Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Hello everyone.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is Pastor Benjamin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City Orlando.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.
Rev. Justin Grimm: I would like to invite you all now to join me in this prayer of illumination.
Rev. Justin Grimm: Uh, would you stand, please?
Rev. Justin Grimm: Would you join me in reciting this prayer together?
Rev. Justin Grimm: Holy Spirit, make us hungry for your word, that it may satisfy us, lead us, and bring us life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Rev. Justin Grimm: Amen.
Rev. Justin Grimm: The scripture reading this morning comes from the book of Numbers, chapter 25, verses 1 through 13.
Rev. Justin Grimm: While Israel lived in Shetim, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab.
Rev. Justin Grimm: These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods.
Rev. Justin Grimm: So Israel yoked itself to Baal of Peor, and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel.
Rev. Justin Grimm: And the Lord said to Moses, Take all the chiefs of the people and hang them in the sun before the Lord, that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel.
Rev. Justin Grimm: And Moses said to the judges of Israel, Each of you kill those of his men who have yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor.
Rev. Justin Grimm: And behold, one of the people of Israel came and brought a Midianite woman to his family in the sight of Moses, and in the sight of the whole congregation of the people of Israel, while they were weeping at the entrance in the tent of meeting.
Rev. Justin Grimm: When Phineas, the son of Eliezer, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose and left the congregation, and took a spear in his hand, and went after the man of Israel into the chamber, and pierced both of them, the man of Israel and the woman through her belly.
Rev. Justin Grimm: Thus the plague on the people of Israel was stopped.
Rev. Justin Grimm: Nevertheless, those who died by the plague were twenty four thousand.
Rev. Justin Grimm: And the Lord said to Moses, Phineas, the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel, and that he was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy.
Rev. Justin Grimm: Therefore say, Behold, I give to him my covenant of peace, and it shall be to him and to his descendants after him the covenant of a perpetual priesthood, because he was jealous for his God and made atonement for the people of Israel.
Rev. Justin Grimm: This is God's word.
Rev. Justin Grimm: Thanks be to God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Just for fun.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Last year I read the biography of Keith Green called No Compromise.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Anybody here know who Keith Green is?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Okay.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Sermon illustration for 10 people.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Here we go.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Keith Green, for those of you who don't know, was a prophetic pioneer of praise and worship music.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A lot of the kind of songs that you hear us singing up here, we can thank Keith Green for in many ways originating that style of worship.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, I love Keith Green for a lot of reasons, but one is because he is that kind of hold nothing back, all in, no compromise kind of guy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And I'm attracted to that kind of devotion in someone else.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, some of that's personality, some of that's Holy Spirit.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I don't know which is which, but it's it's just part of who I am.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And I think that's because I have this allergic reaction to half-heartedness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I really believe that a half-heart is a whole compromise.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And I don't want that in my life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so I read biographies of people like Keith Green, because this is what he would say when he would be playing a concert.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He would tell his audiences, I repent if my music and my life has not provoked you into a godly jealousy or to sell out more completely to Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I love that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I love worship leaders like that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he he's this kind of person who is the reason I read biographies of people uh outside of my generation because I don't want my level of zeal to be set at the standard of our generation.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In fact, I want to look back in church history and I want to measure my current present-tense zeal by the bright shining lights over the last 2,000 years, not the current cultural moment.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so I read biographies of people like this for that reason.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And yet I was surprised when I read something in his biography.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: His wife said this about him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: She said, What many people don't know was that Keith's zeal often led to crushing disappointment with his own perceived failings.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He'd promised God that he was going to pray for an hour or read five chapters of the Bible before breakfast, and then when he'd sleep in late, he'd be devastated at having let God down.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, I also know this underbelly to zeal.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I know what it's like to have that zeal that is sincere, but it ends up becoming self-condemning because it's rooted in performance, not in grace.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so I was helped by Keith Green's biography in a way I didn't expect.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He said that, uh, his wife said that, like many zealous Christians, Keith based his relationship with God on his own performance.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If he didn't feel right with God, then he believed he wasn't right.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This self-centered view sometimes blinded him to the love of God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And Keith once confided in a friend, he said, Sometimes I'm not sure if God loves me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So how are we to feel about zeal?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What are we supposed to think about it?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, I want to look at our text this morning, Numbers chapter 25.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So if you have a Bible or a device or the worship God, go ahead and get Numbers 25 out in front of you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And this is my main point.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If God is jealous, let us be zealous to be found in Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's my main point, and also three subpoints.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So look with me at Numbers 25, verse 1.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The first point would be if God is jealous, if God is jealous, look at Numbers 25, verse 1 says this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A romance because God describes God's self as a husband passionately pursuing his often unfaithful bride.