SPEAKER_00: We study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.
SPEAKER_00: And uh we do have extra copies.
SPEAKER_00: If anybody would like one, uh raise your hand up real high.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody will drop one off at your row, your aisle.
SPEAKER_00: Uh just raise your hand, and uh it's great to follow along in the text.
SPEAKER_00: And um I I don't know about you, I'm loving our study of the Gospel of Matthew.
SPEAKER_00: Um we have seen as we have studied that this book is really all about the king and his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: We've studied the person of Christ in the first four chapters, the principle of Christ, principles of Christ in that Sermon on the Mount, chapters five, six, and seven, the power of Christ and quite a number of the miracles of Jesus recorded in Matthew's Gospel, chapters eight through twelve, the parables of Christ, seven, some people count it as eight parables right there in Matthew chapter 13, and we're finishing up chapter 13 today.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus, along the way with those parables, by the way, regularly points out that they have this sort of two-pronged effect.
SPEAKER_00: They reveal and they conceal.
SPEAKER_00: They reveal to those with eyes to see and ears to hear.
SPEAKER_00: They conceal from those who have no faith, are not interested in hearing from God, are not curious about God, and who simply uh reject uh God outright.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know which condition you find yourself in today.
SPEAKER_00: I find myself, if I are uh to be quite honest, I think sometimes I'm in a learning mood and sometimes I'm not.
SPEAKER_00: Um sometimes I'm it's I'm I'm a little thick and it's a little hard for stuff to get through.
SPEAKER_00: Um there have to be a few people in the room kind of like that.
SPEAKER_00: I see some heads going up and down, mostly wives.
SPEAKER_00: No, it's it's we men are definitely.
SPEAKER_00: But what is the disposition of your heart?
SPEAKER_00: I love the uh way the uh 19th century English poet uh Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, Earth's crammed with heaven, every common bush of fire with God.
SPEAKER_00: But only he who sees takes off his shoes.
SPEAKER_00: The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.
SPEAKER_00: All right, now you don't let you gotta let that sink in, okay?
SPEAKER_00: How many of you like blackberries?
SPEAKER_00: I had some this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I love blackberries.
SPEAKER_00: But if I had to trade blackberries in for any small glimpse of heaven, of Jesus, of his grace and mercy to me, I'd give him a win a second.
SPEAKER_00: Um she's really this by the way, little known fact.
SPEAKER_00: She and her, who that Robert Browning became her husband, here's how they dated 600 handwritten letters at a distance.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like the first you know online dating thing, I think.
SPEAKER_00: No way, but very Victorian era at that point, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like I say, I like blackberries, but I really want to see that with the coming of King Jesus into the world, as Matthew is trying to remind us, the kingdom of heaven was also breaking in.
SPEAKER_00: And this is really important.
SPEAKER_00: We ask the question what is this kingdom of heaven?
SPEAKER_00: We hear this phrase over and over again throughout the Gospels, really quite a bit in the Gospel of Matthew.
SPEAKER_00: This is where God's name is honored, God's righteous reign and rule are respected, where kingdom perspectives, kingdom values, kingdom vision, vision, mission, and goals are all embraced.
SPEAKER_00: And that I've over and over again as we've gone through this, so we've been trying to point out this question and get you to think about it.
SPEAKER_00: What kind of world do you really want to live in?
SPEAKER_00: Which kingdom?
SPEAKER_00: Because for now we all get to choose our king.
SPEAKER_00: And but we need to realize that in the choosing of our king, we're also choosing a kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And that those kings, and there are many of them, many different choices.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's been great, I think, to ponder that just a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you've ever wondered if the God of the Bible knows uh what you're going through.
SPEAKER_00: Could you could God understand what it's like to live in this kingdom, the kingdom of the earth, uh, as broken as it is, as filled with difficulty as it is, when life's worst experiences include things like agonizing rejection, um the smothering grief of loss, the the weight of the relentless need all around us, and we all feel this.
SPEAKER_00: All you have to do is, you know, be aware of the world around you.
SPEAKER_00: But what what is it that the God of the Bible thinks of these things and what has he done about these things?
