The Kingdom Way | Luke 6:12-19 with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch podcast.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the pastor at MetaCurch, and I hope that today's message is inspiring and enlightening and really builds you up wherever you're at in life.

I want to welcome you in wherever you're joining us from.

If you're here in Holodusman, I'm so glad that you came out.

If you're with us online, I'm grateful for that ministry as well.

If you're new with us, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch.

And I'm so glad that you're joining us today.

I think it's no accident that you are here.

And man, we are just glad that you have come.

We pray that God moves in a mighty way.

We are journeying together through the gospel of Luke.

Luke is one of four historical accounts of the life of Jesus recorded for us in the scriptures, specifically in what we call the New Testament, which is the story of Jesus and the church.

And we have been walking through Luke's gospel for quite some time.

As a matter of fact, I looked this morning in two weeks on May 17th.

That will mark one year of us going through the Gospel of Luke.

Now, if you're here for the first time, you're probably thinking, dang it, they're probably at the very end, and I missed all of it.

We're in chapter six, and we're gonna be in chapter six for like 10 more weeks, okay?

You've missed nothing.

You are here at the perfect God-appointed time.

We're just trying to follow the Holy Spirit.

And the thing about God's word is we believe that it is inspired, which means the deeper that you dig into it, the deeper you realize it is.

And so uh we're just really trying to figure out who Jesus is because that's who saves us, that's who redeems us, that's who restores us.

Amen.

And that's who we follow.

And so if we don't know who Jesus is, we don't know who to follow.

So we're taking our time and we're figuring it out.

We're in this section of Luke that we have called the kingdom way.

That's the theme of this section.

Jesus demonstrating and declaring the way that the kingdom of God operates.

And man, this is a beautiful thing because we have the opportunity in the life and the teaching of Jesus to find out how to invest our life into a kingdom that is worth investing our lives into.

We are a people, especially in the West, and especially as Americans, who have just become enamored and infatuated with the kingdoms of this world.

The power structures, the celebrities, the influencers.

It takes up all of the hard drive in our mind and on our hearts.

It's how we live, it's how we keep score, it's how we determine success, and yet we live unfulfilled lives.

We live very dissatisfied.

We live feeling empty all the time, and we go after the things of the world.

And once we have finally gotten whatever the culture has promised us, we end up even emptier than when we started.

And that is because there is one kingdom that you were created for.

That God created you on purpose, which means it's no accident that you're on earth, and he created you with purpose, and that purpose is to join hands with Jesus and to walk out the way of God's kingdom, helping him establish it here on earth.

And anything less than that will leave you short of the fulfillment that God can give you when you understand and live out the kingdom way.

Say amen if you agree with that.

We are right on the precipice of Jesus making a turn.

It starts this week, and then we will see next week that Jesus is moving from demonstration to declaration.

Here's what I mean by that.

In Luke chapter 4, Jesus begins his ministry, and he is demonstrating to everyone who's willing to pay attention the way that the kingdom of God operates.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

Starting next week, Jesus is going to preach his most famous sermon.

We believe this is the sermon that he took and preached everywhere he went.

And this sermon is the kingdom way.

Here's how the kingdom of God operates.

And what's so beautiful about this message, if we will allow it to get past our minds and into our hearts and down into our bones, and we start living it out, is that too many believers think that the kingdom of God is waiting for us on the other side of this life.

So we just exist in the kingdoms of our culture and then die and finally make it to the kingdom.

Jesus says no.

Jesus says, you can start living out the kingdom of heaven right here on earth.

Jesus taught us how to pray, and here's how it starts God, your kingdom come and your will be done in that kingdom right here on earth, just as it is in heaven.

Can I tell you the modern Christian prayer?

God, your kingdom come and your will be done someday when I die and go to heaven.

Even if we wouldn't say we believe that with our mouths, we live it out with our lives.

I'm gonna live for these kingdoms today, I'm gonna live for his kingdom after this life.

And Jesus says, No, I am calling you into the kingdom way of life right now.

Here's what we believe: we believe that someday Jesus will return and he will literally rule and reign on the earth.

And what you want as a believer in Jesus is you want intimacy with him in that kingdom and you want capacity in that kingdom to partner with him.

Is that what you want?

Okay, I don't care if you nod your head or not.

That's what you want.

I'm actually not asking you.

You think you want more sex and more money and more influence and more power.

You don't, because you'll get it, maybe you'll get it.

I hope you don't, but maybe you will.

Maybe you'll get all the I hope you get all the money in the world, you know, just so you can find out that you're still just as depressed.

And then you'll remember me screaming at you today, and you'll go, maybe Jesus.

What you actually want is intimacy with Christ and capacity in his kingdom.

And it's not magic.

If you want intimacy with Jesus in the kingdom that is to come, have intimacy with him today.

If you want capacity alongside Jesus in the kingdom that is to come, demonstrate your capacity for his kingdom today.

And so we're in this, we are walking through it.

Now, you if you come here, you know this.

If you're new, you don't.

Typically, you come and I preach.

That's that's the gifting, the primary gifting God has put on my life.

