WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.560 Okay, so Jill read for us Matthew chapter 4, if you're able to follow that, that would 00:00:06.560 --> 00:00:12.919 be great. It was from verse 12. Thomas last week looked at the temptation of Jesus and 00:00:12.919 --> 00:00:17.280 today we're following that on with what happened after that that Matthew records for us. If 00:00:17.280 --> 00:00:21.859 you're visiting with us, we're doing a kind of, I think probably it'll be quite a long 00:00:21.859 --> 00:00:28.280 study in Matthew's gospel in our morning worship. And the good thing is it's lots of 00:00:28.280 --> 00:00:33.160 variety about that and it's a focus on Jesus very specifically on his life and that's good 00:00:33.160 --> 00:00:40.240 and it's great always to go back to the gospels. And so that is that section today that Jill 00:00:40.240 --> 00:00:45.560 read is what we're going to be looking at. I think it's sometimes good for us just to take a step 00:00:45.560 --> 00:00:51.280 back and remind ourselves a little bit of Jesus Christ because we're living now 2000 years or so 00:00:51.280 --> 00:00:57.560 after the life of Jesus is recorded here. And we ask the question, well why is it that people are 00:00:57.560 --> 00:01:05.400 still talking about following, living in the name of Jesus and are becoming Christians and being 00:01:05.400 --> 00:01:13.240 baptized? Why are you coming here today again week after week to worship Jesus or at least to find 00:01:13.240 --> 00:01:18.520 out maybe more about Jesus if you're not a Christian? Because interestingly globally, 00:01:18.520 --> 00:01:24.400 maybe not so much here in Scotland, but globally Christianity last year grew by one point roughly 00:01:24.400 --> 00:01:32.080 to one point two seven percent throughout the world. There's around 2.5 billion Christians in 00:01:32.080 --> 00:01:41.240 the world. Many people's lives are still being hugely affected by this person, Jesus Christ. I've 00:01:41.240 --> 00:01:48.520 devoted my life to telling people to follow Jesus and follow Him because we can't follow anyone else 00:01:48.519 --> 00:01:54.879 and all of that telling I've stumbled so many times myself. And that'll be true for many of you 00:01:54.879 --> 00:02:00.599 here as well that you live for Jesus and you want other people to follow Jesus. And more than life 00:02:00.599 --> 00:02:05.199 itself, we will want people maybe who we know who are not Christians, maybe they're here today, 00:02:05.199 --> 00:02:14.479 we want them to follow Jesus and to put their trust in Jesus. Why is it that we encourage people to 00:02:14.479 --> 00:02:20.000 follow Jesus? Why do we follow Jesus? Why do we keep following Jesus as believers? Because it's 00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:25.039 tough, isn't it? You're probably coming today on the back of a week when maybe it's been tough, 00:02:25.039 --> 00:02:34.519 maybe tough physically, maybe tough in employment terms or in personal terms. There's many different 00:02:34.519 --> 00:02:39.679 things that make life tough and it can be tough added to that to be a Christian. You know, 00:02:39.680 --> 00:02:45.240 the prospects for being a Christian in Scotland are not that great. It's not a great place to be 00:02:45.240 --> 00:02:50.240 to be a Christian or it's not deemed to be a great place to be to be a Christian in modern-day 00:02:50.240 --> 00:02:56.600 Scotland. We become moral and ethical pariahs in the society in which we live very often. We're 00:02:56.600 --> 00:03:05.200 ridiculed and sidelined. Educational and professional elite would have Christianity privatised but 00:03:05.199 --> 00:03:13.239 probably privatised to oblivion if the truth be told. And Jesus' diagnosis of sin and the 00:03:13.239 --> 00:03:22.479 dysfunction of our hearts and minds without Him is not a popular diagnosis in people's minds. 00:03:22.479 --> 00:03:28.879 Heaven, hell, Satan and angels, all that Thomas spoke about last week with the temptation of 00:03:28.879 --> 00:03:35.159 Jesus in the desert, is seen as unscientific, it's seen as irrational and insignificant in a 00:03:35.159 --> 00:03:44.240 post-Christian generation. But what is it about Jesus that makes people change their course of 00:03:44.240 --> 00:03:50.639 their lives to follow Him and that changes your life and my life and I hope continues to change 00:03:50.639 --> 00:03:58.120 and ought to be continuing to change our lives forever? I'm just going to ask two questions. 