SPEAKER_00: And coming to Matthew's gospel like we have done, and coming to this place in Matthew's gospel, I found quite helpful uh myself this week because, as I said, Matthew is all about King Jesus and his in-breaking kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: It has begun.
SPEAKER_00: It's not fully consummated yet, but it has begun.
SPEAKER_00: And we are being invited to be a part of that, to join him in his kingdom and in his kingdom mission.
SPEAKER_00: And as we turn, and I don't know, do you have one of the Bibles that has red letters?
SPEAKER_00: If you do, um, you'll see that we're now moving into a chapter that it's mostly black ink.
SPEAKER_00: And it just kind of made me sit up straight and think, and and there's nothing, you know, divinely inspired about do we know which letters should be red and which letters should be black?
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying there is.
SPEAKER_00: But it just I've just found it interesting as I looked at this that now we're moving really in verse 53 of chapter 13, we're moving into a section of literature, anyway, that is the narrator is speaking.
SPEAKER_00: I've been reading Jesus speaking through these parables.
SPEAKER_00: And he has been telling humanity what it's like to live in the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And now the human narrator is going to speak, divinely inspired.
SPEAKER_00: That's true, I believe that.
SPEAKER_00: But he's going to tell us what it's like for divinity to live in the kingdom of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And that contrast to me was really fascinating as I pondered this entire section.
SPEAKER_00: Before I read, would you permit me a prayer for illumination?
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we know that we don't live by bread alone, but we find life in every word that proceeds from your mouth.
SPEAKER_00: Every truth that has been recorded in the written word of God, the ancient scriptures, which you've graciously given for our learning, for our instruction, for our correction when needed, and for which we now praise you and thank you as we study.
SPEAKER_00: Give us a clearer vision of your truth, a greater faith in your power, and a more confident assurance of your love for us in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen and amen.
SPEAKER_00: So let me read chapter 13, verse 53, on down through chapter 14, verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: It goes like this.
SPEAKER_00: It came about that when Jesus had finished these parables, he departed from there.
SPEAKER_00: Coming to his hometown, he began teaching them in their synagogue so that they became astonished.
SPEAKER_00: And they said, Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?
SPEAKER_00: Is not this the carpenter's son?
SPEAKER_00: Is not his mother called Mary, his brothers James and Joseph, Simon and Judas, and his sisters, are they not all with us?
SPEAKER_00: Where then did this man get all these things?
SPEAKER_00: And they took offense at him.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus said to them, A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown, and in his own household.
SPEAKER_00: And he, Jesus, did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 1 of 14.
SPEAKER_00: At that time, Herod the Tetrarch heard the news about Jesus, and he said to his servants, This is John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_00: He's risen from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him.
SPEAKER_00: For Herod had seized John and bound him and put him in prison on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip.
SPEAKER_00: For John had been saying to him, It is not lawful for you to have her.
SPEAKER_00: And although he wanted to put him to death, that is, Herod wanted to put John to death, Herod feared the multitude because they regarded him, John the Baptist, as a prophet.
SPEAKER_00: But when Herod's birthday came, the daughter of Herodias danced before them and pleased Herod.
SPEAKER_00: Thereupon he promised, with an oath, to give her whatever she asked.
SPEAKER_00: And having been prompted by her mother, she said, Give me here on a platter the head of John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_00: And although he was grieved, the king commanded it to be given because of his oaths and because of his dinner guests.
SPEAKER_00: And he sent and had John beheaded in the prison.
SPEAKER_00: And his head was brought on a platter and given to the girl, and she brought it to her mother, and his disciples, John the Baptist's disciples, came and took away the body and buried it.
SPEAKER_00: And they went and reported to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And when Jesus heard it, he withdrew from there in a boat to a lonely place by himself.
SPEAKER_00: When the multitudes heard of this, they followed him on foot from the cities.
SPEAKER_00: And when he came out, he saw a great multitude.
SPEAKER_00: He felt compassion for them and he healed their sick.
SPEAKER_00: So wow.
SPEAKER_00: In just the voice that speaks to us and what's being conveyed.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you tried to see it through the filter of those little comments I made right before it or not, but I'm gonna try to help us all see it that way.
