The Gospel Of The Kingdom

So we should continue to talk about significant points of agreement right? Foundationally we’re all exactly on the same page, always have been, and that is that beards and babies are good, right? But a significant point of disagreement I have to take advantage of right now, I cannot let go, and that’s this; you should never let me talk at 9 pm to start with. I have sins in the area of time and this was a really bad choice. And after me is Rusty, so I said earlier, it’s a good thing the windows are closed so no one falls out dead.

Well let’s start with prayer, let’s get right into it, “Father I wanna thank you so much Lord for your glory, for your power, for your salvation that we have, Lord, freely in Jesus. Thank you Lord for the gospel, our unity before You the triune God. We thank you for all these amazing truths that we all stand on, together, and we have always. We thank you Lord for, not just saving us, but calling us to this incredible mission, this calling to bring the good news of the Kingdom to the world, and to do it in the context of the slaughter of the unborn.

    We pray God that You Lord would grant to us more mercy, more grace, more unity, more power, more strength, more endurance, Lord to bring the gospel into conflict with the sin of abortion. We pray God that You would unite us around the Son, his gospel under his rule, and that God You would grant to us the fruit, Lord that have been pleading for and that is justice for these children. That’s what we ask for God, we pray Lord that you would by your Spirit, bring us together with humility Lord, that we would bow before one another, Lord as we lift up and hold up the truth of the gospel in the midst of this holocaust. In Jesus name, amen.”

So I think I want to talk tonight about some of the main things in terms of what is a failure. When we talk about conflict with the issue of abortion, when we talk about waking the sleeping giant, when we talk about the church itself, my thoughts go towards what’s the theological problem? Theology matters, right? Theology matters, it is foundational. Theology matters and so all the sins and failures around us in the world are connected to deeply theological issues. For the unbelievers who recognize it they have a particular worldview, they have a view of morality and justice and mercy and beauty and love and all these different things, and they have that apart from Jesus Christ. They have an antithetical worldview, they’re not neutral. So their perspective is fundamentally theological. To start with. So when we talk about the culture that we live in today it’s an atheistic culture at least in practice if not by profession. And so we say “No God. All we are is matter in motion bobbing along the surface of the cosmos and so my truth is my truth, your truth is your truth, and this is what I think justice looks like, this is what mercy looks like, and it goes towards the women, not the baby, kill the baby protect the woman. Right? And that comes from a theological perspective, no God, no meaning, no ultimate truth, no ultimate justice and so it becomes ‘what do I say, what does demas say? The people, democracy, what does demas say today? Well before it was ‘this person I know looks like a person, it’s not a person, it’s a black man. Uh, I know, looks like a person it’s not a person, it’s a Jew. It’s uh, not a person it’s the unborn, it’s just a pile of tissue, it’s meaningless, it’s nothing, it can be killed at will.’ And so that’s a theological issue.

    But even from the other perspective when we talk about the failures within the church itself in terms of not addressing the sin of abortion, and the way that we ought to by bringing it under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and his gospel into conflict with it, that’s a theological issue. It’s an issue of the gospel itself. We have giants behind us, amen? Theological giants that preached a particular God and a particular gospel. And we look back in history and wonder, where are those men, where are those women, where is that revival among us, and the issue is theological.

    First and foremost, you want the church to arise? You want the church to awaken? You have to address the theological failures within the church. And the interesting thing here is that it is fundamental. We’re not talking about bickering over differences in carpet color and whether we should have pews or chairs or, what style of worship music you have, whether you should have a coffee shop in your church, those sorts of things. We’re talking about something that is fundamental. Not adiophera, not side issues, we’re talking about the central issue of the gospel itself. The problem here in the issue of abortion, and the gospel in conflict with abortion, is the modern evangelical distortion of the gospel. That is the problem.      

    Now this is not something we should just make a pithy slogan about or make bumper stickers about, and just have sort of a vague idea of what the failure of the evangelical gospel is, we should talk about it. The distorted gospel of today.

