The Reality Of The World | More Than A Story

Well, Providence Family, it is uh good to see you once again.

If you're a guest with us, uh, we are honored that you have joined us.

On this special weekend, I want to remind us as a church family uh that every good gift that we have comes from God.

And among the gifts that we have received is the privilege to live in a free nation where we are free to worship and to gather and to sing and to think and to speak and to dream and to create.

And we believe ultimately that this is not because of man's wisdom or strength, but because of God's providential kindness and his grace.

We all know that America is not perfect, never has been, and it never will be.

Our history, as you know, is uh littered.

It includes many, many evils.

And the fact is that even today, her citizens, many, have deep confusions about the Lord and about life.

But I'm thankful for our nation, for those who seek to defend, and for those who seek to do good to the nation.

I think back over what I know of as our history as a nation, and I see and I thank God for his general grace.

God tells us that he gives a general grace where he pours out rain, sunshine, food, and water to the godly and ungodly alike.

And you see that through our history is that whether people have regarded him or or not, is that he has poured out a general grace upon our nation.

But I'm also incredibly grateful for his specific grace.

Where in particular, in the beginning of our nation, and for many, many decades and even centuries, what we've found is that God, in his providence, saw fit to weave a worldview that flowed from Scripture into the very fabric of the nation, and that allowed things like the laws to be informed by something greater than our own perception, that instilled morals, that stirred up mercies in the hearts of people who loved him and gave us the freedom to be able to send missionaries around the whole world.

It's really an amazing thing.

And so I sit here on this weekend, or I guess I stand here on this weekend, you're sitting.

And I want you to know, and I want to remind you as America is not our ultimate hope and it's not our ultimate home as followers of Jesus Christ, but it is our home today.

And he calls us to seek the welfare of the land in which we live.

And one of the ways we do that is to pray.

So would you join me?

Father in heaven, we come before you and we do praise you and acknowledge that you have a big heart for all the peoples of the whole world.

You tell us to pray, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And so we pray for your kingdom that's established in the hearts of people all around the world and every nation.

And God, we pray that a knowledge of the glory of Jesus Christ would spread to the corners of the whole globe.

But this morning we pray for our nation.

We ask for mercy upon the nation, we ask for wisdom for our leaders.

We ask for the kind of kindness that you describe in the Bible that leads a people to repentance.

We pray for an awakening that would sweep over the nation.

Or that people who have no regard for you, your word, Lord, that you would stir in their hearts and they would have a deep longing to know who you are.

We pray, Father, that you would save multitudes.

Now, Father, I pray that as we open your word, that you would speak through weakness as we consider some characteristics of your kingdom.

Help me, I pray, and help us in Jesus' name.

Amen.

If you have a Bible, would you please turn with me to Matthew chapter 13?

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

As you're turning, I want to encourage you to imagine with me, you're alive 2,000 years ago, you're sitting on a hillside in Galilee.

A friend of yours had told you, you need to come with me to hear this man, to come and hear somebody who is more winsome, authoritative, and inspiring than anyone else I have ever heard in my life.

And you trust your friend, and so you came.

And there you sit.

And because he's called a rabbi, and because your friend has just said that this is the kind of teaching that literally changes the world, that you begin to imagine that you are about to experience a theological, ethical, moral, philosophical masterclass.

The doctrines of God and the doctrines of man, he's going to bowl you over, and then suddenly Jesus, the rabbi, stands up and he begins telling stories.

Simple stories.

Like a woman lost a coin.

There was once a field that had a hidden treasure.

A dad had two sons.

A shepherd had a hundred sheep and lost one of them.

And even though they are so simple, you sit there for hours and you cannot turn away.

And the reason is because his stories suddenly were more than a story.

They were all telling your story.

There was something about the makeup of these stories that described your life and your fears and your failures and your strengths and your weaknesses and your relationships and your brokenness, your need, your anxiety.

Jesus taught in parables.

Over the next seven weeks, we're going to look at a number of them, not all of them, but a number of them.

The word parable, it means to cast alongside.

Jesus comes to the earth.

He has this spiritual truth he wants to teach us, but he recognizes that it may be over our head, and so he wants to assist us, and so he finds simple things on the earth that we're very familiar with, familiar scenes, familiar things like coins and treasures and soils and seeds and weeds and wheat.

And he casts them alongside, making connections so that we can understand from these familiar things, these remarkable truths.

It was clearly he was telling more than a story.

