SPEAKER_00: Matthew 19, I'll begin reading in verse 21.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to the rich young ruler, If you would be perfect, sell what you possess, give to the poor, you will have treasure in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Come, follow me.
SPEAKER_00: When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions, and Jesus said to his disciples, Truly I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, Who then can be saved?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus looked at them and said, With man, it is impossible, but with God all things are possible.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter said in reply, See, we've left everything and followed you.
SPEAKER_00: What then will we have?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to them, Truly I say to you, in the New World, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And everyone who has left houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfolds and will inherit eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Many who will be first will be last, and the last first.
SPEAKER_00: This is the word of God, and I pray that He seals it in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: This entire chapter, Matthew 19, has been a chapter of great and unexpected reversals.
SPEAKER_00: It is true what people accuse the early church of in the book of Acts of turning the world upside down.
SPEAKER_00: That the gospel grabs the world and reorients it in a sense that it's legitimate to say the gospel turns the world upside down.
SPEAKER_00: We have seen one example after another in the two chapters we've been looking at the last several months, Matthew 18 and 19, that describe that radical reorientation around Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The most obvious example of that in this section has been the children.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples are trying to get the rich and the famous to follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They're barring off the children, and yet Jesus receives the children.
SPEAKER_00: And then a rich and famous person comes along and he gets sent away.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine the look in the disciples' eyes as Jesus is sitting there with the kids in his arms and the rich guy with all the money walking over the horizon.
SPEAKER_00: Sad because he has so many things.
SPEAKER_00: Just think about that line for a second.
SPEAKER_00: You want a story that shows you the great reversals in life?
SPEAKER_00: How about that description that he went away sad because he had so much stuff?
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever thought about that?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, not spring cleaning, thought about that, but like, oh man, my biggest trial is God has just given me too many cars.
SPEAKER_00: That's the rich young ruler who walks away sad.
SPEAKER_00: That's of course not the only contrast.
SPEAKER_00: The world puts forward divorce and Jesus shuts that down and esteems marriage.
SPEAKER_00: The world puts forward the idea you hold on to what's yours and don't let people wrong you.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus, at the end of Matthew 18, tells a story about the person who's forgiven much, so he should forgive others.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, the great reversal is that he doesn't do that.
SPEAKER_00: You'd expect people to care for young and the children in their midst and the immature believers around them and guard their holiness, but Jesus warns that the opposite is often the case.
SPEAKER_00: That those in charge often cause little people to stumble and put millstones around their or in their path, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says it's better if a millstone goes around that guy's neck and thrown into the sea.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I mean about this chapter.
SPEAKER_00: It's the great reversals.
SPEAKER_00: And that can even be an outline that guides us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: There's four more great gospel reversals in this section.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 19 here ends, it closes off this section of the Gospel of Matthew, describing the powerful reversals that come into play when Jesus reorients the world around himself.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, the first of those is the law, gives way to the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The law is reversed, so to speak, and replaced with the gospel, or the laws superseded by the gospel, or the laws fulfilled by Christ and eclipsed by the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: You could say it in any number of ways.
SPEAKER_00: But the point is, what happens in this story of the rich young ruler is a shifting of the generations, a changing of the guard.
SPEAKER_00: This is such an influential story.
SPEAKER_00: I uh thinking about it, I was like, man, we should spend like six weeks in the rich young ruler story.
SPEAKER_00: And I thought better of it.
SPEAKER_00: Barely, though, I want you to know, only barely.
SPEAKER_00: This story, just in a little narrative form, is describing to you the fulfillment of the old covenant and it being replaced, in a sense, with the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: You're seeing the law give way to the gospel right in this story.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember it begins with the rich young ruler asking Jesus, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?
SPEAKER_00: You want to talk about a law-oriented question.
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
SPEAKER_00: When you're living under law, that is the question.
SPEAKER_00: How can I gain eternal life?
SPEAKER_00: And what good thing must I do?
SPEAKER_00: Remember, this is kind of standard American thinking, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to go to heaven when I die because I am a that's what everybody thinks.
