This is War

Luke number one chapter one fifty seven through eighty.

So we already read through the passage of scripture, and what we're here is in the Advent story that we've been kind of following over these last two weeks is that we're looking now at the actual fulfillment of the promise that had come to Elizabeth.

So we talked about Gabriel came to Elizabeth, this woman who is old in age, known to be barren her whole life, and said, You're gonna conceive a child, and his name's gonna be John, and he's gonna be the one who prepares the way for the Lord.

And then that same angel, Gabriel, six months later, goes and tells Mary, who is a relative to Elizabeth, you're also gonna conceive, but you're gonna conceive as a virgin.

And you're the one whom you're gonna give birth to is gonna be the Messiah.

He's gonna be Jesus.

That's what you're gonna call him.

And so now we're nine months in, and Elizabeth, whom Gabriel had promised would conceive and bear a child, is getting ready to actually have that baby, right?

And so, but what we're gonna find though is this there's this kind of declaration of war that is made when this father, Zechariah, opens his mouth and begins to prophesy about what his son would do.

There's this declaration that a battle would wage to where the enemies of God would be defeated for the sake of the righteous.

And what we understand at the very tail end, and we're gonna work through all this, is this that he will guide our way in peace.

Now, for us, what we have to understand is that peace cannot come without war.

If we understand our history and we look throughout time as we have fought for peace, battle and war had to precede that.

If there's ever been peace in our land, it was a implication or a result of fighting.

And so we have seen throughout our history where we've had to fight wars, we've had to go to battle to ensure that peace was brought to a land.

But in us, if we're really honest, we always kind of question how good that peace is, right?

Sometimes it's just you're not fighting anymore.

Sometimes if you're a parent and you have children at home and you have peace in your house, all that really means you don't love each other.

That just simply means they're not hitting one another right now, right?

That's peace at this point in time.

Uh, but you don't have true reconciliation or relationship where you're for the good and benefit of one another.

It's just there's the absence of fighting at this point in time.

And if we're even more honest, we all question and wonder how long can this peace really last?

It doesn't matter what war has taken place, no matter what battle has been fought, we all know deep down in our hearts that it's only a matter of time before this so-called peace is over and we're fighting again.

In fact, that's just the propensity of man.

We fight, we battle, we go to war to make our own name great, to because of our own lusts and our own selfish desires, that that even causes the need for war so that peace might come afterward.

And so, what we're gonna look at is a declaration of war that promises for us as a people eternal peace.

So when we look at the first section of this chapter, we're entering into the narrative and the story of just John being born.

So, verses 57 through 63, the way that I would summarize these verses is that a purposeful name for a purpose-filled child, a purposeful name for a purpose-filled child.

So we're nine months into the pregnancy of Elizabeth.

And where we picked up last week or kind of left off, is after Mary gave this magnificat, right?

We understand this in church history and tradition.

This song that she sings after she greets Elizabeth is called the Magnificat, the magnification of God.

It says at the end of that narrative, according to Luke, that Mary stayed with her three months.

Now, if you know anything about gestation periods of children, right, it's typically about nine months.

Mary greeted her at six months, stayed there for about three months.

So that we have every right to assume, though it's not explicitly written in the text, that Mary's here.

Mary's with Elizabeth, they're getting ready, she's entering into child pain.

This thing is about to happen.

And so, like I said, it's likely, though not explicit, that Mary is present at this birth.

Now, while Luke portrays a rather quiet birth experience, right?

It kind of seems like nothing extravagant happened during the birth.

It wasn't loud celebration or chaos ensuing.

What we do see, though, is that the response to the birth, though, is filled with widespread rejoicing.

The news of John's birth actually spread all through Judea and was a cause of much celebration considering the state of Elizabeth and the supernatural state of her pregnancy.

So they were all wondering, what is this?

Is this true?

Is this thing that they said Gabriel had proclaimed to them actually going to happen?

And so, while the birth itself might have been pretty uneventful, the news of the birth was very celebratory.

In fact, it went all through the countryside, getting the ears of everyone who lived nearby.

