[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
[email protected] be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast. Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you
[00:00:37] Speaker B: if you're with us for the first time. What we've been doing this summer in our summer series is we've been having our shepherds come up and deliver us some messages about connecting. And you'll see the topic is connecting with Christ as King. Tonight, David Wade is going to be our speaker. And so I got the opportunity to get up and to introduce him tonight. And I wish so much that I had like a ton of stuff that I could just roast him for a few minutes, but instead I'll just say a few words about him.
David and Laura have been here with us, I guess probably about as long as we've been here. What time did you guys get here? 2000, 2000, 2003. Okay, so he's been here for a long time and you know, you wouldn't look at him and think athlete.
I mean, that was so wrong to start off that way. I know, I get it.
Throw the flag. Yeah, I know, I know. It's okay. I'll take the penalty. It's okay.
But David is, he's got quite an elbow when he plays basketball and he's deceptively, I mean, pretty good. He shoots a good left handed shot.
He's brought his kids up, they're great athletes and you know, there's a lot of things that I can remember. He's very competitive.
One time our families did a vacation together and we were playing cards and I don't know if y' all know how to play Nertz, but Nerds is one of those quick pace games where you're, you're slapping cards down table and it's like a group effort. Everybody's doing it and David was really, really good and he was holding a card that was going to send him out and so it was kind of tense. Everybody's like throwing their cards down or whatever. And Cindy had the same card that was going to go on the stack of cards, waiting for the next card to fall so she could put on it, right? And. And so he was standing there, and he was going to put two cards down, one and then another, and he says, what are you going to do? Find a way to get it in between there. And so he put the car down with the other one coming down as well, and she slid the car in there right between them. He's like, what are you, some kind of nurse ninja or something? You know, it was. It was awesome. And it was fun because he got beaten by my wife. And I loved it so, so much.
But also just as a way to say how much we love and appreciate him. You know, one of the things that, for me, that's so important with regard to our shepherds is that they have strong families. And when you look at the Wade family, you just see a lot of good Christian strength.
Their children are just fantastic.
And I know that they have been a blessing in his life. You watch and see how close he is with his children, how much they love him and respect him. I didn't ask Laura for anything. She probably had some good things to say, I don't know.
But I love and appreciate David so much, and I can't wait to hear what he shares with us tonight. So, David, if you'll come up and share with us.
[00:03:29] Speaker C: All right. Good evening. And I appreciate that, and I do thank you for not asking my kids for any dirt.
I'm sure they would have been glad to hand it over.
It's good to be with you tonight, and I think I can speak for all the elders and say that we've enjoyed being able to have this opportunity this summer to speak and to share some thoughts with you, and I'm looking forward to doing that tonight.
So, with a group this large, I assume that there's probably some history buffs in the group.
There's probably some of you that like to read these big, huge, thick, thick biographies.
I was going to say that's a little weird, but I probably shouldn't say that, so I won't.
There's some of us, I think, that are still recovering from just trying to memorize all the dates in high school. So I never was in school. I wasn't really a huge history guy. I wasn't a big fan of history.
I found that it was a little bit boring.
I didn't like doing all the memorization of all the dates, and it didn't have near enough math in it for me.
But as I've gotten a little bit older, I started to appreciate history a lot more. And I've realized that history is not boring.
It's really just history teachers that are boring.
And I know some of you are probably teachers, and I'm not talking about you. I'm sure it was just my teachers that were that way.
But you don't have to be a history buff to know that we're on the doorsteps of a major historical event. And just 10 days from now is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
And those men that gathered on that day, I think I got. Yeah, those men that gathered on that day exhibited a lot of bravery.
It was dangerous for them to sign that it was risk to their own lives.
They also knew that in order for this to be successful, that they needed to be united.
Benjamin Franklin captured that idea pretty well in his normal way when he said, we must all hang together or we will surely all hang separately.
So to the British, this was a rebellion, and they primarily referred to the war as the American rebellion.
But today it's a little more sanitized. And they call it the American War of Independence.
But what do we call it? We call it the Revolutionary War.
So they were doing something more than just fighting for independence. They were starting a revolution, and they were heading down a path that would change everything, introducing a whole new form of governance.
