Seeing Jesus in Matthew: The Good News of the Kingdom

When? Wow. That good, huh?

It's one of these ones where everybody's on vacation. The people on vacation.

Hello, people on vacation.

Good to see you guys. You're enjoying the last of it. The last of the last of summer here.

Yeah, I put on a T-shirt this morning. I just thought, well,

of course, it's been really hot. It's going to continue to be really hot.

Look what happens. So I'm wearing a sweatshirt instead.

And I'm wearing my Davidson College sweatshirt, which is where I went to school

and where Steph Curry also went to school.

So he and I are obviously close. We're celebrating the Olympics and the big

win. Good job, Steph. Way to go.

I attribute his success to the time that we got together and studied for a music theory test.

That's where it all came from. So you're welcome, Welcome, America and Steph.

So anyways, we're continuing on in Matthew today.

We've been going through this series. So if you have a Bible in front of you,

you want to pull it out because we're actually going to be doing like we have

been doing throughout Matthew is going around to different sections of scripture

because that is what Matthew does.

We're going to be picking up in Matthew 4 verse 12.

Matthew 4:12

So we're going to get all the way through chapter 4.

And really chapter Chapter 4 marks the end of the beginning of the book of Matthew, right?

This kind of introductory section of Matthew, the first four chapters.

And up to this point, what Matthew has done, he's introduced Jesus to us.

We've read about his birth. We've read about his early life.

We've read about his baptism, his temptation before his ministry began.

And now, here at the end of chapter 4, we see just this early stages of him

going out and having a public ministry.

At this point, Jesus is probably in his 30s, early 30s. He's grown up. A lot of time has passed.

And after this point, I mean, this has been a breathless four chapters, right? A lot has gone on.

After this point in the book of Matthew, Matthew is going to slow things way down.

He's going to begin to focus on Jesus's teaching and Jesus's life and the things

that Jesus went around saying in very specific and long form kind of ways.

We know that chapter five, if you're familiar with it, is the famous Sermon

on the Mount, this long sermon where Jesus kind of unpacks his essential ideas

that he went around preaching.

And so I'm really looking forward to getting to that eventually,

although though we won't be going on immediately to chapter five.

We're going to have a little break in between, but we'll get there initially.

So here at the end of chapter four, though, we have this preliminary ministry,

this discussion of how Jesus went out and started his ministry.

So picking up in verse 12, let's read it.

When he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee.

He left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum by the sea in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali.

This was to fulfill what was spoken through the

prophet isaiah land of zebulun and land

of naphtali along the road by the sea beyond the jordan galilee of the gentiles

the people who live in darkness have seen a great light and those living in

the land have of the shadow of death a light has dawned from then on jesus began

to preach repent because the kingdom of heaven has come near.

So Jesus heads up to Galilee. He starts his ministry, and it's all precipitated

by the arrest of his cousin John,

John the Baptist, who baptized Jesus and baptized lots of other people.

We read about that in Matthew chapter 3, and we learned sort of about the backstory

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

of why Matthew was arrested actually later on in Matthew 14.

So why was Jesus arrested? Matthew 14 3 says, It says, Herod had John arrested,

chained him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip's

wife, since John had been telling him, it's not lawful for you to have her.

So John is arrested after baptizing Jesus.

Why? Well, because John dared to tell the truth to Herod that it was not right

for him to steal his brother's wife and marry her.

He just told them the truth. He says, it's not lawful for you to sleep with your brother's wife.

And I really like wonder about what circumstance brought this about, right?

Because it's not like Herod or John were like likely to hang out.

They weren't really peers.

Remember, we learned about John last, well, two weeks ago.

We learned a little bit about John and John was this kind of wild man.

He lived in the desert. He wore camel hair clothes, which is not comfortable.

And he ate wild locusts and honey. And he just lived out in the wilderness outside

of Judea, in the Judean wilderness outside of Jerusalem.

And so they weren't exactly friends. And I can't imagine that John actually

went around to look for Herod to explain to him his error.

I can only imagine that at some point he stood face to face with Herod,

either because Herod invited him to come see him or Herod went out to see him in the desert.

And he wanted to ask John about what was going on.

And John told him, he said, he said, I don't think it's lawful for you to marry this woman.

Clearly, at some point, Herod was trying to get the approval of John,

and because John withheld that approval, he got arrested.

