What Makes Jesus Unique? No one else made the claims that He did, He is alive...............
All the great religious leaders of history have one thing in common: they are dead. Only one man has risen from a grave never again to taste death. Jesus Christ died, was buried, remained in the grave for 3 days, then was raised to life again.
Jesus is unique. He is the only one proven to be the Son of God because God validated His Kingship and accepted His payment for our sins all with one incredible stroke: He raised Jesus from the dead!
Paul opens his letter to the Romans with this evidence about who Jesus is:
Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which He had promised before by His prophets in the holy scriptures, concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. Romans 1:1-4
Because Jesus Christ is very much alive, five things are true right now that wouldn’t be true if He were just another dead religious leader like Confucius, Mohammed or Buddha.
Because Jesus was raised from the dead and is alive…Prayers are answered, We can talk to Jesus 24/7
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It wasn't until 1978, when Duan was released from prison, that he learned what had happened to his wife and son. She had died in the terrible famine of 1958, and his son had disappeared along with the Wu family under the rubble of a devastating earthquake in 1975. Said Duan as the rickety cart approached the meeting place, "God judged me for being so irresponsible with my little son." As they arrived at the place where the evangelist was to speak, a crowd of 200 people were already packed into the house. Like many others, Duan had to sit in the courtyard and listen to the teacher through an open window.
When Brother Wang began preaching, Duan felt a terrible shock. It was like hearing himself. He began to tremble with fear. Even the phrases the teacher used sounded familiar. Confused, he staggered up to the window to see the preacher, causing a commotion as he fell over people. The preacher stopped, and there was a moment of shocked silence as the two stared at each other. The crowd was hushed as they realized the amazing physical likeness between the two men.
"I'm sorry for interrupting your excellent message," Duan began. "You see, I had a son who would be your age right now. If he had lived, he would have looked and sounded just like you."
Brother Wang began to tremble violently. Suddenly, his legs buckled beneath him, and he had to be caught before he fell to the floor. Clutching his pounding chest, he sobbed, "Are you Daddy Duan?"
Everyone wept as father and son were reunited. The preacher told how he had indeed been brought up by Wu, who was so impressed by Duan's selfless act that he had become a strong Christian.
"I'm not your father," Wu used to say to him. "Your real father is a great man of God, full of grace and love. He gave you to me, and I give you all my love and the encouragement to put God first, just like your real dad would have done."
Wang's adoptive parents had moved away from the earthquake zone before the tragedy, but both had died of cancer in their 60's. Wang became an evangelist and tried to find his real father, but Duan had changed his name so many times to avoid arrest that he had proved untraceable.
As father and son continued to hug and weep, the elder of the church stood up and declared, "It's December. We have seen our sermon tonight: Christ came into the world to save sinners is the essence of Christmas. Just as Duan handed his only son into the care of his enemy, so God handed over His own Son to us sinners. Let us rejoice in their reconciliation and ours, too."
Date:8/20/23
Series: A Theology of Suffering Speaker: Jeff Thompson
One of the most frequently raised objections to Christianity is the problem of evil. How can a good God exist if there is so much pain and suffering in the world? I this message, we’ll explore what the Bible says about this classic existential dilemma.
If you're not aware, our church has a disproportionately high number of people who are dealing with infirmities, diseases, illnesses, and sicknesses. There is much suffering in our church in other ways as well. And suffering, as I just indicated, takes many forms. In fact, it's pretty much a guarantee that everybody is going to deal with suffering in their life and will do so many times.
But not everybody deals with suffering the same way. Some handle it better than others. For some, it brings out the best in them, making them more like Jesus and serving as a positive witness to those around them. For others, it brings out the worst in them, embittering them, filling them with anger, resentment, and depression, and making them just someone who's toxic to be around. The question we want to tackle in this new miniseries is what should suffering look like in the life of a Christian.
What should it look like? What do Jesus and His Word tell us about how we should view suffering and how we should walk through it? And to answer the question, how should we view suffering? We need to begin by tackling one of the most frequent objections to theism to the existence of God, commonly referred to as the problem of evil. It's the question behind questions like why does suffering exist?
Why is there pain and evil in the world? If God is good, then why does he allow all the suffering and evil that we see in the world? Either he must not be powerful enough to do anything about it, he must not be real, or he must not care. Those are big questions. They're really big questions.
If you're a Christian, you need to know the answers to these kinds of questions. Perhaps you still have these questions as a Christian, but you're afraid to ask them. You don't need to be, because there are really good answers. Not easy answers, but good and true answers. Clear answers.
Pain and suffering feel inherently wrong to pretty much everybody when they show up in a major way in our lives or the lives of those we love, there's this underlying feeling that things should not be this way. Something has gone wrong. And so, we mourn, we lament, we grieve, we get angry when suffering interrupts our lives and the lives of those we love. When you think about it, that's very odd, because in the secular worldview, pain and suffering have been part of life since the world began. They are, by definition, normal, and unextraordinary.
And yet, as a species, we have not adopted the attitude of "C'est la vie," that's life another day, another tragedy. When it comes to pain and suffering, isn't it strange? When someone we love is suffering, we don't say, hey, you know, statistically this was inevitable. We don't do that. But it makes no sense for us to view pain and suffering as tragic when it is, by definition, normal to be expected.
I suggest the reason pain and suffering feel so wrong to us is because pain and suffering were never meant to exist. Our soul knows deep down that things were not meant to be like this. Something has indeed gone very wrong with humanity and with our world. This is going to be your first fill-in. We're going to go on a journey today.
Write this down. Our souls testify that pain and suffering should not exist. And something has gone wrong in our world. Our souls know deep down that things should not be this way. So, let's talk about why suffering exists.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. It goes on to describe Jesus creating everything the sun, the stars, plants, animals. And as he's doing this step by step, he's looking at his creation and he's declaring, this is good. And we can't even begin to fathom the depths of what it meant. When God said of the earth, this is good, he was saying that all of creation was in a state that the Hebrews call shalom.
It means a state of peace, a state of balance, a state of rest, a state of beauty. Everything as it should be - shalom animals were herbivores. There was no savagery in nature. It was good on a level and in a way we cannot comprehend.
No mosquitoes go swimming in the ocean. There's no sand hidden somewhere in your body when you get out of the water. Everything's perfect. And into this beautiful, perfect creation, God places the whole point of his creation, man, and woman made in his image to be his sons and daughters. And when he looked at them, he declared, they were good.
There was apparently no death and there was no work in the sense that nothing was laborious or cumbersome. The only tasks that they had to do were interesting and joyful and life-giving. And they felt like they had more energy when they had completed the task than when they had begun. And they didn't have to work to eat. They would just grab fruit off whatever tree was near them.
And it was all good. It was all satisfying. It was all nutritious. This was a world so good, that they didn't even need pants. I say that jokingly.
But this world was a world without body issues as well. It was a world without self-consciousness. It was a world without lust. It was completely free of all that junk. So, write this down.
The world Jesus gave humanity was good. And when we say good, we mean perfect. The world Jesus gave humanity was good. It was perfect. And God's only instructions to Adam and Eve were to have dominion over the earth and to multiply.
God created man to steward and rule over all the creatures and resources of the Earth. God put man. He put us in charge of the earth. He gave it to us. Jesus gave the title deed, so to speak, of his creation to us and said, Rule over the Earth, be blessed, have lots of babies, which is a wonderful assignment in a world where pregnancy and childbirth are completely painless.
And I want to make sure you don't miss this, so I'm going to say it again. The world Jesus gave humanity was perfect. It was perfectly good. So, if I give you something precious and beautiful to take care of, and I go on a journey and I come back and it's broken, what does that mean? Well, it means something went wrong on your watch.
Something went wrong on your watch. But before we get to what happened, I want to remind us of why God chose to create us. The Bible tells us that God is complete in every sense of the word. He lacks nothing. He needs nothing.
And he's not made more complete by having anything added to Himself. He's not lonely. He's not insecure. He's not bored. He is entirely self-sufficient within the Trinity.
Now, think of a married couple that doesn't have kids yet. Can I tell you what converging they're not having? They're not saying, you know what? We've got too much spare money. We need to have some kids.
They're not saying, you know, I was thinking, like, we're banking a solid 8 hours of sleep every night. We got to do something about that. Let's have some kids. They're not doing that. They're not saying, man, I am so sick of all this free time.
Wouldn't it be wonderful to invest in them and watch them grow and love them? We don't need kids. But kids are a blessing to us, and we get that from being made in the image of our Heavenly Father because that's why God made Adam and Eve, and that's why God made you and me. He doesn't need us, but incredibly, he can be blessed by us. So write this down.
We were created because God wanted to share Himself and His goodness with his children. That's why we're here. God wanted to share Himself and His goodness with his children. And let me tell you, my kids are a blessing to me. Their hugs, hearing them say, I love you, dad, or when they're teenagers, settling for it.
What's up, Dad? Watching them grow, sharing experiences with them, watching them love and serve others. They bless me so much. I'm so grateful for them. But you know what wouldn't bless me?
If instead of six kids, I had six robots who were programmed to hug me and say, I love you, dad, regularly. Even if they did all the same stuff that my kids do. Now, why wouldn't that bless me? If they were doing all the same things my kids do, what would be the difference? We all know intrinsically, don't we, that the difference is free will.
The difference is choice. Affection and relationship with a being who has free will is significant on an incalculably higher level than affection and relationship with an automaton. A being that has no control over its behaviors or actions. A being that is simply following its programming. For love to exist, there must be the choice to not love.
If the option to not love does not exist, then the option to love cannot exist. There has to be a choice. If affection and relationship are to have any meaning at all, a person must have free will. We all get this, even if we've never been able to articulate it with words. God gave Adam and Eve free will by creating what Genesis 29 describes - the Tree of Life in the middle of the garden as well as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
So, God placed two trees in the middle of the garden that we commonly call Eden. One was the Tree of Life. They could eat from that all they wanted and assumedly experience benefits we cannot imagine. We don't know what those benefits were, but we can trust that they were amazing. But there was also a second tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
And this is what the Lord told Adam about that tree. The Lord commanded the man. This is Genesis 216. You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die. So, God created man truly good, innocent, pure, and righteous.
And I can't have that? No. What does God say? He says on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die. At this point, Adam and Eve could not know what that meant.
But they knew it would be terrible. The result of disobeying God. Rejecting God would not be a telling-off or a slap on the wrist. The result would be catastrophic death. Inevitable and unavoidable.
Death would enter creation and affect everything. So, make a note of this. God gave humanity the free will to follow him and choose life or reject Him and choose death. Reject Him and choose death.
And you might think that this is going to be God inflicting death upon them, but that's not what God is saying. God is the only source of everything good, including life, love, peace, joy, hope, goodness, all these good things. But the only way to be connected to the source of those things is to serve Him and worship Him and follow Him as Lord. When you say, I don't want to be connected to you God, you become disconnected from the only source of everything good. And all there is on the other side is death.
God doesn't have to inflict death upon you. Death is all there is outside of God. You choose death when you choose to reject God. Those are the only two options. That's what God is saying.
He's saying if you choose to reject me, if you choose to disobey me, you are by default chosen death. And it will come for you, and you will not escape. The Bible says that God is love. God is the supreme being and his supreme ethic, his supreme characteristic is love. And God is so devoted to the ethic of love that even the angels in heaven, in a way we can't fully understand, have free will.
He gives them a choice. How do we know that? Well, because one of only two archangels in heaven was a being named Lucifer. And with his free will, Lucifer attempted an insurrection, a coup to make himself equal to God. To make a long story short, it did not go well.
He was cast out of heaven by the other archangel, Michael, and fell to the earth as Satan. And you know what happened next. Here's what the Bible says. Genesis three, verse four. No, you will certainly not die.
The serpent said to the woman. In fact, God knows that when you eat it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. The woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So, she took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.
Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew they were naked. So, they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Suddenly, by disobeying God, their eyes are opened to all the ways they could disobey God that they had never considered before. Sin enters them and, in that moment, they become ashamed and aware of their nakedness, and their innocence is lost. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden.
At the time of the evening breeze, they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. So, the Lord God called out to the man and said to him, Where are you? And he said, I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid. Then he asked, who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?
This is what happened. Adam and Eve chose to believe Satan, the deceiver over Jesus, their creator.
Even though God had only ever been good to them, only ever done good for them. In a moment, they chose to believe that God was the liar and Satan was the one telling the truth. In a tragic irony, Satan deceived man with the same lie.
He was deceived with the belief that he should be God. It led to the downfall of Satan and the same wicked desire, the desire to be one's own God led to our downfall.
And immediately things began to unravel. Adam and Eve became self-conscious and ashamed of their nakedness. They felt guilt over their sin and the mess they had made. And so, they ran away from God, hid from him. Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed Satan and both refused to take responsibility for their sin.
Sin moved fast through creation, and everything began unraveling. Physical death entered the world for the first time because the universe was now subject to entropy -decay - and everything began slowly dying. People, animals, the earth, the universe itself, everything. Pain entered the world as pregnancy and childbirth became physically traumatic. Strife between husband and wife entered the world as their selfish pride and desires created constant difficulties in marriage.
Man now had to work and labor and strain to get the ground to produce food. It now felt like the earth was working against him as he battled thorns and weeds and thistles and felt his body ache. At the end of the day, animals began to eat each other, and man began to eat animals. Adam and Eve would have to deal with the first murder, their son Cain, who would later murder their son Abel. Everything began to unravel when man invited sin into God's perfect creation.
Death has entered everything. It's entered our thinking, our actions, our DNA, everything. Do you remember how earlier I shared that God gave the title deed of the earth to man, so to speak? Well, when man chose to submit to the council of Satan rather than the council of God, something happened with that. In some mystical but very real way.
We gave the title deed of the earth to Satan by choosing to obey him instead of God.
In that moment, we collectively, as the human race, gave our rights over the earth and over our own lives to Satan. Write this down humanity's rejection of God transferred ownership of the earth to Satan and caused its fall into sin. Humanity's rejection of God transferred ownership of the earth to Satan and caused its fall into sin. Many Christians have never heard this, and they don't understand that the Bible teaches this, but it does. Paul called Satan the God of this age, and Jesus called him the ruler of this world three times in the Gospel of John when Satan comes to tempt Jesus in the wilderness.
At the beginning of Jesus' earthly ministry, do you remember what the final temptation was? Matthew's gospel says that the Devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. And he said to him, I will give you all these things if you will fall down and worship me. You can read that account in Matthew, Mark, and Luke's Gospels in each one. Jesus does not object to the validity of Satan's offer.
Jesus doesn't say, what are you talking about? You don't own the kingdoms of this world. Jesus doesn't object because Satan did own the kingdoms of this world. They were his to offer because he held the title deed of the earth. Now, before any of us get mad at Adam and Eve for ruining our perfect start, we need to understand that the Bible makes it clear that not only would we all have done the same thing, but we have all done the same thing.
God gave us the right to choose. He gave us free will. Because love cannot be a forced action. It must be a choice. Every single one of us has chosen to reject God at some point in our lives, and some of us are still doing it right now.
So make a note of this at some point, we have all made the same decision Adam and Eve made. We've all made the same decision. And when Adam and Eve sinned, sin came rushing into the world, and with it came disease and sickness and pain and suffering and violence and all these things that we know deep down are wrong with the world. And here's the mind-blowing brutal truth. God has only given us what we wanted.
We wanted to rule over ourselves and be the masters of our universe. We wanted to reject God and set the rules for ourselves. But we can't sustain the universe by the breath of our mouth. And so, the universe is dying. We can't change the heart of a man from evil to good, and so evil persists in our world.
We were hopelessly corrupted by sin. And we cannot go back in time and undo our sinful choices because we would just make them again in another way. Where does pain and suffering come from? It comes from humanity, comes from people. It comes from the sin of the human race.
Because the downside of free will is the option to choose evil over good. If you want a universe in which love exists, then free will must exist too. And wherever there is free will, there will be those who choose evil over love and their decision will inflict violence, pain, horror, and suffering upon other people. And our collective sin has brought brokenness and sickness and disease to everyone. It's the price of free will.
It's the price of having the option to choose love. Genuine free will requires not only the option to choose but also that the consequences of our choices be allowed to unfold and affect the lives of others and indeed the world around us. And that is exactly what God gave to Adam and Eve. He gave them genuine free will, and the ability to make choices that have consequences, and repercussions that have resonated throughout history as a result. Write this down if you're not tracking with me yet.
The brokenness of the world is humanity's fault. It's humanity's fault.
We have had thousands of years of human civilization and the world that we have built indicts, all of us collectively. I've talked about this before. We have the medicine to cure diseases that are still killing millions around the world. Do we do it? No.
Why not? One reason. We love money more than people. We've created incredible new technologies and ways to move goods from one side of the world to the other. But do we use it to solve poverty around the world?
No. We use it to find a new class of slaves in another part of the world where we don't have to see anything and people work for a dollar a day or less so that we can have horse stuff. That's what we did with the miracle of modern travel. New ways to enslave and exploit mankind. I was thinking about this this week.
Remember when social media was starting, and it was going to create better, more connected relationships? Remember that classic? Oh, man, what is it now? It's a tool for brainwashing the culture. It brings out the absolute worst in us.
I've talked about this before. Our culture is so obsessed with sex, and its connection to technology is I just wait. Anytime there's a new technology, I just know they're just going to try and figure out how to use it for sex. The Internet? Oh good, we can have porn everywhere, all the time. Virtual reality goggles? Let's use it for porn. Robots? Oh good, we can help disabled people. Or we could make sex robots.
This is just the world we live in. So depraved. And it happens over and over and over again, and it's so glaring. The world that we have built is a mountain of evidence proving that collectively, humanity is not good. We are not naturally good.
We haven't just made a few little mistakes here and there. We're not good, and we can't make ourselves good. And technology does nothing to make us more good. On the contrary. In Psalm 53, David observed those about humanity the fool says in his heart, there is no God.
They are corrupt and they do vile deeds. There's no one who does good. God looks down from heaven on the human race to see if there is one who is wise, one who seeks God. All have turned away. All alike have become corrupt.
There's no one who does good, not even one. That's what David saw when he looked at the world around him. By rejecting God, we broke ourselves and we broke our world. And we can see the effects of our collective sin every time we read or watch the news or hop online or just pay attention to the lives of those around us. God is perfect.
He's only good. And because he's perfect, holy is the word. He can't be in the presence of sin. And as we've established, we've all sinned at some point. We've all chosen ourselves over Him.
We've all spat in the face of our Maker and severed our relationship with Him. As human beings, we brought death into the world. And when we gave the Earth's title deed to Satan, we gave ourselves to Him too. And that meant that when we die, when we reach the end of our earthly lives, the only thing waiting for us apart from God is death. We can't go to be with the Lord, because our sin makes that impossible.
The Bible tells us the wages of sin is death.
God created us perfect and holy so that we could have a relationship with Him. He put us in paradise and gave us a life of joy and peace that would have lasted forever. If you want to see what God's plans were. You need only open your Bible and read about Eden in the first few chapters of Genesis. That's what God gave us.
That's the start God gave us. That was God's design. All of this, all the pain and suffering that we see around us, that's us. That's our choice. That's what our hands have wrought.
That's what we built by tearing down what God had built. Jesus said of Satan a thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy and we put that thief in charge of the earth. We chose to partner with him instead of God and that left us, humans, and the Earth in a hopeless position. We had free will, for without it love cannot exist. We used that free will to reject God, thus severing our relationship with Him in a way that we could never fix.
In choosing to reject God and align with Satan, we rejected good in favor of evil. And in rejecting God, we ushered in a new age of brokenness resulting in pain, suffering, violence, and everything that comes along with evil. People have historically, and people still do today, react to this reality in three primary ways. Firstly, some choose to blame God, questioning how he could be good if we're experiencing all this pain and suffering.
It's a desire that God would intervene and remove evil, which can only be done by loving our option to choose evil, which would end free will and the option of love and make the possibility of genuinely choosing to love God impossible. This view also ignores the reality that this is all our Paul, it's all our fault. So, the first response is to blame God and say, hey, I just want God to come in and do away with all the evil. But nobody thinks, yeah, but most of the people making that objection don't understand that if God did that, he'd have to do away with them because they're not serving God, they're not loving God. They're worshipping a different God.
The second response to all the pain and hurt in the world is some will claim there is no God, the universe is chaos, and this proves that there is no designer. But this view ignores the overwhelming amount of scientific, historical, and existential evidence to the contrary. And instead of concluding the obvious that the evil in our world proves that man is inherently evil, this perspective tries to claim that, well, there is no such thing as evil or good because if there is no God, there is no afterlife, and everything is essentially meaningless. And so this view refuses to take any kind of responsibility for the world that we have made, and it certainly offers no hope for anything better. So, people either blame God, people either deny the existence of God. But lastly, there have been, and there still are, those who are willing to recognize the truth instead of blaming God. They realize as they look at the world and themselves with honesty, that every bit of pain and suffering we experience is one more reminder that we have broken the universe and ourselves. And instead of being angry at God, or ignoring the problem, some choose to instead cry out, God, even though this is all our fault, please help us. Please help us.
Those who are honest enough, as I said, to look at themselves and the world around us and conclude that we are in a hopeless situation outside of the grace of God. Because if God doesn't do something, we're doomed. Things are not getting better, and I want to ask you to slow down for a minute and answer this question. When you encounter pain and suffering, which view do you take? Do you blame God?
Do you doubt God, or are you broken before God? If you're suffering in an area of your life right now, what's your perspective? If you're honest, do you blame God? Do you doubt God? Or are you broken before God?
Here's the incredible thing. It's unbelievable, in fact. God did do something. He has done something. And the something he did is the reason that all of us are here this evening talking about it.
While it's true that a thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy, Jesus went on right after that to contrast what he would do to what Satan has done, saying, But I have come that they may have life and have it in abundance. And even though Isaiah began by saying we all went astray like sheep, we all have turned to our own way, the very next thing he wrote was, and the Lord has punished him that's Jesus for the iniquity of us all. And while it's true that the wages of sin is death, that verse ends with, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Jesus came to the Earth as a man and fully experienced, fully immersed Himself in the broken world that we had wrecked. He came and dwelt in his perfect world that we had ruined.
And throughout his life, he experienced all the evil, pain, and suffering that we ushered into his creation when we rejected Him. And Jesus did the most incredible thing. He came as a substitute and took our place in relationship to our Heavenly Father.
It's a desire that God would intervene and remove evil, which can only be done by loving our option to choose evil, which would end free will and the option of love and make the possibility of genuinely choosing to love God impossible. This view also ignores the reality that this is all our Paul, it's all our fault. So, the first response is to blame God and say, hey, I just want God to come in and do away with all the evil. But nobody thinks, yeah, but most of the people making that objection don't understand that if God did that, he'd have to do away with them because they're not serving God, they're not loving God. They're worshipping a different God.
The second response to all the pain and hurt in the world is some will claim there is no God, the universe is chaos, and this proves that there is no designer. But this view ignores the overwhelming amount of scientific, historical, and existential evidence to the contrary. And instead of concluding the obvious that the evil in our world proves that man is inherently evil, this perspective tries to claim that, well, there is no such thing as evil or good because if there is no God, there is no afterlife, and everything is essentially meaningless. And so this view refuses to take any kind of responsibility for the world that we have made, and it certainly offers no hope for anything better. So, people either blame God, people either deny the existence of God. But lastly, there have been, and there still are, those who are willing to recognize the truth instead of blaming God. They realize as they look at the world and themselves with honesty, that every bit of pain and suffering we experience is one more reminder that we have broken the universe and ourselves. And instead of being angry at God, or ignoring the problem, some choose to instead cry out, God, even though this is all our fault, please help us. Please help us.