I lean into that.

Today, as I'm studying the text, I realize today I need to teach.

Now, there's not gonna be zero preaching because I don't have that in me, okay?

I'm still gonna step away from the binder and scream and sweat a little bit because I can't help that.

But I need to teach because we are covering all the ground today.

You're like, what do you mean, all the ground?

I mean I called the worship leaders and said, I need you to cut a song, I have to cover all the ground today.

We're going to go from Genesis and we're gonna go all the way to Revelation today.

We're covering all of the ground.

Because if not, the passage that we've already read today, our passage that we are walking through, it reads simple if you pull it out of its context.

If you just isolate it and you just read it, I can put it to you in three lines.

Jesus goes up the mountain, Jesus chooses 12 disciples, Jesus comes down the mountain.

That's the passage.

If you rip it out of its context.

But if you understand it in the whole of God's revelation, what you might call the meta-narrative of Scripture, Genesis to Revelation, then this is a moment that all of Luke's gospel has been leading to, all of Scripture itself has been leading to, all of created history has been leading to this moment.

Jesus up the mountain calls the disciples down the mountain.

This shifts all of history, it creates the church, and it changes even eternity itself.

My job today, I've prayed so hard that the Holy Spirit would work through me to help the weight of this moment we're reading about sit on you.

And the only way that I know to help you get there is to give you the broadest picture and then to show you what's actually happening when Jesus goes up the mountain, calls the disciples, and comes down the mountain.

So are you down for the journey?

Okay.

I'm hungry.

I could go.

Are you ready for the journey?

Yes.

If we don't get this, and the reason I'm gonna take my time today is because next week we walk into the sermon, the most famous sermon, the sermon Jesus taught everywhere he went.

You won't know how to hear the sermon if you don't understand what happens today.

And so let's start with this meta-narrative.

I told you we're starting at the beginning, and I mean the beginning.

In the beginning, God created.

Beginning is a time-bound word, it implies time.

Before the creation, there was no time.

This is not a uniquely Christian belief.

As a matter of fact, all modern science, all cosmology has proven this.

That at one point everything goes back to nothing.

What does nothing mean?

Nothing means no things.

No time, no space, no material.

So what was there?

You know, uh at one point there was a scientist, he came up with a phrase, the big bang.

This person was militant against theism or the belief in God.

And he thought that the Big Bang would disprove God, and then the guy who created the term the Big Bang studied the implications of the Big Bang and found out that if there was a Big Bang, there had to be someone who banged it.

I grew up in my little Baptist churches, and they were like, they're coming after us with the Big Bang.

Little did they know they were actually giving theism the belief in God, its greatest scientific proof that the only thing that could have existed before the universe was created is something.

Listen, that's spaceless, timeless, immaterial, personal, because it can make choices to go from nothing to something.

They're just describing the attributes of the God of Scripture.

A timeless, spaceless, immaterial, benevolent, personal being.

And so in the beginning, God creates.

And what do we learn?

He creates with a word.

John tells us in his gospel who that word is: the word who became flesh, Jesus Christ.

You have God the Father and you have God the Son before the creation ever exists.

There is a creation and yet it is not yet formed.

It has not been organized by God.

And Genesis begins by saying that the Spirit hovered over the chaos: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.

We believe in a triune God, one being in three persons.

If you don't understand the Trinity, welcome to the club.

It's very hard for finite creatures to understand the infinite.

And so God has revealed Himself and He's revealed Himself personally.

And so we can read scripture and we can see that there is one being who is God.

God is one and indivisible, and yet in that one being there are three distinct personages of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and they're all present at creation.

And God creates and it is good, but he's not done because the purpose of creation comes at the end.

God creates humanity, he doesn't create it like the rest of creation.

He instills the Imago Dei, the image of God.

And in his image, he created them, male and female.

And he blessed them and he gave them a mandate to have dominion over the earth.

And God created us, just so you know, God created us for a relationship with himself.

And yet, God created us with freedom.

God is love.

Love is not something God does, it's who he is, it's his nature.

And God must create out of who he is.

God creates us out of love, which requires freedom, including the freedom for us, the creation, to walk out of relationship with the creator.

Now, if you have children, you have done this as well.

Whether you did it consciously or not, when you had a kid, you created a being with freedom, including and up to the freedom to someday walk out of relationship with you.

If you're a step parent, then you have come under this covenant where you now have a child that has freedom.

If you've adopted, you now have this child that you've come into a relationship with, with the freedom, even the freedom to one day walk out of relationship with you.

And some of you have experienced this, and some of you are experiencing it right now, and some of you have been the children who walked out of relationship with your own parents.

We know this is true.

We can look and observe the world, and God created us anyway.

And he gave us that freedom anyway.

And in our rebellion, we walked out of relationship anyway.

Now, it's important for you to know that there is the fall of mankind.

Most of us were raised in church to believe the fall happens at one moment in one space and time.

We don't believe that here at MetaCurch.

If you sign up for the academy, which I want everyone to go through the academy, then you'll spend about three and a half hours with me where I walk you through all of this in a whole lot of detail.