Look, I don't want to read too much into this little scene, but I just want

to make a comment, and that's this, that John did not hold back from telling the truth to Herod.

He didn't hesitate to be straightforward about God's law.

I don't get the impression that he was trying to to get Herod's attention,

that he was trying to target Herod, but some circumstance came about where someone

asked him, probably Herod himself asked him, if he thought that it was right

that he buried this woman, and he said, no, it's not.

He did not hesitate to be straightforward about what God says in his word.

And we're going to be getting into, in a couple weeks, a series on politics,

because I'm not sure if you've known, there is an election happening.

Have you guys noticed that?

No, it's not a big deal. And look, I'm going to have a lot to say about politics

eventually here, but one thing comes across really clearly in this chapter,

in chapter four, and that is that Jesus's ministry and his message and his influence,

at least in his time, encroached on the political sphere.

It encroached on the political sphere. I mean, John is a really great example

of this. John had a very similar message to Jesus.

John was delivering a message of moral reform in the the nation,

he was calling on people to radically turn to God. Let's go back to the previous slide, if we could.

We can go back to the one between those two. There we go. Thank you.

He was calling people to radically turn to God with their whole selves,

and he was killed for it because what he said was thought of or perceived to

be a political message because it was about Herod.

And see, like, we as modern people living in the United States or living in

the Western world, we live We live in what's called a liberal democracy.

And I don't mean liberal like one side of the two political spectrums.

I mean liberal as in the enlightenment concepts that undergird our democracy,

right, that everyone agrees on whether you're a conservative or a more of a

progressive sort of person.

And we live in a liberal democracy and we have a kind of thinking about our

political system and how it's built.

We believe that there is a political sphere of life. There's political things.

And we believe that there are other spheres of life, including like religious things.

Right. And the idea behind the Enlightenment and all of liberal democracies

and kind of our civics is that we keep those two things kind of separate.

We keep religious ideas over here and political ideas over here,

and it's best not to mix the two.

But what we see, and I think we see this a lot in just real everyday stuff,

is that though it is a nice idea to think that we could just have a limited

political sphere over here and a limited religious sphere over here,

that's just not the way values work.

Ends up being a lot of overlapping here.

And what we see is that those two spheres don't separate out nicely.

That's just not how life works. In fact, the gospel that Jesus went around preaching,

as exampled by John, and we'll talk about it further on here,

is not limited to either politics or religion.

It's actually bigger than both of those things. So the gospel circumscribes

the political and the religious.

It is not held within either of those things.

It's not limited to either of those things. The gospel is such a big and crazy

announcement of reality that it has political and religious dimensions.

We think of Christianity and faith and the gospel as merely religious,

and I'm just making the point is that it does not sit neatly into that little little category.

Again, we're going to talk about this more, and I'll just give the caveat,

even though we're not going to get into a message on politics,

that that doesn't necessitate the kind of partisanship that we see,

and I think in our political lives in the United States, America is really just ruining our country.

It does not necessitate that kind of partisanship, but I will say this,

that we need to understand this, and that is that Jesus is someone who had a political message.

You cannot read the gospel of Matthew and get away from that.

It doesn't fit, again, it doesn't map neatly on our partisan divisions,

but Jesus had things to say with political implications.

There's just no getting around that.

His gospel is not a political message. It's not exclusively political,

but it does inform politics.

And it's impossible to miss that here in Matthew as long as you're paying attention.

Look, I mean, we see this right here in this section. After John is arrested,

Jesus goes north into Galilee.

Galilee was, it's a backwoods, far away from the political centers of power.

But it was also a place where there was a lot of turmoil. oil.

There had been various revolutions and sectarianism going on in Galilee.

The people up there were really resentful of the central power in Jerusalem

and particularly resentful of Rome.

And so they were a bit of purists and they had really politicized ideas about

the way things should go about in terms of Israel and everything.

So he goes to this very political part of the country and he starts preaching this message.

And it is a decisively political. It has political implications.

He says, repent because the kingdom of heaven has come near.

Now, if you live in the Roman empire and someone is saying that there is a kingdom

come, that's a political message because there's already an emperor.

And if you're in Israel at this time, there's already a king.

His name is Herod. He's a puppet of Rome.

And so the very fact that Jesus would preach this kind of a gospel is a little

bit of a poke in the eye to the status quo.

It's a little bit more than a little bit. It was overtly a political message,

one that got him in a lot of trouble.