And so, as they bring John for his circumcision, which is customary on the eighth day of a Jewish child, they'd bring him to the temple to be circumcised.

They bring him there and they're greeted with all of these people.

A crowd gathers in anticipation and celebration of this newborn baby.

Now, at the time of circumcision is also customary when they actually name the child.

So not only are they bringing them to the temple on the eighth day to be circumcised, which was a sign and seal of a member of God's covenant people, uh, but they also would name the child at that time.

And so what we have here, if we can try and paint the picture, we have Elizabeth, who's just gave birth eight days ago.

She's probably holding her son, nursing him.

Here's Zachariah.

If we remember back, Zechariah has now been mute for nine months.

He hasn't been able to speak at all for nine months.

So here comes old Zechariah.

They're old in age, what the story tells us.

So uh they're just kind of, you know, maybe walking slowly up to the temple, and this crowd ensues and gathers around them.

And they're, if you know relatives, right?

How many of you have a birth story where it's like you had all these pushy relatives just coming in, like coming into the to the room where you're trying to give birth, or there, you got a swarm of them out in the waiting room.

I remember our first child being born.

It was like, oh my lord, there was an aunt.

You would have thought like we were we were kind of some kind of celebrity birthing couple or something of that nature.

It was like so many people in the room that we learned our lesson in child two, three, four.

We were like, look, we're not even gonna tell them until like it's time to push, and then we're only gonna say, you and you can be in this room.

And we just had so many people, or if you're pregnant, how many pushy relatives are telling you all the things you should do, how much you should have your feet up, what things you should be eating, what things you shouldn't be lifting, how you should be sleeping on this different position or whatnot.

We know that friends and family can be pushy during these times.

And so this crowd ensues, they're getting ready to name the son, and this would be highly significant.

We have to remember this.

Zechariah and Elizabeth were barren.

They had no children, and they were old in age.

And so this might be Zechariah's only shot to have his name carry on, because that was the normal tradition for Hebrew families, that they would name the firstborn son after the father so that the name could be carried on.

So this would be significant for Zechariah since he's already late in years.

He desires successor to his namesake naturally.

And so the people gather were assuming that they were gonna be able to actually be the mouthpiece of old mute Zachariah.

But and they're pushing and they're questioning of Elizabeth when she already told them, no, no, no, no, his name's not gonna be Zachariah, his name's gonna be John.

They say, Well, Elizabeth, we're gonna ask your husband if you don't mind, and we're gonna get his opinion on it.

So Mute Zachariah says, Well, well, he doesn't say anything because he can't talk, right?

He points to his little writing tablet.

Hey, get that over there.

It brings it over to him and he says, No, his name is John.

His name is John.

Now, if we really look at this, Zechariah would have been a perfectly good first name for a child, right?

It wasn't anything weird.

It didn't like have some horrible meaning of cursing or you know, something that was mockery.

We read it in a Hosea not too long ago, and we saw some of the names that God told his people to name his children.

They were they were just horrible names, right?

Nobody would want to be named that.

But Zechariah itself just means Yahweh remembers.

So, in all intents and purposes, it's a great name to name your son.

Yahweh remembers.

God remembers his people, God remembers his covenant.

But the angel told Zechariah and total, no, his name's not going to be Yahweh remembers.

His name is going to be Jehovah has been gracious.

That's the name of John.

God has been gracious.

You see, the birth of John through the seed of Zechariah was evidence that God truly did remember his people and more so remembered the covenant that he had made with him.

But the son needed a new name.

He needed the name of a forerunner who would declare to the people of God that his gracious presence had come for them.

Verses 64 through 66, we see that the beginning of a way being made, right?

That's the whole purpose of John's being birthed, is that he's gonna make the way for the Messiah.

He's gonna be this forerunner before Jesus.

And so instantly, instantly, after affirming the name of his newborn son, Zachariah is actually able to speak.

So the first time in nine months, Zechariah's mouth is open and his tongue is loose, and what does he do?

He blesses God.

The first words in nine months, think about all the pent-up aggression, right?

Think about all the frustration where he couldn't say what he wanted to say, right?