I'm gonna give you the spark notes today.

There are three falls, they all matter.

The first is the garden.

This is where Adam and Eve directly disobey God's one rule by eating the fruit.

After that, there is the flood.

This is where God starts over with Noah and his family, and even Noah's lineage cannot get it right.

The final part of the fall is the tower that we call Babel.

And this is where the nations are divided and they disinherit themselves from God.

Here's why this matters, and here's what I need you to understand for the purpose of the meta-narrative of scripture, so we can understand what's happening in our passage today.

Is that before the tower, even though you had the fall in the garden, and even though you had the fall at the flood, before the tower, God's revelation was going to all people.

After the tower, when God shows his mercy and grace and we rebel, and God shows his mercy and grace and we rebel, and God shows his mercy and grace and we once again rebel, God allows all the nations to be disinherited from his plan for a time.

And he calls unto himself one man named Abram.

His name will later be changed to Abraham by God, and he gives Abram a promise.

Now we should pay very careful attention to first words and last words.

If you've ever been at the deathbed of a loved one, you cling to those last words with all that you have.

We have the last words of Jesus in his physical form before he ascends, where he says, The Holy Spirit will come upon you.

That's when you will receive power, and you will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth.

My witnesses, the Greek word martyrs.

You will give your life a way to spread my movement, to spread my mission, and to spread my message as far and as wide as you can take it.

You will give your life for this reason.

Martyrs.

This is what we're doing.

This is what we're meant to be doing.

If you're here in Helotus with us right now, uh you're doing harder work than anybody at MetaCurch.

Uh Helotus, all of our volunteers, leaders, and staff out there, it's harder work than anything else we're doing because you picked up a call to go and give your life away.

And this is the call to follow Jesus.

Are you willing to give your life?

It's not figurative, it's literal.

Are you willing, if push comes to shove, to choose Jesus over your own life?

Here's the bottom line.

Here's what Jesus knows.

If you are not willing, if called upon, to give your life for the gospel, you won't give them your money.

You won't give them your marriage.

You won't give them your career, you won't give them your children.

Are you willing to give it all for the spread of the only thing that can give people actual hope?

The gospel of Jesus Christ.

Those are last words.

What about first words?

Let's look at the first words that God says to Abram.

All the other nations, for a time disinherited, God chooses one man.

Genesis chapter 12, verse 1.

Genesis 12:1

The Lord said to Abram, Go from your land, your relatives and your father's house to the land that I will show you.

Pause.

What is he asking Abram to do?

He's asking him to give God everything.

Give me everything you have, everything that makes you comfortable, all of your possessions, all of your security, and go to a dangerous place.

I want everything.

I want your life.

Here's the promise.

Verse 2 I will make you into a great nation.

I will bless you.

I'll make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you.

I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt.

And all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

We don't know how to read this because of our political climate.

These verses, I just part of me hopes you're just totally clueless about politics and you're just like happy, you know.

But for those who are paying attention, a lot's happening in Israel over the last several years, and this verse gets brought up.

Here's how it's talked about.

We focus in on Abram will become a great nation, and he does.

Eventually, you have the 12 sons who become the 12 tribes, who become a nation of millions of people.

That promise comes true.

Here's part of it that we talk about all the time that God will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel.

Now, some of you are getting uncomfortable because you're like, pastor's about to make a political point, and depending on how this goes, I might have to leave the church.

All right.

Here's the point I'm going to make.

You don't know how to read this verse.

Because you think I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you, is the end of the promise.

And it's not the end, it is a means to an end.

Building into a great nation is a means to an end.

Blessing and protection is a means to an end.

The end of the promise is that all the peoples on earth will one day be blessed through you.

That's the promise.

And everything else is an end to that need.

A means to that end.

And just think about the heart of God.

Because God stretches out his hands and people reject him.

And God stretches out his hands and people rebel.

And God stretches out his hands and people disobey.

And right after the nations are disinherited, God calls one man.

And what is his purpose with Abram?

His purpose is to one day be able to go back and get those nations in relationship with himself.

The second you rebel against God, the moment you reject God, God begins his plan on how to get you back.

And it doesn't matter how many times, and it doesn't matter how often, and it doesn't matter how severe you have run from him, the moment you turn your back on him is the moment.

And look, if you're a parent and you're even a decent parent, if your kids reject you, if you have adult children and they walk out of relationship with you, for the rest of your life, you will wake up and say, What could I do today?

To open the door to relationship with them again.

What could I do different today?

How could I pursue them today?

How could I demonstrate my love today?

And that's who God is for you as well.

This is the promise and this is the purpose.

This happens all the way at the very beginning of scripture.

And the rest of the Old Testament, the rest of it, are God's people, Israel, struggling through this unique God-given identity.

God told them, if you will obey and worship me, you'll be blessed and you'll be protected.

But over and over and over again, their eyes would wander and their hearts would wander and they would walk out from under the protection of God.

And so we see this pattern where they are taken captive, first by Egypt, then Assyria, then Babylon, and then Rome.