    One, let’s talk about the one we’re all familiar with, and we have a face to it and everything else, it’s the one that says, “I don’t know, I just don’t really know about that. I don’t know if Jesus, he’s just trying Jesus out, right?” It’s the Warren gospel, it’s the gospel he preached on Fox News years ago at Christmas time. I remember sitting at my dads house, and Fox News was on, at Christmas time. My dad’s like that, and, Rick Warren was on at Christmas time, and his gospel was, ‘give Jesus a try. Just give him a chance.’ right, he said “Just give him a 90 day trial” or something to that effect. “Just give Jesus a 90 day trial.” Well that’s a distortion of the gospel, that’s not the gospel, there’s no good news to it! That’s not the message of Jesus, Jesus called people to a different way. We know of course the fundamental verse, John 14:6 “I am the way, the truth and the light, no man comes to the Father but by me.” Jesus is the only way to God. If you don’t have Jesus, if you’re not in him, if you haven’t turned from sin to trust in him, if you haven’t fallen on him, turned from your righteousnesses and your unrighteousness to Christ, if you haven’t come to him you will burn in hell forever, that is a fact.  

    That is the truth, there is something that you cannot avoid. Jesus has a way that he calls people to himself in the gospels that we just do not hear about anymore. He says things like, wide, narrow, broad, right? He says one leads to destruction, one leads to life, and he says come to me and die. “Everyone come, take up your cross and come follow me.” Now that doesn’t mean a lot to us today because we don’t see people doing the death march very often, carrying their cross to a place where they’re going to suffer and die, and so we don’t really hear it, like they would have head it in his day, face to face with Jesus, with dirt around them, sandals, air, breathing in, they’re flesh and blood people hearing the message of Jesus maybe for the first time, and he says “If anyone comes to me and does not HATE”, and then he starts naming all of our favorite people. Mother, father, sister, brother, wife, and he says if you don’t hate them, that is, love them in comparison to me, he says, you’re not worthy to be my disciple. Don’t come.

    Jesus would have failed the majority of seminary classes on evangelism today, by turning the vast majority of his followers away. If you don’t come and count the cost, then do not come to me. Don’t come. Count the cost. Come and DIE, and rise again. That was the fundamental message of Jesus, come die, and rise again. And if you don’t, then don’t come. He turns people away, he goes from thousands of followers and in a moment, back down to twelve, and he turns to the twelve that God has been working on, they understand the message and he says “Do you ALSO want to leave?” and they say “Where would we go? YOU have the message of eternal life. They knew what it was all about.

    But we have the kind of message today that says ‘try Jesus, give him a chance, put him in a corner of your house for just, you know, decoration or something. Just add a little bit of Jesus to your life, a little bit of spirituality to your life.’ Brothers and sisters, not the gospel, distorted gospel, and, it’s part of the reason abortion fills our lands. That’s the truth of it. We have a distorted gospel.

    ANOTHER false version of the gospel and it is key, this is key, and you gotta be careful with how you announce this one, because some blogger somewhere is gonna distort your words and write blogs about you and talk about cigar smoking and all the rest. Or Steven Anderson with get ahold of this and.. *laughter* ….A truncated gospel. We have a truncated gospel, and that is to say, even amongst the reformed folks in the room, we have a truncated gospel today, and I say to America and the West in particular this says really, ‘the gospel is justification by faith.’ ….

    Now freeze, pause, cause you’re either going, ‘wait’, because it’s true. You are only justified through faith alone in Christ alone apart from any work of law, if you don’t have his perfect life credited to you through faith, you have no righteousness that will avail before a Holy God, you will NEVER add to his righteousness, it is his righteousness alone and it is only available through the empty hand of faith, everyone got me there are we clear?

    But let me tell you this, the gospel in Scripture is bigger, much, much bigger than justification through faith. That’s the heart of the gospel, that is how God reconciles dead wicked sinners to Himself. Through Christs work, through faith and through faith alone. However it’s a truncated view of the gospel to say, that it’s JUST about justification through faith alone.

    That’s what we preached. “You wanna got to heaven one day little boy?” “Well what’s the other option?” “Hell. Well you’ll burn in fire for ALL eternity.” Boy says “Absolutely, great,” “Well pray this prayer with me.”

