SPEAKER_00 0:00

So this is maybe kind of a downer note to start on today, but how many of you uh you know keep up with the world news? Yeah, like it's pretty it's pretty depressing, isn't it? I mean, honestly, like you look around, you see all the things that are going on in the world. It's a it's a sad reality that we live in a broken and a messed up world. There's a lot of injustice, a lot of uh difficult things that are happening across the globe. And and we should care about that stuff. Like we should care about what's going on uh around the world because we're part of this thing called the human race. Uh we're just one person, a part of a planet of seven billion, that that we have the opportunity to be on this globe spinning around and and and we want to care about the needs of others, but sometimes it's almost easier not to know the news. You know what I'm saying? It's like if I don't know it, then I don't have to feel some of the pain or the suffering uh that's going on. But you know, if you've been following it at all, this ISIS thing is just out of control, right? It's just crazy, like the ISIS deal. And and for some of you who served in the military, and some of you who have been around uh even the Middle East, I mean, you know, this is an intense deal, and and they're doing horrific, horrendous acts of terror, doing all these things. And one of the most recent stories that came out, of course, was this story of a Jordanian pilot uh who literally burned to death, uh, just to try to continue to make a point and to say, hey, look, like we're gonna we're gonna try to get our point made uh through these acts of terror. It's it's horrible. And I don't know if you saw uh it just in response to that, that that Jordan, they have a king, uh King Abdullah. Anybody see King Abdullah? And uh this week it was all over social media, it's all over the news, you know, that King Abdullah, who happened to be when he was younger, special ops, um, he like put on his military suit again and he made a speech and basically said, Listen, like we are gonna go after these ISIS dudes, and we're gonna expend every bullet we have, every ounce of gasoline we have, and we are gonna take these guys out because we're not gonna put up with this. I mean, like, he just like he just rocked it, man. He's like, we're gonna go. He's like, we're charging this thing. And there was a lot of comparisons to other leaders this week, and there's a lot of commentary on that. But he they actually deemed uh King Abdullah the warrior king. Okay, that kind of got tagged to him this this week that he's the warrior king. In fact, there's actually a picture of him here. This is him, King Abdullah, and uh and he's he's a pretty bad dude, okay? And he's pretty he's pretty bent on like look, we're gonna be we're gonna be vigilant and we're gonna go after these guys. Now, whether you agree with his approach or not, this is this guy and he is he's going hard after it. And I was thinking about that this week because we're getting ready to start a series, or we are starting a series today called The Servant King. And I was thinking about his title, Warrior King. And I was thinking to myself, like, when we think about Jesus, when we consider Jesus, when there's discussions that go on about Jesus, like what do we picture? What do we think about him? What do we think about his life? Uh, what do we think about who he is? And the truth is that the Bible actually gives us a couple of major pictures of Jesus. One primary picture is the picture that we see from 2,000 years ago when he walked the earth, and it's recorded in the Gospels, the first four books of the New Testament, and we see him live out his life, and we definitely would say that according to that account, those four accounts in Scripture, you would not call him the Warrior King, right? You wouldn't call him the warrior king. Now, we also get another picture of Jesus at the end of Scripture in Revelation, when he comes back on a white horse with a sword coming out of his mouth, with a tattoo on his thigh, with his with blood dripping and saying, I'm going to revenge, I'm going to avenge all of the injustice, and I'm going to make right all the wrongs. That's a very different Jesus than the picture we see from the Gospels, right? And we need to understand both of those pictures because here's the thing Jesus came the first time as a baby in a manger, but the next time he's coming as a reigning king. And he's going to take care of all the issues that are going on. And you do not want to be on the wrong side of that equation, okay? Let me just tell you. You don't want to be on the wrong team when Jesus shows back up on the scene. Because sometimes we subdue Jesus, and we've jokingly said before we have the uh Ricky Bobby version of Jesus, you know, that Jesus in the golden fleece diaper, like that's kind of how we think about Jesus. We tame him down, we make him this uh effeminate male with flowing hair and blue eyes and with a kind of a lisp, and we think we think like that's Jesus. Okay? And I'm not I'm not making fun of him, but I'm saying like that's kind of what I hear when people talk about Jesus. That's not Jesus. Even when he was here, he was still a manly man, he was a carpenter, he was a man who uh who definitely was going somewhere, he had a direction, he was driven, he wasn't this purposeless floater, he wasn't like stuck in late adolescence like a lot of men in their 20s and 30s today in our culture. He had direction, he had purpose, he would drive, he was going somewhere. But when he comes back, it's gonna be a very different story than the first time around. But many of you uh who were here back in September, you remember that we every year have sort of an overarching goal for our church. It's an annual goal. Uh we start