SPEAKER_00: But first, uh let me let me just orient us geographically.
SPEAKER_00: Let me see if this thing is working here.
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, good.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So uh here is the Sea of Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: You see the trembling green dot up there.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you can see that.
SPEAKER_00: That's my uh that's my low blood sugar hand holding a that's what that is.
SPEAKER_00: Um this whole area here belonged to a guy named Herod the Great.
SPEAKER_00: He was actually the Roman emperor had appointed Herod the Great as king of that entire area.
SPEAKER_00: He died in 4 BC.
SPEAKER_00: He ruled from 37 BC to 4 BC.
SPEAKER_00: When he died, um, Jesus had already been born, so our Western calendars are a little bit off.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was probably born in what we call uh 5, 6, or 7 BC, but we know a little bit more than Dionysius Exiguus did in the 6th century A.D.
SPEAKER_00: when he set the Western calendar.
SPEAKER_00: So we know when Herod the Great died.
SPEAKER_00: When Herod the Great died, his kingdom, all of this, was split up into regions, a lot of them called Tetrarchs, or this is the decapolis, meaning the Ten Cities area.
SPEAKER_00: Galilee is here, this is the richest, most fertile soil.
SPEAKER_00: Capernaum is right here, this is where Jesus is hubbing most of his Galilean ministry.
SPEAKER_00: Umazareth is down in this area right here.
SPEAKER_00: You can see it, the lower part of Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: And so if Jesus is doing all of that teaching and he moves to his hometown, he's moving down this way, okay?
SPEAKER_00: People are coming to him from all over, though.
SPEAKER_00: Uh religious leaders from down here in Jerusalem will travel all the way up.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this whole area is no bigger than the state of New Jersey, but when you don't have a car or a bus, when you're walking in sandals, that's a long way to go to hear Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Um yet that is happening.
SPEAKER_00: People are coming by the thousands to hear Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Herod, just another little word about Herod the Great, and if you'll just join me, this is kind of a very simple little map.
SPEAKER_00: As I say, 4 BC, Herod the Great dies.
SPEAKER_00: And then what we have here is Herod Antipas, uh, who is going to be the product of uh, so Herod has all these wives, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So, and um he has um, and by the way, he he's crazy paranoid about losing his throne.
SPEAKER_00: But one of his sons is Herod Antipas.
SPEAKER_00: You've got Antiper, Aristobulus, Alexander, you've got Antipas down here, you've got Herod Philip II, the Tetrarch, there's Philip I, who's actually the husband of Herodias, that's her first husband.
SPEAKER_00: And what we just read about is that this guy over here, Antipas, takes, this guy over here takes his wife.
SPEAKER_00: And while she, Herodias there, is actually his niece to begin with in the storyline, she also uh calls him Uncle, right?
SPEAKER_00: And then when he marries or steals her from his half-brother and brings her over here and he marries her, now she's calling him Uncle Honey.
SPEAKER_00: Because she married her uncle.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And it just gets nuts.
SPEAKER_00: So if you think your family is a little twisted or weird in any way, welcome to the Herodian dynasty.
SPEAKER_00: It's it is no wonder it's a mess.
SPEAKER_00: No, no wonder things uh uh go sideways in so many different ways.
SPEAKER_00: But I could go off on that for way too long, and I really don't want to.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I think these first few verses remind us of this.
SPEAKER_00: Familiarity often breeds contempt.
SPEAKER_00: And contempt can be passive or aggressive.
SPEAKER_00: You might have walked in here this morning so familiar with everything that is going to be done in here that you have this sort of passive contempt for it.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we should call it indifference at that point.
SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't need to hear any of this, I don't need to learn any of this.
SPEAKER_00: Um I'm tired of that guy up there talking.
SPEAKER_00: He's just speculating most of the time anyway, because he thinks he is telling me what to believe.
SPEAKER_00: Um I I've already read the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: I've read it all, I've read about it was a forward.
SPEAKER_00: I know what he already has to say.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was a good dude.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he never got mad about anything.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't.
SPEAKER_00: Familiarity can breed contempt.
SPEAKER_00: I think we need to always come to the scriptures with, you know, our hands open to receive from God and when we pray, bent knees.