He had just been dealing with a wife who was pregnant for nine months, old in age.

He couldn't speak, he couldn't minister to her, he couldn't comfort her with his words, he couldn't, if he got angry or frustrated, he couldn't communicate that.

I mean, he had nine, imagine, I'm a talker.

If anybody knows me, I'm a verbal processor to the max.

I tell everybody, don't believe the first 30 minutes of what comes out of my mouth.

I have to hear myself sound stupid, right?

That's kind of the way I think.

Oh, I I I'll start just spewing out words, and all of a sudden I'll be like, Justin, that was dumb.

I'm like, there we go.

Okay, now we're on to something.

Uh so what I that's how I am.

So I can't imagine a week without speaking.

Imagine nine months of built-up language, vocabulary, things that you wish you could have said, that you wanted to say, that you longed to say, but out of his mouth comes what?

The blessing of God.

And Zechariah prophesied the words and promises of God to the people around him.

Now, here's one thing that we want to understand about prophecy.

Missio, we hold a two-view perspective of what prophecy actually means.

So when Zechariah prophesied, we hold to the position that what Zechariah was actually doing was he was forthelling rather than foretelling.

So, foretelling view of prophecy would be that you are actually communicating something that is yet to happen, something that has not yet transpired and has not been revealed to people, but is going to happen at some point in time.

And the Bible's riddled with prophetic utterance of the foretelling kind.

But here, what Zechariah does is he prophesies in a forthelling sense.

And Myssio believes in the gift of prophecy, not always being revealed as the foretelling aspect, but predominantly being revealed as the forthelling aspect.

So every Sunday when we get up here and we preach, we are functioning in a gift of prophecy.

We are forth telling of the words and promises of God.

And so that's what Zechariah is doing.

He's actually not communicating anything new in this blessing of which he declares to the people.

Necessarily, he's reminding them, remember, Yahweh remembers, he's reminding them of all the things that God had promised he would do through the one of whom he was sending.

And so the words of Zechariah created a very emotional response from his audience.

So they have this people gathered around them.

They have this glorious, supernaturally born son being brought forth for circumcision, being named, and there's all this commotion.

And as they hear the words of Zechariah, it says that fear gripped them.

They were gripped by what Zechariah proclaimed.

It caused them to seek understanding from the people around them.

Do you know what in the world he's talking about?

Do you know anything?

We understand that this child was supernaturally born in a promise of God, but what he's saying seems something bigger.

Seems something more majestic, something more grandeur.

You see, by hearing what Zechariah had proclaimed, they knew that this boy was going to be something unique.

And what we have here is a boy birthed in supernatural circumstances, given a unique name.

His mute father opens his mouth and blesses God, and the people are left in awe and wonder.

And so let's see what conditions, let's see what things are said to resolve in such conditions by the hearers around him.

Gripped with fear, left in awe, what is going to be of this child?

And so this is what Zachariah says in 67 through 71, we kind of see the first part of this prophetic utterance.

And so if we were to summarize this, it'd be that prophetic proclamation is the remembrance of promise.

Now, right from the very beginning, we see this phrase that we saw last week too.

It said that Zechariah is filled with the Holy Spirit.

Before Mary, or as Mary greeted Elizabeth and entered it into her home, we read last week in the text the exact same phrase that Elizabeth was filled with the Spirit.

And when Elizabeth was filled with the Spirit, she responded in two ways.

What was that?

If we think back from last week, it was simply that she responded in joy to God's work and in right confession.

So people filled with the Spirit, as we understood last week.

If we are truly going to be people filled with the Spirit, that means that we would respond in joy to God's work and that we would proclaim true confession.

And so this is what Zechariah does.

Being filled with the Spirit, he joyfully responds to God's work and he proclaims right confession about who not only his son is, John, but who the one of whom he would prepare the way for would be as well.

And so notice again, like Mary's song from the previous passage, that Zechariah speaks in this past tense sense.

He has, he has.

You see, these are things that are so sure that Zechariah can speak of them as if they've already happened.