Those who are honest enough, as I said, to look at themselves and the world around us and conclude that we are in a hopeless situation outside of the grace of God. Because if God doesn't do something, we're doomed. Things are not getting better, and I want to ask you to slow down for a minute and answer this question. When you encounter pain and suffering, which view do you take? Do you blame God?
Do you doubt God, or are you broken before God? If you're suffering in an area of your life right now, what's your perspective? If you're honest, do you blame God? Do you doubt God? Or are you broken before God?
Here's the incredible thing. It's unbelievable, in fact. God did do something. He has done something. And then something he did is the reason that all of us are here this evening talking about it.
While it's true that a thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy, Jesus went on right after that to contrast what he would do to what Satan has done, saying, But I have come that they may have life and have it in abundance. And even though Isaiah began by saying we all went astray like sheep, we all have turned to our own way, the very next thing he wrote was, and the Lord has punished him that's Jesus for the iniquity of us all. And while it's true that the wages of sin is death, that verse ends with, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Jesus came to the Earth as a man and fully experienced, fully immersed Himself in the broken world that we had wrecked. He came and dwelt in his perfect world that we had ruined.
And throughout his life, he experienced all the evil, pain, and suffering that we ushered into his creation when we rejected Him. And Jesus did the most incredible thing. He came as a substitute and took our place in relationship to our Heavenly Father.
He suffered more than any person has ever suffered, and he experienced the full weight of death. He experienced having his body broken in the most brutal way possible. And he experienced separation from his father in heaven. And when his body was laid in the tomb, he was there in our place. If he had stayed there, if death had been able to hold Him, death would still be able to hold us.
But the grave could not contain Jesus, because Jesus had never chosen to disobey His Heavenly Father. He had never given those rights over to Satan or to death. And so, when Jesus rose from the dead, it meant that our sins were paid for. The debt we owed God had been paid by Jesus on our behalf. And we too could experience this renewed relationship with God through faith in Jesus.
So, write this down Jesus lived, was judged, suffered, died, and rose again in our place. And when he did all that, Jesus restored to us the choice. This is the incredible part. He didn't take our free will away.
He did all of that so that we could have the choice once again to love Him or reject Him. He still doesn't force us to love Him because love requires free will. The question I want to ask you, after being reminded of all that Jesus has done for you, and how Jesus responded to the mess we made, the question I want to ask you is do you believe that God is good? Do you believe that God is good? The answer is yes.
It has to be. Because if God had abandoned us, we would only be experiencing what we deserve and the eternity that we had earned by rejecting Him. God owed us nothing. Do you understand that? God owed us nothing.
Yet he gave us the most precious thing in existence. He gave himself the life Jesus lived. And the death he died means that there is nothing you will ever experience, no amount of pain or suffering that will be worse than what Jesus has personally experienced in a human body.
He knows what it is to suffer, and he's compassionate toward us, even though he had every right to just leave us in the mess we had made. He didn't. And he will never ask us to go through more than He Himself has gone through. And it doesn't stop there. If you've been through the Book of Revelation with us, then you know God has a plan for Jesus to return to the Earth one day and reign as king.
And when that day comes, Jesus will reset the Earth back to an Eden-like state, and he will rule over the Earth for a thousand years. And the whole point of that will be to silence any voice who would cry out, God is not good. We were set up to fail because we will all bear witness to what the Earth was like when God first gave it over to man. And nobody will be able to say, wow, if I had come from a different family, if I had had better parents if society hadn't set me up to fail. Because we will see how perfect and beautiful it was when it was given to us.
And despite that, we used our free will to still reject God. I have no doubts that only then when the earth is restored by Jesus, will we actually realize how much we lost when Adam and Eve and you and I rejected God in favor of ourselves. Jesus has the right to do all this because, through the Cross and the Resurrection, He paid for our sins. Then he conquered the power of sin and death. And when he did that, he took back the title deed to the earth.
It's in his possession right now. So, write this down. Jesus now holds the title deed to the earth. Jesus holds the title deed to the earth, but he hasn't cashed it in, so to speak. When he does, he will reign as King over the earth.
And when he does, when he lays claim to the earth, all those who have not chosen Him will be expelled from the earth.
It has to be. Because if God had abandoned us, we would only be experiencing what we deserve and the eternity that we had earned by rejecting Him. God owed us nothing. Do you understand that? God owed us nothing.
Yet he gave us the most precious thing in existence. He gave himself the life Jesus lived. And the death he died means that there is nothing you will ever experience, no amount of pain or suffering that will be worse than what Jesus has personally experienced in a human body.
He knows what it is to suffer, and he's compassionate toward us, even though he had every right to just leave us in the mess we had made. He didn't. And he will never ask us to go through more than He Himself has gone through. And it doesn't stop there. If you've been through the Book of Revelation with us, then you know God has a plan for Jesus to return to the Earth one day and reign as king.
And when that day comes, Jesus will reset the Earth back to an Eden-like state, and he will rule over the Earth for a thousand years. And the whole point of that will be to silence any voice who would cry out, God is not good. We were set up to fail because we will all bear witness to what the Earth was like when God first gave it over to man. And nobody will be able to say, wow, if I had come from a different family if I had had better parents, if society hadn't set me up to fail. Because we will see how perfect and beautiful it was when it was given to us.
And despite that, we used our free will to still reject God. I have no doubts that only then when the earth is restored by Jesus, will we actually realize how much we lost when Adam and Eve and you and I rejected God in favor of ourselves. Jesus has the right to do all this because, through the Cross and the Resurrection, He paid for our sins. Then he conquered the power of sin and death. And when he did that, he took back the title deed to the earth.
It's in his possession right now. So, write this down. Jesus now holds the title deed to the earth. Jesus holds the title deed to the earth, but he hasn't cashed it in, so to speak. When he does, he will reign as King over the earth.
And when he does, when he lays claim to the earth, all those who have not chosen Him will be expelled from the earth. That's what's going to happen. So, if it's true that Jesus has the title deed to the earth, why doesn't he just do it right now? Well, because of what I just said. He's being patient.
The Bible says he wants to give people more time to use their free will to choose a relationship with Him so that they can be connected with Him in a relationship and go into eternity, connected to the source of life and peace and love and everything good and be with Him. But make no mistake, the future is set. Jesus has already won. Satan is not inching closer to victory with time. Jesus is simply giving people on the Earth more time to be part of his family.
We know that free will must exist for love to exist. So, God's interventions in our world must not mess with free will in the broad sense. But I don't want to pretend we can understand why God sometimes intervenes and sometimes doesn't. When we struggle with that in our own lives, when we struggle with, well, why did he do something for that person? Why hasn't he done anything about my pain and suffering?
Do you understand that? That if you belong to Jesus, this life is as bad as it will ever get for you? That's it. If you don't belong to Jesus, this is as good as it will ever be for you. But in eternity, for those who belong to Jesus, all of our suffering and pain will be forgotten.
And it will disappear from view like an old home in the rearview mirror of a car as you drive away to a new destination.
Never forget that Jesus has done something about your pain and suffering. And one of the reasons we need to be in God's word need to fellowship with Him in prayer daily, worship Him, gather as the Church, fellowship with brothers and sisters in the faith is so that we never allow ourselves to believe the lie that God has not been active on our behalf. He died and rose again on our behalf. The second thing we need to remember is that God is good. God is good.
If he is God, his view must be bigger and better than ours. His thoughts must be higher than ours. His plan and perspective must be greater than our understanding. Otherwise, he would not be God. When I look at the world around me, and then I look at the cross, I can only conclude that I haven't seen it all.
But I've seen enough to know that God is good. And I've seen it a thousand times over. He's good. Why is there pain and suffering in the world?
Because we rejected God and brought it into the world. Why doesn't God end all our pain and suffering right now? Because he wants others to have the chance to choose to love Him. And that can't happen unless there's free will. And unless he delays coming back to reign over the Earth.
He's also doing something bigger than we can imagine. And what is truly best for us, individually and collectively, will only be truly understood when we arrive in his presence. And where there are gaps in our understanding, we choose to look at the cross and confess, I haven't seen it all, but I've seen enough to know that my God is good. And so if you're struggling with pain, if you are suffering, I want to encourage you to especially bring that to the Lord today as we worship in just a couple of minutes and realize that all the pain and suffering we experience is only because we invited sin into our world. But instead of leaving us in that place, god interrupted our hopelessness, suffered in our place, died in our place, and rose again in our place.
And he secured for those who choose to love Him a future free of pain and suffering, filled with better things than Eden ever saw. And I hope you'll take a moment to just thank the Lord for his goodness. If you've forgotten that if you've forgotten that the Lord is good, let Him know that you're sorry for being slow to remember because he's only ever good. I'll ask the worship team to come up. In John chapter 14, Jesus said to his disciples, don't let your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I'm going to prepare a place for you. If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself so that where I am, you may be also. You know the way to where I'm going.
And then Jesus said this - I will ask the Father, and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever. He is the spirit of truth. The world is unable to receive Him because it doesn't see Him or know Him. But you do know Him because he remains with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans.
Because Jesus reigns in eternity, we will too. In the biggest, deepest, most hopeless mess we could ever make, Jesus showed up and said, put it on me. Put it all on me. And then he paid for it with his life.
We're never alone. We're never alone if we belong to Him. And he is always good. Always. Always.
And so where we can't understand the why right now, we fill in those gaps in our knowledge with what we do know, that he's good. He's good only ever and always. Let's pray. Would you bow your head and close your eyes, Father, we want to pray right now for any of our brothers and sisters who are here, who are going through pain or suffering. Lord, we love them, and we know that you love them infinitely more.
We pray, first of all, that they would be comforted by your spirit. That however deeply entrenched the pain is, even if it's turned into bitterness and anger, that you would break through it right now in the name of Jews, as the Holy Spirit, the comforter, the counselor, and that they would be overwhelmed by your kindness, by your mercy and our grace, by what you did for them and by the way you are with them right now. And so, we pray, Lord, that you would touch them right now in a way that is real, that is tangible, that fills up the parts of their soul that they didn't even realize were empty. With your spirit and with your peace. Jesus.
I pray for anyone carrying burdens as well. That you will enable us by your spirit to cast them at your feet, to let them go and to be filled with what your word says is the peace that goes beyond understanding. A peace that is in no way connected to our circumstances, that comes from above, that is divine, that is transcendent.
And Lord Jesus, above all else, we want to say thank you. Thank you. For not leaving us in the mess that we made. You owed us nothing. We had no rights to claim anything from you, no rights to accuse you of anything.
And had you chosen to walk away and leave us to our fate, who could call that unjust? No one. But, Lord, we are so thankful that because love is who you are, you could not simply walk away. It's not who you are. And so, you came and you interrupted our mess at the highest cost possible and loved us with our body and Your blood.
And we love you for that. And we are so thankful for that. And so, Jesus, we want to use the choice that you have restored to us to serve you, to love you, to worship you, to obey you, to offer our lives to you. And so, Jesus, we pray that you would reign as Lord over us. And whatever that looks like in our lives right now, we invite you to do it.
Whatever you want to do in us, we invite you to do it. Because we belong to you. And we are so glad we do. We love you Jesus. And we can't wait for the day when all things are made right, because the thing we want more than anything else is not bad stuff to end.
But we can't wait for the day when the universe is rightly reoriented around you, and when all fame and all glory returns to its rightful terminus at your feet. And then everything is in balance. And then everything is shalom with you at the center, you on the throne. We long for that day. And we pray until it comes that it would be as much like that as possible in our lives, individually, in our marriages, in our families, and in our church.
Jesus, we love you. We bless you. May you be honored above all things. It's in Your name we pray. Amen.
This is one of the questions that I try to answer in Spectacular Sins. And it is not just something on top of what is already said in the book, but it is right at the heart of it.