SPEAKER_00: And we often do these physical things to express our submission before God.
SPEAKER_00: And that's because we're we're just so programmed in the world in which we live to think like Herod or like the people of Nazareth.
SPEAKER_00: I don't need to hear it from this guy.
SPEAKER_00: This guy, he grew up here.
SPEAKER_00: Who's he think he is?
SPEAKER_00: I we know his mother, we know his father, we know his other kids.
SPEAKER_00: And the the kind of uh shut-the-door approach that they had in Nazareth toward Jesus is a complete rejection of God's overtures of love back to them.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing I think we see in that first section is that Jesus does know our experiences of living in a world plagued by rejection.
SPEAKER_00: And the rest of the passage we'll see his response to grief and relentless need as well.
SPEAKER_00: But I think this is really important for us, and I was considering it myself through what's been a fairly difficult couple of weeks for uh a lot of us, um, and what's been a certainly been a fairly difficult couple of years for all of us.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, when I was thinking about all of that, I was trying to think about well, how does Jesus respond to these things himself?
SPEAKER_00: If this is indeed, after the parables, Jesus embodying us to see what it looks like to live in the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Now here's the divine one living in the kingdom of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And what's he how's he responding to it?
SPEAKER_00: Does that help you kind of see a, I think, a great way to frame uh this particular text and to see uh how is it that Jesus does that?
SPEAKER_00: And what solutions does the gospel offer?
SPEAKER_00: Christianity is the first solution, uh, I think, that that actually makes sense and where God actually starts to show us that He intends to set things right that are broken in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And to do that, he actually doesn't just send messengers, he did send some prophets and all that sort of thing, got rejected, but then he came himself and he got rejected.
SPEAKER_00: And Nazareth is just a symbol, it's a real thing that really happened, but I think it also symbolizes the rest of what happens to Jesus, as he's rejected by the religious leaders of the day, and as he's rejected by some of us in our own day and time from time to time, even those of us who say we believe in grace and have received all of it, sometimes just don't want to hear from him, just not interested at this particular moment.
SPEAKER_00: And so we find ourselves doing the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like what we see here is that Jesus responds to this kind of rejection with resolute faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: He continued his journey to the cross, and that the cross starts to become this place where Jesus established an irreversible basis for our acceptance before God.
SPEAKER_00: See, this is where the real contrast comes.
SPEAKER_00: What does Jesus do about the rejection in the world that fills this world?
SPEAKER_00: He shows us how the ultimate acceptance is on offer to you and on offer to me because of what he did.
SPEAKER_00: Not because of any merit of my own or your own, but because of what he did, the cross is the most brilliant display of these four things from God.
SPEAKER_00: His love that motivated him to go to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: His real love for justice, too.
SPEAKER_00: That is, he didn't just sweep our sin under the rug or just push a button and wipe it all out.
SPEAKER_00: No, he actually paid for it himself.
SPEAKER_00: He took it seriously and paid the price for my sin.
SPEAKER_00: He just didn't tell me to go out and just deny it or just tell me, you're good enough, you're smart enough, and doggone it, people love you.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't do that.
SPEAKER_00: He came and he died in my place.
SPEAKER_00: Justice.
SPEAKER_00: He honors justice.
SPEAKER_00: And then mercy, God granting to each and every one of us his mercy.
SPEAKER_00: That is, we didn't have to take the wrath of God that we actually deserved.
SPEAKER_00: We didn't have to take that.
SPEAKER_00: That's mercy.
SPEAKER_00: We're not getting something we do deserve.
SPEAKER_00: And then his wisdom in putting all of that together, that's just mind-blowing when you think about it.
SPEAKER_00: Paul Tripp summarizes it beautifully.
SPEAKER_00: He says, the one who deserved to be loved and worshipped, Jesus, was willing to be reviled and rejected, so that we, deserving rejection, would be forever loved and accepted by the Father.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that beautiful and a succinct way of saying it?
SPEAKER_00: A 17th century English Puritan theologian, uh, John Owen, by the way, man, when you when you come to a church and you get a little John Owen, you know, and a little bit of Jonathan Edwards, like Kim quoted earlier.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's that's awesome.