It's not that these things have come to their fullness or have come to their resolved completion, but they are so assured in the power and might of God that Zechariah could speak as if they had already been accomplished.

This is not simply a remembrance of things done in histories past, but as a present and future tense of guaranteed fulfillment of God's promises.

The fulfillment was so guaranteed in the coming of Jesus that through the Holy Spirit, Zechariah could speak as if they'd already been done.

You see, something that we have to understand and remember, church, is that we serve a completely transcendent God.

We serve a God who does not bound by time and space.

God has accomplished his perfect will beyond the constraints of time.

You see, the beauty of the God we serve is not that he is actually confined by time, but that he chooses in his own free will to insert himself into our time.

He is so loving and gracious and cares for you so much that this completely transcendent God chooses of his own will to insert himself into your space, into your reality.

And we see this transcendence all throughout the scriptures.

In fact, when we even look at the person and work of Jesus, we see that it declares that Jesus is the Lamb who was slain, was slain, past tense, before the foundations of the earth.

The purposes and works of God were in place and accomplished through his sovereign power before even earth and water was spoken into existence.

That's how powerful God is.

That's how supernaturally transcendent He is.

And then what God does is he inserts himself into our experience.

This is the beauty of the gospel, that God became one of us.

He became man and inserted himself into our reality.

And so if we look at section one of the prophecy, right, I've broken this down into three sections.

So the first section is about this Davidic covenant, this promise that he had made to this man named King David.

Zechariah is blessing God because he has visited and redeemed his people.

This is what he says.

He says, Bless you because you have visited and redeemed.

When we look at those two words, what we look to see and discover is that visited means that Jesus is the presence of God in flesh with us.

This is what we call in the church the incarnation, meaning that God himself put on human flesh to share in every aspect of our existence.

This is what we have as a hope in Christ, that He's actually our great high priest, the Bible says.

And what that means is that God Himself put on flesh, inserted himself into our experience so that he might suffer in every way that we have, be tested and tried and tempted in every way that we have.

Would experience pain and agony and even death in the very ways that we have.

There is no part of our human experience that God himself has not encountered and suffered through in his own experience.

The incarnation gives us a high priest who is merciful and gracious to us because he knows our weaknesses.

And then redeemed.

Jesus is our redemption.

Redemption is the process of regaining a possession through the clearing of a debt.

Let me say that again.

Redemption is the process of regaining a possession through the clearing of a debt.

We had a debt to pay due to our sin.

Redemption had to happen because of a sin issue on our behalf.

You see, we forfeited our relationship and communion with God at a cost that we could never repay or gain back.

We had to have somebody else pay our debt.

We gave up everything that God had promised, a communion and relationship with Him, the blessing of His hand, fellowship with His Spirit.

We gave up all of it for what?

Suffering, hardship, death, struggle, turmoil, strife.

We forfeited it.

And even if we wanted it back, we never could earn it.

There's nothing in our own ability and strength to pay the debt that was owed.

But Jesus, he came as the only one who could cancel the debt owed by paying for it full with his life.

And then it says in the last part of this first section that he raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David.

A horn is the symbol of power and authority.

So sometimes the Bible uses super weird language, right?

And you're like, oh, okay, you just kind of glaze over it and you hope that it doesn't mean something real weird for your own self, right?

So when it talks about that the Bible, that he actually raised up a horn of salvation for his people, what this is, it's a symbol of power and authority.

I don't know about you, but I have this guilty pleasure of an Instagram account called Nature as Metal.

If you're my friend, I have probably sent you Nature as Metal post because this is just it's just insanity.

I love watching this stuff, right?

And so anytime that I'm sometimes that I'm watching this, you'll see these horned animals, right?

And if you know anything about horned animals, they dominate for um mating purposes, for uh eating purposes, whatever it is, they'll actually fight one another.

And so imagine this horned animal raising itself up in preparation to come forth and strike down his foe.

When it talks about power and authority being expressed in the raising up of a horn, what it's talking about is that there's this dominant beast whose horn has been raised in preparation to strike down his foe.

You see, it raises its horn before a strike to show the authority that he would have over his opposition.