SPEAKER_00: That is law thinking.
SPEAKER_00: That is the law.
SPEAKER_00: The law in the old covenant says, do this and live.
SPEAKER_00: Leviticus 18, the heart of the law in the Torah.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: God says, You shall keep my statutes and my rules, and if a person does them, he will live.
SPEAKER_00: That is basically what God told Adam and Eve in the garden, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Do not touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
SPEAKER_00: The day that do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the day that you eat from it, you will die.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, do this and live.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the law offers.
SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy 6, the famous passage about parents teaching their kids the law when they lay down at night, when they get up in the morning, when they sit at the table, when they go on the way.
SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy 6, Yahweh commands us to do all of these statutes, Moses says, so that he could preserve us alive.
SPEAKER_00: And it will be this is Deuteronomy 6, verse 25.
SPEAKER_00: It will be righteousness to us if we are careful to do all the commandments that Yahweh our God commanded us.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, do this and live.
SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy 5, 33.
SPEAKER_00: Walk in the light of his commandments and live.
SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy 4, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: Here are the statutes.
SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy is Moses repeating the law to the Israelites before they go into the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy 4, verse 1, do these laws and live.
SPEAKER_00: That is the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Do it and live.
SPEAKER_00: The only problem with that is that you can't.
SPEAKER_00: That's the problem.
SPEAKER_00: So you come across Deuteronomy 6 that says, keep all these commands and live, and you say, okay, I'm going to do it.
SPEAKER_00: And that's immediately going to give way to the fact that you can't do it, which will then secondarily give way to this whole ordering of commands, which the Jews love to do.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, which are the important ones?
SPEAKER_00: That lives on in Catholicism today, the mortal versus venial sins.
SPEAKER_00: Like, let's start ranking these things, and what can we like seriously not do and still go to heaven?
SPEAKER_00: What's it okay to fail on?
SPEAKER_00: Do this and live.
SPEAKER_00: The rich young ruler is not some pagan atheist who walks onto the stage with some bonker's question.
SPEAKER_00: This is like the height, the zenith of the old covenant right here.
SPEAKER_00: This is a guy with power and wealth and youth and rugged good looks that goes with the youth.
SPEAKER_00: Who says, I just want to do something good to have eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: That's his question.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a terrible question.
SPEAKER_00: The problem is you can't do anything good to live.
SPEAKER_00: You can't keep the law.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is axiomatic to us.
SPEAKER_00: It's obvious to us that we understand, we heard the Sermon on the Mount, for example.
SPEAKER_00: We understand if you look at a woman with lust, you've committed adultery in your heart, you've broken the law.
SPEAKER_00: The law is a plate glass window.
SPEAKER_00: You break it, it shatters.
SPEAKER_00: You can't just kind of break it and still live.
SPEAKER_00: You can't do nine of the ten commandments and still live, although it's essentially what the rich young ruler tried.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, all these I've kept from my youth.
SPEAKER_00: He obviously idolizes money, though.
SPEAKER_00: It's a sad encounter.
SPEAKER_00: This is not just confined to the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: This is repeated in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Galatians 3, verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, and this is again astonishing to the readers of the book of Galatians.
SPEAKER_00: Astonishing is Galatians is one of the first, if not the first, New Testament epistles written.
SPEAKER_00: This would be astonishing to them.
SPEAKER_00: It's old hat to us, but astonishing to them.
SPEAKER_00: Galatians 3 12, Paul says, the law is not of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Because the law says the one who does it will live.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says that's the opposite of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 10, verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: The person who does the commandment shall live by them.
SPEAKER_00: That is not the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The law is given to break you and show you your sin.
SPEAKER_00: And again, that's not, doesn't mean the law is bad.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean the law failed to do what it's supposed to do.
SPEAKER_00: It's supposed to break you.
SPEAKER_00: It's supposed to be the mirror you hold up to yourself and say, I can't do it.
SPEAKER_00: I want to, but I can't.