This message was unsettling for those who were invested in the status quo.

It was unsettling for the Romans, certainly, although they really didn't pay

much attention to the Jews.

They sort of had a policy of just, ah, whatever, like we'll ignore them.

We don't understand them.

And so we'll ignore them until we can't anymore, which we see at the end of Jesus's life. It was a.

It was unsettling, certainly for Herod. I mean, we read about in Matthew 2 and

3, when Herod hears, when the wise men come and say, tell us about this one

who's born king of the Jews, what does Herod try to do?

He tries to kill this little baby because someone is advancing or putting forward

a person who was going to be king. And Herod is king. He wants to say king.

And so he goes about killing these people. Now this was, we should say,

that was Herod's father.

There are three Herods. It's a little confusing.

But anyways, at this point, we have the second Herod.

The first Herod is the one who tried to kill Jesus.

But anyways, sorry, I just shouldn't have said that. I should have let you think

it was all the same Herod and we would have been fine.

Now I've just confused you and I apologize, but I want to be accurate, but we'll move on.

Look, even this quote, right? We have this quote about a people walking in darkness

have seen a great light. It's a quote from Isaiah nine.

And I want you, I'm going to read you a longer version of the quote.

Okay. Because again, we, we talked about this in the last couple of weeks,

whenever Matthew is quoting old Testament scriptures and he does,

he's all over, particularly the prophets and particularly Isaiah.

When a Jewish reader who were the original audience of this message would read these references,

they had so much scripture memorized, and particularly these very poignant and

important passages, that they would have read what we have as two lines here

in Matthew 4, and they would have just known the entire context for this book.

So this is the whole context of what he's quoting here from Isaiah 9.

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. A light has dawned on

those living in the land of darkness.

You have enlarged the nation and increased

its joy the people have rejoiced before you

as they rejoice at harvest time and as

they rejoice when dividing spoils for you have shattered their oppressive yoke

and the rod of their shoulders the staff of their oppressor and just as you

did on the day of midian for every trampling boot of battle and the bloodied

garments of war will be burned as fuel for a fire.

For a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us, and the government

will be on his shoulders.

And he will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

The dominion will be vast, and its prosperity will never end.

He will reign on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish and and

sustain it with justice and righteousness from now on and forever.

The zeal of the Lord's armies will accomplish this.

This little reference that he makes to Isaiah 9, it just goes right over our

heads, but it was very clear that he was laying hold of a pretty important and

very political message here. Talk about politics.

I mean, Matthew is just, he's laying it on thin.

Jesus proclaims the coming kingdom, and he does so laying hold of the tradition

of the prophets who have been proclaiming that one is going to come,

this Messiah figure who's going to come,

and he will reign on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish and

sustain it with justice and righteousness from now on and forever.

It is very difficult to not—Matthew was not on accident bringing these things up.

He's making it clear that there is something very

serious about this kingdom that jesus is proclaiming it

does not sit squarely in the sphere of

religious things or even of

political things it's a huge message with big implications so we get that really

early on here let's keep reading on because we're we're kind of the scene shifts

a little bit and as he's in galilee right he's gone out he's preaching this

message to repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near he's He's teaching

about the kingdom of God all over the place.

We get a sense that he's probably got followers following after him.

And here we see in verse 18, the particular calling of some of the early disciples.

Excuse me. It says this, as he was walking along the Sea of Galilee,

he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and his brother, Andrew.

And they were casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen.

Follow me, he told them, and I will make you fish for people.

Immediately they left their nets and followed him.

Going on from there, he saw two brothers, James and Zebedee, and his brother John.

And they were in a boat with Zebedee, their father, preparing their nets.

And he called them and immediately left their boat and their father and followed him.

See, here we see this Jesus's invitation to Simon, Peter, and Andrew,

and then the brothers, James and John, two sets of brothers to follow after him.

He just, he makes a very Very simple invitation, follow me.

As we read this, it's a little weird, right? Because it's almost like they're

like hypnotized, right?

Like, oh, they just use those two words and then they just leave everything

behind. They follow after him.

I mean, there is a sense that these guys were all about this.

They were immediately drawn in by Jesus, right?

But if we understand a little bit about the context, it makes a little bit more

sense and it can be explained a little bit better.

See, in ancient Israel, there was this very well-known idea of just following

around a rabbi or a teacher. That's what rabbis did.