And it’s just “Great! Jesus punched your ticket now, now we’ll see you when you get there.” Not the gospel! “Where you saved?” “Well yeah, I prayed that prayer one day,” “What’s that mean?” “Well I have faith in Jesus, yeah I’m saved because you know, faith alone. Right?”      

    Listen, the gospel that Jesus proclaimed, if you look in just, well you don’t have to go far, not asking you to do a lot of reading tonight, just read the first book of the bible in the New Testament, it’s called the gospel according to Matthew, it is lovely. It’s an amazing book. You don’t have to get but four chapters into that gospel and you see what Jesus was preaching.

    You have of course the genealogies of Jesus, which is everybody's favorite part of the bible, and then you get into chapter two where you have Matthew showing some amazing things about the symbolism in the Old Testament of Israel fleeing into Egypt, and the ruler of the day trying to kill the baby, and that was by the way a bad thing, in Jesus day. And then you have of course John the baptist and his first message is “repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” That was his message warning the religious leaders in his day, about the soon coming wrath, then the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness for the temptation and the trial the testing of Jesus, and this is what we need to see Jesus was proclaiming when he came out of the wilderness, he was proclaiming, listen, Matthew chapter 4, not a whole lot of reading, he was proclaiming this, the gospel of the Kingdom.

    And that’s what we’re missing. If you ask the modern Evangelical of today, if you ask them “What’s the gospel?” People will talk about “well it means you get to go to heaven one day.” Interesting, true, yes, but, hmmm...Doesn’t sound very much like the Old Testament expectation about what was so good about the Messiah. It wasn’t simply just about going to heaven one day. There was more to the story, it wasn’t the truncated gospel of the modern evangelical, there was more to the story, there’s good news of a Kingdom. You ask the modern evangelical today “What’s good news about the Kingdom, what is it? Tell me. Right now. Tell me.” and I challenge you to do so. Watch the “Uh, hmm...ummm...is there a Kingdom? When?....Oh you mean...now? Oh, yeah, sure, Jesus is in charge...now.” Ask the modern evangelical “is Jesus King of kings and Lord of lords?” And they’ll say, “Yay, and amen.” “He’s Lord of lords?” “Yay and amen.” I have a t-shirt that says that, ‘King of kings and Lord of lords’, it’s really ugly when I wear it, right …..can we do better with christian t-shirts for goodness sake? I can’t wear them cause they are just fowl looking, okay? King of kings, and Lord of lords right?

    Ask the modern christian say, “is it true Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords?” They will say, “Yes.” And then ask them, “Have you stopped to think about what that means, today?” Because if Jesus is the King over the kings of the earth today, then that means that our message to them should sound something like that’s true. That Jesus actually is the ruler over the kings of the earth, today. And he’s their Lord, today. It’s interesting, we talk about the truncated gospel, I have a pastor friend, who saw that our church is going to the city council now, to proclaim the law word of God to the city council, to tell Gods deacons (because that’s what they are) about God's law and the necessity of their obedience, and to uphold justice, which is their job. So we go according to our biblical presuppositions, Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords. He has all authority in heaven, hold on, AND on earth too. That’s past tense by the way, Matthew 28:19-20 is past tense, that’s about 2000 years old, if it’s true then it’s true now. We go to the deacons of our day and say, “Now you must obey Jesus, uphold justice, stop the slaughter of the unborn, and a local pastor actually posted underneath the videos, how much he was in horror over what we were doing.     

    The idea that christians would actually now engage in the realm of the legislature and demand to the legislature that they obey Jesus Christ. How’d we get there? Because hashtag theology matters. #theologymatters. It matters a lot. Your truncated view of the gospel in the West will lead to resistance when people see christians taking those presuppositions, those very biblical presuppositions, and applying them to society today.