SPEAKER_00: All right, that's what's I'm I'm loving this, okay, today.
SPEAKER_00: We can begin each day, Owen said, with a deeply encouraging realization.
SPEAKER_00: I'm accepted by God, not on the basis of my personal performance, but on the basis of the infinitely perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The Apostle Paul would write about that later in 2 Corinthians 5 21, he would say this.
SPEAKER_00: He made him, that is, God made Jesus, to become sin on our behalf, okay, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: See, so if you are recognizing that you're a sinner, but you come to faith in Christ, to believe and trust in Jesus, what has happened is that Jesus who did not sin came and died in my place and in your place.
SPEAKER_00: He took on our sin, nailed it to the cross, paid the price for our sin, so that we could receive God's righteousness in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's that's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: Who wouldn't want that?
SPEAKER_00: If you're sitting here, you I trust that you've considered this carefully.
SPEAKER_00: I implore you, if you've never experienced it, to turn to him in faith believing.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what do we see in 14, 1 and 2?
SPEAKER_00: This is uh 14, 1 through 12.
SPEAKER_00: This is a little bit different.
SPEAKER_00: This is a switch.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the rejection of Nazareth.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I've got a bit of Nazareth in me.
SPEAKER_00: I have to say, we I bet we all do.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it may come and go, but I've got a bit of that in me.
SPEAKER_00: What do we see in 1 through 12 in terms of the human condition, the weakness, the need for salvation in verses 1 through 12 in Herod, people here's the key players Herod, Herodias, uh Salome, the dirty dancing daughter of Herodias, John the Baptist, and Jesus to some degree is here as well, at least referred to.
SPEAKER_00: I've got to admit, um, I chuckled a little in the first couple verses.
SPEAKER_00: Look at with me at 14, 1 and 2.
SPEAKER_00: This is just interesting.
SPEAKER_00: At that time, Herod the Tetrar had heard the news about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: What was he hearing?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, there's this guy, this carpenter's son.
SPEAKER_00: He's preaching, he's healing people, he's working miracles.
SPEAKER_00: He even raised a little girl from the dead, is the rumor.
SPEAKER_00: And so it says right here in verse 2, he says to his servants, this is Herod Antipas, this is John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_00: He's risen from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him.
SPEAKER_00: So some of us on the staff said, well, this is the makings of a Jordan Peele movie.
SPEAKER_00: This is like, this, this is like, you know, and if I were Jesus, I would probably, I mean, if I want to mess with Herod, I'd probably appear to him in a dream, holding my head off like this, and just go, dude, you blew it, you went the wrong way, you made some wrong choices, buddy, you know.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not what has happened.
SPEAKER_00: He has, because he's hearing Herod is hearing about all these miracles and all that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: And John the Baptist was renowned as a prophet.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't know who Jesus is at this point.
SPEAKER_00: He just has heard that there's a person doing all this.
SPEAKER_00: And so he thinks to himself, I did something really bad.
SPEAKER_00: I cut off the head of a prophet, and now he is coming back.
SPEAKER_00: So it's very superstitious about all of this.
SPEAKER_00: But you can see this guy.
SPEAKER_00: He is, he's he's ruled by pride, self-dification.
SPEAKER_00: Um, Herodias, his wife that he stole from his brother, is is ruled by a lust for revenge.
SPEAKER_00: Um I think this is child abuse to some degree, with the with the dancing that uh that they put this young uh girl who's probably 14 years of age, is my guess, probably middle teens.
SPEAKER_00: Um, there's a lot of darkness here, including the violence perpetrated on John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_00: And even when Herod says that the, he's kind of drunken at the feast and he goes, anything you want from my kingdom, well, he's not even a king.
SPEAKER_00: He's a tetrarch.
SPEAKER_00: And you can see that he wants the title that he doesn't have.
SPEAKER_00: He's just self-obsessed like his daddy was.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and he's just trying really hard to look important and to feel important.
SPEAKER_00: And again, this is not an uncommon problem to humanity.
SPEAKER_00: I confess I have a little bit of Herod in me.