But before I answer it, let's make sure that we agree that it is true that God could take Satan out anytime he chose. Because I think there are some who would say, "He really can't, because of some rights (or authority, independence, free will, etc.) that Satan has." But the reason I know God can take Satan out without turning me into an automaton or breaking any rules is because he is going to take him out. He is going to throw him in the lake of fire.
And the question is, "Why didn't he do it yesterday? If he had done it yesterday I wouldn't be tempted the way I am today. The Bible says, 'Lead me not into temptation.' Well, the best way not to be led into temptation is to take the Tempter away! Isn't it? Take him out! I've got sin in my life plenty enough to make me struggle. I don't need Satan on top of my sin making my life more miserable. So God, take him out! You have the right and the power to take him out. You're doing nobody wrong when you take him out. Take him out!"
And he doesn't do it. Why?
The Bible doesn't answer why directly, so we have to go on inferences. But here is my best shot:
God has ordained that Satan have a long leash—with God holding onto it—because he knows that when we walk in and out of those temptations, struggling both with the physical and moral effects that they bring, more of God's glory will shine in that battle than if he took Satan out yesterday.
There will be evidences of God's patience with us and of his mercy towards us as we struggle with sin. And there will be evidences of his sustaining grace as we go through horrific physical suffering that Satan was the immediate cause of (as it says in the Bible: "This woman . . . whom Satan bound for eighteen years" [Luke 13:16]. She had this bent-over back, and Satan was doing it, and God was ordaining that he be allowed to do it). God ordains all of these things so that his glory—his mercy, justice, grace, wisdom—would shine more brightly.
Now we can argue with that and say, "I don't agree. I don't think God should run the world this way." And if we ultimately disagree then we will reject God, we will reject the biblical testimony, and we will perish forever in hell. But I choose to trust him that his way of managing the devil and managing evil that comes at me is wiser than the way I might choose to manage it.
Perhaps the other thing I should say is that he sent his Son right into the middle of this satanic warfare. It was Satan that put it into the heart of Judas to betray him. So Jesus exposes himself to the horrors of Satan's deceit and lies and murder—"He was a murderer from the beginning . . . a liar" (John 8:44)—and dies, in order to make a public display of the principalities and powers in his defeat of them (Colossians 2:15).
There is more glory that will come to Jesus Christ by his suffering to destroy Satan than by powerfully shooting Satan in the head. And there is more glory that will come to Jesus Christ by our sharing in the sufferings of Christ—holding onto his supreme value—than if we had been able to say, "Satan, Depart!" and never have another problem.
And I think the reason for that—this is my ultimate final answer—is that the glory of God and Christ shines more brightly when we are seen to be supremely satisfied in Christ in spite of Satan's torments, rather than if we had his torments removed and liked Jesus because of it.
It's when you love Jesus in spite of Satan's torments and through them that his glory shines most brightly, rather than when we have life made easier for us by Satan's removal and we like Jesus because of it.
John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org
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FREEDOM;
Key Chinese House Church Leader's Testimony By Jerry Dykstra
CBN.com -- SANTA ANA, CA (ANS) -- Probably 80 percent of the house church leaders in China know or have heard the name of this house church leader, but he asked that his name not be used. Possibly as many as 2 million Christians are involved in his house church network. He has been arrested several times and imprisoned for a total of 10 years for his faith in Jesus Christ. He spoke recently with an Open Doors team. The following is his testimony.
I was born in a Christian family in China -- a fourth generation Christian. My grandparents were very sincere Christians.
In 1949 the new China was established. China went into a very deep tragedy. The spiritual warfare increased. Ephesians 6:12 says, For our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
From 1952 to 1954 the Three Self Patriotic Movement was established in China. In 1958 almost all the churches in China were closed. In 1966 it was the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. One of the Gang of Four, Chiang Ching, the wife of Communist Party founder Mao Zedong, closed the foreign church in Shanghai. She proclaimed, Let God go home! Christianity in China is going to the history museum.
The government chased out all the foreign missionaries. Communism closed the door and they attacked the men and women of God in China. The life of the church in China was in a desperate situation, and many people were martyred for Christ. Many went to jail. Many were criticized and were scolded. Some people were scared and they denied Jesus. Some escaped overseas. Some people betray their friends and brothers and sisters.
Just like Satan comes and wants to destroy, the church of China outwardly was totally destroyed. But at the same time, the Holy Spirit filled the church of China with faith, like a filling slowly from the bottom to the top. Actually, nobody proclaimed the name of Jesus. The people had no doctor, no medicine, and no food to eat. No one cared for them. You can compare the situation to North Korea today because people were desperate. They could not find any help from the government. They could not find help from anywhere. Where do I go from here, and what should I do? they asked.
From there, people looked for God. During that time only two to five people could gather together. They just met together in small groups and that became their meeting place. It looked like a spark of fire and it spread all over. At that time Satan scared us and did all kinds of things to try and stop us, but the revival grew. Today in China we have almost 100 million believers.
In this process, many people have carried a cross and been imprisoned, and Jesus Christ carried the cross. The cross helped us confess our sins. The Lord put us in a situation like in Hebrews chapter 11. To carry our cross -- and we have to carry our cross -- we have to walk side by side with Jesus. Because of that the presence of the Lord is with us and gives us strength. We have desperate faith to follow Jesus Christ. That allows the light of Jesus to live within us.
I have been imprisoned several times. Every day I prayed, Lord, before I experience today, you have already walked through it. You have gone ahead of me to experience what I am going to walk through. You know what will happen in my day, and you will take full responsibility.
The first prison I was in was the size of this room (150 sq. feet) and there were 40 prisoners there. A small square for each prisoner. When we crossed one another it was very close, and when we slept, we couldnt stretch out our legs. When you wanted a drink there was no water. And because I was a Christian, they appointed me to distribute water to everyone. But everyday we only had a cup of water, and this water was for you to brush your teeth, wash your face and drink. And even do your laundry with that cup of water! Because of that we did no laundry and we had bugs in our clothes. We only had two small bowls of noodles every day and a small piece of bread. It was a very small piece. If it was a special day or festival, they would give you a bigger bowl of noodles.
Every day they gave you work. The work was making Christmas lights. We had to install those light ports every day -- seven thousand. Inside the light bulb you have two small lines. You hook them together and you have to use your teeth to bite and then seal it. If you could not finish your goal, they beat you up. When you finished, you had to bow down. Then they used that big long stick and hit your hip.
There was no barber, so you had long hair and a long beard. One of the prisoners was a Uighur, a minority from northwestern China. He could not accomplish his goal most of the time. So they asked him, Why cant you finish your goal? Because he had a long beard they just pulled out the hair from his beard. The next time when he couldnt finish his goal, they pulled out twice as much, until his face was hurt and harmed.
They would interrogate you and asked you questions. If you dont answer them, or if your answer was not according to what they wanted you to answer, they would punish you.
I said, I have nothing to say, because the Holy Spirit did not give me a word to share with you. And they said, How can you say words like this? Youre against me? So they bound me. But afterwards they said, No, we will not bind you. We have found another kind of punishment. They had a gate. They cuffed my hands in the back and then to the gate. When they opened the gate my body hanged in the air; my feet could not touch the ground for almost four hours.
During these four hours I prayed to the Lord and the Lord gave me feelings. I felt the Lord crucify Himself on the cross to carry our sins. This is a reality. He is the Son of God. He paid the price for us and He allowed me to take part in His suffering. At that time in my conscience I told myself, I love You, truly I love You, because He allowed me to experience His suffering. It is really only a little suffering I experienced because the Lord will not give us more than what we can carry.
Another officer came to see me. My hand was swollen. He touched my hand and said, Why dont you just say a few words that make them happy? Why do you have to suffer?
I had no strength to talk and I heard a loud voice from far away that said, Beat him up! Then I felt just like when Jesus was on the cross. He said, Forgive them because they don't know what they are doing.
They don't know what they are doing. If they knew the faith we have, the Lord we have, they wouldn't do that. Actually, I feel I owe them the gospel because they don't know Christ. I am indebted to them because they don't know our Lord.
After a few hours, they came to see me. They didn't say any words, they just released me from the handcuffs. They brought me to another room. I sat at a table with the officer -- face to face.
When I was in the barber shop in the prison, the guy who cut my hair -- a spy -- said, We already have four people sentenced to death. You are one of them, we will execute you. They put me in a place, and outside my room there was some clean water, so every day I did my laundry and I washed and took a bath. Every time I heard an engine noise, I put on my clothes because I knew they were coming to execute me. I was ready. Every day I make this preparation. When they wanted to execute someone, they would have some police in uniforms with white gloves and handcuffs. They took out those prisoners, who never came back.
One day the uniformed police came with their white gloves, opened the gate and came into our room. They called my name. I thought, This is the time of the Lord. So I got up and followed them out the gate. There were two gates. I can see the outer gate. Eight police were with me. I walked with the police to the room of the prison chief.
They told me to squat on a rock. One soldier said it was his first time to execute a prisoner. At the right side of the execution ground was a meeting room and the officers were holding a meeting. I talked to a prisoner and he said, No weapon can hurt me. I am with supernatural power. After he said this, they executed him. Just shot him in the head. Blood everywhere!
One of the officers said to me, What do you want to say? The days they executed prisoners they have a loudspeaker. People came to watch the executions. He said, Well, this group is waiting for you. What do want to say, you have to say it now. I said, I have nothing to say.
I felt very sorry for him. I felt I owed him the gospel. But because I have no word to say, he came from his chair and grabbed my wrist. Then he put his hand on my heart to see if it was still beating. He was very angry because he assumed I was going be very scared. Then he sat down. I experienced death. Every day we go through death to allow the death of Christ to live in our life. After a couple of times of this kind of imprisonment and death threats, they finally said, This mans a real Christian. Thank you, Lord!
May the Lord use you (Open Doors) to cooperate with the house churches of China so we can expand and do our mission into the world. And China has opened up. In the 1940s China had a gospel team who had a vision to bring the gospel from China to the Northwest then to the Eastern world to Jerusalem. In 1984 we already sent our colleagues, a few dozen, to the Northwest of China to spread the gospel among the minority. And in the recent house church movement a lot of churches are sending out missionaries to Northwest of China.
To obey Gods word is to submit to Matthew 8 and to bring the gospel to the ends of the world. To bring the gospel in China, out of China and into Jerusalem -- until the numbers fulfilled and when the church is prepared, then we can go to see Jesus.
This kingdom belongs to the Lord and the Lord will reign forever. Until that time the Lord will dry our tears. He will allow us to stay in front of the throne of God and receive his glory. The suffering that we have is only temporary. In the future, we will see forever glory.
Romans 12:1 is a Scripture to encourage the church of China, Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices. Holy and pleasing to God -- this is your spiritual act of worship.
1
“Great is Thy faithfulness,” O God my Father,
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not
As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.
“Great is Thy faithfulness!” “Great is Thy faithfulness!”
Morning by morning new mercies I see;
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—
“Great is Thy faithfulness,” Lord, unto me!
2
Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above,
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.
3
Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth,
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide;
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!
© 1923. Ren. 1951 Hope Publishing Co., Carol Stream, IL 60188
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Chisholm was an ambitious Methodist minister who faced numerous trials in life, from health to financial struggles. Yet through it all, he continuously saw God’s faithfulness. This outlook was reflected in his hymns; even after leaving his congregation due to declining health, he wrote nearly 1,200 poems throughout his life. Many of these became published hymns reflecting elements of traditional hymns while celebrating God’s enduring love.
The captivating tune FAITHFULNESS transcends congregational settings and resonates within popular culture. It quickly became an unofficial theme song for Moody Bible Institute after Runyan shared it there.
Eventually drawing the attention of evangelist Billy Graham, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” reached global audiences through crusades during the 1950s. Showcasing Chisholm’s emphasis on God’s unwavering commitment to us, this timeless work continues to be one of the most loved songs celebrating divine assurance today.