    What’s wrong is theological, and what’s wrong relates to the gospel of the Kingdom, the good news of the Kingdom. This is really important and I can’t stay here all night so I’ll just give you the quick verse, the Old Testament promised that the Messiah was coming, listen, with salvation. ALL of us recognize that, everybody in here can hopefully point to Isaiah 53 and say here’s the suffering servant right here in Isaiah 53, that’s Jesus, you can’t avoid it, it’s his whole beautiful story! We thought he was being punished or his own sin but the Lord was laying on him the iniquity of us all, he will justify the many and so bears their iniquities! The whole story, “pierced through for our transgressions,” there’s our salvation and amen to that! Yes the Old Testament promised the Messiah was gonna bring salvation. Reconciliation and peace with God, but brothers and sisters, there was good news that went above that! And it was the good news that this Messiah was coming to rule, and reign on the earth, and to bring justice and righteousness and salvation.

    That’s why Jesus was proclaiming the good news of his Kingdom, because it is good news that this Messiah is ruling and reigning on his throne now. Because what happened in the garden is being undone now, by the man who was mistaken as a gardener, after his resurrection.

He came out of that tomb, just as a quick little side note, you don’t have to build anything on this but I think it’s delicious.      

    Why’d the women mistake Jesus as a gardener after he’s risen from the dead?...What do you have to be doing for someone to mistake you as a gardener? Perhaps you’re working the ground? Isn’t it interesting that it’s one of the first things that the Son of Man does after he’s raised again from the dead is he starts to work the ground? Because Jesus is bringing about the new creation. He’s bringing in that justice and righteousness and salvation that was to spread throughout the entire earth!    

    The Old Testament promised good news of a Kingdom! Genesis 49:10 “Shiloh is coming, and to Him shall be the obedience of the people's!” Did you catch it? It’s the same kinda thing that the apostle Paul follows in his systematic explanation of the gospel, Romans chapter 1, Romans chapter 16, go read it later, it’s how Paul book ends his explanation of the gospel. Chapter 1 he says “We’ve received this grace and apostleship,” he says, “to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations.” And then he ends Romans 16 after he finishes explaining the totality of the gospel, and he ends with the same statement. The command to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations, that’s how HE book ended his gospel. How do you do it?

    The gospel of the Kingdom, our favorite passages, Isaiah 9:6-7 at Christmas time, talks about the Son and the child given to us, “wonderful counselor, El-gabour, the Mighty God, the Father of eternity, of the increase of His government and of peace,”...catch it?

    Don’t we get mellow headed with the Word of God at times? There’s these grand, marvelous promises and it all goes right over our heads. Right past us. “Oh that’s glorious.” Did you stop to think about it? “Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end! On the throne of David to establish it with JUSTICE! And righteousness forevermore. And if you think, with all of our brokenness and all the trials and all the hardships and all the resistance, how’s it gonna happen, I can’t do this, I’m tired, I’m weak, I’m sick of facebook. Just welcome to my world. The answer is right there, “the zeal of the Lord of Hosts will accomplish this.”

    That’s how it happens, but notice how the Kingdom is talked about in that respect is that it grows and grows and there is peace, there is justice, and there is righteousness. That’s what the bible says, and Daniel chapter 7 verse 13-14, glorious promise of the gospel of the Kingdom, right there in that passage, he says he’s looking in the night visions and he says “One comes and he’s like a Son of Man, and he comes up to the Ancient of days, and was presented before Him, and to him was given dominion, glory, and a Kingdom that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve him! His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away, and his Kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.”

    Where does he go? Up to the Ancient of Days, and where does Jesus go after Matthew 28:18-20? Up. And what does he say before he goes up? He says, “All authority” where? In heaven… and every christian goes “yay! He’s King over heaven ya’ll. Those angels, those angels they love to obey him, and they will, and there is no muckin’ around there, they do it.” And then you look at the next part, he says, “And on earth.” And he says “has been...given to me.”

    Theology matters. If that’s true, pause for a second. If it’s true, then what we’re doing here is absolutely necessary. See we’ve lost the vision of the world itself, we say “no no no no no, heaven is the better, we’ve gotta get to the spiritual reality, God’s not concerned with this.” Well, congratulations 21 century christian gnostic. That’s a theological nerd joke, you guys like that one? The gnostic idea that you know, God’s not concerned with like the earth itself, it’s just icky and dirty and sinful and all this. God would never taint Himself with this world and the evil here…” Uh, that’s interesting, cause that sounds a lot like what evangelicals in the West believe, we gotta get out to the spiritual, and get away from the physical, and that’s why our gospel only contains information that actually pertains to the spiritual.