00:03:58.120 --> 00:04:03.800 The first is what do we learn about Jesus here in this passage? And then the second question is how 00:04:03.800 --> 00:04:09.920 can we be like Him? We can't be like Jesus in every way but there are ways in which we can be like 00:04:09.920 --> 00:04:13.840 Him. So that's the two questions that I would like to ask this morning. So what do we learn about 00:04:13.840 --> 00:04:20.920 Jesus here in this passage that we have together? Well, it's a different phase that Jesus enters 00:04:20.920 --> 00:04:26.959 here. It's really His public ministry. In verse 17 we're told, from now on or from that time, 00:04:26.959 --> 00:04:33.279 Jesus began to preach, saying, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And this is, although 00:04:33.279 --> 00:04:38.839 we kind of read it and we read it passively and we see it, again like we saw in different passages 00:04:38.839 --> 00:04:47.839 before, He really, Jesus bursts onto the scene here very, very publicly and very powerfully. If you 00:04:47.839 --> 00:04:56.519 remember that when Jesus comes onto the scene, it's not, in some ways it's not unexpected. It's 00:04:56.519 --> 00:05:02.759 not like He's a complete random that comes onto the scene. We see a little bit that in John's Gospel 00:05:02.759 --> 00:05:09.519 but we also see it generally as we understand the history is that there was among the Jewish people 00:05:09.519 --> 00:05:16.319 certainly an expectation that a Savior would come. And there was rumblings that Jesus was indeed that 00:05:16.319 --> 00:05:21.519 guy, that He was the Messiah, He was the Savior. There was whispers and talks and it was becoming 00:05:21.519 --> 00:05:29.639 very public in the area where Jesus was. And He had had recent interactions with Peter and James 00:05:29.639 --> 00:05:36.519 and John and John the Baptist. And all of that had begun to really become the focus of gossip in 00:05:36.519 --> 00:05:43.240 the whole area. And Jesus was, there was a degree of expectation. And we know as we look at it from 00:05:43.240 --> 00:05:51.359 Scripture that His own God's unfolding plan was coming to fruition. But nonetheless, even though 00:05:51.360 --> 00:05:56.800 there was a level of expectation of Jesus coming here, or at least the Messiah coming and it looked 00:05:56.800 --> 00:06:04.759 like it could be Jesus, He still acts in a way that's shockingly different to how all those who 00:06:04.759 --> 00:06:09.480 were looking for the Messiah expected Him to come. And I don't think we should ever lose sight of 00:06:09.480 --> 00:06:15.520 that when we think about Jesus Christ, because Jesus invariably is shockingly different to what 00:06:15.519 --> 00:06:22.120 we expect Him to be. In our own lives, in the way He deals with us, in the way He reveals Himself to 00:06:22.120 --> 00:06:28.000 us, our, what we imagine Jesus to be, or think Jesus should be, is usually quite far from the 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:34.439 mark. And as we look to Scripture, we find, and as we look to how Jesus impacts in our lives, 00:06:34.439 --> 00:06:42.079 that He's constantly shocking and surprising us as followers. And as followers of Jesus, 00:06:42.079 --> 00:06:49.120 I think there should be that same element of, at least it's some way that we should be a bit 00:06:49.120 --> 00:06:54.919 shocking in our lives as Christians. And we'll go in and see that in a little bit. But I think 00:06:54.919 --> 00:07:03.319 we should be, I don't think we should conform to what people's imagination of what a Christian 00:07:03.319 --> 00:07:10.399 should be like, that we should be like that. I think we're non-conformists, and we don't conform 00:07:10.399 --> 00:07:16.399 to people's stereotype of what a Christian should be. We shouldn't. So there should be a degree of, 00:07:16.399 --> 00:07:23.879 it's a made-up word, radicality, okay? I just warn you, I said they happen now again, that we 00:07:23.879 --> 00:07:30.519 should be radical in our lives, radically different because we follow Jesus. And we're not just 00:07:30.519 --> 00:07:36.319 conforming to what people's expectations are. And that, well, that should be the case because 00:07:36.319 --> 00:07:41.560 we're not even conforming to our own expectations of what Jesus is as we learn about Him. So what do 00:07:41.560 --> 00:07:45.719 we learn? There's a few things we learn about Him here, and I need to explain what I mean when 00:07:45.719 --> 00:07:50.560 I say this. The first thing I think we learn from here among many things that we'll not look at. 00:07:50.560 --> 00:07:57.319 But one thing we learn is that He's attracted to the darkness, okay? Now I want to explain that, 00:07:57.319 --> 00:08:02.639 I want to clarify that because it could be misunderstood. But if you look at verses 12 00:08:02.639 --> 00:08:09.479 through to verse 16, we have the fact that Jesus left Nazareth, went to Capernaum in the 00:08:09.479 --> 00:08:15.039 Territory of Zebulun and Naftali, and then this prophecy from Isaiah was spoken, the land of Zebulun, 00:08:15.039 --> 00:08:19.120 the land of Naftali, the way of the sea beyond the Jordan, the Galilee, the Gentiles. The people 00:08:19.120 --> 00:08:24.479 dwelling in darkness have seen a great light for those dwelling in the region, and shadow of death 00:08:24.479 --> 00:08:31.319 on them a light has dawned. And that's a prophecy from the Old Testament speaking about the coming 00:08:31.319 --> 00:08:36.879 of the Messiah, coming of Jesus to that particular area. Now it seems that in this different stage 00:08:36.879 --> 00:08:42.519 of Jesus' early ministry, this more going public as it were, it's like He's taking over from John. 00:08:42.519 --> 00:08:49.120 John has been imprisoned, John the Baptist, and Jesus takes over and takes up that kind of public 00:08:49.120 --> 00:08:56.159 mantle as it were. And very often when we read that passage, and I would have thought this as well, 00:08:56.159 --> 00:09:01.799 quite often in the past, that He was going to Galilee, and we think of Galilee as a beautiful, 00:09:01.799 --> 00:09:07.000 idyllic place with a lovely sea of Galilee, and lots of nice little villages just popping 00:09:07.000 --> 00:09:13.719 around the place, a rural backwater where Jesus would go as a kind of not formally educated man 00:09:13.719 --> 00:09:21.720 and begin His ministry. It's very far from that. It's very far from that. Josephus, the great Jewish 00:09:21.720 --> 00:09:27.360 historian, tells us that there was at least four great cities in that area, and there was 200 towns 00:09:27.360 --> 00:09:35.680 with an accumulated population of probably a nearer half a million people. And it was an interesting, 00:09:35.680 --> 00:09:42.639 it was really tightly condensed number of people in that area. And some of them were devious, 00:09:42.639 --> 00:09:49.800 a lot of them were gentiles. And it was regarded as a kind of a bit of a, certainly a religious 00:09:49.799 --> 00:09:56.919 backwater, if not an economic backwater, certainly it wasn't that. But it was certainly regarded as 00:09:56.919 --> 00:10:01.319 an economic backwater. And it had been in pagan hands for many years. It wasn't really a place 00:10:01.319 --> 00:10:09.799 that was strongly under the influence of the Jewish religion. And we see that when Jesus preached 00:10:09.799 --> 00:10:15.679 there, also large crowds came from the Decapolis, which was the 10 towns to the north-south, 00:10:15.679 --> 00:10:23.120 the east of Galilee. They were mainly Greco-Roman towns that had been set up by the Roman Empire 00:10:23.120 --> 00:10:29.759 to house the soldiers after they had finished fighting them and their families. And these cities 00:10:29.759 --> 00:10:34.399 were known for their pagan worship, their idolatry, their sexual license. They weren't kind of clean 00:10:34.399 --> 00:10:40.039 cut cities. And yet people from these cities were all, were told in the past, they came from the 00:10:40.039 --> 00:10:45.599 Decapolis. And they came to listen to Jesus and what he had to say. And I think that gives us a 00:10:45.599 --> 00:10:52.599 heart, a hint into the heart and mind of God. In Luke chapter 5 and verse 32, I think we have that 00:10:52.599 --> 00:10:57.679 on the screen. Jesus says, when he calls Levi, when he calls Matthew the tax collector, he says, 00:10:57.679 --> 00:11:04.879 I've not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. And therefore, at that, what I mean 00:11:04.879 --> 00:11:11.840 by my heading there about being attracted to darkness, that Jesus is drawn to the darkness of 00:11:11.840 --> 00:11:17.879 humanity. These guys weren't any particularly more dark than anyone else in terms of the way God 00:11:17.879 --> 00:11:24.720 could see their hearts. In fact, quite the opposite. And he was scathing. Jesus was always 00:11:24.720 --> 00:11:28.639 scathing of those who thought they were religious and who thought they were good and who were righteous 00:11:28.639 --> 00:11:34.320 in their own eyes because he knew that actually darkness is in the heart of every single human 00:11:34.320 --> 00:11:40.520 being. And we see Jesus here move to where this crowds of people are, these Gentile peoples in 00:11:40.520 --> 00:11:47.400 spiritual darkness because of his unshakable love for the lost and the broken. And he sensed and he 00:11:47.400 --> 00:11:56.520 knew the darkness that they were in. And he came with his great light to bring the gospel to them. 