SPEAKER_00: The person who tries to live by righteousness, to keep the law, to do good things, to merit eternal life, they're not even trading with the right currency because the fountain of the human heart is sinful and defiled and cannot produce good deeds to have eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, one of my kids comes up to me, could have come up with me, it didn't really happen, but imagine a kid of mine coming up to me with a handful of monopoly money and saying, How much money would it take to buy your car?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you can't drive, but that's not the real problem, is it?
SPEAKER_00: The problem isn't the driver's license.
SPEAKER_00: The problem is that monopoly money is not the right currency.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter how much of it you have, it's not going to get the job done.
SPEAKER_00: What good deed must I do to have eternal life is monopoly money.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why Jesus, remember, goes after the word good and says, What are you doing throwing around the word good?
SPEAKER_00: No one is good except God alone.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a semantic debate, it is zeroing in on the heart of the issue.
SPEAKER_00: Do you think you can do something good if no one is good except God?
SPEAKER_00: If you're a good person, you don't need this conversation.
SPEAKER_00: That's the law.
SPEAKER_00: It breaks you.
SPEAKER_00: But it gives way to the gospel at the end of verse 21, where Jesus says, Come and follow me.
SPEAKER_00: Last week we looked at the giving your money to the poor thing.
SPEAKER_00: I hope I explained that that well.
SPEAKER_00: And so now we give way to the gospel here, the follow me.
SPEAKER_00: That's the command of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Not do this and live, but surrender your life to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's the opposite.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel says, hold on to your righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel says, open your hands, surrender your life, and receive a righteousness that's not your own.
SPEAKER_00: The law says, build your life in Israel, hold on to your land, pass it down to your family, pass down your name and your all that by your tribe.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel says, go into all the world and preach the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The law says, fulfill the commandments to have life.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel says Jesus fulfilled the commandments in your place, give your life to him.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're polar opposites.
SPEAKER_00: Richard and Ruler wanted eternal life while holding on to his stuff because he was a good person.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, follow me.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus replaces his stuff.
SPEAKER_00: The law is staying, the gospel is going, the law is striving, the gospel is receiving, the law is action, the gospel is faith, the law is doing, the gospel is believing.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point.
SPEAKER_00: Follow me.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the first time Jesus has said this either.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, I mean, all the twelve are with Jesus because they heard the same summons.
SPEAKER_00: Peter and Andrew are fixing their nuts, and Jesus comes to them and says, Leave those, follow me, and they do.
SPEAKER_00: And don't misunderstand this like they abandoned their wife and abandoned their kids or something sinful like that.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, again, that's how the monks applied this, which is not at all what Jesus is talking about.
SPEAKER_00: Peter did not leave his wife or leave his kids.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, through much of Jesus' ministry, Jesus lived in Peter's house with the wife and kids.
SPEAKER_00: This is a reordering.
SPEAKER_00: This is a dropping your old life and following Christ with your new.
SPEAKER_00: Nathan is seen under the tree, and Jesus says, Come follow me, Nathaniel.
SPEAKER_00: Follow me.
SPEAKER_00: Levi's in his Matthew, the one who wrote this, is in his tax booth, and Jesus says, Follow me.
SPEAKER_00: And he goes.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus in John 10 says, All of my sheep hear my voice and they follow me.
SPEAKER_00: This is the dividing line of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Following Christ with your life.
SPEAKER_00: Following yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Keeping the law for salvation is the law is the law.
SPEAKER_00: Literally the law.
SPEAKER_00: Receiving the free gift of Christ is the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a superficial belief, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: When you contrast law and gospel, don't make the mistake that so many have done and said the law is doing, and the gospel is a superficial believing, like, oh, I believe that Jesus is who he says he is.
SPEAKER_00: I believe the Bible is more likely than not on the preponderance of evidence standard true, blah.
SPEAKER_00: No, believing the gospel is a life transformation that happens to you.
SPEAKER_00: The old becomes new, the dead becomes alive, the blind become seeing the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a superficial belief.
SPEAKER_00: It's a life-transforming, world-altering reversal.
SPEAKER_00: Following Jesus is not meritorious work.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, you don't earn your salvation by doing it.