in September and we kind of work around back through August, and then every year we feel like as an as a leadership, the elders, the staff, we pray and we say, God, okay, what do you want us to be working on? And we felt like this year our goal was to live like Jesus. Now, I'll be honest, um, that should be our goal all the time. Shouldn't just be like a one-year goal, okay, we've lived like Jesus now, let's move on, right? But the reason we explicitly felt that that was the goal for us this year is because we wanted to turn it up a notch and just being intentional that when we say we're Christians, little Christ, that our goal is not just to be better people, not just to be good people, but to actually follow Christ's example. Are you with me? Like we want to look more like him. So if we want to know what it means to be a mature person, if we want to know what it means to be the epitome of what God intended for humanity, then look at Jesus because he is that, and that's who we're following. And so when we think about Jesus, we felt like even during that discussion about living like Jesus this year, that we wanted to take at least a window of time at some point and look at the Gospels and read through a gospel together and really hone in on some of the characteristics that we see in Jesus' life. And Mark was the first one that jumped into my mind. Part of it is because Mark is just succinct, it's clear, it's direct, and it really is helpful for getting these images of who Jesus is and who he was when he walked the earth in human flesh. Okay? And so for the next nine weeks leading up to Easter, we're gonna be walking through who is Jesus in the book of Mark. And so I invite you to go ahead and get your Bibles out this morning. We're gonna look at Mark chapter 1, verse 1, and we're gonna do three things. First, I'm gonna give you a little bit of background on the book of Mark so you understand the context of it. Um, as I said, I don't know how many of you read uh the scriptures daily, but there's a reading plan in the guide, and we're reading through the book of Mark together, so we'll slowly read through it. And while we're reading through the book of Mark, there's still a psalm every day to read alongside of it. Just kind of a devotional thought as we think about the psalmist, they write these really poetic and encouraging, inspiring messages to us about how to worship God, such as a vertical component, and then we'll look at the life of Jesus and say, okay, how did Jesus live and how does that impact the way we live today? Okay? And so that's that's the plan. If you don't have a Bible, by the way, there's some Bibles underneath the seats, feel free to grab one, and then I also have this verse on the screen above me. So, Mark chapter 1, verse 1, it says this, and then we're gonna talk a little bit about the backdrop to this. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Now, I don't know if you guys have seen any of those uh YouTube videos where uh these guys wake up their friends like to firecrackers, to uh dumping ice on them. Have you guys seen these? All the men that are like, yeah, we think it's funny still, because you know, men just never get beyond 13. And so, uh, in humor. And so uh women are like, that's the dumbest thing, and men are like, oh, that's hilarious, let's do that. And uh, but seriously, like uh there's all these like abrupt wake-up calls. And so I've seen some funny ones recently that people post, and you know, it's like a guy's like in dead sleep, and uh, and all of a sudden they put a pan of firecrackers right next to him. So try that next time, right? Uh if you're having somebody in your household that's not waking up easily, just stick some a pan of firecrackers next to them and wake them up, see what happens. And uh so this this is about the way that Mark starts his gospel. I mean, it's like he just boom, we're we're off to the races. We start, it's abrupt, it's immediate, it's like wake up, here we go. Okay? And I usually don't do a real good job uh in the mornings when I'm woking up that way, okay? It's for us today. I feel like even as we read this book, we're kind of just jumping right into this thing. And so we're gonna do something a little bit different than the norm. We're actually gonna slow down and just really camp out around uh verse one and then talk a little bit about some of the following verses and how they uh support the first verse. But before we get there to really unpacking verse one, let me remind you of a couple things. Maybe you think this is great, maybe I'm just a Bible geek and it helps me. But as I read the Bible, I like to know who wrote it, when did they write it, what were they writing about, uh, some of those things. And so a few context contextual things for you. John Mark is the guy who wrote it. Uh, John was his Jewish name, Mark was his Roman name, so he went by John Mark, but really he went by Mark in the book, and that's why we call it Mark, because he wrote it primarily to Roman people, uh, people who were not Jewish, okay? They weren't folks who um who got a lot of the things of the Jewish culture. They were Romans because he was actually probably in Rome when he wrote this book, okay? And he wrote it between 64 and 68 A.D., which is really cool, because there were still disciples alive at that time, there were still eyewitnesses that could have disputed what he was writing. I mean, if you need some encouragement this morning, that the Bible is true and that what we read is good, just think about this. He wrote this, and people could have said, no, that didn't happen that way, or that didn't go on like that, but that's not what happens. In fact, it was actually supported by the early church. They said, Yeah, that's exactly what happened. We've heard these accounts, they