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A battlefield because there is a war going on right here, right now, for your affections.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Who are you going to give your highest allegiance to?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so we read a passage like this, and it's supposed to jolt us like it does.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, scripture uses boldly erotic images to describe the passionate love relationship between God and his people and doesn't apologize for it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So neither will we.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, the scripture calls idolatry using the language of marital unfaithfulness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 1 again.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The people began to whore with the daughters of Moab.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, you were made with an urge to merge because the highest fulfillment of your existence is union with God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's union with God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so even your sexual desires, even your desires for union with your spouse, those are good, but they're mere signport, they're signposts that point to the reality.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Union between God and His people.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what this text, that's what's the subterranean part of this text that's trying to get at.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so this is why idolatry and sexual immorality are often bedfellows in scripture.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, because humans were eat were made to either worship the creator or we end up worshiping our procreative faculties.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's exactly what's happening here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, Baal, the God they end up worshiping here, is the Canaanite fertility god.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Israel's constantly tempted to worship the gods of their surrounding neighbors.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Sixty-three times Baal is talked about in Scripture.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 2 with me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It says this the daughters of Moab invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the people ate and bowed down to their gods.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So Israel yoked himself to Baal of Peor.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, there's a striking image being used here, this image of a yoke.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Many of us are not from agrarian backgrounds.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is what a yoke is.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's like think of the McDonald's arches like this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But then one animal has its the yoke around its shoulders, and the other animal has the yoke around its shoulders, but they're bound together.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So you cannot go left and right at the same time.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What does that mean?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It means that idolatry shapes, forms, directs your life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: To be yoked to Baal of Peor means that where Baal goes, Israel goes too.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is key to what's being talked about here because a yoke is actually kind of subtle.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It starts as a pattern of habit, it starts as a relationship, a subtle idol that begins to shape you in real and true ways.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so here's the question to diagnose Are your commitments drawing you closer to Jesus over time?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If not, who are you yoked to?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What are you yoked by?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You can tell.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because a yoke is meant to direct you over time.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, with that, Israel's idolatry provoked the Lord's jealousy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 3.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the Lord said to Moses, Take all the chiefs of the people and hang them in the sun before the Lord, that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And Moses said to the judges of Israel, Each of you kill those of his men who have yoked themselves to Baal of Peor.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I don't know about you, when I read this, I wince a little bit.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Maybe some of you do too.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I think sometimes it's like this feels like it's too much.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's just over the top.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What's the big deal?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But I wonder if that's actually a symptom of our lack of zeal.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, we live in a cultural moment that that could be described as rampant radical relativism.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so the fishbowl that we swim in has made lukewarm the new norm.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because we don't know any different.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, I was in a conversation with a friend of mine, he really is a friend of mine, who's also lives in a gay lifestyle, who also professes to follow Jesus, something that no Christian thought was even possible until like 50 years ago.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Okay.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Scripture nor tradition believes that's even a possibility, neither do I.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so we have these fun conversations at coffee shops.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the conversation we had was a few weeks ago, he said, You see, the problem is that the Bible's just full of so many contradictions.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I said, Oh, oh, oh, here it is.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I just realized it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The difference between you and me is that you trust yourself and see the Bible is full of contradictions.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Whereas I trust the Bible and see myself as full of contradictions.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Some of you are like, You said that though?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I did, I said that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I said that because we're friends.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is in the context of relationship.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He knows me, I know him, he knows where I stand, and yet we can be friends and disagree with each other meaningfully.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But here's the problem.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In a moment like ours, a relativistic age, convictions present like pride.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But God made you to have convictions.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Augustine of Hippo said it like this if you believe what you like in the gospels and reject what you don't like, it's not the gospel you believe, but yourself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, God made us to have convictions.