This was declaring that from the line of King David, a ruler would come who would go to war on behalf of his people.

He would go to war against the enemies of his people, he would engage in battle for their deliverance, and he would be a conquering king to bring salvation and freedom to his people.

This is the one whom John was preparing the way for.

This is what God had remembered, and this is what Zachariah was proclaiming in joy-filled response to God's work.

There was one who was coming.

Verses 72 through 75, the second section of this prophetic utterance, we would summarize that God's promises will never fail.

Why would he do these things?

Now, this is the crux, this is the thing that flips this whole thing on his head.

So he just declared that he's raising up this horn of salvation, this one who would come and defeat our enemies, who would conquer all of our foes, who would bring redemption and deliverance for his people.

Why?

Here's the second part to show the mercy he promised to us by his covenant.

Now hold on a second.

Why does a king who's going to go battle against our foes, why is that understood in mercy toward us?

Right?

If you're oppressed, if you're in bondage to powers and enemies that are against you, and the king goes out before you who's on your side and he defeats them and sets you free, that's not mercy, that's justice.

You see, the reason that God says and communicates this that this is mercy according to his covenant is that we are the actual enemies of God.

I'm going to war to conquer and defeat your enemies, but it's going to be my mercy.

You see, we're the ones who need to be shown the mercy of God.

Without God's mercy, war would have been made against us.

Because of our sin, because of our rebellion, we are counted as enemies of God.

We are counted as hostile against him.

We are alienated from his promises in covenant.

If God was going to go forth and execute justice under his wrath and power, we would have been the foe he would have crushed.

But he says here in the second part of the prophecy, this is mercy.

This is not to dismiss the very real enemy we have in Satan, but it is to push us to understand that our internal alliance stands with Satan himself.

If there is to be a war, it's to fight against Satan and his military of us.

But God.

But God promised to us, his people, that he would show us his mercy rather than his judgment and wrath.

And the war that he was declaring he was going to fight would look radically different than you and I would have ever imagined.

So what's the purpose of this one?

We're going to discover what that means later on in the text, but let's try to summarize the second part up.

What was the purpose of this war?

That we might serve him without fear and holiness and righteousness before him in all our days.

You see, this is the beauty about serving God.

We don't serve God as slaves, oppressed slaves who are working only for the good of their master.

We don't serve that kind of God.

When it talks about us serving God, we work for the good of our master who eternally exists for the good of us.

Do you see that ebb and flow of beauty that happens between us and God as we serve him in righteousness and in holiness all of our days?

You see, our service to him is not under the weight and load of debt or fear of wrath.

We're actually brought back into relationship with him, and our response is a joy-filled service in cultivated holiness, where our master is not only blessed by our work, but blesses us in response to the work that we do.

It's this synergistic beauty that we have between him and us, where we actually work and toil for the good and benefit of one another.

Verses 76 through 80, I'd summarize it this way as we come to this third section of this prophecy that there is a mission to proclaim the knowledge of salvation.

So at this point in time, Zachariah turns his attention to the son who was just born, who was brought to the temple for circumcision.

This whole time he's been remembering the promises of God and declaring to the people around him what the work of God would look like.

But now he turns his attention to his son, and he says that there's a mission, son, that you're going to carry, and it's to proclaim the knowledge of salvation.

Now, the prophetic word of Zechariah turns to John, and he says that John would be a prophet, a proclaimer of the word of God, and prepare the way of the work of Jesus.

But what's his primary focus?

To give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins.

John, you're gonna have one mission.

You're gonna have one purpose.

You're going to reveal the knowledge of salvation.

And how is that coming?

It's coming in the forgiveness of their sins.

This is where we see the enemies of God are truly us.

God is declaring war.

He's gonna defeat the foes.

But then in a flip of events and a plot twist of sense, we discover here that it the way it looks is through the forgiveness of our sins.

We're the enemy.

We need salvation, but not simply from some outside force or foe, but we need it from the one that lies within.

Salvation will surely come to us through Jesus by his conquering of you and I.

This war is mercy.

Seems like quite the oxymoron to call war merciful, doesn't it?