They were building a new system of citizen rule that was based on freedom, and it was truly revolutionary.
This revolution would spread across the globe to a lot of other countries.
And democratic principles have spread throughout the world, blessing many nations.
But I don't just want to bore you with history tonight.
So this lesson is really about a much more significant revolution. It's a revolution that occurred centuries earlier and that had a much greater impact.
It's a revolution that changed everything and a revolution that is still happening today.
This revolution began in no name towns in an insignificant region called Galilee, in the midst of the greatest empire the world had ever known.
And the revolutionary was born virtually unnoticed under the rule of Augustus, the first and the greatest of the Roman emperors.
And though he came from obscurity, Jesus began a revolution that turned the world upside down.
So on Sundays this quarter, we've been talking about worldview.
If we wanted to just sum up what I think worldview into three words, I think that captures the Christian worldview, it would be simply that Christ is king.
So that's what we're going to Be focusing on tonight.
Jesus talked often about the kingdom.
In fact, the word Kingdom is used 126 times in the Gospels.
Jesus typically refers to either the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. And these meant the same thing.
But to say that the kingdom was a major theme of his teaching is an understatement.
It is also very clear from the Gospels that Jesus had a self awareness that he was of that kingdom.
So to better understand what it means to be Christian, better understand what it means that Christ is king, I want to dive into the heart of his teaching about the kingdom. And that's in the Sermon on the Mount.
We find that in Matthew chapters five through seven.
So in the heart of the Sermon on the Mount, there in the middle of chapter six, there's this prayer that we call the Lord's prayer or the model prayer.
And in the heart of this prayer there's this phrase. So in the heart of his teaching, in the heart of this sermon, in the heart of this prayer, there's this saying from Jesus, your kingdom come.
So what does it mean for the kingdom of God to come?
Well, the first thing that we need to understand is that this is about God ruling or reigning.
The word here for kingdom is basilea, and it means rule, it means royal power, dominion or reign.
And it's really more about the king himself and his authority to rule than it is about his domain or what we normally think of as kingdom.
So this is a prayer.
It's a prayer that God would rule or reign, and it's a prayer that God's rule would come.
So what does that mean for his rule to come?
And we'll dive into that in just a moment.
The second thing we notice is this phrase, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
This is not a new thought.
He didn't change the subject. He's really clarifying and explaining what he just said, what it means for God to rule. So when God is ruling, his will is being done.
So to what extent is God's will being done in heaven?
Well, it's fully and it's without opposition.
In heaven, all is as it should be.
Everything is in order and God is ruling without opposition.
So why does Jesus need to pray that God would rule the earth?
Doesn't he already rule the earth and isn't he already sovereign over the world?
Well, in short, yes. But there has been a rebellion on earth. Everything is not as it should be.
So Jesus prayer is that God's will be done on earth in the same way that it's being done in heaven. It's a prayer that God rules the earth just like he rules heaven. And it's a prayer that men everywhere will do the will of God. So these are all saying the same thing.
So let's unpack a little bit what this first phrase means. Your kingdom come.
This is ultimately the story of how Jesus became king, became the king that brought the kingdom, or the rule of God. This is the story of a revolution that changed the world forever.
Worldly empires and governments, no matter how great, come and go, but God's kingdom lasts forever.
Jesus started a revolution by becoming king in the most unexpected way, and that reshaped the entire world.
Let's begin to break this down.
The kingdom of God means that God is reclaiming his authority over the whole creation.
When Jesus prays for the kingdom to come, he is praying that God would come and reclaim what is rightfully his.
And again, we might ask, isn't all of creation already already God's? And the answer is certainly, absolutely. It is.
Psalms 24:1 speaks to this. It says, the earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.
And also Psalm 95:3,5 speaks to this. It says, for the Lord is the great God, the great King, above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands form the dry land.
And then 1st Chronicles 29:11 says, Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power, and the glory, and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours.
Yours, Lord, is the kingdom you are exalted as head over. All these verses have always been true, and they always will be true. Everything is his, and he rules it all.
Additionally, we can see that he also has dominion over the nations.