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's why we see in verse 5, Moses said to the judges of Israel, Each of you kill those of his men who have yoked themselves to Baal of Peor.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, this is important.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Notice the language.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Kill those of his men, the ones causing the problem, the ones leading into idolatry, those are the ones who deserve to be judged because God is concerned for the whole.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We've been so malformed by Western culture.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We we think a people is basically like a bag with a bunch of marbles in it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But but the biblical anthropology views a people almost more like subatomic particles.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We have these covalent bonds where you affect me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Your compromise affects me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: My compromise affects you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so God deals like a good surgeon, he's willing to cut off a limb in order to save the whole body.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what's happening here in our text.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, this is important to notice the difference between where we are in redemptive history.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In the Old Testament, a crime, a sin that was worthy of capital punishment in the New Testament, in the church, is worthy of excommunication.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So execution becomes excommunication, all right?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We don't kill people for their sins anymore.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's really important.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But what do we notice here?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, in the Old Testament, the body was disciplined for unrepentant idolatry.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In the New Testament, the soul is disciplined for unrepentant idolatry.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You decide which one's worse.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, the reformers believe that a true church had three things: a commitment to the true gospel, uh, a ministration of the true sacraments, and a commitment to church discipline.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You are not the church if you don't discipline the church, according to the reformers, and I believe according to scripture.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so one of the things I love about New City is that we have always taken sin seriously without taking ourselves seriously.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's a really hard needle to thread there.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And that's true of this church, and it's true of the kind of church you want to be a part of, because I find myself pleading with people, beckoning, urging them, saying, hey, please turn back.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The direction you're going is leading to destruction.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's a way that seems right to man, but in its end it leads to death.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And we urge and plead with what Galatians 6.1 calls gentle restoration.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A true church is gonna do that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so a question worth asking is: would my church attempt to rescue me if I got entangled in grievous sin?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because that's what love does.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, not the sentimental, sappy, hallmark love that we're gonna see a lot of movies about in the next season.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Not that kind of love.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Not a relativistic love, but a realistic love, the kind that we see in verse 3.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It says, and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That metaphor is important.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Lord's anger is described as a burning fire.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because the fire of love and the fire of anger both feel like a burning.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is the way Song of Songs 8 says it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: One of my favorite verses in all the scriptures.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Love is strong as death.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jealousy is fierce as the grave.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, God's wrath is not the opposite of his love, but an expression of it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What I mean is that true love is committed to the good of the beloved.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Therefore, when the beloved is threatened or engaged in self-destruction like sin, love necessarily takes the form of wrath.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Wrath is what love looks like when it confronts the evil that harms the beloved.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because the opposite of love is not wrath, it's indifference.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let me just make that plain with a few brief illustrations.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you're caught in addiction, a good friend's gonna confront you, insist on rehab, remove access to the addiction of choice, and set up boundaries for you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They're willing to risk being perceived as harsh because they care about a redemptive confrontation.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A judge who's kind towards criminals is necessarily cruel towards victims.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: To ignore, excuse, or minimize harm is not kindness, it's cruelty.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A spouse who feels nothing when their partner betrays them does not love.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Real covenant love burns with jealousy, the desire for faithful, exclusive intimacy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, that's what we see on display here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God's wrath is his love refusing to be passive in the presence of evil.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God is not a relativist.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God is jealous for the good of his beloved.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so, if God is jealous, let us be zealous.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look with me at Numbers 25, verse 6.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It says this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And behold, one of the people of Israel came and brought a Midianite woman to his family in the sight of Moses and in the sight of the whole congregation of the people of Israel, while they were weeping in the entrance of the tent of meeting.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: When Phineas, the son of Eliezer, son of Aaron, the priest, saw it, he rose and left the congregation, and took a spear in his hand, and went after the man of Israel into the chamber and pierced both of them, the man of Israel and the woman through her belly.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Thus the plague on the people of Israel was stopped.