He would pull from all kinds of things, and what we're going to find is he does so to do four things primarily.

In these parables, what he seeks to do is to explain his kingdom, who he is as the king, his kingdom, and how to enter his kingdom, and how to live as a citizen of his kingdom.

In these parables, what we find is that he seeks to expose the human heart, telling us so much about ourself, attesting spiritual hunger.

What you're going to find in many of the parables, they're actually told in such a way, and Jesus said this early in Matthew 13 that we won't read today, is that for those people who are here today and here throughout all of history and they're playing around with God's truth, you won't be able to understand.

You'll think that they're too silly.

But only for those who are genuinely hunger to understand God, to know God, to know what these parables mean, will they find that they are so much richer than you can possibly imagine.

And finally, he tells these parables in order to call us for a response.

He wants to change our life.

And so most of the parables end with something like this He who has ears, let him hear.

If you've heard, don't just walk away and think, oh, that was a really clever story that Jesus told.

He wants to change our life, reform our life, inform our life, reorient our life.

And when we come to Matthew chapter 13 and verse 24, we're gonna read three different parables.

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

And in these parables, he's gonna do two things.

He's not only going to inform us about the kingdom, he's also going to do something else, and that is, he is going to answer a very perplexing thing, and that is a tension that we all feel with his kingdom.

You say, Well, what is a tension we all feel with his kingdom?

This is it.

You've thought this, if you haven't asked it.

If Jesus' resurrection defeated evil, why do I see so much evil?

If Jesus' resurrection provides us victory and his kingdom has been established, why do so many of us face so many losses and defeats?

Why does it sometimes seem like his kingdom is losing when he's the one who has all power and authority?

And so we read, starting in verse 24, he put another parable before them, saying, The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.

But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed seeds among the wheat and went away.

When the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also.

The servants of the master of the house came and said to him, Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?

How then does it have weeds?

He said to them, An enemy has done this.

So the servant said to him, Then do you want us to go and gather them?

And he said, No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the weed along with them.

Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, gather the weeds first, and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.

He put another parable before them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field.

It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it is grown, it is larger than all garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nest in its branches.

He told them another parable.

All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables.

Indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable.

This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet.

I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.

Then he left the crowds and went into the house, and his disciples came to him, saying, Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.

And he answered, The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, the field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom.

The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil.

The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.

Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so it will be at the end of the age.

And in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father.

And he who has ears let him hear.

When Jesus came and was teaching, Israel was not an independent nation, it was a depressed colony of Rome.

Rome ruled the world and taxed them heavily, took away their freedoms, and silenced their voice.

So the people of Israel, like many places, but in particular in Israel, because they had an idea, a concept of a Christ, a special son, because God had made a promise that one day a Christ would come, is that not only did they long, but they began praying for this Messiah to come, to overthrow Rome, and to establish a new kingdom under the rule of God.

So Jesus comes to the earth, he grows up at the roughly around the age of 30.

He begins a public ministry.

And his ministry began with signs and wonders, such power that people had to look.

He would heal people, make miracle food.

He would clearly had more power than anyone else.

And so everyone wanted to be around him to look.

And suddenly he began speaking.

He began speaking many of his sermons, beginning things like, and the kingdom of God is at hand.

Well, the these two combined together to see someone who had obvious divine power and who was saying, God's kingdom is at hand and I'm bringing it.

It created an electricity and excitement.

This is the one, this is who's going to do it for us.

But they were also as confused as they were excited.

You see, they had preconceived ideas about who the Christ would be, what he would do, just as we do.

They had preconceived ideas of how to enter this kingdom and what life would be like as a citizen in this kingdom, just as many of us do.

And so Jesus tells many of his parables, these three included, to reorient our understanding of the king and the kingdom.

And so let me show you just a few principles here from these three.

First is that Jesus' kingdom is planted in a contested world.

His kingdom is unlike the kingdoms that we are familiar with.

If you've studied anything about world history, even from the Bible, you know that there's these kingdoms.

Babylon took power, and then came Persia, and after Persia came Greece, and after Greece came Rome.

You have these major empires and kingdoms.

And every one of those empires, in every one of those kingdoms, what you find is a typical pattern.

Someone was in power, and while they were in power, the next empire was first amassing strength.

They were amassing an army and wealth, preparing for the day.

And then all of a sudden there was an invasion.

And then they conquered the ruling empire.

So they became the ruling empire.

And then what they did was they laid claim on all the land, and then they organized the structure to put down any uprisings.