match up. And here's the cool thing, again, maybe I'm the only nerd in the room that really gets into this stuff, but even recently, um, there's been findings of manuscripts of the book of Mark. And over the last four years, they've been validating, verifying, because they go through a lot of textual criticism and work before they can actually put this stuff out there and publish it. But uh these guys were in Egypt and they found some uh Pharaoh's masks, and in that they actually found some Mark manuscripts from the first century. Like, think about that. Manuscripts from the first century. Here's the the picture of the mask. And what was the deal was is that these these uh manuscripts, these fragments of Mark were actually attached inside the mask, and so they had to figure out a special way to detach them so they could get it and not ruin what was on the paper. And so they got them off, and then they've been able to read them, and here's the cool thing. Catch this when you read them, they match with what we read from our New Testament today. Are you hearing that? Like, so maybe you're here just exploring faith, maybe you're here just checking things out, but I I think that's a miracle. It's a miracle that God has preserved his word, and that every finding that we get from the ancient world continues to point to the fact that this word that we have today is reliable, it's trustworthy. And it's why we don't just stand up and teach our opinions, because honestly, my opinion changes like the weather. But God never changes, and what his truth is never changes. It never fails. It's consistent, it's constant, and it's reliable in our lives. So just know that as we read the book of Mark. Some of the things you'll notice about the book of Mark is that it moves really fast. It's like a Jason Bourne movie. Any Born movie people like out there? I love the Bourne movies. Um, and it's like, but but when you finish, you're like, your neck is super tense, and you need to go to a chiropractor. I just met a chiropractor this morning here. It's like you were tense, and you're just like, you know, and my wife, she's like, I don't know if I can do this. It's like it's just so back and forth and up and down and all around, and the the camera shots and everything. That's kind of how Mark feels when you read it, because he uses this word uthos uh 41 times in the book, which is the word immediately. It's like, here we are, okay, next, and then next, and the next. Only twice in the whole book does he stop and really give us a little bit of a broader perspective. Kind of slows down, gives some teaching. Only seven parables in the book of Mark, which is a lot less than Matthew and Luke. And so when you when you look at the way that Mark writes, it's just really fast. Boom, boom, boom, boom. I joke we've got a couple of elders, one in particular who's very succinct, and like we'll like list off prayer requests, and Matt Altman and I will like take like 30 minutes and then he'll say like three words, and it was like way more profound than anything we just said. And so Mark's kind of like that. He's very succinct, very direct, to the point. And so the thing is that when you read it, you've got to really hang with him because he's moving fast, but it's also very vivid. And and I love it that he doesn't like, he doesn't try to paint this picture of these disciples as if they were uh just superheroes. It's very real, it's very true to how they they wrestled. In fact, multiple times you almost think Mark is being hypercritical of the disciples, like they're very dense, they're just not tracking. And uh, and so you you'll see Mark say that straight up. I think that's good, right? Because when you read the Bible sometimes, we make these characters in the Bible actually like uh these men who are just superheroes, that they're supernatural, and that they aren't human like we are. But the truth is they're human beings just like we are. Okay? And so Mark really helps us get that feel. Know this though, Mark is not just about giving us a historical account of what was going on during Jesus' life. He's not just giving us a biographical account. Anyone like to read biographies? Nobody? Okay. Um, wow. Um so anyway, that didn't really go anywhere. Um watch biographies? Uh anybody history channel people? Okay. Uh so here's the thing. Mark writes this not as a biography. In fact, he doesn't even include Jesus' birth. He doesn't even go there. He just jumps right in. Part of that's because he was writing to a Roman crowd, and they would really have cared less about all of his Jewish lineage and who he was. So he just goes straight into some of the details that are there. So, as I said, when we look at the book of Mark, we're gonna understand more who Christ is, and we're gonna understand more about how to actually follow him. That's the baseline of what Mark's showing. He's showing us who is Jesus, not just what he did, but who is he really. And then he's gonna show us how we actually follow him in our lives. You could say that discipleship is a big theme for Mark in this book. So back to verse one on the screen here. Mark one, one. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Let's just unpack this because sometimes we move really, really fast. Some of us are ADD and we like really, or for that matter, we've heard this so many times, we're just like, ah, you know, I've heard that before. Sure he is. Let's go. Okay? Let's move on to what really matters. Let me just tell you that if you miss this verse, you miss the rest of the book of Mark. Okay? If you miss the purpose and the uh the point that Mark is listing out here, this is actually the title verse, if you will. It's the theme for the whole book of Mark. And he says this, the beginning of the everybody say that word?