Not just the creation itself, but the nations within it. Daniel 4. 7 says, the most High is sovereign over all the kingdoms on earth, and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of mankind.
And then Psalm 22:8 says, for dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.
So on the one hand, all of creation is already God's.
Yet when we look at the world, we see brokenness all around.
So the world is not as it should be.
So how can this be? How do we reconcile the fact that God is ruling and God is in charge? But yet we see a broken world.
We see a world that has so much evil. So there's clearly something more at play here.
And that problem is that Satan has become an illegitimate ruler over the world.
We see some of this in these passages. In 1 John 5:19, John says that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.
And then John also states, he states Jesus mission very clearly and very bluntly in this passage says that the reason the son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.
And then in Jesus own words in John 12:31, this is Jesus as he's approaching his death and he's speaking to his disciples.
He says, now is the judgment of this world.
Now the ruler of this world will be cast out.
And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.
He said this to show what kind of death he was going to die.
Alright, so let's pause here and let's make some observations.
So first we see that Satan has become a usurper of God's authority over creation.
And Jesus himself frequently called Satan the ruler of this world or the ruler of this age.
Satan became the world's ruler when humanity handed over the keys of earthly dominion through their sin.
Man's sin opened the gates to the enemy and Satan has taken up residence.
He became the ruler of this world.
Men were supposed to be God's delegated rulers over creation, but instead they handed over that rule to the enemy.
Before we move on, I want to just make a comment.
The location of Satan's rule that we're talking about is really in the hearts of men. This is really not about land or territory, it's about hearts. This is where the real battleground lies and this is where the enemy has taken up residence.
The second observation I want to make here from these verses is that we see that Jesus mission and his work, his reason for coming was to destroy the works of the devil.
And there are many different ways that we could say this.
For one, he's reclaiming his authority over humanity or over the world.
We could also say that he's judged and defeated and cast out Satan.
We could say that he's bringing the reign of God or the kingdom of God from heaven to earth.
And these are basically all saying the same thing.
Then the third observation I want to make here is that Jesus defeated Satan in a most unexpected way.
He did not come with worldly power or authority, with wealth, with political influence or with a sword, but instead he came with love and humility and service.
Satan used the weapons that he was used to, the ones that he knows best. He used violence and he used death. But Jesus Fought with sacrifice.
And in the greatest cosmic turn of events, Satan and the powers of the world meant for the cross to be the condemnation of Jesus. But God meant for the cross not to be his condemnation, but his coronation.
And it was precisely through the cross that Jesus defeated sin, overcame Satan, and became king.
Or in other words, Israel's God became Israel's king.
The powers of the world that thought that Jesus was on trial, but it was actually them that were on trial, and it was actually them that were judged.
So to summarize this whole first point, the coming of the kingdom of God means the defeat of Satan and the reclaiming of God's people.
So the next thing that I want to say about the kingdom and what that means is that it means the defeat of sin, or freedom from sin.
Sin is the tool that the devil used to gain power over men, and it's the means that he used to enslave mankind.
And through the cross, Jesus overcame sin and freed us from the slavery of sin.
Looking back into Israel's history, we see Moses, and we see how God used Moses to lead the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt.
And that story is foundational to the story of Israel.
It really defined Israel as a nation.
But as important as that story is, it was really just a foreshadowing of what would come, of what would come through Christ.
Just as Moses demanded that Pharaoh let my people go, so now Christ declares to Satan, you have no authority over my people, and I am freeing them from their captivity to sin. He is reclaiming his people, redeeming them from sin.
We need to understand the full scope of what it means to be free from sin, the full scope of our salvation from sin.
So to help us understand this, I want you to imagine a stereo system.
I had AI make this picture for me.
It came out pretty good, maybe a little over the top, but maybe it will help us understand that.
So if we see salvation as a stereo and it's got two speakers, in order to properly understand it, the speakers need to be balanced. We need to hear the sound from both speakers. One doesn't need to overwhelm the other. If one's turned up too loud and we can't hear the other one, it distorts the message. If one's turned down too low, it distorts the message. So the message of salvation on the one hand, in one speaker, we talk about forgiveness.