    Jesus said, “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” and he says “go therefore,” because of that, and he says “go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Jesus is a Trinitarian, amen. And he says... what? “Teaching them to obey.” So part of our moving through the nations to bring them to Jesus Christ, is to teach the nations to obey Jesus.

     And somebody might say, “Oh yeah, hold on, but really to do this right they need to be converted to obey Jesus,” and we go, well yes, of course they need new hearts and all the rest, but listen, whether they’re converted or not, his law word, still applies. His law is his law, based on his own character, and it remains unchanging. So whether the nations obey Jesus or not, God still requires of them that they do! And so we go into a culture, we proclaim the excellencies of Jesus, we proclaim his perfection and his law, and we call people to repent! And our message ought to be consistent to say, this is God's law, he calls you to obey him, obey him or you will perish. The only freedom, the only peace, the only salvation is in Jesus, and these are his commands, these are his standards, now submit to the Messiah, that’s the call. The command to repent and believe, not the request, to repent and believe.

    Here’s the problem, deeply theological, deeply theological. And that is a problem of pretended neutrality. Pretended neutrality, you see it all around us. Mostly in the christians. Mostly in christians. Particularly, you’ll see it in the prolife movement, pretended neutrality. It was interesting, umm, two years ago, Senator Silk put in SP11 18. We tried to do some stuff to try to support, and try to make sure people could hear about it, and we wanted to make sure we could provide some help, I saw the videos of Russell and Rusty in the capitol building and it broke my heart. We saw and said “what can we do, let’s try to get Tony Lauinger on, and let’s see if we can get him to talk to us, and sort of tell people what his position was, and it was interesting there in that conversation (which you can listen to later) I wanted not to debate him, which I really wanted to do, but I wanted him to go on record with his neutrality and his failed policies. I wanted him to show it to everybody.

    There’s a few times in there you’ll see me look up at Marcus and Marcus was pulling his beard out of his face and I threw my pen up in the air, and it’s a good thing that Tony couldn’t see my face. But in there  you’ll hear him say things like, “But they don’t wanna use words like murder. They wanna take a back door approach,” they don’t wanna talk about Jesus and call people to faith in Jesus. Brothers and sisters that’s pretended neutrality, and it’s a failure. But here’s the interesting thing, have you noticed yet (of course this room has but) have you noticed that the opposition, those who believe they should be able to kill the unborn, they’re not pretending neutrality here. And you see it in New York. Now it’s interesting of course, we have to all confess, we see the inconsistencies in the prolife movement everyone’s up in arms about New York, and we’re at 40 week or up to birth and we say, hey wait a minute pro-lifers, why are you so upset that’s just a consistent position for them. What’s the difference between the 40 and the 22 and the 20 and the 18, so we see the inconsistency, but just pay attention to this.     

    When you think about what has happened in New York, the power of that moment, all we see there is their praise, their applause, their commitments on full display, that they were never, ever pretending neutrality, this was what they were going for the whole time, and the prolife movement is confused, “how can you do such a thing?” and here’s why, because they’re just staying consistent with their principles, why aren’t you? Why aren’t you? Because the question is, is if it is a human being from conception, if it is the Holy image of God, which our President said, which by the way praise God for that, the Holy image of God, then why aren’t you protecting it from conception? Why are you playing around the edges, why are you failing over and over and over again?

    Here’s the key, what we’re doing here, call it abolition, call it criminalization, call it whatever, it’s consistency. It’s consistency with the christian worldview, it’s consistency with the law. Here’s the key, be courageous, be brave, you win! You win! 500 years from now I truly believe this, and I’m post mil so maybe that has something to do with it, but, 500 years from now I believe christian school children are going to be reading in their history books what happened in the West, and they’re gonna be horrified! Horrified. And the truth will be that christians finally rose up on a consistent position, and it was with the gospel itself and the proclamation of Christs truth that lead to the end of abortion in our culture.