unknown 15:22

Gospel.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Gospel. Okay. How many of you guys have heard us say the word gospel like a thousand times? Right? At least. We say this all the time. Every week you hear the word gospel. Well, let me give us a little bit of background to the word gospel. It's the word you and Galeon. You and Galeon, okay? It's in the Greek. I know y'all, again, you geeks kind of follow me for a minute. Um, you and Galeon, which means good news. It means good news. But let me give you even a broader context because when they heard the word gospel, it didn't mean, or didn't mean to them what it means to us today. It's actually a military term. If your city was under siege by another army, right? You're there, you're hanging out, doing a thing, you look up, and here comes this army across the desert, and they're going to attack your city. Well, you don't just sit there, but like warrior king King Abdullah, your leader steps up and says, Alright, men, we're going to battle. And so the guys gear up, the men all get their warrior outfits on, and they go out and they they engage this enemy coming against them in battle. And as that happens, this battle spot, if you won the battle, hopefully you did, if you won, then they would send a messenger back to the city, and that messenger would bring the Eugangalion. The Uengalion was the message that we won. That's basically what the Uengeleon was. And so when they heard this word Uangalion, they thought, oh wow, that's interesting. He's using a military term to talk about how that there's a message that says, we've won the victory. The battle has been won. And we all celebrate. Woo-hoo! So, do you get the point that I'm driving at this morning? When Mark writes the beginning of the gospel, he's saying this is the beginning of the story of how Jesus has won the victory. How he won the battle. And notice what's cool about this is that none of us fought in it. Are you with me? None of us fought in the battle. They didn't fight in the battle, we didn't fight in the battle. Jesus won the battle. He won the victory. You and Galeon, the victory has been won. But notice the next thing he says is not just there, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, when we hear the word Jesus, because we've heard it so many times, maybe we don't really fully grasp what that means and why his name was Jesus. If you were in Jerusalem or Nazareth or Galilee or any of the places that Jesus did his ministry and you said, Hey Jesus, in a crowd of people, about 18 guys would have turned around. Okay? Because Jesus was a very common name. It's like Nick. I met another Nick this morning and I was like, don't you love it? Let's go everywhere we go. It's like, hi Nick, this is Nick. And then like you get to hear your word your name a lot. I hear that a lot. But here's the thing. Um in that day was a common name, which is the name we actually call Joshua. And the the name Joshua means God or Yahweh saves. Yahweh saves. So that's pretty cool that his first name, and should I say his only name, really, because we'll get to the second part, was Yahweh saves. And so that kind of tells you a little bit about him from the front. But again, there were multiple Jesuses. And in fact, you didn't have last names, so Christ is not his last name. Okay? It wasn't like uh Nick Christ, right? Or Nick, it's you know, it's it's not the same concept at all. It wasn't Jesus Christ, that's his last name. Actually, Christ was a title. It was a title from the word Christos, which means a royal figure, an anointed royal figure who has a role to do, a special role, a specific role to do. And so that's the idea is that Christos is there. And actually the Hebrew word would have been Messiah. Anybody ever heard the word Messiah? That's the Hebrew word for it. And so when Mark writes this out, he says, Jesus, Yahweh saves, the Christ, he's the Messiah. He was dropping a bombshell on him. He was saying, listen, like the victory has been won through Jesus, the Messiah. That's pretty awesome. Pretty amazing to think about. That Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the one who is winning the victory for us. So it's not just a last name, it truly is a title for him. And he's not just a king, not just a royal figure, he is the king. Right? He is the king of kings. And he shows up on the scene. He's a king who has shown up, and we'll see this later on in the gospel to establish his kingdom. Now I have a friend that has hung out with some Jewish folks, and uh maybe you have some friends that are Jewish. Uh Jewish people don't believe that Jesus is the Messiah. Okay? The ones that are still practicing Judaism today. The ones who who still believe and buy into the fact that the Old Testament, as we call it, is the scripture and it stops there, and then the New Testament is all stuff that Christians have added to the Old Testament text, but it's not true. Like Jesus, basically the way they would say it is that Jesus failed, so he can't be the Messiah. And I want you to know that there have been hundreds, if not thousands, of