SPEAKER_00: That confuses cause and effect.
SPEAKER_00: You receive salvation through faith, which produces a life spent with empty hands, but a heart full of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Unlike the goods, the rich young ruler who went away sad.
SPEAKER_00: Second transformation is self gives way to spirit here.
SPEAKER_00: The rich young ruler goes away, of course, sad.
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about that last week.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to his disciples, verse 23, I tell you, it's only with difficulty that a rich person can enter the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Now don't misunderstand that, as many do.
SPEAKER_00: I've heard people say, like, that rich people can't get saved because they have so much more to trust in this world.
SPEAKER_00: And there's probably an element of that that's true, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like a rich person might have more grounds upon which to seek shelter or distract themselves from the reality of eternal life, I guess.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what's happening with this dude, though.
SPEAKER_00: He has all this stuff and he's there and he walks away sad.
SPEAKER_00: He's not distracted.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what this is about.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, Jesus goes on to say it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle in verse 24 than a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: The point is that it is impossible to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Again, I've read people that try to dilute this by saying there was a gate in Israel called the needle gate, and camels could get down on all four and like camel their way through, and they just needed a couple good pushes in the back.
SPEAKER_00: That's there's no needle gate.
SPEAKER_00: And if there was just make a bigger gate or get a skinnier camel, which is not Jesus' point.
SPEAKER_00: Although it is funny to picture camels praying, like on all four, like praying their way into heaven.
SPEAKER_00: I guess it's a funny picture.
SPEAKER_00: Not what's happening though.
SPEAKER_00: The point is it's impossible.
SPEAKER_00: Camels don't the eye of a needle, so I can't even get a thread through the eye of a needle.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody can do it.
SPEAKER_00: That's Jesus' point.
SPEAKER_00: And the disciples get it.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, the Israeli culture and the American culture are similar at this point.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you if somebody is wealthy, you think they must have capability.
SPEAKER_00: I assume Instagram influencers are kind of ruining that mindset right now.
SPEAKER_00: But it used to be if somebody was rich, you say, oh, they had some merit to them.
SPEAKER_00: They worked hard, they did something to merit that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: They must be good at something idea.
SPEAKER_00: And the Jews believe the same way.
SPEAKER_00: And so this when Jesus is saying how hard it is for a rich person to get to heaven, he's not saying it's easier for a poor person.
SPEAKER_00: The opposite is true.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying a rich person, it is impossible for them to get into heaven, and everybody else is going, if that guy can't do it, how can I do it?
SPEAKER_00: If the guy with the money and the power and the influence can't work his way into heaven, what hope is there for me?
SPEAKER_00: If the rich good guy can't do it, how can the middle class mediocre guy do it?
SPEAKER_00: And that's what the disciples are saying, too.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 25, when they heard this, they were astonished, saying, Who then can be saved?
SPEAKER_00: Not, well, good thing he has more money than me.
SPEAKER_00: Phew.
SPEAKER_00: No, if he can't do it, nobody can do it.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point.
SPEAKER_00: If you can't trust yourself, and here's a dude with a lot to trust, and get to heaven, then there's no way anybody can get there.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus does not say, Oh no, you guys have it in you.
SPEAKER_00: I know you.
SPEAKER_00: Peter, you're good enough.
SPEAKER_00: Try harder, man, you'll do it.
SPEAKER_00: I believe in you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, you're right.
SPEAKER_00: With man, verse 26, it is impossible.
SPEAKER_00: But with God, all things are possible.
SPEAKER_00: This is another one of those great reversals.
SPEAKER_00: You trust yourself, you fail every time.
SPEAKER_00: You trust Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You trust God.
SPEAKER_00: God can save whom he wants to save.
SPEAKER_00: Here's just the most basic way to understand this.
SPEAKER_00: God is the author and the agent of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: God is the one who saves people.
SPEAKER_00: If you were left to save yourself, you would fail and nobody would be saved.
SPEAKER_00: If the gospel depended on man who wills or man who runs, there would be zero believers.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, the gospel depends on God who chooses.
SPEAKER_00: And God can save whomever he wants to save.