#1 The Prolife Movement Isn't Christian Insofar As It Refuses The Absolute Authority Of Jesus And His Law.

    A couple things quickly, I don’t wanna take too much time, I wanna respect you guys and we have children here, so I wanna make sure that I show you respect, but

number 1: The prolife movement isn’t christian insofar as it refuses to acknowledge the absolute authority of Jesus and his law. I’ll say it again, this is critical, it is key, it needs to be heard and responded to, the prolife movement isn’t christian insofar as it refuses to acknowledge the absolute authority of Jesus and his law.

    You can’t tell me that your movement is from the christian worldview if you refuse to acknowledge the absolute authority of Jesus Christ and his law. In every area, it’s not christian. You want biblical proof for that? We’ll be here all night but how about Matthew 12:30 “Whoever is not with me is against me.” So are you with Jesus in your education? Are you with Jesus in your legislature? Are you with Jesus in your prolife attempts to end abortion? “Whoever’s not with me, is against me.”     

    Jesus does not allow neutrality with him. And so we have to ask ourselves the question, are we playing neutral as the church? If so, let’s turn away from that.

#2 The Prolife Movement Isn't Christian Because It Denies The Lordship Of Christ, And The Supremacy Of His Law Word.

Number 2: The prolife movement isn’t christian because it denies the Lordship of Christ, and the supremacy of his law word. It refuses to acknowledge Christs Lordship and the supremacy and ultimacy of his law. When you see pro-lifers saying “don’t use the name of Jesus when you come against the legislature, and don’t quote scripture,” they are testifying to the fact that they are not a christian movement. And brothers and sisters, if it’s not a christian movement, it’s not based on the gospel, if there is no gospel there is no life!

    The bible says, now don’t let this be a pithy christian slogan, let’s actually firm our commitments up and say, do we believe it? Romans chapter 1 verse 1, “the gospel is the power of God, for salvation.” You want your culture to change? Preach the gospel. That’s what leads to salvation, that gospel proclamation goes out, the Spirit of God empowers that proclamation, and brings dead people to life. You want your culture to turn away from death? A culture of death? Then preach the gospel to them. No gospel, means only death. That’s the truth.

#3 The Prolife Movement Is A Failure, Because Of Its Commitments.

Number 3: The prolife movement is a failure, because of its commitments. Isaiah chapter 30, I should say its unholy commitments. Isaiah chapter 30 is a powerful text of Scripture. Isaiah 30:1 it says “Ah, stubborn children, declares the Lord, who carry out a plan, but not mine, and who make an alliance, but not of my Spirit. That they may add sin to sin.”

    The prolife movement wants to make an unholy alliance with the secularists. The prolife movement wants to make an unholy alliance, not based upon God's Word, His plans, His Spirit. And that’s why they fail.

    Next, I wanna talk just briefly about God's concern for justice, I wanna talk about the gospel and justice, God's concern for justice, I know I don’t need to speak to this group in vivid detail about this, but I wanna highlight it in terms of ‘does God have any concern today under the new covenant for justice?’ I wanna say of course, if you just take a cursory look at God's Word you will see over and over and over again God's concern for justice, and here’s what we have to say as christians, “God does not change.” We think today with the coming of the New Covenant that somehow Gods characters changed.

    By the way that’s how it’s also preached in today's culture in evangelicalism. You have the God of the Old Testament, who’s terrorizing the people, He’s a big meanie, a wrathful God, and Jesus comes along in the New Covenant to make Him a little better. To sweeten it up a little bit, so he’s sort of the nice side of God. That is a false perspective about God, and it’s a false view of what the gospel is all about. God is God, He is unchanging, His standards are unchanging. And God still has a concern for justice, just quickly, I mean for the record, Isaiah chapter 1, most of us know this in this room, but this needs to go out to the world, “hear the Word of the Lord” verse 10, “You rulers of Sodom, give ear to the teaching of our God you people of Gomorrah, what to me is the multitude of your sacrifices, says the Lord, I’ve had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well fed beasts, I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or of goats, when you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings, incense is an abomination to me, new moons and sabbaths and the calling of convocations, I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly, your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates.” So here’s God dissing their worship. Here’s God having a hatred for their worship practices, more-so than many of you maybe hate Hillsong.  