They would travel around and they would have students with them who followed

them, literally just followed them around and learn from them.

It was a normal practice in Israel at this time.

All rabbis had disciples. And Jesus at this point was a rabbi.

He was teaching publicly.

He was understood to be a person of authority who had a message.

And so when he's walking by the Sea of Galilee and he sees these sets of brothers

and they immediately go and follow him, it's not like their first time hearing

about Jesus. And it's not like this is some new invention of a relationship

between teacher and disciple.

There is, again, this tradition in Israel that disciples would follow after their masters.

And so that's what's going on here.

They aren't under some sort of a trance, but they are leaning into a tradition

within Israel of following after a master.

But what they are, they're people who have heard Jesus no doubt teaching about

the kingdom that's coming,

and their immediacy has everything to do with the fact that they understand

that Jesus is preaching something that's exciting, and it's bold,

and it's just scratching the itches of their desires and their heart.

Like what Jesus is saying, going around talking about the kingdom of God,

like it's what they've been longing for. It's something true.

It's something good. It's something beautiful. And so the minute that Jesus

says, hey, you want to be one of my followers?

They're like, yes, we will give up everything.

We want to follow after you.

Following after Jesus, they're saying, we want to be with you.

We want to learn from you. We want to do what you do.

And the goal that they had after following after Jesus was to become like their

rabbi, because they understand that Jesus had something special going on. He understood things.

They don't get the full sense of who Jesus is.

That, I mean, clearly, as we look at the disciples, particularly in the book

of Matthew, it takes them a while to finally understand who Jesus really is.

But even in these early stages, they are compelled by Jesus.

And I just think we need to think about this, and we need to recover this sense

of discipleship once again.

I talk about discipleship practices a lot.

We have this particular list of things that I call just like becoming practices, things that we can do.

I think I got a slide for it. things that we can do to become like Jesus.

These are habits that I ask you guys to practice on a day-to-day basis so that

you can kind of lay hold of Jesus'

character and start to demonstrate his character and start to love the things that he loves.

And I keep mentioning this, and I'm going to keep mentioning this over and over

and over again until you're really bored with it. maybe you're already there,

but I'm just going to keep going.

I'm going to mention this because I think it is very clear that being a disciple

involves living a certain kind of way.

James and John and Peter and Andrew, they understand this.

They understand that if they're going to follow after Jesus,

that means that they're going to have to live a certain kind of way.

They're going to have to model their life after Jesus's actions and his characters.

Following after Jesus, being a disciple means that they can't be fishermen anymore.

They can't kind of like divide up their life in the way that we have become,

I think, very comfortable with kind of compartmentalizing certain things in their lives, right?

They could say, oh yeah, well, I'm a follower of Jesus on Sundays,

or in their case, Fridays, right?

Friday nights, I'm really into Jesus. I pray to Jesus. He's really great.

He says, but the rest of the time, I'm just a fisherman.

And I understand that they have this kind of radical thing where they just give up their jobs.

But what they understand is that the summons that Jesus gives them to follow

them is not just limited to one little part of their life.

It's not limited to their thoughts or their prayer life or their religious sphere,

right? It's something bigger.

To follow after Jesus for them is a whole life kind of thing.

And I think, honestly...

We need that. Because if you find that this whole, just come to church sometimes

and like, you know, we kind of pray sometimes and sort of, I'm a Christian,

like that's a label that I have in my mind.

If you find that kind of unsatisfying, it's because it is unsatisfying.

And it's because what Jesus preached, this whole repent because the kingdom

of heaven is at hand, is much bigger than what happens on Sunday morning.

It's meant to be something that is consuming of your entire higher life.

And if that sounds scary, it's because it is scary.

And if that sounds like it's trotting on your personal space,

it's because it is treading on your treading, trotting. Who knows?

I don't know. You don't know. I don't. We'll just just say it sounds like it makes sense.

It's encroaching on your personal space.

If the kingdom of God is here, that means that my little kingdom needs to respond in some kind of way.

Everybody has a kingdom. You have a kingdom. I have a kingdom.

I have things over which I have authority.

I've got four children. For all intents and purposes, they're my kingdom.

I've got a little apartment and a 2005 Volvo XC90. I've got a bunch of bills.

These are my kingdom. These are things related to me. They are things within

my power. They are my kingdom, right?