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Nevertheless, those who died by the plague were twenty-four thousand.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Wow, okay, here we go.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So Phineas sees a man flagrantly defying covenant fidelity.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what he witnesses.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so he brings a spear and enters this tent and kills the man and this woman in the act, if you will.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Text goes on in verse 10.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How does the Lord appraise this?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He says, And the Lord said to Moses, Phineas, the son of Eliezer, son of Aaron, the priest, has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Underline that, if you would, in your Bible.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, according to the Lord's telling of the story, Phinehas is the hero because he was, quote, jealous with my jealousy, verse 11.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now that's the key.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And it's actually a good life purpose.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You want something to live for, you want to have an aim that's worth spending all of your efforts and energies reaching towards, become a man or a woman after God's own heart.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Be the kind of person who, no matter what, you are gonna try to think God's thoughts after him, feel God's feelings after him, love God's loves after him, will God's will after him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what it means to be a man or a woman after God's own heart.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And it's a worthwhile aim for the entirety of your existence.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: No regrets if you pursue that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so, like Phineas, I want the verdict over my life to be, I want the Lord to say, Ben, you were jealous with my jealousy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I want that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I don't know if I have it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let me tell you a story.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In 2011, I lived with some friends in a neighborhood just north of UCF.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And when I was there, we with a small neighborhood, about 50 houses, three streets, and we covenanted together.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The roommates, uh, our girlfriends, some other friends, we covenanted together to take spiritual responsibility for the 50 houses in our neighborhood.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We called it the Park Road Parish.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so what that meant was we would prayer walk often our entire neighborhood and ask the Lord, Lord, would you deliver these people from darkness?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Bring them to your son Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We had an after-school program where we'd I'd come home from work and I'd see uh a dozen kids in my living room with my roommate Danny reading the Jesus Storybook Bible to them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Um, my neighbor across the street ended up dying of cancer, and I was holding her hand while she died in her bed, urging her to trust Jesus while my wife, then girlfriend, was in the living room consoling her teenage daughters.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I cared.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I cared about my neighbors.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So one day when I was driving home, I pulled my truck over on the side of the road in my neighborhood because I saw two Mormons riding a bicycle.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Two bicycles.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I would have been impressed.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I wouldn't have been mad, I would have been impressed.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Two Mormons riding two bicycles in my neighborhood.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so I pulled my truck over and I get out and I say, Hey, can I talk to you?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They're like, Oh yeah, we that's what we're here for, actually.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I was like, Oh, you don't know what you're in for yet.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so I spent about 30 minutes talking to them because that's all that it took for them to realize I'm not the one.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm standing on business right now.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so they talked to me about the Mormon faith, and I'm I'm like, this isn't happening.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And at some point in the conversation, it ended here, usually they do, because I said to them, hey, listen, I've taken spiritual responsibility for this neighborhood, and so what that means is you're peddling a false message that's leading people to hell.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do not come back.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, was that youthful zeal?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Maybe, but I fear full-grown lukewarmness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I don't want that, I don't want to look back on a day and age when I burned for Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Man, you remember when I was super into Jesus?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I don't want that to be in my past.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Far be it from me, because if God is jealous, I want to be zealous for the things that He cares about.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so it's important to distinguish, though, from being an intense jerk and godly zeal, all right?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's important.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: When I first came to know Jesus, I was in the intense jerk side of things.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I remember one of my friends, Ed, who was an atheist, uh, would let me practice on him sharing the gospel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's like, Oh, yeah, I mean, you talk to me if you want to.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I was like, great, Ed.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Captive audience.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so I would talk to Ed about Jesus and then he'd give me feedback on how he thought it went.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he's like, dude, that was actually really good.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It was super interesting at first, but then that point when you looked at me and got really intense, you're like, You're going to hell, dude.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He was like, I don't know what to do with that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And here's the thing: Ed was like mostly right.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is why.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because I actually felt a fear because my responsibility was so great for his salvation that I felt like it was all on me to convert this dude.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And if I didn't do it right, and if he was resistant, I felt anger because of his refusal to trust Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That was me being an intense jerk, frankly.