00:11:56.519 --> 00:12:05.559 And the gospel for us is recognizing Jesus as the great light who brings light into the darkness 00:12:05.559 --> 00:12:16.559 and into the sin of our own hearts and into the society in which we live. And the darker we recognize 00:12:16.559 --> 00:12:24.600 our own moral depravity, the brighter Jesus shines for us. And I guess the opposite is true. The 00:12:24.600 --> 00:12:31.120 better we think we are, the more righteous we think we are, the less attractive Jesus is to us. 00:12:31.120 --> 00:12:41.720 And his light is less pulling towards us in our lives. And it was shocking in many ways that the 00:12:41.720 --> 00:12:50.200 Messiah would go to this part of Judea, this part of Galilee to the, what had been the exiled 00:12:50.200 --> 00:12:56.840 northern tribes, the northern tribes that remember in the Old Testament, the exile had fallen to 00:12:56.840 --> 00:13:03.600 Assyria and had given into idolatry and lost the promises of the promised land, the land flowing 00:13:03.600 --> 00:13:10.600 with milk and honey. First to fall, but also the first to hear about Jesus. Because I think Jesus 00:13:10.600 --> 00:13:16.800 through that is saying they're no different actually. I've come to save people and people are in 00:13:16.799 --> 00:13:27.879 spiritual darkness unless they come to the light of Jesus and the salvation that he has. And we 00:13:27.879 --> 00:13:36.120 look for that sense, I think, of darkness in our own hearts, because it draws us to Jesus Christ 00:13:36.120 --> 00:13:43.399 for forgiveness and hope. So he was attracted to the darkness. But also we see that he had a 00:13:43.399 --> 00:13:50.199 trinity of influence here in this passage and still does. We're told that Jesus in verse 18, 00:13:50.199 --> 00:13:57.519 sorry, verse 23, he went throughout Galilee teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming or 00:13:57.519 --> 00:14:02.600 preaching the gospel, he speaks about him earlier, preaching the gospel of repentance and healing 00:14:02.600 --> 00:14:08.720 every kind of disease and affliction among the people. And these give us three different elements 00:14:08.720 --> 00:14:15.240 of the life and the work of Jesus that are still significant for us. He was a teacher and that means 00:14:15.240 --> 00:14:21.680 primarily he was telling the people things that they need spiritual truths, primarily from the 00:14:21.680 --> 00:14:28.240 Old Testament he was speaking and revealing to them, imparting knowledge to them about themselves 00:14:28.240 --> 00:14:33.759 and about the truth of God and about the reality of who he was, appealing to their minds and their 00:14:33.759 --> 00:14:41.039 reasons. So we appeal to our, the gospel, we look for it to appeal to our minds and to reason 00:14:41.039 --> 00:14:47.360 that's not irrational. There's times it's above reason, but it's not irrational. And we're not 00:14:47.360 --> 00:14:53.679 losing our minds when we follow Jesus Christ. It's not for the illiterate and uneducated 00:14:53.679 --> 00:15:03.959 alone. It is for all people, scientists and educationalists because the gospel appeals to our mind and 00:15:03.959 --> 00:15:11.000 Jesus taught truth appealing to the mind, but also speaks of him as a preacher, a proclaimer here. 00:15:11.000 --> 00:15:17.120 And that in the Bible is a different, slightly different connotation. It's about proclaiming 00:15:17.120 --> 00:15:24.560 the truth with a view to changing the way we behave because our heart has been moved. So it's not 00:15:24.560 --> 00:15:33.120 just teaching bare facts, but what we have is powerful persuasive preaching that moves the 00:15:33.120 --> 00:15:39.440 affections. And we see that preaching and teaching are different things in many ways, 00:15:39.440 --> 00:15:45.519 although they kind of dovetail together. And he wanted to speak in such a way that we'd move 00:15:45.519 --> 00:15:52.079 people to change their will and their hearts because that was usually important. It's in 00:15:52.079 --> 00:15:57.519 other words, there's a subjective element as well as the objective truth. There's a subjective movement 00:15:57.519 --> 00:16:03.240 of our will. Now we see that sometimes today in some of the movements in society. Sometimes they 00:16:03.240 --> 00:16:09.639 move away from scientific truth and they move towards subjectivism. It doesn't matter what 00:16:09.639 --> 00:16:15.799 science says, it's just this is what I want. This is what's important to me. This is my body. This 00:16:15.799 --> 00:16:23.319 is how I want to live. And there's preaching, as it were, but not teaching that they've moved away 00:16:23.319 --> 00:16:31.559 