to deliver to John? By contrast, the prophet, Daniel was told to seal up several of his visions for the future,  their meanings would be hidden until the time came. Daniel 12:4 says, "But you Daniel, close up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end." I believe there are details in the book of Daniel that would be unintelligible unless you're living through what's going on there, and so it's sealed up until the time of the end.

Now in this open scroll here in Revelation 10 lays the revelation of the mysteries that God will only grant through his prophet at the end of the world. Look at verse 7, "In the days when the seventh angel is about to sound his trumpet, the mystery of God will be accomplished, just as he announced to his servants, the prophets." The vision is about God granting the revelation of the final mysteries of God to the human race through the prophet John. Beyond the scroll, the angel takes a mighty stance on the surface of the earth, look at verse two and three. He planted his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land and he gave a loud out like the roar of a lion. So this stance is like one of a mighty warrior on the battlefield who cannot be moved from his position. John tells us that his right foot is in the sea, his left foot on the land. I don't know why the right and the left foot are signified. If I can just say for all expositors, especially of the Book of Revelation, it's good to say “I don't know.”  You don't have to say it after me, but just learn to say “I don't know.”  When you don't know, say “I don't know,” so I don't know why the right foot, then the left foot. I have no idea, but it's told to us. It does give us however, a sense of this warrior angel's mighty power, but also the sense that the message he comes to bring encompasses the entire surface of planet earth. It will affect all the creatures of the heavens, for the angel’s head reaches to the clouds and his face is like the sun. It will affect all the creatures of the Earth where his left foot is, and on the sea, where his right foot is. The Word of God, small as it may seem in his hand, is more permanent than any of them, “for heaven and earth will pass away, but God's word will never pass away.” This angel voice also is like the roar of a lion, the overpowering might of God in his unbreakable word.

 Then comes the seven thunders and the limitation of the revelation, look at verse 3 and 4, “When he shouted, the voices of the seven thunders spoke. And when the seven thunders spoke, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven, say seal up what the seven thunders have said and do not write it down.” We don't know what the voices of the seven thunders are. Perhaps they're other mighty angels whose voice sounds like thunder. They say certain things that it seems are intelligible. John, he understands them, but he's forbidden from writing them down, they're sealed up. They're not given to the human race. Like what happened with the apostle Paul when he was caught up to paradise. It says in II Corinthians 12:4, "He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell." In other words, he can't put them into words and he’s not allowed to try, but that work was somewhat given to John and not to Paul to describe heaven. Thus, there are some mysteries that God will reveal to the human race, then there are others He will not reveal to us. And so we have in Deuteronomy 29:29, "The secret things belong to the Lord, our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever." 

Now, I believe as I've written in my book on heaven, there'll be no secrets in heaven. Everything that God has ever thought about the unfolding of redemptive history will be made plain to us in due time in heaven. Now that's the heavenly education. I could easily lurch off into that right now and I'd love to do it, but I'm going to stick to Revelation 10. Right now there are many things that have not been revealed to us, they're secret. In verse 5-7, we have the message from the angel. We could sum it up in one phrase, “There'll be no more delay.” No more delay, that's what we're talking about but he takes a solemn oath. Look at verse 5-6, "Then the angel I had seen on the sea and one the land raised his right hand to heaven and he swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created the heavens and all that is in them, the Earth and all that is in it, and the sea and all that is in it and said, 'There will be no more delay.'" We have this angel in this powerful stance, he raises his right hand to heaven and takes an oath. This is an oath stance. The taking of this oath is for the purpose of giving a sense of absolute certainty to John. "Oaths are taken and they give certainty," the Book of Hebrews tells us that. He swears by the eternal God, the God who lives forever, whose kingdom never changes. He swears by the creator God, the king of all creation. The text looks at all the spheres of creation, heaven, Earth, and the sea in it, extending to all the creatures that dwell in those spheres. The God who made the heavens and all that is in them, the God who made the Earth and all that is in it. The God who made the sea and all that is in it. This is the God of the universe. The God of all creation. The angel saying, "By him, I swear. I promise." What do you swear? Verse 6, there'll be no more delay. The unfolding of the plan of God seems so slow to us, doesn't it? As we go through it, we're forever asking, “ How long, oh Lord?” I mean honestly, even the angels long to know the answer to this. In Daniel chapter 12, one of the angels asked that very question, Daniel 12:6, "How long will it be before these astonishing things are fulfilled?" We see the martyrs under the altar in the fifth seal asking the very same question. They're in heaven and they're asking in Revelation 6, “How long Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the Earth and avenge our blood? How long will it be until we're avenged?” Then they're told to wait a little longer, but there will come a time when human history will come to an end, rapidly even. Now this is in the middle of the seven trumpets. 