Over and over, they become captive people when they wander out from obedience to God over and over, and their only hope they can really cling to in those seasons is that the prophets speak on behalf of God all throughout the Old Testament, prophesying of a Messiah, God's chosen king who would come.

Here's what we learned at the beginning of Luke, almost a year ago now.

We learned that in between the Old Testament and the New Testament, in between Malachi and Matthew, there were 400 years of silence.

For 400 years, the people had wandered so far from God that they did not hear from God.

Here's what else happened: the Messiah would come to fulfill God's promise.

And what is his promise?

It's not a great nation.

His promise is not blessings and protection, those are a means to an end.

His promise is that one day God would use the lineage of Abraham and specifically a Messiah to open the doors of relationship to God to all the other nations.

Are you tracking with me?

That's the promise.

But God's people stopped receiving God's revelation through the lens of promise.

They started seeing it through the lens of pain.

They were a captured people in Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Rome.

Always occupied.

Suffering, always captive.

They began to read God's revelation, not through the lens of a promise made to Abram thousands of years ago, but instead through the lens of their pain, and their version of Messiah was no longer the Prince of Peace who would come and bless all the peoples of the earth.

The people longed for a Messiah who would be a military leader, not to bless the nations of the earth, but to destroy the other nations of the earth.

We can judge Israel for this all we want, but we do this as well.

It is a very dangerous habit to take your pain, your desires, and your agenda and approach the inspired word of God, trying to fit God into what you already want.

This is what Israel did.

And it's not like they ended a few degrees off of God's desire.

God's desire was to bless all the people of the earth.

They now want a Messiah who will come and destroy the peoples of the earth.

They don't want something a little bit off plan.

They want the opposite of what God wants.

And we can end up there too, if we do not just let God speak and then surrender and submit in humility to whatever he wants from our life.

Amen?

It's easy to say, it's hard to do.

It's hard not to interject our own desires into his word.

But we must want God's will and God's kingdom over our will and our kingdom.

It is in this 400 years of silence that God comes after his people in the most direct way ever.

God steps out of eternity, out of constant blessing in heaven, where his praises are sung all day and all night.

Scripture says he empties himself, he puts on human flesh, and he is born in the most humble of circumstances.

He lives in the midst of our pain for 30 years.

He is preparing to do the work that will change the world, change our lives, and change eternity.

We learned all of that in our first section called The Chosen King.

Then we stepped into the kingdom way.

In the kingdom way, Jesus is going through the last steps of preparation, and then he begins his ministry.

Luke starts his ministry back in his hometown of Nazareth.

Jesus goes up in the synagogue.

We read in Luke chapter 4, the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to Jesus.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he's anointed me to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

And Jesus rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down.

And the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him, and he began by saying to them, Today, as you listen, this scripture has been fulfilled.

This is a prophecy from Isaiah about the coming of the Messiah.

Jesus stands up in his hometown synagogue, he reads it, he sits down and goes, By the way, what Isaiah was talking about is here and it's me.

I am Messiah, I am the chosen king, I have come.

And yet, the people were not satisfied.

In their mind, not through the lens of promise, through the lens of their pain, they wanted a Messiah who would stand up and give a battle cry.

Jesus wasn't talking about defeating Rome or smashing their enemies.

It wasn't good enough.

And so they push back on Jesus.

And Jesus begins to give lessons out of the Old Testament.

Very precise, specific lessons.

In fact, every lesson he goes to is an example from the Old Testament where God would bless not the Israelites, but a foreigner.

And this was too much.

They don't want a Messiah who will bless the other nations.

They want a Messiah who will destroy them.

And his own hometown takes him to the edge of a cliff and tries to throw him off.

We walked into Luke chapter 5, and it's nothing but controversy and rejection by the leaders of Israel.

Luke 5 · chapter mention

Jesus is calling his disciples, but not in the right way.

He's not calling them out of Torah school, he's calling them out of the tax booth.

He's not calling them out of seminary, he's calling the fishermen out of the sea.

He is whining and dining, not with the religious elite, not with the influential, not with the wealthy, with the tax collectors and prostitutes and the spiritually marginalized.

Jesus begins to forgive people of their sins, if you know anything about the Old Testament.

To get the forgiveness of your sins, you had to travel, you had to buy a lamb, you had to go to temple, you had to walk through the ritual and the next ritual and the next ritual.

Jesus says, Yo, God in human flesh is here.

I see your sins, they're forgiven.

It is as good as done in heaven.

He gets the attention of everyone, he has power they don't have, so they have contempt for him and they're jealous of him and they're fearful of him.

We walked into Luke chapter 6 over the last two weeks, and we see the spirit of religion coming at Jesus and Jesus fighting right back.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

And finally, on a Sabbath in a synagogue, he heals a man, he gives him his life back.

And look at the response of the religious leaders in Luke chapter 6, verse 11.

Luke 6:11

The religious leaders, however, were filled with rage and started discussing with one another what they might do to Jesus.

Can you imagine?

If God healed you, I mean, really healed you.