SPEAKER_00: We all do.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we check to see how many people liked something.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we we want to be the first one to know.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we just always want to have that kind of power.
SPEAKER_00: That's a human problem.
SPEAKER_00: And so when you see uh end with Herodias, it's sort of like, man, I mean, if Herod Antipas is an Eastern despot that has been, you know, confronted by John the Baptist and called out for his sin of stealing his brother's wife and all that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's one thing to say something to an Eastern despot, it's another thing, you know, to actually say to his wife the kinds of things John the Baptist was calling them both out for.
SPEAKER_00: And she has been stewing on this.
SPEAKER_00: And so when her daughter has an opportunity to literally win the lottery, anything in my kingdom is yours, what does she want?
SPEAKER_00: What does she tell her daughter to ask for?
SPEAKER_00: The head.
SPEAKER_00: Vengeance.
SPEAKER_00: Revenge.
SPEAKER_00: That's how obsessed people get with their outrage, with their revenge, with their they want to take control, they want to get people back who have in some way offended them.
SPEAKER_00: Uh this is this is, I mean, that's a dark little passage right there with all of that.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus, interestingly, when he experiences the loss of his cousin John the Baptist here, he doesn't just sidestep the crucifixion, but he transforms it into a resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: And he does to his own tomb what he will do to John the Baptist's tomb and what he will do to my tomb someday, what he will do to your tomb, because last time I checked, a hundred percent of us go that way.
SPEAKER_00: Until the Lord returns himself, and I hope it's before I finish this sentence.
SPEAKER_00: But it wasn't, so I'm just gonna tell you, whenever he comes back, he's gonna set everything right, and that's how he responds to rejection and this deep sense of loss and grief for the loss of his, and as well the injustice of it.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's so many things you can see in those first 12 verses.
SPEAKER_00: The kind of injustice that this Eastern despot, you know, wielding this power, it's totally corrupted him.
SPEAKER_00: And he just off with somebody's head.
SPEAKER_00: No trial.
SPEAKER_00: No, was he guilty or not?
SPEAKER_00: None of that.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so it's it's amazing how that goes.
SPEAKER_00: Um I'm gonna quote from a guy that's gonna preach for us next week.
SPEAKER_00: I'm excited.
SPEAKER_00: Malcolm's coming.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the realization that Jesus himself is the fulfillment of prophecy and that the apparent defeat of the cross is revealed or unveiled in the light of the resurrection as a victory completely transforms and galvanizes those who grasp it.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Want to be transformed and galvanized?
SPEAKER_00: Galvanized in your confidence in God, then remain, be connected, remain part of God's church, God's body.
SPEAKER_00: This is where you get reminded about the fact that Christ has risen.
SPEAKER_00: He's risen indeed.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, sing hallelujah.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the kids of the author of that song sang it, Oh, sing happelujah.
SPEAKER_00: So I sing Happy Luya every time.
SPEAKER_00: I just I do that every time.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what hallelujah is.
SPEAKER_00: It's indeed rejoicing in our God who is so good to save us.
SPEAKER_00: Kim Thomas has probably one of the best books on grieving and going through all of that, and I still proudly say that, even though I'm her husband.
SPEAKER_00: But she said, God, when this is after her mom died, God has been attentive to my mourning.
SPEAKER_00: He has been ever close.
SPEAKER_00: Close enough to catch my tears in a bottle as they fall from my eyes.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if perhaps the bottle of my tears might sit on the shelf next to the tears Jesus wept.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, we're told that Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus.
SPEAKER_00: We're not told that right here.
SPEAKER_00: And there's some Bible commentators that say he didn't withdraw because he was sad.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't withdraw because he was grieving, he just was moving on.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure.
SPEAKER_00: I don't, I kind of I kind of feel like he loved his cousin pretty well.
SPEAKER_00: And I kind of feel like that was proper and right for him to pull away for a bit.
SPEAKER_00: But what happens, and you see it right there, look at verse 13 and 14 of chapter 14, and uh and we'll we'll wind this up here in a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus heard about John the Baptist being killed, he withdrew from there in a boat to a lonely place by himself.
SPEAKER_00: And when the multitudes heard of this, they followed him on foot from the cities.