SPEAKER_00: Not just God can save whomever he wants to save, God saves whomever he wants to save.
SPEAKER_00: God is the one who saves people.
SPEAKER_00: With man it is impossible.
SPEAKER_00: With God, all things are possible.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit is the agent of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: He brings dead hearts to life.
SPEAKER_00: He takes out the stony hearts, replaces them with a heart of flesh that believes the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: He takes the dead bones and causes them to come alive.
SPEAKER_00: He takes the blind eyes and causes them to see.
SPEAKER_00: He takes people dead spiritually and raises them to life and gives them a heart and a life and affections and joy of belief that trust Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Impossible for you to do this to somebody else.
SPEAKER_00: You can't boss somebody around to get saved or push them to get saved.
SPEAKER_00: Even your own kids.
SPEAKER_00: You can't box them into the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: You can pray them in, but you can't fight them in.
SPEAKER_00: That's the idea.
SPEAKER_00: God saves whomever he wants to save.
SPEAKER_00: It is the Spirit who brings life.
SPEAKER_00: And the Spirit goes wherever he wants to go.
SPEAKER_00: No one can say to it, Spirit over here, that person next, that would be a good person to save.
SPEAKER_00: No, the Spirit saves whomever he wills.
SPEAKER_00: Unless you think it's divine duck duck deuce, that God's like, saved, saved, not saved, not saved, saved.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what it's talking about.
SPEAKER_00: It's before time, before there was even a duck or a goose, God sets his affections on people that he designs to be recipients of his eternal mercy.
SPEAKER_00: And he brings them into this world and he saves them by his will.
SPEAKER_00: He can do this to whomever he wants to.
SPEAKER_00: And he chooses whom to save based not on anything in us.
SPEAKER_00: Salvation does not depend upon man who wills or man who runs, but it depends upon God, who is the one who chooses, God who is the one who saves.
SPEAKER_00: God is the one who brings life.
SPEAKER_00: It's God who causes the blind to see.
SPEAKER_00: This is not arbitrary.
SPEAKER_00: God uses means.
SPEAKER_00: He uses the means of the preaching of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: There's no faith without hearing, and hearing comes by words about Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So the gospel goes with an external call.
SPEAKER_00: This is the heavens declare the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: The sky speaks forth its handiwork.
SPEAKER_00: The preacher says, Everybody come to faith.
SPEAKER_00: You tell the whole neighborhood come to faith.
SPEAKER_00: That's the external call, the sun and the words that fill the air.
SPEAKER_00: External call.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't save anybody, but salvation works through that with the internal call of the Holy Spirit changing people, regenerating their dead hearts, and giving them life.
SPEAKER_00: That's the great reversal.
SPEAKER_00: So hard for people to believe that because we so badly want to trust self.
SPEAKER_00: This leads to the next reversal family or Oriented under Christ now.
SPEAKER_00: In the old covenant, family was the most important thing, so to say.
SPEAKER_00: Like your life existed to hand your land down to the next generation.
SPEAKER_00: Every 70 years the land reverted back.
SPEAKER_00: Year of Jubilee.
SPEAKER_00: Again, the Jews never did that, but that was the point.
SPEAKER_00: Not so far away from the American culture, is it?
SPEAKER_00: Where your biggest calling in life is to, you know, make a country for your kids.
SPEAKER_00: Have property to hand down to your kids.
SPEAKER_00: That mindset, when it comes to church, often views God as the agent of self-preservation.
SPEAKER_00: God is a homeland security agent.
SPEAKER_00: Protect my family, God.
SPEAKER_00: That's your job.
SPEAKER_00: Make sure everything in my household is fine.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus reorients this by placing family under Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Under him.
SPEAKER_00: He describes in verse 28 people who leave and follow Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And then verse 29, they've left houses, they've left brothers, they've left sisters, they've left their father or their mother or their children or their lands.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't like an exhaustive list, of course.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean every person leaves all of those things.
SPEAKER_00: It's more of a universal list.