If you have any uh understanding of pop culture and the Avenger Marvel series that's happened, there's this character named Thanos, right?

And he actually believes that he's gonna be merciful to people by killing them.

He's gonna provide for better resources and better sustainability.

He's actually gonna make a new world, a better place, but it's gonna cost the lives of millions and millions of people.

But Thanos himself is not willing to give up his own life for this mercy that he declares he is showing.

You see, we couldn't fabricate this story if we wanted to.

Even Hollywood and Disney Plus, right?

They can't fabricate this story.

Because God himself says, no, I'm not gonna kill millions of people to show mercy.

That's not mercy.

I'm gonna kill myself.

I'm gonna put myself on the line so that mercy would be extended.

That war itself would be brutal and bloody, but its attacks would not strike and afflict his foes.

No, through his mercy, he would become the afflicted one, standing in our place.

Jesus becomes the central focus as this prophecy comes to a close.

It says that he would be the sunrise on a darkened world.

His work would be a blazing ray of hope to a death-darkened people.

And it would be Jesus who would ultimately be the one to guide us into peace.

You see, the end result of this war would be peace.

And this isn't some kind of peace that we know and understand, where there's just the absence of fighting.

No, this peace, this peace is where two parties are fully and wholly reconciled and in fruitful relationship with one another.

That's peace.

It's not just the absence of hostility and fighting.

Peace is where the two parties now come together and they work for the good of one another.

Oh, that's peace.

That's eternal peace.

So when the Bible says that Jesus is the Prince of Peace, that doesn't mean he's just a nice guy.

And that's the issue with the church, right?

We've turned this Prince of Peace or peace be with you, or whatever these statements that we kind of made normalized and fancy and just kind of everyday part of our life.

When it says that Jesus is the Prince of Peace, we have so reduced that statement down to he's just some nice guy.

Who's kind, who won't smack you when you need it, right?

That's not what we're talking about.

This is talking about Jesus is the Prince of Peace because he is the conquering king who declared war and fell as the own enemy of which he was fighting, so that we might have peace.

Jesus would make war to bring to his people peace.

So our main idea this morning is this that John would be a forerunner of Jesus to declare that war was coming to bring peace.

John would be a forerunner of Jesus to declare that war was coming to bring peace.

This would ultimately be the answer to the people's question: what then will this child be?

What will he be?

Well, he's going to be a messenger, a forerunner.

You see, John was consecrated before the foundations of the earth to be this messenger.

He was the clay shaped by the potter's hands to fulfill this one singular purpose.

But let's look at what the message of John really was, because that's another part of this war declaration.

If we look throughout history, when a battle was getting ready to be declared, when war was getting ready to be made, they would send out a messenger before them to let them know we're coming.

You got time.

If you want to gather up all your things and you want to retreat, or if you want to barricade your city down so that we can't penetrate it, you do what you want, but I'm telling you, we're coming.

That would be John's sole purpose.

But what would be his message?

Would it be just love each other and be nice?

Would it be be kind and generous to one another?

No.

It was declarations of war.

Let's look at Matthew 3, 7 through 12.

It says this.

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, You brood of vipers.

Who warns you to flee from the wrath to come?

Bear fruit, then, in keeping with repentance.

And do not presume to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our father, for I tell you, God is able to from these very stones raise up children of Abraham.

Even now, the axe is laid to the root of the trees.

Every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit in fire.

His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

That's a declaration of war.

Jesus doesn't come in hand with presents and gifts, he comes with weapons.

John was trying to warn them of what was to come.

John was trying to go before them to say that war was coming, but you have an opportunity to repent and be baptized before he engages in battle.

So this was John's only purpose.

This was what he was made for.

He was predestined to do, to be the messenger of Christ.

But when Christ came on the scene, the war John had envisioned would rage, the battle he envisioned would be fought was nothing like he imagined.

In fact, John is filled with doubt.

When he looks at what's happening, when he looks at the ministry of Jesus, when he looks at what's happening to himself, he's imprisoned and he's locked up because he has stood for righteousness, where a woman wanted to have an extramarital relationship with someone who was not her husband.