And the response of the people who are supposed to be your spiritual shepherds is that they're enraged that you got healed.

The other gospels make it explicit.

They say that these religious leaders went outside of the synagogue that day and they began to plot how they would kill Jesus.

Jesus has been rejected.

Four hundred years of silence, and God's Messiah, the chosen King, comes to Israel, God's chosen people, and he offers them the opportunity to fulfill the promise made all the way back to Abraham, to be the light to a world full of darkness, to join with Jesus, the chosen King, in opening the doors of salvation to all people in all places, and they are not interested.

That brings us to today.

We could preach this very simple.

Jesus goes up the mountain, chooses the twelve, goes back down the mountain.

But this is the pivot point of history.

So I want to walk through the text, and once we've walked through this text, we are going to set it where it belongs in Scripture.

Does that sound like a good plan?

Let's walk through it, but then let's set it where you really understand exactly what Jesus is doing.

In Luke chapter 6, verse 12, this is the first verse today.

Luke 6:12

During those days, Jesus went out to the mountain to pray, and he spent all night in prayer to God.

Jesus has a big decision.

The next day he's gonna wake up and he's going to choose his disciples.

Now Jesus had a lot of followers.

If you picture Jesus and 12 men and they were solo all the time, that's incorrect.

Jesus had a big crowd of people who considered themselves disciples of Jesus, followers of Jesus, men and women.

And yet Jesus is going to choose out of that larger group, 12 of them, because he has a decision to make, he spends all night in prayer.

Let me ask you a question.

You don't have to answer out loud.

When is the last time you spent all night in prayer over a decision you had to make?

Let me ask a tougher question.

When's the last time you prayed over a decision you have to make?

As Christians who live in the West, and not just the West, but in America, Christians who are taught culturally from birth to be self-sufficient, to not lean on anyone, to make something of ourself, to pick ourselves up from our bootstrap.

We have this independent spirit that keeps us from interdependence with Jesus.

We are not proactive in our prayer life.

We are reactive in the West.

We pray out of reaction.

Here's when we pray.

We pray when we're going 22 miles over the speed limit and we see the lights and hear whoop whoop.

We react.

We pray when she comes and tells us she's pregnant.

We pray when we've slacked off for six months and we get called into the boss's office.

We pray right before we blow into the breathalyzer that's gonna decide whether we get in the back of the car or get to drive home.

This is when we pray.

We pray reactive prayers.

We're like, God, I know we haven't talked in a long time, but if you will get me out of this one situation, I'll never drink again and I'll never smoke again and I'll never watch porn again, and I'll start giving a little money to the church and I'll go every Sunday and I'm really sorry.

It's just reactive.

And if we're gonna be followers of Jesus, maybe the very first thing we should learn to do is pray like Jesus.

There are people who've been following Jesus for far too long to not be proactive in your prayer life.

There are Christians who know God, who have been saved by the blood of Jesus, and you have been in a romantic relationship for 18 months, you have never asked God if that's the right man or woman for you.

There are people who go through a whole dating, a whole engagement, and a whole marriage, and they've never asked God if that's their person.

You have been bringing in money for 25 years.

You've never asked God what he wants to do with your money.

You have been managing and strategically planning a career your entire life, and you have never asked Jesus or the Holy Spirit if that is the career path that he actually wants for you.

We are reactive.

And if we are not willing to be proactive in our prayer, then we will be reactive people, just reacting to the things the world brings at us, reactoring to unnecessary suffering, reacting to the consequences of our sin.

Instead of being proactive in our relationship with God, proactive in our prayer life, proactive in our scripture reading, and instead of just getting to Tuesday and something bad happening and then throwing your hands up to God in reaction, we come in, we get on our face on Sunday and on Monday and on Tuesday and on Wednesday, and God has already prepared us for whatever comes our way.

If we want to be like Jesus, we have to pray like Jesus.

Now let me say this.

I don't think God is mad at your reactive prayers.

Some of you are raising adult children.

I have a 21-year-old, I have a 17-year-old who is on his way to adulthood, almost 17.

I have a 21, we'll be 22 this year, we're officially raising an adult, and we're so blessed because he still reaches out, he still comes to us, he seeks wisdom from us.

But you know this, not every young adult is that way.

As a matter of fact, when they're kids, they are proactive because they need you for everything.

There is an age they cannot wipe their butt without you.

They are proactive in every way, annoyingly so.

You're like, can you please be independent?

And then they're 16, 17, 18, and you're like, Can you please be dependent?

Can you please call?

And you know, puberty makes, especially young men, like, oh, we got it all.

We have all the answers, we got it figured out.

And the hope is that we mature beyond that.

I don't think God's mad at your reactive prayers.

I think he's a good father, and he's like, Finally, you called.

But what God wants more than that is for you to mature into an interdependent relationship with him.

Spiritual independence is spiritual immaturity.

Because what we go is we go, God, I appreciate the advice, I got this.

And let me assure you, as someone who's lived long enough and banged my head on enough brick walls, you don't.

You don't know how to navigate life without God.

And if you will become proactive, it's like, listen, I already told you, you don't understand the Trinity, and neither do I.