SPEAKER_00: Like here's categories of things that are important to people.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel puts underneath their relationship to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Christ is elevated above your family, above your lands, above your stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not a list of secondary things either.
SPEAKER_00: When you come to faith in Christ, it's not saying you might have to find a new softball team or a new book club.
SPEAKER_00: It's targeting central relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Your family, your land, your kids, your brothers, your sisters, your parents.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it's not saying every Christian leaves all of those things, but it's saying being a Christian will require you orienting all those things underneath Christ.
SPEAKER_00: There will be sacrifices in this life.
SPEAKER_00: There will be people who decide to go in the mission field and raise their kids in some foreign country where they live in a house that is way too small.
SPEAKER_00: They learn a language that's not theirs.
SPEAKER_00: They play sports that you didn't play.
SPEAKER_00: They go to doctors and a hospital and a health clinic that's garbage compared to our countries.
SPEAKER_00: And you move your kids there.
SPEAKER_00: Or you can't drink the water, and you can't, you know, it's a helicopter ride to an airport, to another plane, to another plane to get you to see grandma.
SPEAKER_00: And you move your kids there.
SPEAKER_00: Because you feel God calling you in the mission field.
SPEAKER_00: Or people that lose their jobs because they won't, you know, bow down to the idol of evolution or use the preferred pronoun or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_00: Like those are just little sillies, like superficial things, like your job.
SPEAKER_00: And you order all of those underneath following Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Your parents might no longer talk to you because of your love for Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Brothers or sisters might not talk to you because of your love for Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it means to leave and follow.
SPEAKER_00: Not that you alienate them because you're a jerk to your family, but that your love for Christ is so evident and so confrontive to the world.
SPEAKER_00: In Matthew, in Mark's list here, Jesus says, you'll get all of those in this life and persecutions.
SPEAKER_00: He throws in persecutions there.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
SPEAKER_00: Like you'll you'll face actually, he's talking about persecution in this list.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew doesn't make it obvious he's talking about persecution, but again, Mark and Luke do.
SPEAKER_00: This is a list about persecution.
SPEAKER_00: You will have family separate from family over your love for the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure many of you know medical students that were kicked out for not going to the abortion sessions in school or whatever, the teachers around here who've been fired for the pronoun stuff and the name stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And again, those are just little cultural things, but they start to get at the heart of your occupation, the heart of your identity.
SPEAKER_00: That stuff is in the news, but that stuff goes on in your family, and I know you know this.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus is talking about here.
SPEAKER_00: Do you love Christ more than those things?
SPEAKER_00: Remember, this is not a superficial belief.
SPEAKER_00: This is a belief, when you say I'm following Jesus, it's a belief with a willingness to surrender all for obedience to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Forfeiting your life is the way Jesus describes it elsewhere.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever wants to follow me, deny himself, pick up his cross.
SPEAKER_00: Count the cost.
SPEAKER_00: Forfeit your life.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever wants to gain his life will lose it.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way Jesus describes this elsewhere.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same concept right here.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to leave houses and brothers and sisters and father.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, the crowd comes to Jesus and says, Your brothers and your sisters and your mother are calling for you.
SPEAKER_00: They think you're out of your mind.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, Who is my mother?
SPEAKER_00: Who are my brothers and my sisters?
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about the people that become your new family as the life in the church.
SPEAKER_00: Where Paul is a father in the faith to Timothy and to Anisimus and to Philemon and to so many others, where Paul has his own mother in the faith who nurtures him.
SPEAKER_00: Brothers and sisters, children.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he's talking about.
SPEAKER_00: All of those relationships are redefined and reoriented around Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Notice this gets back to the law gospel distinction too.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus doesn't nullify the fifth commandment, he fulfills it and, in a sense, replaces it.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one God that you worship.
SPEAKER_00: He is the object of your worship, not the idols.
SPEAKER_00: When you live your life devoted to Christ, following Christ, you're not taking the third commandment in vain.
SPEAKER_00: You find your rest in him, the fourth commandment is fulfilled by him.
SPEAKER_00: He is honored above your father and your mother, the fifth commandment.