He said, You that this wicked that's wrong, that you should repent of that thing, so they throw him in prison in the end result of John's ministry.

The end result of his being called out, set apart to be the forerunner of Jesus is what?

He's decapitated because some little girl had the ear of her mother and requested that his head be put on a platter and brought before her.

John, Jesus, I thought I was called to be your messenger.

I thought I was called to be your forerunner.

I thought you were gonna bring war to the people, and John's filled with so much doubt about what this war actually looks like.

Let's look at Matthew 11, 1 through 6, he says this.

And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.

John is in so much doubt because this war looks nothing like he thought it would.

That he says, Are you actually the one?

Because I'm in prison here.

My life is on the line.

Are you the one, or am I supposed to be looking for another?

Because this doesn't look anything like I thought it was going to.

And the end result of John is he's beheaded and his hand is, his head is plated on a platter and given to a little girl to present as a gift.

John knew fundamentally that he was making the way for the Son of God to come.

But he didn't fully realize all that the Son of God would be coming to do.

He was ready for war and was heralding that the champion was coming, but the battle seemed to be losing from his perspective.

And some of us, we wrestle with these very same things.

And the way that we respond to this declaration of war, right?

We we respond in similar ways to John.

I think there's two ways primarily that we respond.

Number one is that some of us show no regard to the declaration of war.

We show no regard to it.

You see, we actually don't hear it.

And this is something that has been throughout time, that as proclamation was made that war is coming, or proclamation was made that this is Jesus the Son of God, this is the Messiah, this is the Christ, this is the one of whom we've been promised, of who we've been waiting for, this is the one.

Time and time again, people turned in unbelief with no regard to what they heard or what they saw.

So much so that the Bible even records that after Jesus had resurrected from the dead, been on earth ministering to people for a strong period of time, then in the midst of 500 people, ascends to heaven straight from the ground up in the sky.

It says people turned and they didn't believe.

Are you kidding me?

People like I've been to David Copperfield shows.

I don't believe what that dude's doing, because actually, when I was a little child, I saw how one of his things were was done.

I had like this horrible side seat, super cheap seats, and I saw the trick.

I saw how it happened.

But but we're not talking about that.

We're talking about this man just ascended to heaven, and people turned in disbelief.

And we are like them even today, 2,000 years later.

We have no regard for the declaration of war.

But even worse yet, even worse yet, we reduce the gospel.

We reduce the gospel, this declaration of war, to simply be love each other and be nice to one another.

That's not the gospel.

The gospel is not just be nice.

We don't have a true scope of frame of what it costs heaven to purchase and rance us when we reduce the gospel down to just be nice to one another.

If that's all it took, then what did Christ die for?

In fact, if that was possible, then why did we murder him?

If Jesus' true message, if that was really what he was declaring to us, that all you have to do is be nice to one another and love one another and you'll be good with God, if that's true, the one thing he proved is how cosmically unable we are to do that because the man who proclaimed it, we put on a cross and murdered.

You can't be nice to one another, to the realm of measure of what it takes to make yourself right with God.

In the end, it will only be proven that we have failed to accomplish these tasks.

And actually, in reducing the gospel, we dismiss the gospel because we put out our own efforts and accomplishments in the place of Jesus' finished work.

Jesus would have never had to come if we could have fixed our own mess with our own strength.

This message of be nice and love one another is not to earn right relationship with God, it's the implications of having been made right in relationship with God because of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

If we look in at Galatians chapter 2, verse 21, part B, it says, Paul says this for if righteousness were through the law, through obedience, through being nice, Christ died for no purpose.

Galatians 2:21

Some of us, though, we're distracted on the battlefield.

Some of us are distracted on the battlefield.

We're in the midst of a battle and we're striving toward a self-gratifying false victory.

Some of us are scavenging for treasure while brothers and sisters are dying to our right and our left.

I'm remembering, I love movies and I love early 90s movies, right?

So Hook, if you remember Hook, yeah, there was this battle ensuing.

And there was this character named Shmi.

And while the battle was ensuing, what was Shmee doing?