I can give you some object lessons to help.

God is mysterious, God is infinite, and we are finite, it's difficult.

But what we know is Jesus is a third of the Godhead.

Jesus is God, and he prays all night before he makes a decision.

And it's like a tough decision.

He's got a bunch of people, he's gonna call 12, and the 12 he calls will shape history forever.

Now you might be ahead of me, like he maybe should have prayed one more night because he picked Judas.

I don't know this.

Total conjecture.

Please, I'm gonna stare down the barrel of the camera so that the heresy hunters don't come get me.

These are Clayton's ideas, this is not exegesis, this isn't theology.

I just know in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus is praying with the Father, and he's going, is there another way?

And I'm just curious if Jesus prays all night on the top of the mountain, knowing that he is about to put the guy in his squad who will be the linchpin of the operation to get him killed.

And you know why he chooses Judas Iscariot?

Jesus chooses Judas because Jesus chooses you.

And the cross is not an accident and the cross is not a detour.

Jesus purposefully put the guy in his squad who would be the linchpin of the operation to put him on the cross, and he did it so that he would get to the cross to save your life.

If you start praying proactively, I promise you God is going to ask you to do things that do not make sense to you.

He's gonna ask you to make changes that are incredibly difficult.

He's gonna ask you to navigate your relationships in very different ways.

He's gonna ask for you to manage your resources in wildly different ways than you're doing it right now.

He is going to break down your entire construction of how the world operates and what it means to live a life of meaning.

Jesus goes up and he prays.

And he wakes up the next morning, verse 13, when daylight came, he summoned his disciples, and he chose 12 of them, whom he also named apostles.

You can do this.

I need you to put a pin in two things.

He chose twelve of them, not three, not twenty-seven, not eighteen.

And he named them not just disciples, but apostles.

I need you to put a pin in that in your mind.

Let's look at their names.

Verse 14, Simon, who he also named Peter and Andrew, his brother, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Alpheus, and Simon called the zealot, Judas, the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

I just, the Holy Spirit has put this on my mind and heart, and I'm, I didn't, you know.

You know James, and you know John, and you know Peter, and you know Judas because he's the bad guy.

You don't know any of these other guys.

You cannot tell me one Bartholomew story.

I'd give you a thousand dollars.

You know Thomas because he doubted and he gets a bad rap.

You don't know Judas, the son of James, you know nothing about Simon the Zealot.

You don't know these guys.

And they changed the world.

Quit seeking platform, quit seeking attention, quit seeking virality, quit seeking to get inside of this little hole that was created when you weren't loved well and you didn't get the right attention, and you're trying to fill it with all of the wrong things, and you want to have godly ambition, but you have a lot of selfish ambition, and just so you know, I'm just preaching to myself, and if it's helping you, then maybe it's helping you.

But you don't need to be a John, and you don't need to be a Peter, and you don't need lots of inks filled about you, and you don't need a biography in your name that's a bestseller.

You need to be faithful, and if you are faithful with what God has given you, you can be used by God to change the world.

In verse 17, after coming down with them, he stood on a level place with a large crowd of his disciples and a great number of people from Judea, Jerusalem, the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon.

They came to hear him to be healed of their disease.

Those tormented by unclean spirits were made well.

The whole crowd was trying to touch Jesus because power was coming out from him and healing them all.

Now I've been saying this every week.

What happens next?

And I mean next, like verse 20, is Jesus begins to preach what we know as the Sermon on the Mount.

He delivers the message that teaches you the kingdom way.

All of this is great.

There's a lot we can learn, but if we don't take this moment and understand it in the broader meta-narrative from Genesis to Revelation, the weight of what Jesus just did will not sit on you properly.

The scriptures are an unbelievable gift.

The way that they are organized, the way that they are inspired, the way that they are self-referential.

It's something that no human could possibly have ever put together.

There are people who struggle in having faith in God.

There are scientists and philosophers and great thinkers who have actually studied the scripture and they just come to the conclusion, I don't know what all this means, but a human could not have done this.

And one of the ways that we understand the things that Jesus is doing during his time on earth is we look at the shadows of those things that have come before him.

So let me walk you back through it so I don't lose you.

God creates and he creates us for relationship, but we fall and we fall and we fall.

And so God calls one nation for a specific time and a specific purpose, and that purpose is that one day this nation would be used to bless all the peoples of the earth.

God's promise rings true.

Abram's family does become a great people of twelve tribes.

However, in their disobedience, they get stuck in Egypt.

For 400 years, they are slaves.

And those 400 years, most scholars believe they grew to a size the 12 tribes were somewhere between one and two million people.

Listen, they were a people, they were not a nation, they could not be a kingdom.

And here's why.

Because nations have laws, they have a culture, they have expectations, and they have spiritual doctrine.

They had none of these.

They were just a people who got stuck in a land and grew very, very large.

For 400 years they waited.

This is a shadow.

How many years of silence before Jesus came?

400.

You're allowed to talk here.

How many years of silence before Jesus came?

400.

400 years.