So this is about God forgiving us of our sin, and it's about freedom from the guilt of sin.
And this is definitely a key Part of our salvation, then the other speaker is labeled transformation.
We could also call this renewal, or we could call it sanctification. But this is about God changing our hearts, making us new, and freeing us not from the guilt of sin, but from the practice of sin.
And this is also a key part of our salvation.
So when we speak of salvation, sometimes we allow the speaker on the left to overwhelm the speaker on the right. We talk about forgiveness, we talk about that aspect of salvation, but we don't talk enough sometimes about transformation, about being freed from the practice of sin.
Let's think of it this way. If we view sin, if you view sin like being stuck in a mud pit, we need to have, in order to be saved from that, we need to have the mud washed off of us. That's forgiveness, but we also need to get out of the mud pit.
That's transformation.
And these are both lifelong processes. It's a continual washing and it's a continual transformation by the Holy Spirit.
They both happen initially in our baptism, but they also continue as we remain in Christ until we are perfected in the resurrection.
Let's look at some passages that talk about this.
So the first One is Ezekiel 36, 25, 28. It says, I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses and from all your idols. I will cleanse you and I will give you a new heart, a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey My rules.
You shall dwell in the land that I gave your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.
Alright, there is, there is so much in this passage here.
And we could spend a whole lesson just on this passage.
But here we find God's promise to save his people and to free them from their sin.
But first, notice that he promises that he's going to wash them clean.
This is forgiveness.
But second, he promises that he's going to change them from the inside.
He's going to change their hearts, and he's going to do this by giving Him His Holy Spirit.
And the result is that they're going to follow his will.
This is transformation. And these are the two dimensions of salvation.
But before we move off of this verse, what's the point of this?
The point of this is for us to be able to dwell with God.
That's God's ultimate desire, his ultimate purpose.
That's the purpose of the creation and that's the purpose of redemption is that God wants to dwell with us.
It's all right here in this passage.
Let's also look at Titus 3:5,6.
It says he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.
Salvation is the washing of regeneration, forgiveness and its renewal, the transformation of the Holy Spirit.
Can I preach just a little bit?
If we really want to understand transformation, we need to change the way we think about God's will and the way that we think about sin in particular. We need to see sin as something that destroys us, something that brings us misery and something that ruins our life.
And we need to see God's will as something that leads to the good life, that leads to fulfillment.
I think this is what Romans 12:2 is after when it says that we need to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Or in other words, changing the way that we think.
And how is it that we need to change the way that we think?
We need to see that God's will is good and pleasing and perfect.
Happiness is not found in sin. Misery is found in sin.
Any pleasure that sin offers is just a thin veneer.
It's temporary, it's a lie, it's a trick, it's a trap, and underneath it it's rotten.
I debated whether to say this, but sin is like a chocolate covered cockroach and we need to see it for what it really is.
It's disgusting and we need to stop eating cockroaches.
Greed and love of money leaves us empty.
Selfishness and anger will kill us.
Lust will destroy us and it destroys others.
But Jesus can free us.
The life that is good and pleasing and perfect is found in the will of God.
Alright, preaching over.
The third thing I want to say about the kingdom of God is that Jesus is currently ruling from the throne in heaven.
Jesus is not a king in waiting. He is reigning right now.
Following his death and resurrection, he ascended to the right hand of the Father, establishing his throne above every earthly power, authority and demonic force.
Verses that talk about this Matthew 28:18 20 and Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven on earth has been given to me.
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to Observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.
These are Jesus words to his apostles following his death and his resurrection.
These are instructions to him that he gives before his ascension.
Notice that he says, all authority in heaven, on earth, has been given to me.
He doesn't say, I'm giving you all authority and I want you to go. He says, all, all authority is mine and I want you to go. So when we go out, we go under his authority.
We go out in his authority.
Notice that he also says, I am always with you when Jesus returns to heaven.
The point of that isn't that he's far away.
The point of that is that he's ruling. And yet he remains close to us.
Ephesians 1:20, 20, 21 he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and Dominion.
And then, first Peter 3:22, Christ has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities and powers having been subjected to Him.