from scientific reality. But what we find what is really powerful is when facts come and they 00:16:31.559 --> 00:16:39.959 move us to change. And Jesus preached about repentance and good news. So it's a kind of, 00:16:39.959 --> 00:16:45.319 it's a paradoxical thing, isn't it? He's saying you're going the wrong way. You need to turn 00:16:45.319 --> 00:16:50.519 around from the way you're going. You're a sinner and you're in danger and I'm in danger of God's 00:16:50.519 --> 00:16:57.319 perfect justice condemning us and that's bad news. But he comes with that persuasive good news of 00:16:57.320 --> 00:17:03.080 his grace and of his love and of his salvation that he goes on, that we have been singing about. 00:17:03.080 --> 00:17:09.000 He's a preacher, a teacher, and he's also, we've told there, a healer. And these healings that he 00:17:09.000 --> 00:17:19.400 did, which were just amazing, were dramatic signs of the power and authority that he had as a teacher 00:17:19.400 --> 00:17:25.640 and as a preacher. They were proof of his divine origin, of the power of his message, 00:17:25.640 --> 00:17:32.840 and they pointed towards not just physical healing, but to the inside healing, the darkness that needed 00:17:32.840 --> 00:17:40.200 to be touched, changed into light and ultimately the physical healing that comes when we trust in 00:17:40.200 --> 00:17:48.520 Jesus as we live forever with him. So there's teaching and preaching and healing and I think 00:17:48.520 --> 00:17:54.440 it's important for us to recognize that also. I think Matthew 11, 28 and 29 says, come to me, 00:17:54.440 --> 00:17:57.960 Jesus has come to me, all you who are labour and heavy-weight and I will give you rest. 00:17:57.960 --> 00:18:03.480 My yoke is, take my yoke upon you, learn from me, he says, I'm gentle and lowly hearted, 00:18:03.480 --> 00:18:08.920 you'll find rest for your souls, you'll find healing. And that is, that was always what Jesus 00:18:09.559 --> 00:18:14.600 spoke of and that's what he still reminds us of. It's important that we are learning, 00:18:15.240 --> 00:18:23.480 that we're growing and knowledge of him, that we are moved by that truth when we hear that 00:18:23.480 --> 00:18:29.640 truth preached in church or when we hear it in a different context, one to one and pray for that. 00:18:29.640 --> 00:18:33.880 Really pray that you don't just come on, I just want to learn a few more facts about Jesus here 00:18:34.440 --> 00:18:40.759 and then leave. It's not that kind of thing, we're wanting the facts of the gospel to affect our 00:18:40.759 --> 00:18:47.240 wills and our hearts so that we're moved to follow him. There should be in our lives and in the 00:18:47.240 --> 00:18:53.160 worship, there should be proclamation and urgency, moving our souls to worship. We should be moved 00:18:53.160 --> 00:18:59.240 to worship. We shouldn't really be moved to fall asleep. It's wrong if we're falling asleep. 00:19:00.360 --> 00:19:05.080 I haven't got it, you haven't got it, none of us have got it. If that's generally why we come 00:19:05.080 --> 00:19:09.720 to church, I know sometimes we can be tired but if that's the everything we do every week we come 00:19:09.720 --> 00:19:13.960 with it, it's great, I've got an hour of sleep, then we've misunderstood, we've all misunderstood 00:19:14.759 --> 00:19:18.600 that the proclamation, the preaching is to move our will and our hearts. 00:19:18.599 --> 00:19:26.519 And he says, be healed and he keeps on saying, be healed, we're sick, we need healing, 00:19:26.519 --> 00:19:32.759 don't stay sick but be healed by his grace and by his love knowing that the best is still to come. 00:19:33.799 --> 00:19:41.319 So he had a trinity of influence but he also had, we see in this point that he gets up close 00:19:41.319 --> 00:19:48.759 and personal. So he was attracted to the darkness, he had a trinity of influence and he gets up close 00:19:48.759 --> 00:19:56.439 and personal. In verse 19 and then in verse 22 he says, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. 