You've got it. I've got it. We've all got it. i've

got a job this is a this is a job it's how i get paid right and then the question

that i need to ask myself the question that you need to ask yourself is how

is your kingdom going is your kingdom surrendered to jesus's kingdom.

And that's an uncomfortable question because we live in a culture,

again, that has taught us that we separate things out. You have a religious thing and that's fine.

But this message that Jesus went around preaching, this message of come and

follow me, this message of put your faith and your hope and your trust in me,

this message that the kingdom of God is coming among us, it comes against these

little ways that we compartmentalize.

And it asks us, it demands of us that if we want to be a part of it,

then we submit our kingdom to Jesus.

We submit our whole life to Jesus.

And so, you know, just want to ask you, how's your kingdom going?

What's going on with your kingdom?

What's going on with yourself, yourself, your identity, like how you think of

yourself, what's going on with your life?

Is it surrendered to Jesus? Do you have the sort of life?

Is your agency? Is your domain, is it submitting to the greater king?

And I think the hard question, right?

This is the thing that's hard about me. I grew up going to church camp.

You guys been to church camp, right? It was awesome. It was loud. It was great.

And then at one point, some guy with some really cool skinny jeans,

which is what cool people used to wear, young folks.

We used to be cool when we wore our skinny jeans. Now we're all cringe and weird

and stuff. But that's okay.

We're still going to wear them. In like 20 years, we'll be cool again.

That's an old people joke. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm alienating the youngs.

The hard thing is like, okay, so like I got to this thing. I went to church camp.

I grew up in church. And many a time did I surrender my kingdom to Jesus.

Many a time did I hear somebody say, you know, you just got to give your life to Jesus.

You got to put your hope in Jesus. You got to put your trust in Jesus.

And I mean, there were moments where I did that and they meant something. thing.

They were meaningful moments where I heard the gospel of Jesus Christ,

the fact that he wanted to forgive me of my sin. He wanted to give me eternal life.

He wanted to be Lord of my life, and it was going to be good that I could just

trust in him, and he's worthy of all trust.

And I heard that message, and I believed that message, and I raised my hand

or went up front or did whatever the thing I was asking him to do.

I had faith enough to respond to that message, and I believe that that was an

important moment in my life, moment

when I crossed over into this a relationship in this life with Jesus.

But I've got to tell you, I'm 40 years old now, and those moments mattered.

But what I'm finding is that there's another layer of challenge for falling after Jesus.

And that's, okay, I gave my life to Jesus. I surrendered my kingdom to Jesus

this once when I was 13 or 16 or 25 or whatever, but how do 20,

30, 40 years on, how do I continue on with surrendering my kingdom and my life to Jesus?

And it is a hard, it is a complex question because what I've found over the

years is though I believe something happened to me. I believe God God put his Holy Spirit to me.

I believe he saved me by faith when I responded to salvation,

to the good news that he's forgiven me and adopted me in.

I believe that that was true. But what I find is that my heart continues to

be self-focused, right?

And my heart continues to be very comfortable with trusting myself and my own

competence and my own ability over trusting Jesus, right?

And every day, every moment, you know, every couple of years,

I probably have like a come to Jesus moment, right?

Like maybe you've had this where like, I'm like, I realized,

no, I'm in sin in certain places.

Like I have idols that I'm worshiping. I have parts of my life where I'm just

putting myself first and my own desires first.

And so I repent of those things. And yet years later, years pass and I find

that I have to do this all over again.

And I'm not I'm not saying that in despair. I'm actually saying this is the

normal course of Christian life.

Don't beat yourself up for the fact that you fail to, in a single moment when

you're a teenager or whatever, you fail to give your whole heart to Jesus. But understand this.

Call to follow him remains. It remains vibrant in your 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond.

The call to surrender your kingdom to him remains, and it's good,

and it's the work of faith and maturity.

And you can continue on and have that.

You don't just want to stay into this place where you feel like,

oh, I messed up, and I'm following my own kingdom.

The work of a disciple is to every day A, give your heart and your stuff and

your kingdom to Jesus and trust him more and more.

And these practices, right? They're not lists. They're not things on a list

that you check off. So you can say, oh, I did the thing and I made Jesus happy.

These are things, practices, practice-based Christianity forces us into situations

where we understand that we aren't surrendered to Jesus.

If you find living your life this way hard, that's the point.

So that you will realize I understand what Jesus calls me to.