So through all the Bible's history in the Old Testament, where you have different empires, what you never find is like Babylon and Persia or Persia and Greece ruling together, ruling in the same field, trying to get along in the same space.

But Jesus' kingdom is different than that.

He says the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field while he was while his men were sleeping, his enemies sowed weeds among the weed.

So you notice that two people are sowing, two people are planting seeds in one field.

The seeds are different, but they're in one contested field.

Interestingly, in Israel, there's a weed.

A weed called Darnell.

It looks just like wheat.

Darnell is on the right, weed is wheat is on the left.

When planted together at the same time, initially you can't tell a difference.

They look identical.

Until they mature, and eventually the weed remains stalk and the wheat produces grain.

But there's a time that you cannot tell, and yet they're vying for the same space.

What Jesus says when he begins to explain his parable is the difference between who's planting and what's being planted.

We're told that Jesus, the Son of Man, is the sower who plants sons of the kingdom.

See, the Bible says we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

And so Jesus came to the earth, he lived without sin, he went to a cross, he died for our sin, he was buried in a grave, and then he rose from the dead to prove he has the authority over our life and even to provide his forgiveness.

He says, if you put your trust in me, not only will I forgive you, I'll give you my righteousness, I will adopt you into my family and make you a citizen of my kingdom.

And this parable is a description of what Jesus does, taking people like me, a sinner, opening my eyes, helping me to become a son of the kingdom, and he plants his kingdom down into my heart, and I am living in contested land, and so are you.

At the same time, he says there's an enemy, and he tells us later that the enemy is the devil, and it says that he's also planting.

And the weeds that we are told, they're called the sons of the evil one.

Now, what is that?

Well, the fact is that's all of us before we put our faith in Christ.

Every one of us are born with a nature towards sin.

Satan tempts us and we act on that nature.

Every one of us has done things that we didn't want to do, and then we've done them again even after we said we won't.

Now, why?

It's because the Bible calls us a slave to sin before Jesus Christ comes into our heart.

There's a temptation, we feel like I must chase after it.

We have a desire, and so as a result, what you find is this is that you have Jesus and he's planting, and you have Satan and he's planting, and it's in one field.

But not only we planted in the same field, well, he goes on in verse 26, and he says that we grow in the same field.

He says, When the plants came up and bore grain, the weeds appeared also.

In other words, both weed and wheat, Christian and non-Christian, son of the kingdom and son of the evil one, they grow in the same field.

They vie with one another for water and resource, for rule and resource.

This is why people argue who gets to Lee be the leader.

And we argue and we vie and contend over the resources because some people say, I do not want resources going to that because I have a heart for God, and God says that that's evil, and other people say, Well, I don't think that's evil, and I want resource going to that.

And so we have contention among people, some who know the Lord, some who don't, over water and nutrient, resource and rule.

And then we find a tremendous patience in the farmer.

It says, when the servants noticed that there was actually wheat, and there was also weeds among the wheat, they said, Should we pull up all the weeds in fearing that they may uproot some of the wheat?

The farmer says, Let both grow together until the harvest.

In other words, be patient.

Two kingdoms are growing together, contending for rule and resource.

And the fact is, is they're not always discernible.

Sometimes wheat behaves a whole lot like weeds.

Sometimes followers of Jesus Christ behave a whole lot like people who don't know Jesus at all.

And similarly, sometimes wheat behaves a whole lot like what did I say?

Wheat.

Weeds sometimes behave like wheat.

Sometimes unbelievers who have no regard for the Lord can be incredibly kind and generous, decent, sacrificial, religious.

They can come into spaces like this and sing it is well with the best of us.

So the second principle becomes very, very sobering, but also clarifying, and that is that Jesus' kingdom will be distinguishable at the end.

There today is a difficulty in discerning between wheat and weeds.

And there is also a contention between the wheat and the weeds.

But that contention will not last forever.

There will come a day when they become Discernible.

Verse 30 in Jesus' parable, he says, At harvest time, I will tell the reapers, gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.

He tells us at harvest, and later he tells us that the harvest is at the end of the age.

He says, I'm going to tell the reapers, and we tell us later that this is the angels.

They're going to separate the wheat from the weeds.

They in that moment will be forever discernible, distinguishable, and separated.

And what he does in his explanation at the very end of our passage is he describes the future experience of both.

He says in verse 41, in sobering words, the Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all lawbreakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace, and in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The Bible says we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

And what he's saying here is this is that those who have sinned and have refused God's one provision in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sin will be separated from the wheat, and they will be sent to a place the Bible calls hell.