A Simple Observation of Jesus...Date:12/27/20
Series: Matthew...Passage: Matthew 26:17-25
Speaker: BJ Chursinoff
There are places in the Bible that give us a sneak peek into the life of Jesus and allow us to see the various ways He interacted with people. When given this kind of access, we would do well to pause and observe what God is really like. Be careful, though - if you spend enough time looking at the Saviour, you just might end up having your life changed forever!
If you have your Bible and I hope you do, please take it and turn with me to the book of Matthew, Chapter 26, verses 17 to 25, and be our text for this study. And as you find your place, let me read our passage for us, Matthew. Twenty-six starting in verse 17. Now, on the first day of unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus the same. Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the Passover?
He said, going to the city to a certain man and saying to him, the teacher says, My time's at hand. I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples. And the disciples did as Jesus had directed them. And they prepared the Passover. When it was evening, he reclined that table with the twelve. And as they were eating, he said, Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me. And they were very sorrowful and began to say to him, one after another, Is that I Lord?
He answered he who has dipped his hand in the dish with me will betray me. The son of man goes as it is written of him. But woe to that man by whom the son of man is betrayed. It would have been better for that man if he had not been born. Judas would betray him, answered. Is that I, Rabbi? He said to him. You have said so. And so our scene here is taking place on a Thursday and Jesus is going to die on the very next day, but for now, he's celebrating Passover with his disciples.
If you're unsure what Passover is, it is the feast, is the celebration that the Jewish people observe, observed every single year to commemorate the time, the event when God delivered them from their slavery in Egypt. At this point in history, they had been celebrating the Passover every year for centuries.
Up until this point in this text, in this scene, we get a sneak peek into this particular Passover meal that Jesus was able to experience with his disciples on the eve of his crucifixion.
Now, my hope for this message is a simple one, is I hope this will be a simple message. I'm going to make three simple observations of this text and those simple observations are enough to teach us the challenge, to encourage us as we continue to follow Jesus as his disciples today.
And so here's an observation. No one is actually going to be the first to fill in on your outline. Jesus had access to this man's house, Jesus had access to this man's house. Let's take a look again at Verse is Verse is, 17 to 19. One more time says now, on the first day of unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus saying, where will you have us prepared for you to eat the Passover? He said, going to the city to a certain man and saying to him, The teacher says, My time is at hand.
I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples. And the disciples did as Jesus had directed them and they prepared the Passover.
This is a police emergency. And then usually they give the car and the police officer pursues the suspect. Oh, Jesus, Jesus is kind of doing the same thing with this man's house. Jesus sends his disciples to this man's house and they tell this man that Jesus needs to use his house. Because they want to celebrate the Passover together. Now notice what the man doesn't say to the disciples. He doesn't say, you know what, I would love to help you and Jesus out, but I have plans already four miles from my house tonight.
I got dinner plans. I got guests coming over any moment now. And so if you want to come back tomorrow, you can use it or come back the day after that. And I can maybe, maybe fit you in. But I would like to use my own house this evening. This man doesn't say that now. Matthew doesn't tell us the exact words the man says in response to the disciples requests, but we know that he agreed to their request.
This man, this unnamed man in Matthew's gospel defers to Jesus request and lets him and his disciples use his home to celebrate the Passover together that night. This is such a great picture for us, this serves as a great example for you and me question.
How would you respond if Jesus did this to you? What if he asked to use your house? What if he asked for something else, would it be asked for anything else? What would you say to Jesus if Jesus revealed to you that he wanted to have something from your life?
Does Jesus have access to any part of your life that he wants to use?
Think about everything in your life, both physical and non-physical things. I'm going to list a whole bunch of them and think through these things as you hear them. Think about your house, your car, your clothes, your food, your money, your family, your friends, your job, your hobbies, your time, your energy, your will, your sexuality, your relationship, your truth, your plans, your successes, your failures, your dreams, your fears.
Think about it all. Now, ask yourself this question. If Jesus ever came to you and asked you to give him any one of those things.
What would your response to him be? Yes, Jesus, you can have whatever you want, whatever I have in my life is totally at your disposal. Take it all, take whatever you want, whenever you want. Or Jesus. I'm sorry you can't have that thing. I know you've asked me to give it to you, but I don't want to give it to you. I want to keep it. I want to use that one thing that you've requested.
I want to use it for my purposes. And I want to use that one thing the best way that I see fit. What does a readiness, a readiness or a willingness to give anything to Jesus reveal about a person's heart?
See, this is the first and simple observation I want to make with you. Jesus had access to this man's house. Now, simple observation number two is going to be the second fill-in on your outline, Jesus enjoyed a meal with his disciples. Jesus enjoyed a meal with his disciples. We see this in verse 20 again says When it was evening, he reclined at a table with the 12. On this night, Jesus and his disciples sat around the dinner table and enjoyed a meal together eating together is a timeless expression of friendship, hospitality, conversation, laughter, crying, trust, knowing one another, love, peace, and joy, all can be experienced when we break bread with one another.
This is what we need to see happening in our text. There is a friendship around this table now. Who's this friendship between? Well, there are 12 regular Joes. And then there's God. In this picture, we see regular people enjoying friendship with the God of the universe. Now, how how did this happen? How did the disciples ever get to the place in their lives where they got to have and enjoy a privilege like this? Remember, they didn't seek Jesus out.
They didn't have to earn a spot with him. They didn't have to win a contest. Some of you may have heard of the TV show American Idol.
Well, there wasn't any reality show back then called Jerusalem Disciple, Jesus didn't gather a bunch of potential disciples together to make them battle each other to see who would come out on top.
He didn't have a contest to determine who helps the poor, the best, who preaches the best who fasts the best, or who endures persecution the best. No, there was no contest to see who was the best qualified to be at the table with Jesus.
Do you remember how they got there? There, there, there. Right now, by way of his invitation and his invitation, Jesus wanted them around the table with him. The disciples were only there that evening because three years earlier, Jesus invited each of them, each of them to follow him, and they took Jesus up on his invitation.
Now, do you know that this is what God offers everyone in the world? Everyone is without exception. He offers them a seat at the table with him.
In the Book of Revelation, the apostle John records Jesus saying these words of revelation. Chapter three, verse twenty.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone here is my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him and he with me. If anyone responds to God's invitation, God will come in and eat with them. God will be your friend. When you share the gospel with people, Christian, do you share this vital piece of information with others when you share the gospel? I hope you include the contents of the gospel.
The news of the life, the death, the burial, and the resurrection of the son of God who did all of that to pay for our sins.
I hope you include something about the free gift of eternal life that was purchased at the cross.
I hope you will include the call to repent of sin and to place all trust in the finished work of Jesus alone. I hope you include all of those things, but when you tell people the good news when you share the gospel, I do. You tell people that God has made a way for them to become his friend.
The point of the gospel is a relationship with God. That's what our sin kept us from. Jesus is a friend of sinners, and he died for our sins so that he could remove our sins completely and totally from us.
And he made a way. He has made a way for anybody to come into a relationship where they can know God and enjoy God as a personal friend. That's what he died to offer us. That's good news.
As disciples of Jesus, we do a lot of things, we learn his word, we obey his word, we tell others about his word, and we spend our entire lives doing these things.
This was my first time to lead online discussion groups for the healing course. I always liked face-to-face human interaction, so I was worried about how online discussion would go before it. Since August, I have led three online discussion groups, one from Taiwan, another from Shanghai group, and the other from Singapore. Each group and I meet once a week online.
After we started, to my surprise, everyone was very open to sharing in spite of not knowing each other before. We were both comforted and encouraged when recalling and sharing how God healed our bodies and minds in the past.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yea and forever. Our faith was stirred up and our minds strengthened when we reread the Bible verses in the journals. Our understanding of the Bible verses and stories was deepened through learning from each other’s viewpoints and testimonies. All the members from these three groups told how they looked forward to having the meeting online every week. Then I realized what made these meetings so special was because of God’s presence with us online.
During these months, my eyes were very dry and had a tingling feeling. However, I was fearless and believed they would be healed by God. One day I was so focused on worshiping with my eyes closed. I opened my eyes at the end of worship finding out that all the tingling was gone. The pain has never come back again. Before the online discussion was dismissed, we would pray for each other.
Some participants also shared that their coughs were gone quickly. Our participants supported each other not only in prayers but also in actions. Owing to they were all professionals, some needed to travel to another city for business and did not want to miss even a discussion meeting.
The others from the group showed great understanding and support by postponing the discussion meeting. They also expressed it would be a pity if this course came to an end. Now four more people enrolled in this healing course after they heard our participants’ sharing in their fellowships. So, we will start a new group even before we finish the first three discussing groups. I have more confidence to work with this type of online discussion group now because I see the wonderful things He has done through this. He can do what He wants to do. He is merciful and worth being praised.
Books of the Bible
Bible Prophecy Update (12.7.2020)...Date:12/5/20...Speaker: Jeff Thompson
In this special update, Jeff discusses the current state of the world and shares some Biblical insights to help Christians make sense of everything that's going on. We'll touch on COVID-19, climate change, the looming global debt crisis, the Great Reset, the United Nations Agenda 2030, and more, and highlight some important things for Christians to remember in the days ahead.
If you find this video useful, please share it!
The Great Reset (World Economic Forum):
United Nations Agenda 2030:
Full List of Agenda 2030 Indicators:
Hey, everybody, I wanted to do something a little bit different with this video. This is not a normal Bible teaching message. This is something much more informal.
I wanted to address the fact that if you haven't noticed, there's a whole lot going on in the world right now. And as I read what Christians are posting on social media and I listen to questions, there's there's so much confusion still. There are so many conspiracy theories out there. There's so much that we know is going on.
But we can't quite decode we can't quite make sense of.
And so I wanted to make a video that I hope will be helpful to you as you take a look at the world around you and seek to understand biblically what's going on.
I want to be very clear. This is this is not a Bible study. Again, these are some of my own personal insights, thoughts opinions, and views based on what I see. But looking with eyes that have spent a lot of time studying eschatology, a lot of time studying biblical prophecy.
So with everything I teach, as we often say, don't believe it because I say it. Check for yourself. You pray, you discern, you get into the scriptures and you come to your own conclusions.
But I can tell you this, this video is going to give you some very, very interesting things to talk about with your friends and your brothers and sisters in the Lord and your small group.
So let's talk about conspiracies.
Let's talk about what is going on in the world right now.
And when I thought about things to cover, the very first thing that you need to understand as a Christian is that Satan is running the show on Earth right now.
Let me say that again, Satan is running the show on the earth right now. When the Lord created man and woman, he created Adam and Eve. He gave them he gave Adam what was essentially the title deed of the Earth. He gave Adam rule and charge over the Earth to steward the Earth. Adam had that authority.
However, when Adam and Eve sinned, they transferred they gave up that title deed to Satan and Satan held the deed to the earth and had authority over the Earth.
When Jesus came to the Earth, died, and rose again at the resurrection, he took back that title deed from Satan. Jesus now holds it. However, Jesus has not yet cashed it in, so to speak. He holds it, but the scroll has not been opened yet.
The title deed has not been opened yet because as soon as Jesus reclaims the earth, the opportunity for people to join the family of God, the opportunity for people to be saved will be over.
That door will close. The apostle Peter puts it like this.
He says The Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some count slackness, but his long-suffering taught us his patience toward us. Why? Because he's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
So Jesus is not yet cashing in that title deed to the Earth because he wants to give more time for people to turn to him and be saved.
So for now, even though he doesn't hold the title deeds, Satan is still running the show on Earth.
Jeff, that doesn't seem very biblical. Well, it's in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, which record the famous Temptation of Christ. Perhaps you recall the interaction from Luke, Chapter four verses five through seven.
It says then the devil taking him, that's Jesus up on a high mountain showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment in time. And the devil said to him, to Jesus, all this authority I will give you and their glory for this. Listen to me. This is what Satan says to Jesus.