I'm called to be a person who blesses with people.

I'm called to be a person who's on mission.

I'm called to be a person who is quick to confess my sins to Jesus.

I'm called to be a person who's talking about Jesus with other people and telling

people how great Jesus is.

I'm called to be a person who prays, who meets with God on a daily basis.

I'm called to be a person who is examining my own life and lifting it up to

him and just saying, Lord, show me what's not in keeping with your kingdom.

Him. If you find that difficult, good. That's the point.

That should make you a little uncomfortable.

It's a good place to be, to be a little uncomfortable in the presence of God.

It's even better that you can be assured that he's forgiven you,

that he's going to build you up. He's going to lead you through.

He's going to show you gently and kindly and with all grace,

how you can surrender even more and how you can enjoy him even more and how

you can live this life in this kingdom even more.

See, these disciples early on, they came, they gave up everything.

They said, we're not going to compartmentalize our lives anymore.

We're just going to give you everything, Jesus. And they did that to a maximal

degree. And that is our calling too.

We are going to continue on and be the sorts of people who are giving over our kingdoms to him.

That is what it means to be someone who repents because the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Someone who understands, man, Jesus is doing something remarkable.

It has to do with every part of my life. the personal and beyond.

And so I am going to just welcome him in. I'm going to be a part of my kingdom.

I'm going to trust and have faith in him.

That is what it means to be a person who follows after Jesus for your whole

life. And so how do you stay there? How do you persist in that?

You just keep pressing in. You pursue the kingdom of God.

You ask yourself these questions, Christians, Lord, in what ways is my kingdom

about me and not about you?

And you listen. You listen.

Let's keep reading. Let's keep reading. This is the final little bit of Matthew

4 here. How much time do we have? Okay.

Now Jesus began to go all over Galilee, teaching in their synagogues,

preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the the people.

And then the news about him spread throughout Syria.

So they brought him all those who were afflicted, those suffering from various

diseases and intense pains and the demon possessed and the epileptics and the paralytics.

And he healed them. Large crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis,

Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan.

So Jesus starts to have this remarkable ministry.

He's going around, he's preaching that the kingdom of God is near.

He's preaching the good news of the kingdom is what it says right here,

the gospel of the kingdom.

He's telling all of Israel that something has happened. It's happening through him.

And God is, through Jesus Christ, advancing his mission. He's bringing his kingdom.

He's making good on all the promises that God has given to you over the years.

This week, we are going to be taking pause on our series. But what I'm going

to encourage you to do is over the next couple of weeks is, would you keep reading?

If you could pick up in Matthew 5 tomorrow and start reading Matthew 5,

you will get a taste of what it looks like, what Jesus said it looks like to

be a person who is entering into this kingdom, what the good news of the kingdom looks like.

In Matthew 5, 6, 7, and a little on into 8, you see the Sermon on the Mount

and what Jesus was teaching to people.

I would really encourage you in preparation for when we get back into Matthew

5, which will be a couple of weeks, we're gonna take a little break and do some

other things and we'll get back into it, to just be spending some time reading what Jesus said.

But just in order to not get too far ahead of ourselves, I just want to summarize what he was about.

I like, of course, the way Dallas Willard summarized it.

He says this, in the gospels, Matthew,

Mark, Luke, and John, the gospel is the good news of the presence and availability

of life in the kingdom now and forever through reliance on Jesus the anointed.

If you start to read Jesus's good news about the kingdom, it's all about the

fact that God is present, that he's with you, that he hasn't abandoned us to

some sort of outer realm where he isn't there.

In fact, the good news of the kingdom is that God is among us,

that he comforts those who mourn, that he heals those who are sick,

that he lifts up the brokenhearted, that he cares about people and that he's present with them.

And Jesus' teaching is all based on that fundamental reality,

which he reveals is true.

He says, this is just a part of the kingdom coming among you.

God's presence, his power, his kingdom coming to earth looks like all of this stuff.

And we see Jesus, he preaches this message, and it's wild.

And it's not only a wild message, but it is is accompanied by these signs and wonders, right?

People are being healed everywhere Jesus is going. People are being healed.

They're hearing about it over in Syria.

That's like people coming from Wyoming saying, oh, I hear something really great

is happening here in Washington State.

People are hearing about it in other countries. They're bringing sick people

to this northern region of Galilee.

People all over other parts of Israel are hearing about what Jesus is doing. and everywhere.