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if you can see it, but you're in a boat and you're looking at the shore, and there's you know, and they're just you know, and they're literally following where he's going.
SPEAKER_00: You know?
SPEAKER_00: Looks like a little video game, and all the little munchkins are running, you know, and they're they're coming after him, but it's because they have need.
SPEAKER_00: It's because they too know rejection, it's because they too know grief.
SPEAKER_00: And their needs are great and diverse.
SPEAKER_00: They need healing, they need hope, they need courage, they're afraid, they're oppressed by the Roman government and the culture around them as well.
SPEAKER_00: There is just a relentless amount of need.
SPEAKER_00: How does Jesus uh respond to that?
SPEAKER_00: He reminds us there's a day coming throughout the New Testament where Jesus will set the world to rights.
SPEAKER_00: There'll be no more sickness, no more dying, no more sadness, no more crying.
SPEAKER_00: Just look in the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: If you haven't studied the book of Revelation, uh all of our, we did that uh during the pandemic, and we did it on purpose in the pandemic because we wanted to study something that was bigger than the pandemic.
SPEAKER_00: And so the book of Revelation, which basically reminds us who's ultimately in charge of everything.
SPEAKER_00: The sovereign God of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: So we studied that, and you'll find if you read the end of the book, you will find that that is the plan that Jesus has.
SPEAKER_00: And so his plan is to raise John the Baptist from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: And he can do that.
SPEAKER_00: I can trust him to do that.
SPEAKER_00: On what basis do I trust him?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus himself got up from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: And so you read throughout the New Testament, the crucifi, I mean, the resurrection of Jesus is just everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: And if it didn't happen, the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, all of our preaching is in vain, as well as our faith itself.
SPEAKER_00: Everything hinges on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It proves that he can, and he will, when he makes a promise, he can fulfill his promise.
SPEAKER_00: Last week Frederick Bieckner died, some of you know of him.
SPEAKER_00: My favorite quote by Bieckner is this resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing.
SPEAKER_00: That's a great quote.
SPEAKER_00: That's so true.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus proved that in his own resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: So there's relentless need around us.
SPEAKER_00: Um the Christian faith does not deny the relentless need around us.
SPEAKER_00: We have wept these past couple of weeks for six families.
SPEAKER_00: Um we will weep again as folks go on to their eternal rest.
SPEAKER_00: But what we what we have is a group of hopeful mourners.
SPEAKER_00: We don't mourn or grieve without hope, 1 Thessalonians 4 tells us.
SPEAKER_00: The Apostle Paul says, I don't want you to be ignorant.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because ignorance puts us at a deficit.
SPEAKER_00: If we don't know the promises, the hope of the New Testament, that would be terrible for us and lead us to a great despair.
SPEAKER_00: And so the Apostle Paul says, I don't want you to be ignorant about those who are asleep.
SPEAKER_00: And then he goes on to tell us about how the Lord will return one day and how he has defeated death itself.
SPEAKER_00: John Owen has one of his most popular writings was the death of death in the death of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's just the end of it.
SPEAKER_00: He put an end to death by paying the price for all our sins.
SPEAKER_00: Let's close uh kind of as we began with a Paul trip quote.
SPEAKER_00: Grace relentlessly pursues, relentlessly forgives, relentlessly transforms, relentlessly restores, all of which we relentlessly need.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what your world is like.
SPEAKER_00: Um I don't know what difficulty or troubles you may be experiencing right now.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's around the corner for any of us.
SPEAKER_00: Um I just know this.
SPEAKER_00: I need to be reminded over and over and over again of his amazing grace available to me, available to you in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And when we get together on Sundays, we are going to remind ourselves over and over, we are going to relentlessly remind each other of this good news of the hope we have in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you.
SPEAKER_00: That when you entered this world, you didn't sidestep rejection, you didn't sidestep grief, you didn't sidestep relentless need, but as those crowds pressed in on you, even as you were still considering the brokenness of the world that you had stepped into and the loss of your cousin, as all of that was going on, Lord, knowing that you would be coming to set things right, impress that upon our hearts, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Write that deep in our hearts that we might find our hope in life and in death in Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen and amen.