He was just filling his pockets and pants with gold and jewels, and he was trying to run off, right?

The battle was happening, and what's he doing?

He's scavenging the field for his own personal gain and treasure.

And some of us are like that in the pursuit of our own wealth, of our own security, of our own building of our kingdom.

We're scavenging for treasure while our brothers and sisters are dying to our right and left.

And the problem with those dudes, in every movie, in every scene, they end up dead and without the money they were seeking for.

That's some of us.

Some of us are riddled with fear and paralyzed in action because we can't set our gaze upon heaven's champion.

I'll say that again.

Some of us are riddled with fear and paralyzed in action because we can't set our gaze upon heaven's champion.

If you look at other war movies, there's always that one character who's just so terrified to get up and fight.

Because the outcome of the battle looks like his life is going to be taken from him.

But when we look at the battle that God wages, man, he's already got the victory for us.

Our problem of why we're not acting in the battle, of why we're so distracted and paralyzed with fear is because we can't look at the victory.

We look at our own weaknesses and shortcomings.

Some of us are fighting more for recognition and power than we are for the good of our neighbor.

We're fighting for our own self-gain, for our own prominence.

We want to be known, we want to be celebrated, we want to be rejoiced upon instead of fighting so that our neighbor might have good and blessing brought to them.

And some of us, some of us are standing on the battlefield with our pants around our ankles looking for our next lust-filled conquest.

You're fighting a battle, some of you men are fighting a battle, and you're standing there with your pants around your ankles while war is ensuing.

What are you looking for?

And our consumption of porn and our consumption of lust and our consumption of our sisters in Christ.

We're fighting a war for God's sakes.

And this is how we discover ourselves.

But the beauty of the gospel is this: Jesus was struck down as an enemy of the Father that we might have peace with him.

This is the gospel.

God waged war.

And the enemy was us.

We should have been crushed under his wrath, stomped out under the heel of his boot.

We should have been obliterated.

But his mercy.

So that's not what the war is gonna look like.

And instead of coming with spear and bow, he comes with cross and humility.

You see, God is extremely confrontational.

His confrontation just doesn't look like us.

The gospel's not absent of confrontation, the gospel is actually full confrontation of everything that we have done.

It's just that the war looks different.

And the righteous one, the one who perfectly lived in obedience to the Father, the one who never sinned, who never fell to the temptation that he was met with, who was God with God.

With us stands in our place, and he says, Father, don't crush them, crush me.

And for you and I who should have been struck down by the wrath and judgment of God, we get to have what?

We get to have peace.

We get to have peace.

This is what it means when it says peace that is beyond understanding.

We can't fathom the scope of what it cost heaven to bring us peace.

We can't measure it.

We can't seem to understand it.

This isn't one of those things of like, you know, I've never experienced what you're going through, but I think I can imagine the pain and the hardship that you're kind of experiencing.

It's kind of the same thing, right?

No, we can't do that.

We can't look at Jesus and be like, hey, look, I've never really experienced this, but I think I kind of could feel where you're coming from.

No, the peace that Christ offers us goes beyond our understanding, beyond our finite ability to comprehend that all of heaven went bankrupt, that heaven went to war against itself, so that it could purchase and redeem us and bring us peace.

The battlefield was filled with blood.

But upon it laid one fallen soldier, Christ our King.

And we get to reap the benefit and beauty of life everlasting because of it.

So how should we respond in this?

I'm super late.

I'm sorry for being late on time.

Here's how we should live in light of this truth.

We would be forerunners of the coming of Jesus, declaring his peace to all.

Like John, the mantle has been handed to us, declaring that Christ has accomplished peace to you.

Look, enemy of God, there's peace available to you.

You are alienated from him.

There's peace available to you.

You who are striving and toiling and working your fingers to the bone to try and earn your right standing with God.

Let me have good news for your ears.

There's peace available because Christ accomplished it.

We are heraldals of the one who is coming.

And so we should, like John, sprint out into the culture, into the world around us, declaring, peace has come.

You don't have to suffer the fallings of war.

You don't have to fight the battle.

Peace has come to all.