SPEAKER_00: He's the author of life and of marriage, the sixth and the seventh commandment.
SPEAKER_00: You find your contentment in him, the eighth commandment.
SPEAKER_00: He is the way, the truth, and the life.
SPEAKER_00: The ninth and the tenth commandment.
SPEAKER_00: You find your rest in him.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't nullify the law, he fulfills it, and you reoriented everything around him, which leads finally.
SPEAKER_00: The world is eclipsed by the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: The world's eclipsed by the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: So Peter says, going back up, the disciples hear this in verse 25.
SPEAKER_00: Their minds are blown, verse 26.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus looked at them and said, Man, it's impossible.
SPEAKER_00: Peter, verse 27, said in reply, Matthew is being nice to him, he said in reply, Mark lets you know that Peter interrupted Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of contained in the quote, see, we've left everything and followed you.
SPEAKER_00: So you can picture the wheels turning in Peter's mind.
SPEAKER_00: The rich young ruler was just there, and Jesus said, Follow me, and he bounced.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter watches him go, and it's sad, and Jesus starts talking about leaving everything to follow him, and it dawns on Peter.
SPEAKER_00: I did that.
SPEAKER_00: I did what that guy didn't do.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, with Peter, when he has that thought, he can't keep it in.
SPEAKER_00: Ooh, ooh, Lord! I did it.
SPEAKER_00: The relationship between Peter and Jesus is so complex and marvelous that it's wonderful just to see.
SPEAKER_00: Peter interrupts Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: See, Lord, we've done this.
SPEAKER_00: What do we get?
SPEAKER_00: Love the question.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, in the new worlds.
SPEAKER_00: You see a little footnote there in your ESV.
SPEAKER_00: If you have the NS, you don't need the footnote, but the ESV has a footnote there.
SPEAKER_00: It's the word for regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: It's a Greek word, regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: So if you thought I was inserting the spirit into this where the spirit's not up there earlier, here's the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: This is the work of regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, in the regeneration you will have all these things.
SPEAKER_00: Very unusual word.
SPEAKER_00: In Titus 3, it's the Spirit saves us by the washing of the Word of God and the renewal of regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: That's the word Jesus uses here.
SPEAKER_00: In the regeneration is when you get a larger family and larger lands and large not just a hundred percent more, a hundredfold.
SPEAKER_00: That's 10,000% more.
SPEAKER_00: You get all of that in the New World.
SPEAKER_00: Acts 3 uses that word to talk about the restoration of all things.
SPEAKER_00: This is talking about the millennial kingdom when Jesus returns to earth and establishes his throne and reigns over the nations.
SPEAKER_00: Revelation 3 says, On that day, those who endure the tribulation of this world, who endure persecutions, who endure this church age, and you endure it, you receive the blessings of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: You will reign with Jesus on his thrones over the nations.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, don't you know that you will judge the world?
SPEAKER_00: You will reign with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus establishes communion, he tells the 12, with the 11 at this point, if you've overcome the world, you will reign with me and sit on the tribe and sit on the thrones and reign over the nations.
SPEAKER_00: You'll reign over the kingdom of God, which will go shore to shore, sea to sea, around the world.
SPEAKER_00: The earth will be shaken.
SPEAKER_00: The Old Testament says, repeated in Hebrews 12.
SPEAKER_00: The earth will be shaken, and the gold and the silver, Habakkuk says, will come to Jerusalem, and the world is reoriented around Christ.
SPEAKER_00: There's a new temple, and the waters flow from it, and the nations are drawn there, and you will reign over the nations with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's coming.
SPEAKER_00: A vast disproportion between what you leave and what you receive.
SPEAKER_00: So disproportionate.
SPEAKER_00: Math doesn't do it justice.
SPEAKER_00: Don't someone start doing the math with if I left one brother, I get a thousand brothers.
SPEAKER_00: So disproportionate is the point.
SPEAKER_00: The sacrifices in this world will seem so small, the rewards in the next so great.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Peter hears from Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you'll get.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is worth it.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter doesn't understand that at this point.