He says, for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish.
Therefore, if you will worship before me, all will be yours.
And Jesus doesn't say, don't be ridiculous, Satan, you don't own the world, you can't make that offer. I already own it anyway. Your offer is meaningless.
He doesn't do that.
Jesus responds to Satan's offer seriously, because it's a serious, legitimate offer, because at that moment in time, Satan did indeed own the kingdoms of the world. In John 14 30, Jesus calls Satan the ruler of this world.
John the Apostle declares, Long after Jesus returns to heaven, the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.
And in Second Corinthians four, again, long after the resurrection, our brother Paul speaks about those whose minds the God of this age has blinded the God of this age.
And here's what that means in terms of the world's power structure.
I want you to imagine this will use some some really nice conspiratorial imagery. OK, we'll imagine a pyramid. And then just the way it is on the American one dollar bill, imagine the top of the pyramid, the cap of the pyramid separated from the rest of the pyramid. And we'll say that this pyramid represents the world's power structure.
And however you view the world, we all understand that at some point there is a top to the pyramid.
There is a group of people who make the biggest decisions on Earth who are calling the shots and earthly politics and industry and things like this.
And so whatever you believe, let's call that group at the very top, the elite. Now, if you don't believe in conspiracies at all, then you believe that these are essentially just heads of state that are as high as the power structure on earth gets.
That's fine. That's cool. If that's what you believe, that's who is at that level.
They're part of what we'll call the elite. If you believe in conspiracies at this level, at the top elite level, then let me show off my conspiratorial bona fides here a little bit.
If you believe that's the Illuminati, the Bill de Bergers, the Trilateral Commission, the UN, the deep state, the World Economic Forum that gathers in Davos, the world banking families, the Merovingian bloodline, the lizard people, whatever you think, whatever you buy into, you believe that they're at the top and they're part of the elite. What the Bible tells us is that whoever those people are.
Above them is actually another level that's not where the power structure ends, you get to the top of the pyramid. That's not where the power structure ends.
You have to cross over into the spiritual world to get to the next level, because at the next level, above those people is Satan, the God of the sage, the one who holds the world system under his sway.
That is what the Bible teaches, that Satan is ultimately at the top of the world's power structure.
And so the people at that elite level, whether they realize it or not, are ultimately under the influence of Satan.
We need to understand that according to the Bible, anyone who does not belong to Jesus is under the influence of Satan. They are susceptible to being used by him for his purposes.
That's scriptural. That's biblical.
Everywhere there's a Christian, the Holy Spirit is there. And so the Holy Spirit is all over the Earth, inside believers and in acts.
In chapter two, when God gave the Holy Spirit to the church, the church was deputized, so to speak, by Jesus to resist Satan's schemes on the Earth. And in second Thessalonians two seven. It all comes together as the apostle Paul declares The mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way.
And ultimately in that verse, when we're talking about he who now restrains, we're talking about the fact that Jesus has placed the church on the earth.
And so the question becomes, is there a coming time when that restraining force of the church, is there a coming time when scripture says that that restraining force of the church is going to be removed from the earth so that lawlessness will no longer be restrained?
Yes, there is at the moment of the rapture, the church will be removed from the earth and the restraining presence of the Holy Spirit and believers across the world will suddenly be dramatically diminished.
And Satan will not be restrained the way he is right now in this church age.
That is why the Rapture will be shortly followed by the rise of Antichrist.
It will only be possible when the restraining force of the church is removed from the earth. And so what I want what I really want us to understand is, is the implication of Paul's phrase. The mystery of lawlessness is already at work.
What Paul is saying is that Satan has been trying to lay plans for a very, very long time, even when Paul was writing this in the first century, he was saying Satan is already at work trying to work his plans that will facilitate the rise of Antichrist when he has opportunity.
He's been working on that for a long time now. The church is not going to be on the earth when the Antichrist rises to the fore.
Paul tells us that in Thessalonians.
But we will be here for many of the preparations that will precede the emergence of the Antichrist. And we will likely be able to see recognize and identify some of those preparations. I heard one pastor put it this way.
He said, you know, that when you see Christmas decorations in Costco, it's almost time for Thanksgiving.
Here's the idea, when we see preparations for the Antichrist being established and made across the Earth, we know that the rapture is almost here.
That's the that's the biblical side of things.
And I really want to share with you some of my own personal observations about what's going on in the world right now.
As I said, I'm not saying thus say if the Lord, that is a very serious thing to say. And I'm not saying that these are just my observations.
You can consider them for what they're worth, but I hope they'll be helpful to you.
I believe that Satan is a globalist. If you don't know what a globalist is, a globalist is someone who has a political and sociological philosophy that the whole world should essentially be one community.
They're in favor of things like open borders, essentially a one world system of governance, a one world currency, so that the whole world can be one true global community.
That's what a globalist is. We don't need to have individual identities as countries. We need one global identity. And I believe that Satan is a globalist for one simple reason.
He wants to unite the world, the world system that he is currently ruling over.
It's about finding the God in you and learning to live out your desires so that you are God. That is the essence of Satanism because that is the essence of Satan. That's what got him thrown out of heaven, his desire to be God himself, to be equal with God.
And I believe that Satan truly desires globalism, grab a hold of our planet so that the whole world can be united in secular humanism, the exultation of self, and the rejection of God.
And I say this because firstly, in the Garden of Eden, this was his appeal to Eve, wasn't it?
Eat the fruit, then you will be what, like God.
But even more compelling when the world's first civilization begins to emerge in Mesopotamia, in Babylon, specifically, Satan stirs up the first Antichrist Nimrod to attempt to lead all of human civilization in the pursuit of self, this secular humanism, this paganism.
But that's really about the worship of self, he says. Let us build a tower, the Tower of Babel. And his whole idea was, let's unite the world in the pursuit of self and the rejection of God.
And if you know the story, then you know what happens in Genesis 1. God comes down and he confuses the speech of people by creating different languages and different ethnic groups, and they're scattered across the world.
But do you remember what Nimrod tried to do? When all the world was living together in the same place, when they were all one community, Scripture says that the people got together and said, come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top is in the heavens. Let us make a name for ourselves lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.
It all sounds so wonderful, doesn't it? We can reach our human potential. Let's be united. Let's move into a new age of enlightenment, a new age of fulfilling ourselves. But then God comes down and he breaks all that up because at the center of it is this satanic philosophy of self-exultation and turning the self into God.
And ever since then. I believe that Satan has been waiting for the time when he could once again rally humanity together under one leadership in the pursuit of this humanist philosophy.
The problem is people have been scattered and Satan's plans have been hindered. But this is why we saw the League of Nations as soon as Satan could do that, then that was followed by the U.N. when he could do that, then by the EU, Satan was always doing the best he could to build a globalized society with what he had available.
But what Satan has really been waiting for and needing is technology. Satan has been waiting for international travel to become the norm. He's been waiting for more trade alliances between countries. He's been waiting for a worldwide system where you could disseminate information and mislead the entire population of the world by controlling the information that they receive.
He's been waiting on the Internet. He's been waiting for mass surveillance to be possible. He's been waiting for communication to increase. He's been waiting ever since Babul for the infrastructure to truly implement globalism yet again and try and turn the whole world into what he tried to make Babylon in Genesis 11. And in case you're not picking up on what I'm putting down. I think his wait is over. The wait is over, and so now the question really becomes, if you're Satan, how do you get the world to buy into globalism?
How do you get the world to buy into the idea of becoming one of giving up personal identity, national identity, and personal individual freedoms, and going to a one-world currency?
I mean, some some countries that would be easy, because in Third World countries, you're only offering them the potential of something better.
But first-world countries, nationalistic first-world countries that have an independent streak, well well, they're a real problem because they value personal freedom and personal freedom is antithetical to globalism. So what do you do?
You have to attack the concept of nationalism. And that's really what we've seen in the media over the past few years, haven't we?
We've seen this rhetoric develop where if you're a nationalist, then you're a Nazi. If you're concerned about your personal freedoms, then then you're a nut job.
This is the emerging narrative, but it's still not enough. We see that in America right now, don't we? You know, 50 percent of the population still hasn't bought into that idea of becoming essentially a more socialist state.
And so not everybody is on board with the idea, and the problem is in some of these countries, you can't just take everybody's rights because they might rebel could be a real problem.
And what you're doing suddenly has to become revealed as being brutal rather than enlightened.
So you can't just take everybody's rights and freedoms, you have to make them give them to you. Now, how in the world do you do that, how do you make people who value individual rights and freedoms give you their rights and freedoms? It's really not that difficult. It's been done in history over and over and over again. And we saw it happen after 9/11, didn't we, when even those who value freedom were willingly giving it away because they were scared?
And they were offered the promise of safety in return. See, that's how you do it. If you can create fear and then offer security in exchange for freedom, most people will take that deal all day, every day.
That's what happened with the Patriot Act after 9/11, and things like intimate body searches became the standard protocol at airports, we got to do it, got to stop the terrorists. Well, I'm scared. So I'll let you invade my personal body space. The Patriot Act led to things like mass surveillance of citizens, which was later exposed by people like Edward Snowden. People were scared, they said, go ahead and do it, just keep us safe now, hang with me because I'm going somewhere with this.
In First Thessalonians five, Paul is writing specifically about the day of the Lord.
It's a term that applies to the whole coming season when God will judge the Earth, including the tribulation.
And here's what Paul says about that time. Listen to this. Paul says, for when they say peace and safety. Peace and safety. Then sudden destruction comes upon them. Paul tells us that the rapture and the tribulation and the rise of the Antichrist that whole day of the Lord is all going to unfold in a time when people are crying out for what?
Peace and safety. And I think that's because this global system of governance, this infrastructure out of which Antichrist will emerge, can only be implemented and created when there's an atmosphere of fear where people are crying out for peace and safety, give us peace and safety. And I suspect their fear is what will be used to create this new version of the world.
Now, keep following me down this train of thought. If the goal is to create global governance, that's the goal, and if the way to get there is by creating fear, that makes people willing to give up their rights because people are crying out for peace and safety, then the fears that you create, the fears that people have, will need to be global in nature.
They will need to be existential threats. Are you tracking with me?
If you want to bring the whole world under global governance, you have to create fear on a global level.
You can Google any of them.
They're well-established. They're very real. They're being discussed in all the mainstream circles. But what I want you to picture in your mind right now is a Venn diagram that has those three circles that overlap in one place. And each of these circles represents one of these three things.
You've got three circles, you've got covid-19, you've got climate change and you've got the global debt crisis and where they overlap.
This is where they all create existential fear. For the whole world. And the question, of course, is what is their purpose, what is the ultimate purpose of all this fear? And I believe it's to create a world system that will facilitate the rise of the Antichrist in the very near future. But to bring it down, how are we going to get there?
We're going to create a more globalized society across the world. That's what all of this is for.
It's to create the fear that will overlap and create enough fear that people will be willing to accept a new version of the world, the world's economy, the world's industry, the world's civil liberties, the world's borders, all of these things now, all of these things are real. But there's something very interesting about each of them. You see, the debt crisis has been known to be coming for decades. It's not something that emerged out of the blue.
And we're like, whoa, we blinked. And suddenly the whole world's in debt. The world economic system since the early 20th century. Has been on course to get us to where we are right now, a situation where the world is unsustainably in debt, where countries are trillions of dollars in debt in a hole so deep they cannot possibly dig themselves out. We've known for a very long time this is where this is going and no country has changed course.
Why is that? Why is that? And then we get to climate change and covid-19 both real things, but both, quite simply, extremely inflated and extremely exaggerated and constantly pushed in our faces.
There's a reason why Al Gore can make entire documentaries like An Inconvenient Truth, where every single prediction fails to come true.
And yet he's still considered an authority to speak on the subject of climate change.
There's a reason why people just ignore facts like the environmental damage caused by producing the batteries for electric cars and the environmental damage caused by disposing those same batteries when they die out in seven to 10 years.