00:19:57.480 --> 00:20:03.720 And he says that again in verse 22, he says immediately they left their boat and they followed 00:20:03.720 --> 00:20:09.079 him. So this is an interesting little bit here, isn't it? The first disciples, Jesus says follow 00:20:09.079 --> 00:20:15.319 me and they follow him and it's stark when you read it. I think if you read that and you don't 00:20:15.319 --> 00:20:20.599 think it's a bit stark and maybe even a little bit weird, then we've just, it's become too normal for 00:20:20.599 --> 00:20:24.679 us because you can't imagine anyone just walking out the street and seeing someone you think they've 00:20:24.679 --> 00:20:29.559 never seen before saying, follow me and they follow them. It seems such a strange thing to do. 00:20:30.119 --> 00:20:36.919 But what we need to recognize is that this is just a very, very brief summary of what Jesus did here. 00:20:36.920 --> 00:20:42.600 And if you look between verse, there's verse 11 where Thomas finished reading last week and then 00:20:42.600 --> 00:20:50.200 we start at verse 12. Well there's a whole section in John's gospel that fits into that bit and that 00:20:50.200 --> 00:20:54.840 tells us about Jesus meeting with Peter and meeting with John and they would have heard about his, 00:20:54.840 --> 00:20:58.120 they maybe listened to him quite a lot at the time, they would have been gossiping and talking about 00:20:58.120 --> 00:21:01.720 him. So it wasn't like it was the first time he ever saw them and they were fishing and they said, 00:21:01.720 --> 00:21:07.079 follow me and they just all came and followed him. That seems weird and it doesn't seem to be 00:21:07.079 --> 00:21:13.079 what was the case. He had clearly interacted with these men and Jesus was obviously the 00:21:13.079 --> 00:21:20.360 object of gossip and of people's conversation because they came from the decapolis a long way 00:21:20.360 --> 00:21:28.120 away to hear and preach. The whole region was buzzing with Jesus coming to preach. But what we 00:21:28.119 --> 00:21:34.439 have here is Jesus reminding us of the importance that there needs to be a decision. There does need 00:21:34.439 --> 00:21:39.000 to be a time where you get beyond learning and you get simply beyond feeling moved in your heart 00:21:39.000 --> 00:21:43.559 and then going back to the same way of living. And there does need to be a decision to follow 00:21:43.559 --> 00:21:50.199 Jesus Christ because repenting means turning from not following to following Jesus Christ. That's 00:21:50.200 --> 00:21:59.960 what it means. Jesus becomes our Lord and our Savior. They made a decision. They knew about 00:21:59.960 --> 00:22:05.799 the Messiah, they had expectations and they followed Him. They were young, they had no formal 00:22:05.799 --> 00:22:10.840 education, they were giving up their livelihoods and they were moving away from their home comforts. 00:22:11.480 --> 00:22:17.319 But their choice to follow Him was based on His teaching, His preaching and His healing. 00:22:17.319 --> 00:22:27.319 And within all, probably even more than that, His person as they could listen to Him, the inexplicable 00:22:28.279 --> 00:22:34.200 recognition that this was God and that He was drawing them with love and that there was authority 00:22:34.919 --> 00:22:42.359 and that they could worship Him as God. And that was a huge decision for them. 00:22:42.359 --> 00:22:47.559 Then we quickly read over that. What a huge decision it was for them requiring great courage, 00:22:49.000 --> 00:22:55.399 opening up to danger. They needed patience. They needed to reassess what they thought of the Savior. 00:22:55.399 --> 00:23:01.319 There was risk. Yet there was assurance that this was the right thing to do. He was the right person 00:23:01.319 --> 00:23:07.639 to follow. He loved them and He was the Messiah that they were looking for and hoping after. 00:23:07.640 --> 00:23:17.240 Follow me. And you know, that remains the same today. We all follow something. If you're not a 00:23:17.240 --> 00:23:22.280 Christian, it's not that you're not a follower. You are a follower, but it's just not of Jesus. You 00:23:22.280 --> 00:23:27.160 follow sometimes your own mind. You follow what other people think. You follow your career, 00:23:27.160 --> 00:23:29.960 you follow whatever it might be. There's all kinds of things. But what is it? 00:23:31.800 --> 00:23:36.840 We implore people to follow Jesus Christ and to keep following Jesus Christ. You know what is 00:23:36.839 --> 00:23:41.720 saddest for us? When we see people who've come and worshiped here for many years and they stop 00:23:41.720 --> 00:23:47.720 coming and they fall away from following Jesus, praise God, it's usually only for a while, 00:23:47.720 --> 00:23:53.399 but it still hurts us to the core because we believe and we are persuaded that following 00:23:53.399 --> 00:23:58.839 Jesus is the right thing to do. And we have the story of, we have the story of the cross, 00:23:58.839 --> 00:24:02.599 and we have the story beyond the cross and the resurrection and all that it means. 