    He says “My soul hates, they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them when you spread out your hands I will hide my eyes from you, even though you make many prayers I will not listen, your hands are full of” what? “Blood.” He says “wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes,” now what’s interesting here is that God is condemning their worship, He’s saying He wants none of it, something is wrong with His people, and here’s His response to all of this false worship that He wants nothing to do with, here’s His response, He says “cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause.”

    Powerful text of Scripture, a lot of hipster churches today love to quote these little sections and like “love justice and mercy and all that stuff, and you know, right?” Well ask “what’s that look like my friend, to actually bring justice to the fatherless, what’s it look like to cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, what’s it look like?” It’s interesting, it’s a powerful verse, it’s on a lot of t-shirts and a lot of oil painting and all the rest, this text in Isaiah 1:18 “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord, though your sins are like scarlet they shall be as white as snow, though they are red like crimson they shall become like wool.” It’s powerful here. That famous text of scripture, that famous section that people quote all the time about God's forgiveness and His love and His washing away of all our sin, comes right on the heels of God condemning them for their evil and their embracing of injustice. So what is He calling them to repent of? Their injustices, not pleading the cause of the widow, or bringing justice to the fatherless! So repent of what? Those things!

    So coming to God and asking for a cleansing assumes that the cleansing now leads to the ceasing of doing evil, the learning to do good, the seeking justice, the correcting oppression. It’s a key thing. Is God concerned with justice? Yes. And one more text, Isaiah chapter 42, it’s one of those promises that Jesus had to be proclaiming when he said that he was proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom. What’s that mean? The good news of the rule of God. let’s break it down, the gospel of the Kingdom. Sounds so christian, so Christianity. Right? Fits on a t-shirt. Gospel of the Kingdom. It means, the good news of Jesus rule in the world. Okay? It’s Isaiah 42. That promise of justice. It says in Isaiah chapter 42, I’m gonna read it to you instead of just trying to quote it from memory, I want you to hear it, and I pray to God that it blesses you with good news. “Behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights, I put my Spirit upon him, he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry allowed or lift up his voice or make it heard in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench. He will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth, and the coastlands wait for his law.”

    You hear that? He’s not gonna grow faint or discouraged, he’s gonna establish justice in the earth. Do you know why many Jews today reject Jesus, our version of Jesus? Because when they look at us we’re saying, “no Jesus isn’t concerned with the earth, he’s coming back someday, and that’s when it’ll all get taken care of.” they go, “That’s not what the bible says about the Messiah. Cause the Messiah’s gonna come bring the nations to God and establish justice in the earth. Doesn’t sound like the Messiah to me.” And you know what? They’re right. They’re right.

    We’ve given a truncated view of the gospel, our gospel is no gospel of a Kingdom, and we have a savior that doesn’t rule over the kings of the earth. Why would you expect them to receive our Jesus. Do you see? God says that he won’t grow faint or discouraged until he has established justice in the earth and the coastlands wait for his law. Hey, why are we proclaiming “Thou shalt not murder” in the context of abortion? Because the bible tells us that the coastlands are waiting for his law. So I’m just heralding it. I’m just bringing it into conflict with this instance over here of baby murder. And I’m calling my nation to repent and come to the King for salvation and forgiveness, and in the meantime obey his law. Obey his law. You want true justice and righteousness in the world? It’s only one place it’s in His law.

    Now I wanna finish up here with hopefully important words that will bless, about God's law, in terms of proclaiming it in the context of the legislature, if you say “well should you be doing that?” I would say Matthew 28 all authority here is his, so yes I should. I would say the bible says he’s King of kings so yes I should, Lord of lords, so yes I should. But God's law is the revelation of His own character, and standards of righteousness. If we remove the law of God from our lips, there is no standard by which to condemn sin, and unrighteousness, and to call unbelievers to repent of to come to Christ for grace and salvation. Do you get that? There is no grace and salvation if you don’t first have his law and character.