There's a reason why nobody wants to look at that information. It's because there's something bigger, there's an influence behind the scenes driving all of these things, and when you get to countries that have a more independent streak, there's even smaller circles in this Venn diagram, things like racial issues and police shootings, all these things, they all overlap to create fear and to create the impression that the whole world is in imminent danger and it's falling apart and something has to change.
Now, that's where they all overlap.
And what's very interesting. Is that we now seem to know specifically what is in those overlapping areas? Yes, we know it's to set up the infrastructure for the emergence of the Antichrist, but I would suggest how we're going to do that is actually out in the open.
Now, if you haven't heard, it's called the Great Reset. It's called the United Nations Agenda 2030. And please understand, that these are not things spoken about in whispers.
You can go on to the United Nations website and read about the United Nations Agenda 2030 and the 230-something parts of that proposal. These are not conspiracy theories.
These are absolute facts out in the open for anyone to read, being pushed by heads of state simultaneously because these overlapping, existential global threats are all creating fear and this feeling that things need to change right now.
And this is what's being proposed to bring about those changes, the Great Reset and United Nations Agenda 2030.
Together, they envision a massive restructuring of the global community economically, socially, and politically. As I mentioned, these are wide out in the open. You can go check them out for yourself.
And I'm sharing this video because I don't want to just add to the noise. I don't want to just do a new update on who we think the Antichrist could be every week.
But I don't want to add to the noise or the panic, but I'm doing this video because I think it could be helpful. And I think that these things are potentially imminent. I think we're going to see a lot of movement on these specific issues next year in 2021.
And I'm sharing this because as Christians, we need to know how we should respond to all of this.
Firstly, we need to not get angry at people. We need to not get angry at people.
Listen, the idea that your local health authorities are knowingly part of a grand conspiracy is simply ridiculous. There are too many people involved for that to be kept secret. You can't run a conspiracy with that many people.
But as we talked about earlier, anyone who does not belong to the kingdom of God, who's not saved is susceptible to the influence of Satan. And so Satan is able to make things like closing churches but keeping bars open.
He's able to make that make sense in the minds of local national and international health authorities.
He's able to make it seem like a good and considerate, compassionate, logical scientific idea. This is why Paul told us to remember that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, and against spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places.
Don't get mad at people, don't rage on social media. And listen, if you're concerned enough to speak out, then you should be concerned enough to pray. Because your prayers are going to make a whole lot more difference than ranting on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram ever is, there's also no point ranting at people.
There's no point.
And by the way, Paul's commands to honor and pray for our leaders still apply.
We may not be able to always obey our leaders, but we're still required by scripture and by the Lord to pray for them to honor them, and to watch the way that we speak about them publicly.
You know, I see a lot of churches and pastors who are talking about how the church needs to not meet.
We need to not gather because it could damage the church's reputation in the community and we need to keep our neighbors healthy.
Listen, those are good things, they're good things, OK, they really are, but they're not the most important thing.
The most important thing is to remember that the church has got to be clear about this. The church does not exist first and foremost for us. Most of us are clear on that, but I'm going to say something now where the church is very confused much of the time. Neither does the church exist, first and foremost for our community. Do you understand that the church does not exist first and foremost for the lost? The church exists first and foremost for Jesus.
The church is the bride of Christ, that is the identity of the church.
And so as the church navigates these times, there are a lot of questions we should ask. But the one at the top, and we should not be confused about this, the one at the top, the most important question is what does Jesus want us to do?
What does he want us to do in our daily situation, in our corporate gatherings, in response to restrictions? What does Jesus want us to do? The first question is not what our community thinks we should do.
The first question is not what do our health authorities say we should do, the first question is not even what's best for my health. Do you want to know what's not good for your health gathering as the church in a country where being a Christian will get you murdered?
Where it's a capital offense that's bad for your health, and yet this weekend, Christians all over the world in places where they could be killed for loving Jesus will gather together as the church, even though they are risking their health in a far more serious way than we ever will with covid-19.
The question is not what our community thinks, what are health authorities say we should do what's best for our health. Those are all questions that, yes, we should consider. But above all of the above, all of them is the question, what does Jesus want us to do? And that will be the question tomorrow, next week, next month, 10 years from now. If the Lord tarries, that is the question. How do we discern the answer?
We stay in the word of God. We pray we fast.
We do our best to listen to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
And I need to let you know, Christian, that in the days ahead, what God will ask you to do will probably not line up with what you want to do if you have a very independent and contrarian streak, as I do.
You may find that Jesus is going to ask you to comply and obey civil orders much more than you would like you to.
You might find that Jesus will tell you, no, you need to stay home. You need to meet online for several months.
You might not like it, but that may be what Jesus will ask you to do. If you're conflict-averse and you care deeply about being at peace with everybody.
Listen, you may find Jesus asking you to engage in civil disobedience much more than you would ever like. But here's the big thing I want us to remember. When the church is making decisions corporately and individually and as families. What Jesus wants is at the top of the list, always, no matter what, no matter what. Christian, we need to also understand that the rapture is God's promise to remove his church before he pours out his wrath upon the Earth.
The rapture is not God's promise to remove his church before the Constitution gets shredded the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is radically revised or before society takes a significantly darker turn in terms of civil liberties.
God doesn't say I'm going to rapture my church before your country embraces communism under another name. It's not what the Bible says. Do you know that living in a time and place where Christians are not persecuted is a historical exception in the church age?
As always, every Christian needs to be ready to live for Jesus to preach, Jesus to go to prison, for Jesus, to suffer for Jesus and to die for Jesus. The rapture is not to deliver the church from persecution. It's to deliver the church from the wrath of God. Jeff, this is some scary stuff. Here's what Jesus told his disciples when he was talking to them about the difficult days that would lie ahead for his followers, Jesus said, see that you're not troubled.
For all these things must come to pass, all these things must come to pass over and over again in scripture, the command, not the suggestion the command appears, do not be afraid.
Do not fear.
But don't ever forget. And there's someone else even higher over everything is Jesus over everything is Jesus. And listen, there's an elite class in the world that is playing chess while the rest of us are playing checkers, Satan's playing on a level above them.
But listen, Jesus. Jesus is working things on a level we can't even fathom. Everybody thinks they're making their own choices, but the Bible says man makes his plans, but the will of the Lord prevails.
What Jesus has written about biblical prophecy is not a plan, it's not a prediction he hopes will come true, it is future history. Not one word that the Lord has spoken will fail to come to pass, his word will never return void. What he has spoken will happen with absolute certainty and the final chapter of the Earth.
And the ages to come are already written. You can read about them in the word of God. The ending is certain church.
We are getting so close, we're getting so close. Keep your eyes on Jesus. Don't don't get distracted. Don't get distracted. No matter what happens, we belong to Jesus, we live for Jesus if you're not doing that. Get serious about the Lord, get serious about the Lord, make up your mind now, make the decision now that you're following him no matter what, no matter where it leads, because the king is coming and he's coming soon.
God bless.
Date:5/22/22
Passage: Acts 1:12-26...Speaker: Jeff Thompson
As the followers of Jesus wait in Jerusalem to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, Jeff highlights two vital ingredients that always precede a powerful move of God - obedience to Jesus and prayer.
Luke's Gospel tells us that when Jesus appeared to his disciples following his resurrection, he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. What a credible Verse what is it like to have Jesus just open your mind to understand the Scriptures like that? In an instant, they could connect the Jesus ending in front of them to all the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah. In a moment they understood why he had to die on the cross and why his resurrection had changed everything. Reading from Luke 24, beginning in verses 46, it's on your outlines.
He that's Jesus also said to them, this is what is written. The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead. The third day and repentance for forgiveness of sins will be proclaimed in his name to all the nations beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And look, I am sending you what my Father promised.
As for you, stay in the city until you are empowered. The word literally means clothed with power from on high. After spending 40 days making appearances on the Earth as the risen Savior, Jesus led his disciples up the mound of Olives, a Hill just outside Jerusalem to the east. Acts chapter one, verses four and five tell us that Jesus repeated his instructions. It says while he was with them, he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for the Father's promise, which he said, you have heard me speak about for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit in a few days.
When we reach Acts chapter 2. Next week, we're going to learn what precisely this baptism of the Holy Spirit is. But Jesus makes it clear in Acts chapter in verses eight that it will give them power to travel throughout Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the Earth. Preaching the Gospel as eyewitnesses to the resurrection, Jesus then physically leaves the Earth, ascending back to Heaven where he currently resides. And with that, his earthly mission, the Incarnation was completed.
Verse twelve picks up the moment after the disciples lose sight of Jesus as he disappears into the clouds. Open your Bibles. Let's take a look at verse twelve together in Acts 1. It says; Then they return to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away. That's about 1 km away.
It's just outside of the Eastern side of Jerusalem. When they arrived, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying. The disciples were already staying in Jerusalem because they were there to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, which commemorated the giving of the Law to Israel by God at Mount Sinai. We studied that when we went through the Book of Exodus. For those of you who are with us, the upper room mentioned here could be the upper room where the Last Supper took place.
And it could be where Jesus appeared to his disciples on resurrection day. Some speculate it could be above the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark. But there's no way to know if any of those theories are really true, and it doesn't affect the narrative whether or not they are. Verse 13 continues and lists the names of the eleven surviving disciples Peter, John, James, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James, the son of Elfius, Simon the Zealot, and Judas the son of James. It says Judas the son of James so we don't confuse this Judas with Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus to the religious leaders.
He's also more plainly referred to in John 14/22 as Judas, not Iscariot, and I'm sure he had to say that phrase only about a million times over the course of his life.
I put this on your outline too. We know that the remaining eleven of the twelve disciples were there. It mentions the woman. This would have included Mary Magdalene, Mary the wife of Clopas, Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, the dear friends of Jesus, Salome, and others. Some of these women had followed Jesus from Galilee down south to Jerusalem for the Passover where he was crucified.
They supported him with their finances. They helped feed him, and his disciples served however they could and were the first witnesses to his resurrection. It says, Mary, the mother of Jesus, was there as well, and I love that the word shows us what Mary was doing following the ascension. We don't find the disciples gathered around her praying to her or saying, can you get a message to Jesus for us? We find her among the disciples of Jesus, praying and worshiping him.
She is Jesus' disciple first and his mother second. Jesus is her God first and her son second. This is the final picture of Mary that Scripture gives us. Praying with the disciples as a disciple of Jesus, Jesus' brothers were technically half-brothers as they were the biological offspring of Joseph and Mary. Mark six three tells us they were named James, Joseph, Judas, another one, and Simon which was likely as little as eight months before.
This time, Jesus and his brothers were sarcastically telling him that he should do his miracles in front of a larger audience because they didn't even believe that he was actually doing miracles. They didn't believe the reports. And yet here they are, worshiping him and praying to him. What happened? The resurrection happened when the brother you watched die on a cross appears to you in a resurrected body, and speaks with you in front of other witnesses.
It causes you to pause and say, I might need to reevaluate my perspective on whether or not my brother is in fact, God. They changed from skeptics who viewed Jesus as a mentally disturbed embarrassment to the family, to fully devoted followers willing to die brutal deaths for him rather than recant their testimony that he had risen from the dead. It's one of the great apologetic evidence for the resurrection, the change in the behavior and perspective of the brothers of Jesus. If you're going to claim to be the Son of God, there is going to be no one harder to convince than your brother, okay? It's just the way it is.
Oh, really? You're the Son of God? Now, is this a trick just to get out of doing chores?
James would become the first leader of the Jerusalem Church and write the epistle that bears his name.
Judas, the brother of Jesus, would write the Epistle of Jude. There were also some there who had been part of the group of 70 disciples that are mentioned in Luke chapter ten. And there were probably some other odd male and female disciples of Jesus whose names we don't know. Luke's Gospel tells us that after watching Jesus ascend back to heaven, they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple praising God.