God's people are in exile, not hearing from God, waiting for a savior.

We fast forward or we reverse to the shadow.

God's people are enslaved in Egypt.

They wait 400 years for a savior.

Eventually, God calls a man named Moses.

Moses comes, and through the power of God, the people are released.

And yet they are a people, they're not a nation.

They cannot meaningfully inherit the land and set up a kingdom because they're not a nation.

And so the first order of business is Moses must form the twelve tribes into something worthy of a kingdom.

Where does he go?

He goes to a mountain.

In Exodus chapter 19, Moses went up the mountain to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain.

Exodus 19 · chapter mention

This is what you must say to the house of Jacob and explain to the Israelites.

Moses spends a lot of time up on the mountain.

And what is God giving him in this revelation?

He's giving him the kingdom way.

Here's the law and the culture and the expectations, and here are the spiritual guardrails.

This is the way the kingdom of Israel will operate.

Moses goes up the mountain, he receives this, and then he comes down.

In Exodus 34, as Moses descended from Mount Sinai with two tablets of the testimony in his hands, as he descended the mountain, he did not realize the skin of his face shone as a result of his speaking to the Lord.

The power of God just pouring off of him.

What do we read at the very end of our passage today?

Everyone's just trying to touch Jesus.

He comes down the mountain.

The power of God is flowing out of him.

Everyone who touches him gets healed.

The power of God is shining off of Moses, and God entrusts the 12 tribes of Israel to Moses.

Moses goes up, he spends time with God, he comes down and he gives them the kingdom way.

I'm sure you're connecting the dots.

Jesus goes up and he spends time alone with the Father.

He comes down, and what we're gonna see next week is he preaches the new kingdom way.

Not the way of the kingdom of Israel, the way of the kingdom of God.

Jesus the Messiah, the chosen king, he came to earth and he offered to God's chosen people to join him and to fulfill the promise to Abraham to be the light of God to all of the nations and Darkness so that through them all the peoples of the earth would be blessed.

But Israel rejected Jesus.

Now, not all of the people, you'll notice all of his apostles are Jewish, all the earliest members of the movement we call church are Jewish, Jewish, most all the men and women who took the gospel to the ends of the earth are Israelites.

But the leaders, the people who speak on behalf of the people, they rejected Jesus, and by the end of Luke, they will hang Jesus on a cross.

Now you need to know this.

This doesn't take God by surprise because nothing takes God by surprise.

Amen?

Nothing takes you think you can surprise God, you cannot.

God is not surprisable.

This just moves God on to the next phase of his plan.

And we know this was his plan.

We know the cross was not a detour.

We know it was the destination.

Because listen, when John is given the revelation and gets to see in the throne room of heaven, how does he describe Jesus?

He says, Behold the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.

The cross was always the plan.

Jesus makes a well-meant offer to Israel, but Israel does not have eyes to see or ears to hear.

They reject him.

And so what does he do?

What Moses did in part, Jesus does in totality.

Moses climbs a mountain, Jesus climbs a mountain.

How many disciples does Jesus call?

He calls 12, not three, not 27, not 18.

Why?

Because Jesus is reforming, not reforming, not slightly changing, reforming God's people.

He is starting a new movement, a new faith family.

And this new faith family is not bound by lineage or ethnicity or geographical location.

It is determined by those who put their faith in Jesus, God's chosen king.

Let me say it to you like this.

Just like Moses formed the people into a kingdom at Mount Sinai, just like he did that, Jesus now forms a new people who will carry the kingdom.

You need to know that this is the moment a seed is planted.

Later, Jesus will die on the cross, and his death will cause that seed to bloom into a movement that we now call church.

This is the moment that you are invited in to be a part of the movement that God is using to rescue and redeem the world.

We are not here playing religion.

We are not here to get a good little message so that we can get a little self-help and then we can go out and feel a little bit better about ourselves.

We are here, and God is depending on us, His movement to join with him in rescuing and redeeming a world that is headed and bound to the demonic forces of hell.

We are in a spiritual battle, and it starts here.

Jesus goes up a mountain and he calls twelve, not three, not twenty, twelve.

And he doesn't just call them disciples.

Listen, I told you to remember this.

Judas is replaced by H.

Wealth.

They go out in power and they take the gospel to the ends of the earth.

It starts here.

You and I, our involvement in this, our relationship with God, it starts right here.

It changes history, it changes our lives, it changes eternity itself.

I told you we'd go from Genesis to Revelation in the book of Revelation.

John is given this peek into the throne room of heaven, and he says he sees the throne of God and it is surrounded by elders.

You would think 12, that's the biblical number, 12, 12, 12, 12.

No.

24 elders.

Why?

Like by 24.

Because nothing in God's plan is ever wasted.

12 that represent the 12 tribes of the old covenant.

12 that represent the apostles of the new covenant.

You want to know how I know that?

Because in the last chapter of Revelation, in the last chapter of the last book, we get to see the new heavens that are coming down to form a new earth.

This is our landing spot.

This is the destiny of the children of God.

This is where all things are made new, where all things are made right.