Every day, the crowds are increasing because they're hearing about this good

news that he's preaching and this power that he has to make people well.

We read later on in Matthew, you know, John the Baptist, who is in prison, right?

He's been in prison, but in prison, he hears about all the stuff that Jesus

is doing and he sends his disciples.

He wants to ask about them. He says, I'm going to read you from Matthew 11, two through six.

It says, now when John heard in prison that what the Christ was doing,

that is healing and teaching and doing all these things.

He sent a message through his disciples and asked him, are you the one who's

come or should we expect someone else?

And Jesus replied to them, go and report to John what you hear and see.

The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with leprosy are cleansed,

the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor are told the good news,

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

Matthew in prison, he's been cut off from everything, right?

He's going to end up dying in prison.

Read about that in Matthew 14, after the little bit that we read in the beginning,

he gets beheaded, but he hears about this ministry that he had prepared the

way for, this ministry of Jesus.

And he just wants to make sure that Jesus really is the one who he thinks he

is, that he really is the Messiah, who he thinks he is.

And Jesus's reply to Matthew is a little bit cryptic to us.

Because again, we're not immersed

in the Hebrew scriptures, but it was not cryptic to somebody who was.

It was not cryptic to an ancient Israelite who really knew.

Because in fact, he says these things which don't really seem like an answer

to John's question, which is, are you the one?

He says these things, but they were actually totally an answer because what

Jesus is doing is stringing together quotes from the book of Isaiah, several of them.

And I'm going to read two sections for you right now. Okay.

So this is Jesus's reply to John is just quoting the book of Isaiah.

And all of these quotes are from sections about the Messiah.

He says, Isaiah 35, five through six, then the eyes, the blind will be open

and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped.

And the lame will leap like a deer and the tongue of the mute will shout for

joy for the waters will break forth in the wilderness and the streams of Arabah.

Or in Isaiah 61, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he's anointed me

to bring good news to the afflicted.

He sent me to bind up the brokenhearted and to proclaim liberty to the captives

and freedom to the prisoners.

What Jesus is doing is he's answering John's question by referring back to the

scriptures. And he says, look, the scriptures said all these things are going to be happening.

The blind are going to see, the deaf are going to hear, the good news is going

to come to those who are mourning.

And so, yes, I am this one. I am the one in whom all these promises are being fulfilled.

Worship team's going to come up here right now, but I just want us to think

about this for a little bit.

See, Jesus is showing up. He's bringing this good news of the kingdom.

There is healing, and there is remarkable things going on, and it's like we've

been talking about before.

In Jesus, all these promises of Israel made to Israel are coming true.

They're coming true for all people.

And they remain true for us now.

Like the kingdom that he invites us into remains this kind of a kingdom.

It remains powerful like this.

We continue to have God among us, present with us.

I believe that that's the consistent invitation in the New Testament,

that we can enter into this kind of relationship through and in Jesus Christ,

through trusting in him, where we can know his comfort,

his presence, his power, his healing, his blessing, like all of these things

continued to be promised to us in him.

And as we're going to go through in the book of Matthew.

We see kind of how it plays out. And the way that this plays out,

what determines if you experience this or not is just faith.

It's always about faith. Faith is, we've sometimes I think like made it into

this kind of an abstract idea.

Like if I just faith hard enough and Jesus will show up into my life, right?

But the way Jesus starts talking about the kingdom, he simply says this,

says, the kingdom of God has come among you.

Like it's just something that is happening.

And if you have faith, you'll see it. If you respond in trust,

you're going to experience it.

And so the life that we have, the calling that we have as disciples,

as people who are walking into the kingdom is always just about faith.

It's always just about hearing what God has promised and then setting my hope

and my expectation and my desire and my heart and building my life around what he says is true.

If you want to see the kingdom, if you want to know his presence with you,

then you need to exercise faith.

And I think there's like, again, we're going to get into Matthew here and he's

going to flesh that out to us.

He's going to make it really clear what that looks like for us.

But to just give you guys something to chew on, I think more than anything, faith looks like this.

It just, for me and you in our day-to-day life, it just means expecting something from God.

And I think so often we get these ideas about God and we put God into this little

sphere of religious thinking, right?

And then we put God in there and then we think, but I'll handle everything else.

And so we don't set ourselves up in life to need anything at all from God.