And they will receive exactly what they've asked for, and that is separation from God.

And when the Bible, in particular, Jesus describes hell, he does so in horrific words.

And the reason is because he doesn't want you to go there.

He describes it this way to produce a motivation within our hearts that we would avert it.

That he could then say, He who has ears, let him hear.

That if you happen to have fallen short of the glory of God and sinned and you know it, and you're not putting your trust in the one provision that he's given, there is danger, and he's urging you to move.

But the flip side is the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father.

That is, those of us who have put our faith in Jesus Christ after having sinned and fallen short of his glory, we are forgiven.

And we're given his righteousness.

And it says that those of us who have sinned against God, put our trust in Jesus Christ, seen him as the treasure, the ultimate treasure in the world, what it says in the Bible right here is that Jesus Himself will forgive us, give us his righteousness, which is why he calls us the righteous.

He calls sinners the righteous.

And it's not because of our merits, it's because of our faith in the righteous one.

And he sends us to heaven where we get to shine forever.

And he speaks of heaven with these kinds of terms to lead our hearts to long for that place.

So that when he says, he who has ears, let him hear.

That if you hear and understand that this is where you want to be, he's inviting you to take hold of the one provision that he's given that provides it for you.

If your heart is stirred and move.

But this third principle asks a very important question.

And it answers it, and it's this what's he doing in the meantime?

And what's happening to us as sons of the kingdom in the meantime?

If we're planted in this field and there's a contest over rule and over resource, and one day we will be distinguished and separated from one another, then what happens in the gap?

And the third thing that he describes here is that Jesus' kingdom expands within us in surprising ways.

It expands within us in surprising ways.

You see, one thing about our life, in particular when we first come to Jesus or begin even thinking about Jesus, is we are pretty one-dimensional.

The people in Israel were one-dimensional in this time.

What do I mean by that?

This is what I mean.

It means that when they thought of Christ's coming, they had all kinds of personal needs, but they saw one need as greater than all the other needs, and that is to overthrow Rome and establish a new kingdom and have a new king, a new ruler that ushered in the age and the rule of God.

In other words, they had political aspirations for the Christ.

This is what he's going to do for me.

And what's interesting is each one of us, when we begin to think about Jesus, when we begin to come to church, when we begin to open up the Bible, there's typically in each one of us one dominating need.

Now we may know we have other needs, but one of them stands taller than the rest.

Some of us, we've just begun to search out the things of Jesus or the Bible or Christianity because we feel guilty.

We've done things in our life and we feel guilty and shameful, and we've heard that maybe Jesus is somebody who can forgive us of sin, and so we're magnetized towards him in such a way that we come thinking maybe he can deal with this one particular guilt area of my life.

Others, interestingly, walk into the doors and they don't even know if they have sinned, and maybe they don't necessarily know that it's guilt from God.

They're just lonely.

Some people come in and they're like, look, I don't even believe what you believe.

And they tell us this, and it's totally cool.

We're glad that you're here.

They come and they tell us, I don't believe what you believe, but I am so lonely.

And I can't leave this place because people love me differently here than anywhere else.

People welcome me, they encourage me, and I need that in my life.

So I'm here not because of a guilt problem that I necessarily feel is paramount in my life, but I'm just lonely.

And other people come for a different reason.

Some people, as we get older, we start thinking about dying.

We're like, I think I've heard about heaven and hell, and I'm like, definitely want to go to one and not the other.

And so, how do I do that?

And I've heard that the Bible has answers to that.

So, some of us, it's simply a matter of mortality of life, and we need we need somebody to help us through and navigate that.

But interestingly, other people come and there's another reason.

Some people come and they're not lonely, they have an enormous social friend network, they're not overridden by guilt and shame, and they don't necessarily think a whole lot about heaven.

But their life is on fire and they simply need wisdom.

What about this marriage of mine and my children who are not behaving like they should be, and my money is a mess, and my mouth is a mess, and this is a mess, and this is a mess, and people come and like, I just maybe Jesus has some wisdom, some instruction on how I can live that would help me.

We're all pretty one-dimensional.

We look to Jesus to fix one part, but what we find next is that he intends to rule every part.

If you've come to Jesus Christ, the meantime between being planted in a field that's contested and going to heaven where we will be separated, the meantime is that his kingdom is not going to take over that one dominant area of your life.

He intends to rule every square inch of your life.