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It was more about me and my fear, and I wasn't a card-carrying Calvinist yet, so this was zeal without knowledge.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And and that would have that would have helped me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It would have helped me because I would have felt this sense of like, Jesus, you got this, dude.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I don't, not me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So what am I getting at?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What I'm trying to say is I want to be jealous with God's jealousy for the people around me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I want to be, I want to step into the shoes of Phineas.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I want to, I want to live like this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If Jesus is my model, I want to be able to say, zeal for your house consumes me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But here's the problem.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do you feel the tension around zeal?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because simultaneously, on the one hand, zeal is a very Christ-like emotion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: On the other hand, zealous people have done very unchrist-like things in the name of Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so what do we do with that?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I mean, par excellence is the zeal of Phineas becomes this uh model for a lay movement of Jewish people called the Pharisees.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, the most famous Pharisee described himself like this in Acts 22.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He says, I'm a Jew born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God, as all of you are this day, I persecuted this way to the death, binding and delivering prison to prison both men and women.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Or how about this in Galatians 1, Paul says it like this for you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Or finally, Philippians 3, Paul presents his flesh resume like this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He says, I was circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law of Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You notice in all three of those times when Paul's telling his testimony, he connects his zeal with his violent resistance to Christianity.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They're linked in Paul's mind.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, because Paul saw himself in the Phineas tradition of zealous, covenantally loyal Jewish warriors.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what it meant to be a Pharisee.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so they believed if they could be pure enough, then they could usher in God's kingdom.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's why he was, it was nothing for him to kill Christians.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, like Phineas, Paul was trying to be loyal to Israel's God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: To Paul, Christians were idolaters, they were worshiping a man named Jesus of Nazareth.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: No go in monotheistic Judaism.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so not only were they doing that, they were fraternizing with pagans, they were eating with Gentiles, they must be killed, Phineas style.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what Paul thought.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so they believed that they were anticipating a messianic figure who would come and would destroy Israel's idolaters from within and deliver them from Israel's enemies from without.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They were waiting for that Messiah to come.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And all of the people who were not as serious about Judaism as they were, they looked down on and judged and thought, this messianic figure is gonna set it up, set it right.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: One of my favorite things is that the Bible, there's no more trenchant critic of the dangers of religious zeal than the Bible.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Bible's constantly warning us because something happened to Paul.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Something happened to this zealous Pharisee in the style of Phineas.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He met the true Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You know the story in Acts 9 on the road to Damascus, he meets the man Jesus who is raised from the dead.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so what does Paul do?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He goes to seminary for three years in the wilderness to rethink his entire view of Jesus in light of uh the entire view of scripture in light of Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And when he did that, he res he redirected his zeal to be found in Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the third point, and where we're gonna land the plane.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If God is jealous, let us be zealous to be found in Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now you see behind me Philippians 3.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Paul, after his flesh resume, as I called it, goes on to describe this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He says, But whatever gained I had, I counted as loss for the surpassing, for the sake of Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Indeed, I counted everything as lost because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Not that I've already obtained this or I'm already perfect, but I, here's the zealous language, press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind, I strain forward to what lies ahead.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I love this dig at the end.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if anything you think otherwise, God's gonna show you you're wrong and I'm right.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Only let us hold true to what we have attained.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, why do I read that lengthy passage?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because I want you to see that Paul didn't get, he didn't go soft on the total demand of God over all of life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God doesn't rewire a personality, he redirects it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Paul was a zealous man, and yet when Paul saw the cross of Christ, the fire of his zeal was ignited to burn in a different way.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, because rather than coming like a Phineas-like Messiah to spear sinners, Jesus hanging on the cross was speared by and for sinners.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, rather than Jesus coming to pierce evildoers, Jesus himself was pierced for evildoers.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So what Paul saw was that on the cross we can we can see the fierce jealousy of God to destroy our sin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what we see in the cross.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so what that means is that God is not tepid toward your transgressions.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They matter.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The cross of Christ does not offer an excuse, it offers forgiveness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Those are two very different things.