The next thing that will be in the Book of Revelation is the sounding of the seventh trumpet, so we should effectively transport ourselves in our minds and our hearts to that point in history. All of these events have happened, including the terrifying ecological plagues described in Revelation 8. Then the even more terrifying, demonic plagues described in Revelation 9. That when those things have happened, the time will be very short indeed, at that point, very short. Jesus himself said in Matthew 24:22, "If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, the Lord has shortened them." So what is the significance of this promise? Those days will be so severe, so terrible, so terrifying that it will be vital for the people of God to know that they will not last very long. I actually think this is what the counting of the days, the mysterious counting of the days at the end of the book of Daniel is all about. They're just not going to last long, and the people living through it will need to know how long. There's a mysterious counting of the days that we can't understand, but they'll know exactly what that's about, and so the mystery of God in those days finally will be accomplished.  Look at verse 7, "But in the days when the seventh trumpet is about to sound or the seventh angel is about to sound his trumpet, the mystery of God will be accomplished just as he announced to his servants the prophets."

 When you get to that point in redemptive history, it's not going to be very much longer. The mystery of God will be fulfilled. Now what is that? The mystery of God is his plan for redemption. It is God's plan for the human race. Lots of passages speak about this mystery of God, but I like Ephesians 1:9-10, the best of all. There it says, "And he made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure. Which he purposed in Christ to put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment, to bring all things in heaven and on Earth together under one head, even Christ." That's God's purpose for redemption. Sin had a fragmentation grenade effect on the universe, blowing it apart. Christ and his redemption puts all things back together and makes them one under one head, even Christ.  That's the mystery of God's purpose. That's what this is all about, an end to the fragmentation grenade explosion that sin and wickedness has had on God's beautiful universe, the end to rebellion and disunity caused by sin. This is the mystery that was hidden in the mind of God before the foundation of the world, but it's been gradually revealed step by step by God's holy apostles and prophets. The Book of Revelation represents the final stage of prophetic unfolding of the mysterious plan of God in writing ahead of time, given to us to read like we're doing this morning. In the days of the seventh trumpet, the end of all those messages, all the messages ever given throughout the Old Testament, prophetic books, and throughout the New Testament as well, all the messages of the prophets and the apostles will be accomplished, they will be fulfilled.

 To that end, the angel has come to recommission the apostle John to finish his writing, the rest of the Book of Revelation. So the mission of the angel is the commissioning of John, again, verses 8- 11. "Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me once more, 'Go take the scroll that lies open in the hand of the angel, standing on the sea and on the land.'" So the giving of the scroll, as I said, is the whole reason for the mission of this mighty angel for his descending from heaven to earth. Verse 9 says, "So I went to the angel and asked him to give me the little scroll." But the angel told him something about the scroll and the effect it would have on him and indeed on every faithful heart that receives its message. Look at verses 9-10, "He said to me, 'Take it and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour. But in your mouth, it will be as sweet as honey.' I took the little scroll from the angel's hand and ate it. It tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour." The angel told John to eat the scroll, representing the prophetic Revelation of the future. Ezekiel ate a scroll in Ezekiel 3 that tasted sweet in his mouth, similar to that. So also Jeremiah 15 said that he ate God's words and they were his joy and his delight. The eating of the scroll represents the total absorption of the Word of God into our very being. Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God to eat, that it nourishes our souls to the very depth of our being.  John is to take this message into his mouth and to digest it inwardly. Now the sweetness of the word of God in our mouths is well known. Ezekiel celebrates it. Jeremiah celebrates it, but John's experience would be different.  Sweet, yes but also bitter in his stomach. The final outcome of the Book of Revelation is utterly glorious: the final salvation of the elect from every tribe, language, people and nation. Jesus said, "The righteous will shine like the son in the kingdom of their father are going to be radially glorious,” and the fact that the new Jerusalem will descend out of heaven like a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. With the radiant glory, there will be no need for the sun or the moon to shine, or a lamp to shine because the glory of God will irradiate that entire world, the new Heaven, new Earth and the new Jerusalem. That is glorious. What could be sweeter than that? 

But it comes at a terrible cost, as we travel the journey there. The destruction of this present world, the destruction of all the unbelievers, their condemnation under the wrath of God is bitter for us. This is why Jesus wept over Jerusalem. This is why Paul says in Romans 9, "I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish, for I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of the unbelieving of my people, the Jews." And so Ezekiel 33:11 says, "As surely as I live declares a sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked. But rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways. Why will you die? Oh, house of Israel?"  I think that's the bitterness of all of this as we read the judgment and destruction that's coming, and the condemnation in the lake of fire that will certainly come on unbelievers.