It says the kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field.

It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it is grown, it is larger than all the garden plants, it becomes a tree.

So as the birds of the air come and make nests in his branches.

An important thing to understand before we understand this is that the kingdom of God is not a land mass, it is a leader.

We think of land when we think of a kingdom.

We think borders and we think of a ruler inside those borders.

We think of land.

And you need to understand that the kingdom of God is a system of leadership.

Every single one of us has been involved in an institution, maybe it's a family, a business, a church, a small group, whatever.

And depending on the leader or the leadership team, it can be pretty dysfunctional.

But it's interesting if there's a change of leader or leadership team, sometimes something that's dysfunctional can be the exact same ingredients, same people, same employees, same computer systems, same everything.

But now all of a sudden, under a different leadership model, what you find is it's not dysfunctional, it's functional.

It even begins to thrive.

When we think about Jesus as King, what he does is he comes to it and he says, I am bringing perfect leadership to your life.

And I'm doing so as a king.

And just like a mustard seed that's so small, my reign is gonna start in just one little part of your heart, but it's going to expand to every part of your life, enabling you to become like a shelter to others.

You see, you think about Jesus' king.

You look at the kings of the world and you study most of the kings, most of the rulers of the world, and what you find is people who take their strength and they exploit others.

They take their strength and their resource and they say, I'm going to exploit you to ride on your back.

But what does Jesus do?

He comes to the earth and he says, Pile on, I'm gonna take you to God myself.

He puts us on his back.

He comes to the earth and he doesn't wear a gold crown.

What does he wear?

He wears a crown of thorns.

He gives us life for us.

He's a servant leader.

And not only that, he gives us a constitution in the Word of God, a way to live, a rule, a way to live in a way that is good for us.

And what's interesting is the two, it is his death on the cross.

It is his death that is the evidence that the constitution is for us and not against us.

He comes to us and he says, If I would give my own son for your benefit, do you not think that my instructions are in your best interest?

And so this king, this leader, the kingdom of God that's within our heart, what we find is this it's not just a land, it's not a space, it's the leader who's ruling over us.

But this leader, once you understand how good he is, you want him to take every square inch of your life.

That's what he says next.

The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until it was all leavened.

Yet leaven is yeast.

You put a little bit of yeast and some dough, and what happens?

You begin to knead it, and it begins to travel and take over the entire lump of dough.

This is simply saying, Jesus saying to us, My rule is like leaven in that it works invisibly but thoroughly.

It takes over the whole person.

You may have come to me to fix one thing, but I intend to rule, heal, and inform every square inch of your life and to prove to you that my rule in your life, whether it's relationship or sexuality or finance or work or any other part of your life, the evidence that you know that I'm going to be a good king to you is look at the holes in my hand.

They're for you.

He is for you.

And if you know Christ, he is not a weekend activity, he is everything to us.

So, what do we do with this?

A couple things.

First, let me encourage us to allow our understanding of his kingdom to create patience.

To create patience.

Did you notice that every one of these parables take time?

It takes time for the leaven to take over the whole lump of dough.

It takes time for the mustard seed to become a tree.

It takes time for the seeds to eventually grow to where there's grain.

It takes time.

Farming takes time.

And when we understand these realities of the kingdom and we live our life, what happens is it creates poison patience.

You see, on one hand, we look and we think the kingdom of God is here.

People are believing, faith is expanding, addictions are breaking, love is unfolding.

But we also see the kingdom of darkness is also here.

We see lostness soaring, sin celebrated, churches are closing, nations are spiraling.

But the understanding of his kingdom gives us poise and stability.

How so?

Well, when we see success among the wheat, among the Christian, among the Christian church, instead of looking and thinking, wow, this is amazing, we should become all the more vigilant to pray because we can anticipate that weeds will be planted nearby.

You find any church that's experiencing things like people being born again, people being baptized, people going overseas, people connecting in relationship with one another.

When you see that kind of spiritual fruit, you can be certain that Satan will intend to plant weeds to divide.

And so be patient and vigilant.

Be poised with your blessing.

But second, when we see success among the weeds and we do, we see sin celebrated, we see, we see, we see crime go unpunished, we see all kinds of things that are just terrible.

We should also be patient and anticipate a day of divine justice that will vindicate the wheat.

Wait for it.

Be patient.

Second, let's examine our lives.

See, friends, there's absolutely nothing more important than knowing to which kingdom you belong.

Some of you know that you know that you know that you were born again.