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so when we see the cross, we recognize that it is this is what it took for God to recuse.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Recognize, we have to recognize this is what it took for God to rescue me from my compromise.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, God is far from indifferent toward your affections.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: James 4 says it like this Do you not know that God yearns jealously for the spirit that He's put within you?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We see that when we look at the cross.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so what it does is that it ignites our zeal to repent.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 7.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, some of you here, Jesus would look at you and he would say, in the words of Revelation 2, you have lost your first love.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Repent.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Come back home.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at the cross.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: See how unrelativistic God is towards your sin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He is willing to destroy his own son to destroy your own sin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Hate your sin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But do not hate yourself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because you look again at the cross and we see that God has a fierce and jealous love to make us his own.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, in the cross we see that not only is God willing to destroy our sin, he's willing to be pierced for our sin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So some of you in here, like Keith Green, you've been making religious vows to do this and to do that, and either you do them and you become an insufferable person to be around, or you fail at them and you spiral into despair.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, the cross says that God loves you where you are as you are, and that that love for you actually changes you over time.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so, if God would welcome me, even me, into his covenant people, then it redirects our zeal to take up a towel, not a sword, towards our neighbors.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Augustine of Hippo said it like this: those who are lost in their passions are less lost than those who have lost their passions.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What does that mean?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It means that the worst thing is half-hearted Christianity.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because you feel enough to feel guilty, but not enough to feel free.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like, let me just be straight with you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Either go all in with Jesus or find another hobby.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's not worth it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because the only way that we can function at our fullest is if we are on fire burning for something worthwhile.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And I'm telling you, Jesus Christ is worthwhile.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, the reality is that without abandonment to God, our hearts end up sinking into restlessness and boredom and frustration, and you better believe those things all come out sideways.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you have nothing to die for, you will live for nothing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus gives himself to you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, it is worth being, if God is jealous for you, then it's worth being zealous to be found in Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He gives all of himself to you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's giving himself to you right now.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He has himself to you on offer.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Will you take him?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: One of the questions I'm going to invite you to ask in a moment is, Lord, what is it that hinders love?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What is it that hinders you from being my all-consuming passion?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because you see, Jesus on the cross purchased a church full of people ablaze with affection for him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If this really is a romance in the midst of the battlefield, then the Father would not insult his beloved son by giving him a bride that is bored, passive, and compromising.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because nothing less than your full affections will do.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Nothing less than your total allegiance and devotion to him will do.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Christianity without zeal is not a threat to the devil.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: John Wesley said it like this: light yourself on fire with passion for Jesus, and people will come from miles to watch you burn.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I want that for a new city.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I want us to be a people who burn with a zeal for the love of Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That actually shapes us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: One person has said, it is men and women on fire who change the course of history.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Nothing less.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so, true Christianity sparks a flame in the human spirit.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It ignites in us a fervency.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This matters.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It matters for the trends of history that we become a people, not like a Laodicean age like we live in right now, but a people who burn with a zeal for the true and living God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let me close with some words from one of Keith Green's songs.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Oh Lord, please light the fire that once burned bright and clean.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Replace the lamp of my first love that burns with holy fear.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Lord Jesus, we ask these things now.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Would you give us, restore to us our first love?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A felt affection for you that burns away everything that hinders love, Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Spirit of God, this is your work.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You are described as the fire of God throughout Scripture.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Would you come, fire of God?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Not in judgment, but come to purify.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Purify New City from our little idolatries, our seemingly inconspicuous compromises.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We want to see them too, and we want to repent.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We want to be zealous to turn back to you with our whole hearts.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For your beautiful name we pray.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Amen.