men who come on the scene and said, I'm the Messiah. They've done this through the years. And they would actually argue, Jewish people would argue that Jesus failed because he did not establish a throne for the Jewish. He did not set up a kingdom in such a way that the Jewish actually were in charge now when he left. In fact, we all know this because we just look at it, and those of you who've been around church, you may get you get this. We look at that and we go, I mean, that wasn't what he was trying to do. But the Jews, in their mind, Jesus was a Jew, they assumed that when a king came, the Messiah came, he was gonna do what? He was gonna politically like lead them to victory. He was gonna militarily like lead them to be to be over these Romans who were suppressing them, and he was gonna re-establish their dominance. And that's not what happened. So they would actually look at Jesus as a failure. But we know that's not true at all. Because the kind of kingdom that Jesus brought was not a temporary kingdom, it was not a political kingdom, it was not it was not a kingdom of power and influence here and now. It was about eternity, it was about the big picture, it was about what God was trying to do for all humanity, for all time. And so we see this in this language that he uses. But then he drops a final bomb on them. And that wasn't enough. He then says, not only is he Jesus the Christ, he says he's the Son of God. Now, again, for us that have been in church, around church, we're like, oh sure, yes. That's great, let's move on. But do we even grasp that? Do we even really understand what he's trying to say? That Jesus was not just a man, but he was God. He was God in flesh. He was God who came and lived among us. As it says in Philippians 2, he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but he made himself nothing and he came and he dwelt among us. He put on flesh. He humbled himself. And that's why we would say he's not just a king, but he is a servant king. He is unlike any other king that's ever walked the planet. He didn't come to just get everybody to worship him and to bow down to him. He came to save us, to rescue us, to redeem us, to give himself up for us. When you look through history, think about this. Yeah. When you think about this, look through history. Look at all the kings and what they did and how they sent their men and their peasants out to war. And yet, Jesus being God, he didn't send the peasants out to war. He became a peasant and he went and he died on behalf of those who didn't deserve it. That's me. That's you. That's the kind of king we're talking about. A servant king. A servant king. The beginning of the gospel, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He wasn't just from God as a man who was a kingly man. He was actually God. God-made flesh dwelling among us. Which is amazing. It's incredible. And I don't want to ever get over that fact that he came down to earth to dwell among us and to live the life we could not live and die the death we should have died. That's what he did. So Mark's claim is that this guy from the middle of nowhere, Nazareth, is actually the Messiah, the King of kings, the Lord of Lords. He's the one who is the Son of God among us. Well, from that point forward in the book of Mark, you just start to see Mark kind of make this case even more clear. And so we're going to move quickly through some of these verses just to make this point. But in verse 2 through 3, you'll notice he quotes a prophecy. If you've got your Bible, you're looking along there. He quotes Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah, mixed with a little bit of Malachi. And so he kind of doesn't mention Malachi's name here, but if you know anything about the prophecies, he's actually using kind of those in combination to make this point that look, I am sending my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way, a voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way for the Lord, make his path straight. This is John the Baptist's job. And so he's saying to the people at that time, look, God was going to send a precursor, he was going to send a messenger to go out ahead to prepare the way. Now, have you guys ever been around when like a president or a high-up official has shown up in a city? What happens? Like they shut down roads, you know, all the secret service show up on the scene. All these crazy things happen, right? Listen, what happens when Jesus, the king of all kings, shows up? There's a crazy man in the desert yelling out to everybody, hey, prepare the way of the Lord. Like, this is so backwards, isn't it? Seems so odd. And yet it's exactly what God said would happen, and that's how it happened. And so John, who these guys were looking for, by the way, they were looking for this precursor to the Messiah. They knew the prophecies. They knew somebody was going to come and say it, but they didn't realize that John's the one out in the desert. He's out there, by the way, the desert itself even has symbolism because the Jewish people had spent time in the desert. If you'll read the Old