00:24:02.599 --> 00:24:10.359 But it means we need to change our mind and our heart about sin and about what we think of sin 00:24:10.359 --> 00:24:20.359 and about being attracted to sin. And we must be moved to have our wills and our hearts touched 00:24:20.359 --> 00:24:25.399 by Jesus Christ, recognizing the offer of His healing and knowing that we are dead, 00:24:25.400 --> 00:24:35.480 spiritually dead without Him and sick as it were. And I encourage you if you're not a Christian, 00:24:36.280 --> 00:24:38.920 but maybe you've been coming, maybe you're sitting, I know there's some people here who are 00:24:38.920 --> 00:24:45.080 searching for Jesus Christ, recognize that it's costly, but recognize it's a step that you need 00:24:45.080 --> 00:24:52.040 to take to follow Jesus. Your life will never be the same, to get at risk in following Jesus, 00:24:52.039 --> 00:25:00.920 only from our point of view, not from His. And recognize His promises and put your trust in 00:25:00.920 --> 00:25:07.480 Jesus Christ. Speak about it with someone today. Make a choice. God is drawing you, and following 00:25:07.480 --> 00:25:15.480 Him is worth following a million times over. And we continue as believers to follow you. Maybe 00:25:15.480 --> 00:25:19.480 you're just on the edge as a Christian of many years of saying, I've had enough of this. 00:25:19.480 --> 00:25:26.519 Can I implore you in Jesus' name? Keep following, because it's the way of life, and He is the way of 00:25:26.519 --> 00:25:34.680 light and not darkness. So just closing for the last five minutes, the second question, how are we 00:25:34.680 --> 00:25:40.360 there therefore to be like Him? Jesus Christ is the one who is attracted to darkness, he had an 00:25:40.360 --> 00:25:45.480 eternity of influence, and he gets up close and personal. How can we be like Him as believers, 00:25:45.480 --> 00:25:52.279 and speaking at this point to us as believers? A couple of things. First is by dispelling darkness 00:25:52.839 --> 00:25:59.319 ourselves, by being people who dispel the darkness. And that begins by letting His light shine into 00:25:59.319 --> 00:26:05.720 our hearts, into the dark recesses of our own heart, and right, rooting out, going from here and 00:26:05.720 --> 00:26:10.759 rooting out all the things that separate us from Him, in an ongoing way, the selfishness sometimes, 00:26:10.759 --> 00:26:17.640 the greed, the pride, the lust, the hatred, the anger, the kind of things that break our 00:26:17.640 --> 00:26:23.079 relationships with one another, separate us from one another, help make us judgmental of others. 00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:30.599 And by so doing, we're dispelling the darkness in our own heart, as we love His truth and live 00:26:30.599 --> 00:26:37.079 humbly, independence in the Holy Spirit. And as we do so, we will be attracted to darkness. We'll 00:26:37.079 --> 00:26:43.639 not want to be monastic. We'll not want simply to be in our own Christian bubble, but we will long 00:26:43.639 --> 00:26:48.679 for God's kingdom to come, and that will only come as we take the light of Jesus Christ that has 00:26:48.679 --> 00:26:53.399 transformed our hearts into the darkness of the world around us, because it's the same darkness 00:26:53.399 --> 00:26:59.480 that's in our hearts. And personal is a church, we want that to be the emphasis we have. That's why 00:26:59.480 --> 00:27:04.519 we continue in the impossible pathway of planting churches, because we want to reach out with the 00:27:04.519 --> 00:27:12.680 gospel into the city, which we love and which we long to come to know Jesus, and we want to be like 00:27:12.680 --> 00:27:19.160 Jesus in that respect, going to where the people are and telling them about His great love, to 00:27:19.160 --> 00:27:25.639 dispel the spiritual darkness with the light of the gospel and with Christ in us. Only with Christ 00:27:25.639 --> 00:27:32.359 can we do it, because we are part of the problem. He alone is the answer. We're not the answers, 00:27:32.359 --> 00:27:38.839 we don't need to be, you know, don't need to have a wrong attitude of ourselves and think that we've 00:27:38.839 --> 00:27:43.240 got the answers. We don't. Jesus is the answer. We're just as ambassadors, we just fall in. 00:27:43.240 --> 00:27:50.839 Just think of the people that Jesus brought light into their lives and the darkness of their lives, 00:27:51.399 --> 00:27:58.279 people like Matthew, Zacchaeus, the Samaritan woman, Legion. What did they all do? They all went and 00:27:58.279 --> 00:28:03.879 told their friends. They all went with the God. See what Jesus has done for me. They invited people 00:28:03.879 --> 00:28:11.639 into their homes. They went back to their cities, and Jesus gave His great seal of approval on them 00:28:11.639 --> 00:28:17.079 doing that, and they dispel darkness where they were. And that's a great challenge for us to think 00:28:17.079 --> 00:28:21.399 of into this week in which we're in. How am I dispelling the darkness in the world? This is 00:28:21.400 --> 00:28:28.920 just my little world, you know, we're not talking about the universe. Just my own circle of influence. 