The ascension of Jesus isn't about him leaving us. It's about the fact that he is currently reigning in heaven.
He is still with us now through His Spirit.
The fourth thing that I want to say about the kingdom is that we look forward to the final victory.
When we look out on the world, we still see a world that is full of problems, a world full of sin. And it's easy to question whether Jesus is really ruling. But let me say without question, he absolutely is.
He won the decisive victory and he is ruling.
The outcome is certain, but the battles still wage on.
There is a sense in which the kingdom has come.
God's rule has come.
But there's also a sense in which there is more to come.
More of the world needs to be brought under his authority. More, Much more of the world needs to be doing his will.
So it's still appropriate to pray the Lord's Prayer and pray that his reign would come.
Psalm 110:1.
The Lord said to my Lord, sit in the place of honor at my right hand until I humble your enemies, making them a footstool under your feet.
This is actually the most referenced and quoted verse from the Old Testament in the New Testament 16 or more times.
Also Hebrews 2:8 says, you have put everything in subjection under his feet, for in subjecting all things to him, he left nothing that is not subject to Him.
But we do not yet see all things subjected to Him.
We see in this verse the tension that we've been talking about. Everything is subject to him yet not everything is subject to him yet.
The victory is won. But there's still work to do to finish the job also. First Corinthians 15, 22, 26.
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive, but each in his own order. So he's talking about the resurrection here.
Christ, the first fruits, and then at his coming, those who belong to Christ. So Christ is the first one that's been resurrected. And when he returns, the rest of us that are in Christ will be resurrected.
Then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death.
There's so much in this passage as well.
But what I want to focus on is that in the end, Christ destroys every rule, authority and power, and ultimately death itself.
And in the meantime, he is reigning.
So we have left Egypt, we've left slavery, but we've not yet reached the final destination. So we're on the journey and Jesus, through His Spirit is leading us to help us understand that we can look at another event from history in World War II.
D Day is widely considered as the decisive battle of that war.
But it's not the battle that ended the war.
That actually didn't happen until about 11 months later. There was 11 months still of intense fighting until a full victory in Europe or VE Day when the war finally ended.
So similarly, we live in this already, but not yet period.
We live in this time between D Day and VE Day.
The decisive battle has already happened. It's already been won by Jesus on the cross. But the final cleanup operation is underway.
But the day is approaching when Christ will return visibly to complete the work.
Alright, so let's summarize what we said so far.
A lot in there.
So the Kingdom of God means that God is reclaiming his authority over creation and specifically he's defeating Satan. Do that.
It also means freedom from sin.
It means that Jesus is currently reigning on his throne, but yet we still look forward to a future final victory.
So we said a lot, all from this one little phrase, your kingdom come.
And we could say much more about the kingdom, but I want to move on to kind of some practical stuff and I want to talk about how the Kingdom of God affects us.
So the next phrase in Jesus prayer, in the Lord's Prayer is your will be done.
So what does it Practically look like when Christ is reigning as king over a human. It means that they are doing his will.
The kingdom of God is present, is present. Whenever God's will is being executed on earth with the same perfection, immediacy and beauty as it's being done in heaven.
And to see what that looks like, we're going to go back to the Sermon on the Mount and we're going to go back to the Lord's Prayer and we're going to start there and kind of work our way out.
So in that prayer, in that Lord's Prayer, he opens with this statement, hallowed be your name.
To declare, to declare the name of God holy is an act of allegiance. And it means that we are deliberately placing God above everything else and especially our own self will. If we believe that God is king, we must acknowledge it and it also leads to worship.
Second thing that we see in that prayer is we see a reliance upon God in the prayer. Give us today our daily bread.
Our new king says we need to trust him daily. Relying on him for our immediate needs breaks our enslavement to materialism.
Then we also see restoration.
Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors.
Sin keeps the world fractured through bitterness and grudges.
But forgiveness is the only way that we can have healing and the only way to restore relationship.
So as we now expand out further into the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, you quickly realize that Jesus value system flips the world's value system upside down.
The world system screams that life is about power and accumulating wealth protecting your own skin. Pride is a virtue in the Kingdom of the world.