So then John is recommissioned to preach to the nation. Verse 11, "I was told you must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, languages and kings."  John's eating of the scroll results in his writing of a prophetic message that the entire world must hear. "John, you must prophesy. It is necessary for you to do this. You must write this message down for the world." John is called by God, and he has no choice in this matter, he must do it. The Greek's a little unclear, either “you must prophesy about many nations” as in the ESV, meaning they are the topic of his prophetic words, or “before many nations”, as in the KJV meaning they are the audience. But either way, that's the focus. Here we have peoples, nations, languages, but also mentioned are kings. Now the word of God overrules and outlasts worldly kings. Isaiah 40 says, "He brings princess to naught and reduces the rulers of the world to nothing. No sooner are they planted. No sooner are they sewn. No sooner do they take root in the ground then he blows on them and they wither, and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff. The word of God however, lasts forever and ever." However, Isaiah 52:15 says some of those kings may well be converted. Some of those kings of various nations might hear the word of God and believe. As Isaiah 52:15 says, "So will he, Christ, sprinkle many nations and kings will shut their mouths because of him. For what they were not told, they will see and what they have not heard, they will understand."

 Well, that's the text. Let's take a few minutes on application. First of all, thank God for the written word of God. Thank God that we have this Bible that came from the scroll and we get to read these words. What a gift this is from our loving God to give us this scripture. Secondly, understand the reality of the invisible spiritual realms that surround us. God hides them from you because you can't handle seeing them, Daniel was on the ground unable to breathe. If you saw the battle going on around you every day in the heavenly realms, you would be unable to function. As Jesus said, "I have much to say to you more than you can now bear." Now I believe when we get to heaven and we see our lives in retrospect, we'll be able see it because we can handle it. But right now we just learn from the Bible about the invisible spiritual realms and the warrior, the mighty holy warriors that are fighting for us, but you must know that their wicked counterparts are as powerful as they are.  These angels and demons, it seems in the book of Daniel, battle it out on roughly equal terms. That's the battle, the warfare that's going on, but God's purpose always will prevail.

Thirdly, understand the terrible road that still lies ahead of us before God's glorious plan is fulfilled. Think about all of the people that are concerned about the ecology of the Earth. They're green people, so to speak. Have they not read what's going to happen in Revelation 8?  I don't have any problem with being concerned about ecology, we are stewards of the Earth, but God's going to rip it to shreds and that's a judgment. It started from the very beginning when he cursed the Earth because of Adam's sin. This is the consummation of that curse and it's going to be completely destroyed. A third of the sea is going to turn to blood, a third of the drinking water turned to blood. It's going to be destroyed, burned up. Let's understand also the judgments that are going to come on the wicked and the unbelieving of the world, and let's grieve over it. The grief for sin is not for heaven. The grief for the lost will not be in heaven, we're not going to mourn at all then. It's for now, it's to motivate us to share the gospel to lost people. That's why we weep. That's why we move and understand that. 

Fourthly, let this chapter warn us against all the evils and deceptions of sin. Ephesians 5 puts it this way, "Among you, there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed because these are improper for God's holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place but rather thanksgiving. For of this, you can be sure no immoral, impure or greedy person, such a man as an idolater has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words for because of these things, these sins God's wrath is coming on the earth." All the wrath we read about is caused by human wickedness and sin, so we as God's holy people must flee from these evil things.

 Fifth, let's understand the delay. The text says at that point, there'll be no more delay. Right now, there is a delay going on and we need to understand the reason for it. As we look around and see everything going on as it always has, it seems from the beginning of creation, we could be lulled into a sense that these things aren't really going to happen, but they are going to happen, they're coming. The delay, Peter tells us in II Peter is for salvation. This is the reason why God is waiting. He is patient with us not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. That's the reason for the delay. Therefore, sixth, let's be active in sharing our faith. The passion we have at FBC Durham right now, and we've been and praying for it for weeks now, is that a durable culture of evangelism that results in constant effective outreach to the lost in our community will result in the conversion of many people. That's what we're praying for. This seminary is committed with the word  to sending missionaries to the ends of the earth and even within our own nation. We need to be passionate. As Peter said, "To look forward to the day of God and speed it's coming by evangelism and missions."

Close with me in prayer. Father, thank you for Revelation 10. Thank you for the things that we've learned and the ways that we can apply this text to our hearts. Thank you for the power of the Word of God and this little scroll that started little, but has had a massive impact on the fate of the earth. Lord, we pray that we would drink in and eat the word of God and that it would be sweet and bitter as it needs to be in our hearts to motivate us to the action and the good works you've called us to do. Now, we pray in Jesus name.