So, understand this for Jesus, Jewish disciples, and all of these people are almost certainly Jewish. So, for Jesus's, Jewish disciples, Christianity is just the continuation of Judaism for them at this point, they don't see it as a new religion. That's why they're in Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost. And that's why when they want to worship God, they go to the temple. If you ask them, what are you?
They would have said, We're Jews, we're religiously Jewish, and we worship and follow the Jewish Messiah, who was prophesied in the Jewish scriptures by Jewish prophets. Throughout the Book of Acts, we will see Christianity emerge and separate from Judaism, as most Jewish leaders and people reject the gospel message that Jesus was his Messiah. But at this point, the word Christian didn't even exist, and the followers of Jesus were still religiously Jewish in their minds. When you study Church history, you will find prayer at the center of every great move of God. Wherever revival has exploded, it has been preceded by a powerful prayer movement.
And so I want us to notice that before we get to Acts chapter two before we get to the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we see a prayer movement taking place among the followers of Jesus. In his great high priestly prayer in John 17, Jesus prayed for his future Church. May they all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe you sent me. I have given them the glory you have given me so that they may be one.
As we are one, I am in them and you are in me, so that they may be made completely one that the world may know you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. Where does genuine unity in a Church come from? How do you get it?
Unity is produced when people submit to God and his word and gather to pray. When we gather to pray, when you gather with God's people to pray, His Spirit begins to bind your hearts together. Supernaturally. It's a work of God and of His Spirit. In that prayer, time is when God births the kind of love for your brothers and sisters that we're going to read about in the Book of Acts.
It's the kind of love that you can't stir up yourself. You can't hear a message on this on a Sunday and say, that's it, I'm deciding to love my brothers and sisters. Flick the switch. You can't do that because you don't even have that kind of love within yourself. It comes from the Lord, it comes from his Spirit.
So, understand this for Jesus, Jewish disciples, and all of these people are almost certainly Jewish. So, for Jesus's, Jewish disciples, Christianity is just the continuation of Judaism for them at this point, they don't see it as a new religion. That's why they're in Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost. And that's why when they want to worship God, they go to the temple. If you ask them, what are you?
They would have said, We're Jews, we're religiously Jewish, and we worship and follow the Jewish Messiah, who was prophesied in the Jewish scriptures by Jewish prophets. Throughout the Book of Acts, we will see Christianity emerge and separate from Judaism, as most Jewish leaders and people reject the gospel message that Jesus was and his Messiah. But at this point, the word Christian didn't even exist, and the followers of Jesus were still religiously Jewish in their minds. When you study Church history, you will find prayer at the center of every great move of God. Wherever revival has exploded, it has been preceded by a powerful prayer movement.
And so I want us to notice that before we get to Acts chapter two, before we get to the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we see a prayer movement taking place among the followers of Jesus. In his great high priestly prayer in John 17, Jesus prayed for his future Church. May they all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe you sent me. I have given them the glory you have given me so that they may be one.
As we are one, I am in them and you are in me, so that they may be made completely one that the world may know you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. Where does genuine unity in a Church come from? How do you get it?
Unity is produced when people submit to God and his word and gather to pray. When we gather to pray, when you gather with God's people to pray, His Spirit begins to bind your hearts together. Supernaturally. It's a work of God and of His Spirit. In that prayer, time is when God births the kind of love for your brothers and sisters that we're going to read about in the Book of Acts.
It's the kind of love that you can't stir up yourself. You can't hear a message on this on a Sunday and say, that's it, I'm deciding to love my brothers and sisters. Flick the switch. You can't do that because you don't even have that kind of love within yourself. It comes from the Lord, it comes from his Spirit.
It can only be accessed. It can only be stirred by the Spirit of God within us. And he chooses to do it where people gather to pray and then that unity and that love that grows. Here's the incredible thing. It actually empowers your prayers.
It creates this incredible, glorious circle of unity being birthed, love for the brethren being birthed, which makes you pray more effectively and more passionately and stirs you to pray even more. And this is how these prayer movements happen. People who just want to see God move, gather and pray and find the Spirit of God joining them together in the kind of agape love that can only be found in the Lord. And as they speak out, as they pray out loud, as they gather together to pray, all the different divisions and all the different strata and tears among the body of Christ become level at the feet of Jesus, the ground becomes even. And that is when we become brothers and sisters.
I do a different work when you gather together and agree in my name. So would you write this down? When believers who are submitted to God's word pray together. The result is love and unity. The result is love and unity, which must necessarily precede the revival or removal of God.
Otherwise, it cannot be sustained. It cannot hold itself now because it makes sense in terms of flow. We're actually going to look at verses 18 and 19 first and then come back to verses is 15 through 17. In verses 18 through 19, Luke gives us some details about the fate of Judas Iscariot. Haven't seen this one in a lot of kids.
Bibles now this man acquired a field with his unrighteous wages. He fell headfirst, his body burst open and his intestines spilled out. Lovely. This became known to all the residents of Jerusalem, so that in their own language that field was called Hakaldama. That is Field of Blood.
What a beautiful story. These events are documented in Matthew chapters 26 and 27 and there appear to be contradictions between the accounts. But as is always the case with Scripture, the two accounts harmonize. When you begin to investigate the specific details, you'll recall that Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus to the religious leaders in Jerusalem for a fee of 30 pieces of silver. The amount of compensation the law demanded to be paid to a slave's owner by the one who caused their death.
This money is what verse 18 refers to as unrighteous wages. After Jesus had been arrested, Judas felt guilty about betraying innocent blood. Now please understand it is possible to feel guilt and remorse without repenting. Guilt and remorse are not the same thing as repentance. They can lead to repentance or not.
You can feel overwhelmed by your conscience and remain steadfast in your refusal to submit to Jesus as Lord and Savior. Such was the case with Judas. He threw the money back at the religious leaders and then hung himself in a Potter's field. Unbeknownst to Judas, the priests took the money he threw at them and later used it to buy that very field as a burial place for the unclaimed dead. They did that because they felt it would be morally wrong to put the money in the temple offering due to it being blood money.
That's how hypocritical and spiritually dead the religious leaders were. They felt the money was tainted but didn't feel any conviction over the fact that they were the ones who had tainted it by using it to bribe Judas to arrange the murder of Jesus. Eventually, Judas's hanging body swelled, fell out of the noose, and hit the Rocky ground where it burst open in the graphic fashion described in verse 19. As a result, people in Jerusalem came to call the place Field of Blood. That's the backstory of Judas's death.
I'm so glad I could build you up in your most Holy faith this evening and what a bleak picture it paints for us. The very place where Judas took his life was paid for literally by the blood of Jesus and the blood of Jesus has paid for everyone's sins. If you're here today, the blood of Jesus has paid for your sins. Yet many will choose to be their own God instead and therefore choose to pay for their sins themselves.
The only question is whether you will turn to Jesus, say thank you, and receive him into your life as your Lord and Savior. If you will eternal life will be yours. It'll be yours. It's a staggering thing to think about what Judas saw and heard. He spent three years with Jesus watching the miracles, hearing the Son of God teach on the Word of God.
He heard the Word of God expound on the Word of God. He was one of the Twelve, and yet he hated the Romans more than he loved Jesus. He loved money and power more than he loved Jesus, and as a result, he lost everything. No wonder Jesus called him the Son of Perdition, which means Son of waste. With that context regarding Judas in place, let's return to verse 15.
It says, in those days. So, while they were waiting in Jerusalem, per Jesus' instructions, Peter stood up among the brothers and sisters. The number of people who were together was about 120 underline 120 and said, brothers and sisters, it was necessary that the Scripture be fulfilled, that the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of David, foretold about Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus, for he was one of our number and shared in this Ministry. Now jump down to verse 20, for it is written in the Book of Psalms. Let his dwelling become desolate, let no one live in it, and let someone else take his position.
Some of the Psalms are known as Messianic Psalms. Many of them were written by David and they were written centuries before Jesus was born on the Earth. As a man, David was writing about his own life and experiences, but unbeknownst to him, he was also serving as a type of Jesus, meaning that what David was writing applied not only to his own life but also served to prophetically point ahead and apply to the coming Messiah, who would be Jesus. There are aspects of David's writing and life that prophetically parallel the life of Jesus on the Earth. Peter quotes from two of these Psalms and applies them to Judas' betrayal of Jesus.
His first quote is from Psalm 69:25 and the second is from Psalm 109, verse eight. Psalm 69 is clearly Messianic. Psalm 109 focuses more on a specific betrayer of a righteous man, which is obviously Judas more than it does the Messiah. But if you study Psalm 69 on your own this week, you'll find it fascinating to just try and pick out all the details in there that apply to the life of Jesus. Prophetically.
The word office that is quoted by Peter is the Greek word "episcopen". It means "position of Overseer", "position of verse is". Peter references these two prophecies written by David in the Psalms. And he says, guys, David was writing prophetically about Jesus and Judas, and these prophecies give us direction as to what must be done. Next, we need to replace the member of the twelve who betrayed Jesus.
And Peter suggests this for a few reasons. First of all, most importantly, God prompted him to do it. God prompted him to do it. God is in control. Secondly, Peter suggested this because at the beginning of our study, I referenced from Luke's Gospel where it told us that Jesus appeared to his disciples following the resurrection and he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.
And Peter suggests this for a few reasons. First of all, most importantly, God prompted him to do it. God prompted him to do it. God is in control. Secondly, Peter suggested this because at the beginning of our study, I referenced Luke's Gospel which it told us that Jesus appeared to his disciples following the resurrection and he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.
We see the effect of that here. Peter has had these Psalms stored up in his mind for years. He's a good Jewish student. He's memorized the Torah. He's memorized probably most of the Old Testament.
But when Jesus opens his mind to understand the Scriptures, suddenly the dots start connecting between Jesus and his death and life and the cross and resurrection. All the dots start connecting between what has just happened over the past three years and all of these Old Testament prophecies and Peter. Peter can now see it. He can now discern the connection. So Peter speaks up because he believes these scriptures reveal the actionable will of God now.
Thirdly, Peter does this because he understands on some level that Jesus is establishing his Church around this time. He doesn't know what's about to happen in Acts chapter two. But he understands Jesus is going to establish his Church because Jesus had spoken about it during his Ministry to Peter. He doesn't understand all the details, but he understands that just as Israel was established on the twelve tribes of Israel, Jesus is going to establish his Church on twelve disciples. Two additional observations on Peter's words in these verses.
Peter also uses these Psalms to explain to the other disciples that Judas' betrayal had always been part of God's plan. It had been prophesied for centuries. Can you imagine the astonishment that would have gripped the disciples when they began to connect the dots with Peter, ending them and realizing that Jesus's past is in absolute control of everything that had happened down to the smallest detail. This wasn't a plan that had been derailed. This was the plan before the foundations of the world.
No aspect of the cross had been a tragedy. It was a triumph, a staggering Symphony of scandalous Grace conducted at every measure by the Lord Jesus. I also noticed that Peter teaches the concept of the divine inspiration of Scripture. When he says - and underline it if you haven't - "the Holy Spirit through the mouth of David", I love that phrase. In other words, the Holy Spirit, Peter says, inspired David to write those Psalms just as he inspired the over 40 men who wrote all the Scriptures. 2 Timothy 3:16 plainly declares, "All Scripture is inspired by God." The interesting thing is that if you look at the original Greek of 2 Timothy 3"16, the word "all" means "all". It means "all". All Scripture is inspired by God.
So, if you ever find yourself in a Church or a Bible study where people want to claim that certain parts of the Scriptures are not inspired, leave, leave. Because once you decide that you can choose which parts of the Bible should be considered divine, you're playing God. You're saying, I'm going to be the editor of the Word of God.
Not good. And the evidence of that will be revealed when the version of God that you end up with happens to share all of your preferences and opinions. It's amazing how that happens. In verse 21, Peter reveals the criterion that Judas's replacement would need to meet to verse is a witness along with the rest of the 12th. It says this in verse 21.