And I thank God for that.

But there are some people who look just like a Christian.

They're kind and decent, and yet they are all stock and have no grain.

And this is why the Bible tells us that eternity is too long to get this wrong.

So he tells us to examine ourselves.

In 2 Corinthians, he says, examine yourself and see if you are in the faith.

Test yourself.

What are the evidences of somebody who is in the faith?

Well, first of all, they believe in Jesus Christ, that he's the Son of God, that he came to the earth, that he lived without sin, that he died on a cross, he was buried in a grave, and he rose from the dead.

You must believe that to be saved.

But interestingly, a lot of us we have a memory of something a long time ago when we walked in the aisle.

The second proof is active resting in Jesus Christ today.

I put my trust in Jesus Christ when I was 16 years old, 36 years ago.

And I tell you, I have more hope.

I have more hope today that I woke up today, more certain that my only hope today is Jesus Christ than a memory of something 36 years ago.

There's all kinds of people who have a memory of a date written in their Bible, a memory of walking an aisle, a memory of something, but they're not actively hoping in the Lord Jesus Christ and expecting that He and He alone is the only assurance of salvation.

And I would simply say that's a scary way to take this test.

Active faith in Christ, resting in him, is a requirement.

To be filled with the Holy Spirit is the third evidence.

He tells us in Romans chapter 8, verse 9, he who does not have the Holy Spirit is not born again.

Romans 8:9

Well, how do you know if you have the Holy Spirit?

He says, first of all, there's fruit that'll come in and out of your life.

He says, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

We will not see these things perfectly, but persistently.

We will long to be these things.

And if you long to be those characteristics as an individual, it's proof that the Holy Spirit is inspiring your heart in that direction.

He tells us, as a fourth evidence, when the Holy Spirit is in our hearts, that we will be convicted of sin, righteousness, and judgment.

When we sin, we'll feel bad about it.

When we do what is right in his eyes and in his word, he confirms his pleasure in our heart.

And then as we're living our life, he convicts us of judgment.

That means he reminds us of the day before we're making our decisions.

One day you may have to ask an answer for this.

Friends, listen, if you're sinning today and you feel no impulse of guilt, if you're obeying today and you feel no impulse of his pleasure, and you're making your decisions, and it has been a long time since you have thought any way about the judgment seat of Christ, you really need to spend some time examining if you're born again.

Because these are evidences of the Holy Spirit within us.

He then goes on and he says, and there's other evidences of the Holy Spirit.

He puts a hunger in our heart for his word, a longing to quickly obey, a quick repentance when we stumble in sin, a love for his people.

And so I urge you to examine your heart.

And finally, I urge you to surrender to Jesus as King.

If you haven't, I urge you to surrender as Jesus is king.

It's really interesting.

A long time ago, God promised that he would send a seed, a sun, as the Savior of the world.

Literally, hundreds and hundreds of years later, God came to renew his promise when Babylon was in power in the world and he was so big, Babylon had ruled the world.

The metaphor the Bible uses of Babylon is a great tree.

God comes to a man named Ezekiel, a prophet, and he says, I want you to tell my people this, that one day I'm going to uproot Babylon as a tree, and I'm going to plant a tiny sprig on a mountain in Jerusalem.

And this tiny sprig, Ezekiel 17 says, will become a noble cedar, and under it will dwell every kind of bird, and in the shade of its branches, birds of every sort will nest.

Friends, this sprig was representative of Jesus Christ.

You see, just as his kingdom starts in us, so small like a mustard seed, so he the seed of the woman became so small that not just a baby, but a human cell in the womb.

And suddenly it began growing.

And he was born and he lived and he grew up and he lived without sin.

And then he went to a cross and he died for us.

He was buried like a seed in the ground.

And on the third day he rose from the dead in power.

Extending to us an invitation as King that if you will bow your knee with your heart, acknowledge your sin problem, believe in him, and confess him as Lord, that you will be forgiven.

And I urge you to do that now.

So let me pray.

Father in heaven, we thank you for what you teach us in the Bible.

I pray for those who are considering trusting you that you would incline their heart right now to call out to you in faith.

To simply say, I believe that I have a sin problem.

I believe in Jesus Christ.

I confess him as Lord of my life.

God, please allow your good reign to not only rule in their hearts, but to spread every part of their lives just as you do so in us.

I pray, Father, that you would help us to be curious about these parables.

To help us to see what we need to see, to examine our hearts.

We pray all of this in Christ's name.

Amen.