And look what John sees.

He then carried me away in the spirit to a great high mountain, and he showed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, arrayed with God's glory.

Her radiance was like a precious jewel, like a jasper stone, clear as crystal.

The city had a massive high wall with 12 gates, 12 angels were at the gates.

Listen, the name of the 12 tribes of Israel's sons were inscribed on the gates.

Three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south, three on the west.

Listen, the city wall, the city that represents the new heavens and the new earth.

It had 12 foundations.

What are the foundations of the city of God?

And the 12 names of the 12 apostles of the Lamb were on those foundations.

We stand in that lineage.

We are a part of this movement.

We are shifting eternity.

We are a supernatural movement of God.

And it began when Jesus climbed a mountain and he called apostles to himself and he gave them the Holy Spirit in Acts.

And they went out to the ends of the earth.

And I was lost and I was dying and I was in darkness.

And the Spirit of God, through his movement, came and got me.

You have to understand what you're a part of.

Jesus wasted no time.

After coming down, he stood on a level place, he's about to preach the sermon.

Who's there?

Great numbers of people from Judea and Jerusalem, but look, great numbers of people from Tyre and Sidon.

Why does it matter?

Jerusalem, Judea is Israel.

Tyre and Sidon is not.

These are some of the disinherited nations, and Jesus is getting ready to open the door to them right now.

He came down the mountain on a mission.

A mission that would take him to the cross.

Pull him out of the grave.

Bring him back to heaven, where he would send his spirit to you and to me, his church.

And so, yes, if you really listen, the more layers you step into the ministry, the heavier it gets, the harder it gets.

You find out what it means that Jesus said, You listen, you want to do this thing?

You will be my martyrs.

You will die to yourself and deny yourself and carry your cross.

Some of you are in, you are leading here.

You are leading.

Nobody cut you a check here.

You are just showing up and you are carrying burdens and you are leading, and you know what I'm talking about.

Every leader in Holotus knows what I'm talking about.

Every person waking up when they could be on their porch drinking coffee, showing up, carrying their cross, building this movement in the hardest environment we have right now.

When we start another venue, some of you will be called.

You will go out, you'll take another step deeper into the ministry, and you will find out what it means.

And the question is will you count the cost?

Is it worth it?

Is this something that you come and check a religious box?

Is this something when the weather's nice enough, you're not gonna show up?

Is this something when you didn't get enough sleep, you're not gonna show up?

If the sperms have an early game, are you not coming?

Or is this the supernatural body?

Are we a part of a spiritual battle?

Are we gonna take this seriously?

Will we put our life on it?

Will we be a martyr for the cross?

When persecution comes, will we shrink back?

Or will we step up?

Do we really believe he's gonna crack the skies?

Do we really believe that Jesus is coming back?

And I don't care what you say with your mouth.

Do you show it?

Do you walk it out?

Do you live it?

Do you live it in your marriage?

Do you teach your kids it?

Are you walking it out in your life?

If you can't handle preaching like this, don't come to the Sermon on the Mount.

Take the next 10 weeks off.

Because Jesus is just gonna go, you don't have three options, you have two.

His kingdom or the kingdoms of man.

And if you want to live a life that changes the world, you will start living for the kingdom of God, and everything will change.

And you will experience meaning and peace and love and purpose like you cannot imagine.

Not because it's easy, it's not easy.

But because you will deny yourself and you will carry your cross and you will live the life that you were created to live.

This is the kingdom way that everyone is invited in.

Would you pray with me?

Across our venues, if you would just bow your head and close your eyes.

Listen, if you're here at one of our venues or you're with us online right now, I believe there has to be someone under the sound of my voice who does not have a relationship with Jesus.

You need to know that up on a mountain one day, Jesus chose a traitor.

He put him in his squad, he walked with him for years, knowing that it would be his downfall, that Judas Iscariot would send him to a cross, and he did it because that cross belonged to you.

That cross belonged to me.

It's the punishment for our sins.

And Jesus was focused and intentional about taking it for you, exchanging his perfect life for my sinful life for your sinful life.

To come into a relationship with Jesus changes everything.

Scripture says it makes us new, it forgives all of our sins that hold us back from relationship with God.

And because it brings us into relationship with God, it gives us life after death, an eternal life with our Heavenly Father.

If you're here under the sound of my voice, and that's you, you know there's never been a moment in time where you have just surrendered and put your whole hope in Jesus.

My guess is that God is pressing in on you.

That's a Father who loves you, calling you back.

And I'm gonna ask you if you're ready to make that decision today, right now, to signal that by just simply raising your hand.

With everyone's eyes closed, raising your hand is not magic.

It just says, today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

For those who raised a hand, I want you to know that God sees and accepts your faith.

Scripture says, for he forgives all of your sins and does, in fact, give you the great gift of eternal life.

And so all I want to do is help you acknowledge this moment through a very simple prayer.

If you raise your hand, I'm gonna ask you to repeat this with me.

I'm gonna ask all believers at our venues to pray out loud as well.

Let's pray like this.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

So glad you joined us for today's message.

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