Maybe he makes us feel good. Oh my gosh, there's a bird in the lobby.

I'm sorry, there's a bird in the lobby. Don't leave this room.

There is a bird. Sorry, I just ruined that really. That was a moment.

And then I had to tell you that there's a bird out there. That's just weird.

So like, it's so easy for us to just put God in this little box and we expect

almost nothing from him.

We expect almost nothing from him. And I just like, want to just say like,

Like the step is faith and it's just saying, okay, God, if you promise these

things and they're bigger than this little thing,

then I'm gonna expect you to not stay in this little box.

And I think that we can just take steps of faith.

We can do that prayerfully and just sit with God and begin to ask ourselves,

okay, what's the thing, God?

Where is the thing in my life? Where's the thing in my kingdom that's just closed off to you?

That doesn't even require you, that expects nothing of you.

And I'm not suggesting that it's going to be like this whole thing,

like one day, everything is going to be sorted out.

I'm just saying the way we move forward in our life,

like the way we move forward in our kingdoms and continuing on to grow in surrender

to Jesus is we are thoughtful and intentional about exercising faith in different areas of our life.

So you have a financial life. Is Jesus asking you to do something in that little

realm. You have a work life.

Is Jesus asking you to think of your work life as a ministry place and to start

taking steps of faith there that make you uncomfortable?

You have a neighborhood life, a social life.

Okay, what does faith look like for you in that little thing?

If you were to surrender that little area of your kingdom to Jesus,

what does that look like?

What does exercising faith in that part of your life look like for you?

These are the things that I just want you to do. I want you to go home and to

think about your life and to one, assess your faith.

Have you put Jesus in a little box?

Or is he really, do you really expect him to show up in every part of your life?

And if the answer's no, don't beat yourself up.

Jesus doesn't need you to beat yourself up. Just ask yourself the question,

what can I do to expect something from Jesus outside of the bubble?

And then just start to pray about that thing. Fixate on it, fixate on it for

a week. Just pray about it for a week.

It doesn't have to be your whole life. Don't try to give your whole life to

Jesus. You can't do it. Give one thing to Jesus.

Is it you're sick and you need healing? Okay, I'm just going to pray for that.

I'm going to seek the Lord to show up.

Is it that you want to rely more on him in your work life?

Is it that you want to share Jesus and talk about him outside of church?

Take a step of faith because he's there. the kingdom has come among us.

And so often we miss it just because we're closed off to it.

We've put the kingdom into this little bubble and we can intentionally let,

exercise our faith beyond the bubble.

Great. So we're going to worship. I'm going to go catch a bird.

And Lord Jesus, I thank you for your word.

Lord, I pray you just get rid of all the seriousness within us,

Lord. We know that you're holy. You're holy and you're good and you're beautiful.

Oh God, how awesome it is. And yet God, you invite us right into your holiness.

Lord, you say, don't be afraid.

The kingdom has come among you.

We have a place in the kingdom. We have an eternal place in the kingdom.

It's the adoption into your family that we have, God.

And so God, as we go out into our life and we survey our own kingdoms and we

try to see, are these things submitted to you, Lord Jesus?

Lord, I just pray against any condemnation, Lord. Lord, the foundation that

we have is your sacrifice, Jesus.

You've paid the price for our sins. So even when we make mistakes and when we

err and when we're selfish, Lord, you just say, I've already forgiven it.

And so Lord, I just pray against any shame and condemnation as we go out and

we try to think about where can we exercise faith? faith. I pray that that would

just be so far from us, God.

A miraculous confidence that you're good and you're with us, Lord.

I pray that that would pervade us as we head out into this week,

Lord, that we would just understand that there's so much invitation and so much

joy in trusting you and knowing you more and more, God. Give us that confidence, God.

And would you give us specific things, specific things where we can exercise

our faith and see your kingdom coming among us, Lord, Lord, where we want to

unleash your word into our life.

Lord, we believe that you've already claimed all of it, everything about us.

This whole world is yours.

And God, would you teach us to exercise faith that knows that and says that

and moves in that spirit?

God, I pray for every person here, Lord, as we set to pray this week,

Lord, that you would give us something specific because you're the God who's

with us, who's growing us, who's teaching us. We're your disciples, Jesus.

We want to be like you, Jesus.

Give us that vision. Give us that hope. Give us that persistent faith to pursue that.

All right. Let's worship the Lord.

Music.