Testament, you'll know they didn't really have an affinity towards the desert, the wilderness, because they'd spent a lot of time out there wondering why, because they were rebellious against the king. They were rebellious against the king, as in the big king, God King. And so they had spent time there. And here's John out in the desert saying, make way the path, repent, believe, be baptized with water. The king is coming. You know, the Messiah is coming. He's on the way. In fact, it even goes on in the next few verses there, four through eight, to tell us about this man named John the Baptist. And you might be wondering, like, why did they give us this details about this guy, saying he wears funny clothes and he eats weird food? Because he's trying to tie him to the Old Testament figure, Elijah. He's saying, hey, look, he's not just any old prophet, he's actually the one who's coming, the second Elijah that's gonna make way for Jesus to come. Are you still with me? He's telling them this is the big deal. This is the king. He's coming. Here's his the prophecy that came from 400 years before. 300 years of silence now? Have you guys ever had to wait for a message before? You ever wait on good news or or some news at all? I remember one time when Jada, she um, we were we were pretty early in marriage, and uh anyway, we get when she went to a doctor's appointment and they said, hey, look, we found a lump and we need to check that out. And uh I just remember like my heart just like beating fast and just the overwhelmed sense of, okay, God, like what's gonna happen? You ever been there? Some of you in this room know exactly what's that that's like. You don't know what they're gonna say, and you go do these tests, and then you're just waiting. You're just waiting. And you're like, okay, like when are they gonna call? Like, why do these people don't think like I need to know, I need to know like now, I need to know yesterday, you know? And it's like they just drag it out. These people have been hearing about a Messiah, and for 300 years they'd heard zero silence. Nothing. You think you've been waiting a long time? 300 years, they've been in suppression under other governments, they've been just waiting. They'd heard all these things from the prophets, and now nothing. Crickets, silence. And John comes on the scene and he says, prepare the way. And then we see after John comes and Mark makes the point that John is the Elijah who's preparing the way for the king. Verse 9 through 11. Again, we could camp out here. This is a great passage where we see Jesus be baptized. If you've never been baptized, that's a great next step to following the example of Jesus. Right? If you've never been baptized. Um, we actually talk about that at our membership lab, and we'll talk about that tonight. For those who are coming, I'll we'll remind you again that that's going on tonight. But baptism is a big deal because Jesus was baptized. And we see in this passage, he gets baptized, and what happens? A spirit descends on him like a dove, saying, My Holy Spirit is on you. And then the Father speaks out of heaven the words that all of us want to hear from our dads. He says, This is my son whom I love, and I am well pleased. How many of you want to hear that from your father? Even more so, what's awesome is that even if your earthly father has never told you that, your heavenly father believes that about you and speaks that over you. And that's good, isn't it? Because that'll get you through a lot of hardships in this life when you know you don't have an earthly father who's been that kind of man in your life. And I know that's probably true for a lot of you, according to what my conversations and stories that I hear. But he says, This is my son. So we see the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all in the same scene. This is why we believe there's a Trinity. Right? That's why we believe that God is three but one. And then verse 12 through 13, Jesus goes out into the desert, immediately tempted. And what's interesting about this is because in the other gospels we get a little bit more context, we get a little bit more of the story, and we kind of see how Jesus is tempted in three different ways, but every time he he passes the test with flying colors, he does not turn his back on his father, he does not step away from truth. Even though the enemy is trying so hard, while he's very weak, he's been fasting and praying for 40 days, he's very weak physically and tired, and yet he does not turn his back, which is a reminder that the first Adam that came in the garden where he had everything, everything was plush and good, he messed up, he screwed up, and he broke down and gave in to temptation. But Jesus, the second Adam, as he's called in the Bible, he doesn't give in. He doesn't give up, he doesn't let us down. He follows through and he perfectly rebuttals every one of the temptations that Satan brings against him, with the word of God, may I add. In case you want to know why you should know God's word, because the lies that you're gonna get told, you've got to be able to combat them with