SPEAKER_00: He knows Jesus is worth it, but he doesn't know all it's coming.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, they're still fighting through in their minds is Jesus going to go to Jerusalem and overthrow Rome and get this thing going right now.
SPEAKER_00: It hurts that the rich young ruler went away.
SPEAKER_00: He would have helped.
SPEAKER_00: Now we just got these kids all around.
SPEAKER_00: And yet Jesus is worth it.
SPEAKER_00: Peter is going to be martyred for his faith, crucified upside down.
SPEAKER_00: He's got a whole road in front of him still, doesn't he?
SPEAKER_00: He's going to deny Jesus three times, be restored, jump out of the boat, swim to the shore, the whole thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's all in his future still.
SPEAKER_00: It's worth it though, Peter.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus affirms that to him.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't rebuke him.
SPEAKER_00: He refirms him and says, you're going to get it and so much more.
SPEAKER_00: Not just you, verse 28, but all who follow me.
SPEAKER_00: There's that word again.
SPEAKER_00: All who follow me.
SPEAKER_00: That's the reversal.
SPEAKER_00: And they did it.
SPEAKER_00: These disciples did it.
SPEAKER_00: It's worth asking yourself.
SPEAKER_00: It's so easy to slide back into works righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: It's so easy to think you're going to heaven when you die because you're a good person.
SPEAKER_00: It's so easy to keep working, working, working.
SPEAKER_00: Set that aside.
SPEAKER_00: Find the confidence of your salvation in what Christ has done for you.
SPEAKER_00: And have your life changed.
SPEAKER_00: Trust Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Don't fall into thinking of, oh, I'm saved because I chose or I did.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: If you're following Christ, you are saved because of what Jesus did, and he set his spirit in your heart and sealed you, gave you faith.
SPEAKER_00: So easy to think that the gospel is just going to make my family better.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe, maybe not.
SPEAKER_00: Orient your family underneath Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So easy to fall back into living for this world.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you want a bigger house, right?
SPEAKER_00: You deserve just a little bit bigger house.
SPEAKER_00: You deserve a little bit of a raise, right?
SPEAKER_00: You got to get your kids on the right soccer team.
SPEAKER_00: They deserve it.
SPEAKER_00: It's so easy to fall back into that.
SPEAKER_00: You reorient this world under the kingdom that's in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: And I know many of you have done that.
SPEAKER_00: There's people in this congregation that have lost their jobs over their faith.
SPEAKER_00: I know this.
SPEAKER_00: There are people in this congregation whose parents don't talk to them or whose kids don't talk to them over their faith.
SPEAKER_00: You've made sacrifices for the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: I know we have missionaries visiting this morning who've done this.
SPEAKER_00: I know we have grandparents that have watched their grandkids get on planes and fly around the world.
SPEAKER_00: I know that.
SPEAKER_00: And you could be tempted to think, where's the hundredfold?
SPEAKER_00: Like where's the blessing?
SPEAKER_00: Where's the return?
SPEAKER_00: And you have to remember, Jesus says it's not in this life.
SPEAKER_00: Like the church is in this life for sure.
SPEAKER_00: But the hundredfold is the next life in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And there, by the way, the first will be last and the last first.
SPEAKER_00: What a great reversal to end this chapter with.
SPEAKER_00: How in the world can the first be last in the last first?
SPEAKER_00: How does that make any sense?
SPEAKER_00: That, my friends, is next week.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we are grateful for your word and we pray that you would seal it in our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for anyone here this morning that has never counted the cost and trusted you with the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Receive forgiveness of their sins through their faith in you.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that you would work that in their hearts this very morning.
SPEAKER_00: I know there's people here that were here under compulsion, brought by friends or parents.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that you would work in their hearts this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Give them ears to hear and a heart to believe the word.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, for those of us who believe the gospel, help Christ be our vision.
SPEAKER_00: We see in him the riches of the world come to focus in him.
SPEAKER_00: He indeed is our vision.
SPEAKER_00: We're so grateful for that.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church.
SPEAKER_00: If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to tms.edu.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.
SPEAKER_00: But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.
SPEAKER_00: Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.