00:28:29.560 --> 00:28:36.920 How can I stop a line of gossiping? How can I not do something that's mean that everyone else is 00:28:36.920 --> 00:28:46.040 doing? How can I be graceful and serve people who are antagonistic towards me? Little things are 00:28:46.039 --> 00:28:51.960 bringing the light of Christ into the darkness of our lives by dispelling darkness. And I think also 00:28:51.960 --> 00:29:03.240 by prioritizing His priorities, truth preaching and healing, which He speaks of here. So the 00:29:03.240 --> 00:29:10.200 ongoing importance of knowing Him, knowing more about Him through His Word, through learning about 00:29:10.200 --> 00:29:19.880 who He is by developing a strong apologetic for the gospel, by praying, by coming under the sound 00:29:19.880 --> 00:29:26.920 of preaching and by being spoken to by one another, preaching the gospel to each other in our lives. 00:29:26.920 --> 00:29:34.360 But also on the Sunday, the powerlessness of the preaching is always something that's a great weight 00:29:34.359 --> 00:29:40.279 on a preacher's shoulder. In fact, the people aren't converted, the people that look dull and bored. 00:29:40.279 --> 00:29:49.479 That's not important. And it's not the preacher or the institution matters, but that He's given us 00:29:49.479 --> 00:29:56.119 this day where we can all interact together and seek God to speak to us, to persuade our will 00:29:56.119 --> 00:30:02.199 and through our hearts to change on a day-to-day basis so that we're not becoming hardened and dull 00:30:02.200 --> 00:30:07.960 and bored under the sound of the Word, but allowing our heart and will to be moved when we come together 00:30:07.960 --> 00:30:16.840 and praying towards that. And then as we do so, seeking ongoing healing in our lives, recognizing 00:30:16.840 --> 00:30:22.840 that, that's basically what sanctification is, there's that ongoing healing. Sometimes it will 00:30:22.840 --> 00:30:29.080 be physical we're praying for, but more often it's heart healing, heart change, heart closeness, 00:30:29.079 --> 00:30:35.799 heart growth towards Jesus Christ. And as we do so to intentionally encourage one another 00:30:35.799 --> 00:30:41.480 over this year, the vision for the year in our walk, in our talk, and as we share that we would 00:30:41.480 --> 00:30:49.319 prioritize what Jesus prioritizes. And I hope that I strive to do that by His grace, and I hope you 00:30:49.319 --> 00:30:57.079 will do also. And primarily that we will all be followers, and known as followers of Jesus. 00:30:57.079 --> 00:31:04.119 And the great mark of that of course was that they loved one another. Let's pray briefly about 00:31:04.119 --> 00:31:11.480 these truths. Father God, we desperately need You to help us to live out 00:31:14.759 --> 00:31:22.759 the reality of being disciples, being followers of being just overwhelmed by Your grace, 00:31:22.759 --> 00:31:29.079 by Your love, by Your interest in us, by Your desire to come into the darkness of our lives 00:31:29.079 --> 00:31:37.559 and hearts and death, and to come and bring Your light. And there's so many powerful symbols and 00:31:37.559 --> 00:31:42.759 images in the Bible of that, no greater than Jesus, the light of the world, being plunged into darkness 00:31:42.759 --> 00:31:50.839 on the cross as He bore our sins. None of it, none of it a waste, none of it made up symbols or 00:31:50.839 --> 00:31:58.359 images, but powerful to make us think about what He's done. The greater love is no man than this, 00:31:58.359 --> 00:32:03.399 He would lay down His life for His friends, and He calls His friends when we come to Him. And we 00:32:03.399 --> 00:32:08.519 pray that we would be known as followers, and we pray for anyone who are on the cusp of following 00:32:08.519 --> 00:32:14.039 Jesus today here, that they would make that decision like the disciples to follow Jesus, 00:32:14.039 --> 00:32:19.159 because He is worth it. And if anyone on the cusp of giving up following Jesus today, 00:32:19.160 --> 00:32:27.480 may they be drawn from the edge to know and love and recognize that the message itself has been 00:32:27.480 --> 00:32:34.600 absolutely geared for them because of His great love and His great concern. So help us today in our 00:32:34.599 --> 00:32:50.039 lives, and help us tomorrow and the next day to be followers of Jesus. Amen.