the word of God. And then I want to finish our conversation this morning from verse 14 and 15. Verse 14 and 15. I want to read this out loud to you guys because it's really, really good. Says this after John was arrested, Jesus went to Galilee preaching the good news of God. The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe in the good news. If Jesus were here today, what would he preach? What sermon would he preach? What message would he share? Do you think that he would share a message of, hey everybody, don't cheat on your taxes? Hey, everybody, uh, be kind. Hey, everybody, be generous. Do you think that he would preach a message of morality? Don't lie, don't steal, don't commit adultery. Do you think that's what his message he would bring today? Because I know that some people, many of us in this room, come to church, gatherings like this, and we want a little shot in the arm to make sure that we're continuing to be a good person. You know, the message that he would preach today is the same message he preached then. The message of the good news. The good news, he preached the good news that the victory has been won in him. That he is sufficient when we aren't, that he is perfect when we're not, that he can clean up our mess when we can't. That he is the one who can make our marriages and our parenting and our workplace and everything that we do, he can make it work because he knows how it works best. And he knows that when you find your identity and your worth and your value in those things, it's always going to lead you to destructive behaviors. It's always gonna lead you to despair and disappointment and discouragement. But he brings life. And he would preach the same message to us today. He would say, believe the good news that the king has come and his kingdom is coming. And if you get under his reign, there is amazing life to be found. Not just then and there when we get to heaven, but here and now, today. That you can find, you can find the kingdom of God in your workplace, experiencing it there. You can find the kingdom of God wherever you live in your neighborhood as you come under the king's reign. That you can find the kingdom of God, the goodness and the grace and the mercy of God in all of life because the king has come. And some of you teenagers in the room, you need to know that you are buying a lie when you live under the kingdom of self and you think it's gonna bring you pleasure. And some of you adults need to know that you need to stop buying the lie, that you're gonna find life in something other than Christ, like Harley said earlier in our welcome. It's not there, it's in the king, it's in his kingdom. And he says in there, this is the kicker, he says, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom has come. It doesn't mean that it's heaven on earth now, right? We said on the front end, if you watch the news, it's not heaven on earth. In fact, we see a lot of hell on earth. But here's what we do know: his kingdom has started. And we are in an already but not yet place with the kingdom. And you and I have the opportunity to live as subjects to the king. And here's the cool thing: not just subjects in service to the king, but children of the king. Part of the royal family, and to enjoy the privileges and the awesome responsibilities of declaring that same good news that Jesus preached to all the nations, to all the world. So I don't know where you do life, I don't know, you know, what your everyday rhythms look like, but here's what I do know: you have an important job. I have an important job to take the message, the good news, the Ewangelian, that the victory has been won in Christ to the whole world. We have that opportunity. But notice what he says. We must repent and we must believe. Repent and believe. That would be his closing statement to us, just like it was back then. Repent. What does that mean? It's another military turn term. To turn away from the beliefs that there is life in something other than him, and to turn to him who is life. To turn away, but how does that happen? Well, can I just lock in here just a second, guys? Everybody. You can't do this on your own. Because the Spirit of God has to do that in you. And that's my prayer. As we're praying this month, we're turning up a notch and saying we want to pray above and beyond what we could ask or think. My prayer is that the Holy Spirit would land on every one of our hearts in such a way that we could could not deny him access to us any longer. That we would stop living in fear of man and we would start living for the kingdom of God. That we would stop living for the pleasure of the flesh and start living for the kingdom of God. Does that sound like crazy? Radical? I think with the kingdom of God that Jesus brought is radical. But I think it's life-giving. I think it's worth it. And I think it's what he's called us to. Repent and believe on Jesus. Because he's the King and He's good. He loves you. He offers life. And when that happens, everything in your life that you're so stressed and anxious and worried about it's not going to get better. Necessarily.