But in Sermon on the Mount, Jesus defines life and his kingdom very differently.
We can start by looking at the Beatitudes.
In this, Jesus redefines what a good life is like.
That word bless is really talking about this is the good life. This is the way to have a good life.
I like to call these Beatitudes provocative proverbs.
But Jesus is directly challenging the world's way of thinking.
And this is revolutionary stuff. It's a whole new definition of what is valuable and what is good.
We also see that in God's kingdom, internal righteousness is ultimately what matters.
We live in a world that focuses on externals, but Jesus focuses on the heart.
Sin's roots are in our heart, and if we want to root out sin, we need to go to the heart.
The kingdom is about anger, not just murder. It's about lust, not just adultery.
It's about integrity versus oaths and it's about love over vengeance. We turn the other cheek.
In God's Kingdom, we also focus on secret devotion over public performance.
Kingdom people practice generosity, prayer and fasting, but we do it, but we do it specifically for God, not for the praise of men.
We also see in the Kingdom allegiance and trust. We have a single loyalty and that's to God. There is no place for any other.
We also learn to rely on God to meet our needs.
Also in the Kingdom we see a kingdom minded community.
We don't judge others like we treat each other like we want to be treated and we forgive.
Alright, so in the Kingdom it's a battle, there's a spiritual battle going on.
I think that's obvious to all of us. And we're in this battle whether we want to be in this battle or not.
But there is a call for us to fight for the Kingdom. And this is a call that goes out to every single, every single purpose in this room, every single person in this room.
No matter what season of life that you're in, some of you have been fighting in this battle for 50 or 60 or 70 plus years.
You've walked with Christ for decades.
And I want to say thank you, your veterans, but it's also not time to retire.
The Kingdom needs your wisdom and your experience and your encouragement.
The younger generation needs you to show them what a lifetime of faithfulness and endurance and quiet prayer looks like.
Some of you may be fairly new to the Kingdom.
We need your enthusiasm and we need your energy, but we also need you for the long haul.
Satan is hoping that you're going to quit, that you'll wear out, that your fire will burn out, that your faith will just be a fad or a phase.
And that when things get a little tough that you're going to move on to the next thing.
And it will get tough and your faith will be challenged.
But if you stay faithful, you will have victory.
The victory is absolute and secure.
Some of you have brought children into the world and now they're part of the battle.
Satan is roaring around like a lion seeking whom he may devour.
So fight for your children.
The most important thing that you can do for your children is to grow in your own faith.
Live out your faith in front of them and live out the values that Jesus taught.
Serve, sacrifice, forgive, show kindness, patience.
Be humble, be like Christ.
Some of us may be growing weary in the battle.
Your faith or your commitment isn't what it used to be.
Rely on God's daily bread and on his grace to carry you through, find some support, find a friend, minister, a shepherd, somebody that can help you and stick with it.
And many of you are thriving.
I just want to encourage you. Don't grow weary in doing good.
There's more work to do.
As we bring this to a close, I want to ask us two questions. The first is a question that Peter asked. Peter was asked by Jesus and he said, who do you say that I am?
Jesus steps up and he makes. I'm sorry, Peter steps up and he makes the ultimate declaration that you are the Messiah, the son of the living God. So he recognized his king and he recognized the arrival of the kingdom.
As Christians, we've all made that same confession at our baptism, that Jesus is the Christ.
But do we still believe it and are we still living it?
And I would also say, if you haven't made that confession yet, Jesus is calling you and asking you that question and how you answer it changes your life.
We could end the lesson right here.
But I think there's one more question as well that I want to, that I want us to ask ourselves. And I think it may be even a more important question than this one.
This is also a question that Jesus asked of Peter and that was, do you love me?
Jesus asked Peter this question three times, do you love me? And Peter answers, ends up answering, lord, you know that I love him.
Lord, you know that I love you.
And Jesus gives him a practical command out of that, which was feed my sheep.
So I want us to ask ourselves this same question, these same two questions, but especially this question, do we love Jesus and know that he certainly loves us, but do we love him?
And how are we being called to show that love?
Alright, that was the second bell. Right on time. Thank you guys for your attention.
Appreciate getting to share with you.