    So I can’t talk about Jesus as a mighty savior if I don’t first talk about our breaking of his law! Modern attempts to maneuver away from God's standards and His character have given way to the depravity and lostness we all see around us. Hostility towards God's law is in essence hostility toward His gracious freedom from condemnation. Denial and continuity of the one, God’s law, leads to a denial of the need for the other! God’s grace. Stated more plainly, if the law is irrelevant for unbelievers today, then so is the need for God's salvation. So we need to proclaim it to preach it.

    So final words here, our call ought to resemble the call of the apostles and Jesus. It was a command to repent and believe. A command to repent and to believe. Got that? That’s our message. Don’t ‘try Jesus’ or ‘let him into your heart,’ ‘or just give him a chance.’ That’s not how Jesus proclaimed it, or the apostles, if you’re doing it like that, stop. That’s part of our failure in the culture. How did Paul preach it? “In the past God overlooked this, but now he commands men everywhere to repent.” And God's appointed a day, for judgement. Our message comes with a command to repent and to believe.     

     We need to call people to obey the Lord Jesus, and when we think about where that call ends, It doesn’t. Every area of life. What does ‘all authority’ mean? If you look in the Greek, every bit of it, every inch of it. In heaven and on earth. Now this is my last thing I'll say here, Psalm chapter 2. It’s part of that good news of the Kingdom Jesus was proclaiming. Psalm chapter 2. How integral would it have been to their life and thought life and theology? Oh, I dunno, they were just singing it in the synagogue as their hymnal.

    Psalm chapter 2 the Father says to the Son, apparently not a modelist. That’s another theological nerd joke. You’re welcome, okay? The Father says to the Son, “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, the very ends of the earth for your possession.” One of my favorite theologians and apologists was dr. Greg Bonson, he’s with the Lord now but he said this when I was learning from his lectures, and it stuck with me. He said this. “Do you think, that Jesus forgot to ask?”
“Ask of me I’ll give you the nations for your inheritance the very ends of the earth for your possession” do you think he forgot to ask? Answer? No. Because when he ascended he said “it’s all mine, go get them now.”

    But then the Father has a word to the kings of the earth, and this is something that we ought to come with confidence with, to our legislatures. Do you hear me? You go and die for this. The Father says to Jesus after promising all the world to Jesus, you’re gonna get em all Jesus, he says to the kings of the earth, he says “Be wise, obey the Son, or you will perish.” When we go and bring the gospel of the Kingdom in conflict with the culture of death and the issue of abortion, we’re coming with the authority of the King of kings and Lord of lords, with his message of peace and reconciliation, but we’re also coming to the kings of the earth, the magistrates, those in authority with the same message the Father has, “obey the Son, or you’ll perish.” Let’s pray.

    “Father please bless us with the confidence that can only come by your Spirit, please bless us with the gospel on our lips, please let it come from us with grace and mercy, and humility but also with boldness, and we beg of you God to raise up giants, to preach your good news to this culture, and we pray for your nations to come to salvation, and we pray that they would be discipled and learn to obey you, in the midst of it give us strength, give us endurance, give us perseverance to proclaim it faithfully to the end, and God, in this area, the area of the murder of children, we are asking, all of us, please stop it. Please. We are begging of you for fruit. And Lord we don’t want names for ourselves, we don’t want people to remember us, but we do want them to remember what you did. And so Father we are begging of you for justice Lord, not so we can hold a trophy, but Father we beg of you for justice, for Your glory, please bring justice, please have the victory. We’ll give you all the praise for it. Lord, let people forget our names and remember Yours, and we beg of you to establish justice in the earth and to bring salvation to the ends of the earth. We trust you that you shall have dominion from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the earth, and so we ask of you to put this enemy under your feet, and let us be the herald of your gospel to do it, in Jesus name, amen.”

Abolitionist - Jeff Durban Find out about Pastor Jeff here,
or email him at: contact@apologiastudios.com