Amen. If you would turn in your Bibles then to Luke chapter 12, as we conclude this chapter this morning, verses 49 through 59 of Luke 12. And following the Reading of scripture will sing together the glory of pottery printed in your bulletin. Please stand for the reading of God's holy word. Hear now God's holy word. I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled. But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed. Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on, there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law. He said to the crowd, when you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say it's going to rain, and it does. And when the south wind blows, you say it's going to be hot, and it is. Hypocrites, you know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don't know how to interpret this present time? Why don't you judge for yourselves what is right? As you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, try hard to be reconciled to him on the way, or he may drag you off to the judge, and the judge turn you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny. And God will add his blessing to this reading of his word. Amen. We look to the gospel for comfort and for peace and often take great delight in that. We have Isaiah having his great commission in Isaiah 40. Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed. that her sin has been paid for that she has received from the Lord's hand double in spite of all her sins. We have a passage like Philippians four where Paul says, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God and the peace of God that passes all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. And then he continues, whatever you have learned or received or heard from me or seen in me, put it into practice and the God of peace will be with you. We think of Jesus' wonderful words to his disciples nearing the time of his death. He says, peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give unto you. And so we go to the gospel and we appreciate all the blessings of that and the comfort that it gives us. But the gospel, like the word of God, is a sharp, double-edged sword, and it cuts two ways. It cuts the one way, bringing the words of comfort and peace. And it cuts the other way, giving us the words of obligation, warning, and judgment that will come. Sometimes the gospel unites, sometimes it divides. Sometimes it comforts us, sometimes it discomforts us. And as Jesus is going through this section that we read today, he's confronting us with the crises of the gospel. the crisis of faith, and he presents it to us in four different elements. The first is the crisis of the gospel for him. How does it impact him and his life, which then becomes the foundation for us? But then there's three crisis points that he's drawing, and it's not exhaustive, but significant things for you to think about. The first is the crisis point that Jesus demands you complete and total allegiance to him. The second crisis point is that he's calling on you to understand the time in which you live. Has nothing to do with all the prophetic schemes that are out there. Has everything to do with you and dealing with your life here and now. And the third crisis point for you is you're on the way to judgment. You need to deal with things on the way. And we'll be looking at all those things. The harsh realities of the gospel isn't exactly what we want to hear, maybe not what you came here to hear today, but it's what Jesus puts before us this morning. And the first crisis point is the crisis point for Christ himself. He gives that to us in verses 49 and 50, and it comes in the form of his calling and then his crucifixion. And he begins with his calling, he says, I have come to bring fire on the earth. Sounds fairly ominous, what is he talking about? We'll turn to Luke 3, verses 16 and 17. Luke 3, 16 and 17. This is John's introduction to Jesus. And he says, John says, I baptize you with water, but one more powerful than I will come. The thongs of his sandals I'm not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. And you see these two elements of Jesus' baptism. John baptized externally. Jesus is going to have a different kind of baptism. The first is He's going to baptize them with the Holy Spirit. It's the fire of the Holy Spirit. Remember the tongues of fire when the Holy Spirit was given on the day of Pentecost. It's the work of the Holy Spirit that is sometimes painful, sometimes wonderfully enriching, but he convicts us of sin, he sanctifies us, he burns away the sinful elements of our lives that we might be restored in Jesus Christ. So part of his bringing fire on the earth is the fiery work of the Holy Spirit. But then the second element is the element of judgment. And we can see that in the context in verse 17, his winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the weed into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. Jesus is gonna bring fire on the earth and he's going to bring his beloved into the barn for safety. and the chaff outside will be burned in unquenchable fire. And Jesus has a longing to do the work that he's been given, he's been called to do. I wish it were already kindled, but there's something he has to do first. Before he can carry out that work, He has something else that is an obligation upon him, and he tells us in verse 50, but I have a baptism to undergo. And that baptism is a picture as a pointer to his crucifixion. Before he can pour out fire upon the earth, he himself has to undergo this baptism. And it's the severe suffering that he will undergo on the cross. And we are familiar with that use of that term baptism for that. Remember when James and John wanted to be first and second in the kingdom of God and Jesus says to them, are you able to be baptized with the baptism I will be baptized with? And they naively said, yes, we can. And they would. They would, especially James, he'd be the first martyr of the apostles. Baptism for the suffering of Christ, he had to go through that, and he says, I'm distressed until it's accomplished. There's an urgency within him that he has a desire that it be accomplished. both his calling and his crucifixion. But he had to undergo that, and that's the foundation for the hope that you and I have. I. Howard Marshall writes, with perfect candor, Jesus described the impatient misery that drenched his soul. He wanted to get the ordeal over with. The thought of it dominated him. Part of what made the waiting so terrible was that he knew exactly what his baptism entailed. The prolonged torture and the cruel death were not primarily what distressed him, but rather the necessity of his taking the raw sewage of our sins on him. Isn't that a... Descriptive way to look at it, he had to have the raw sewage of our sins dumped on him so that he in effect would choke and drown in it and become the same. Jesus had to undergo the crisis of the gospel in carrying out the work of redemption. And as we reflect on our own crises that we have to deal with, do we reflect a little bit at least on Jesus and his crisis and his suffering? But there are three crises for you. that he lays out, the first is, he begins with, do you think I've come to bring peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but division. And that's a fairly jarring statement. Isn't Jesus the Prince of Peace? Didn't he come to bring peace with God through him? Isn't that what he came to do? But here he says, I haven't come to bring you peace, I've come to bring division. And then he goes on to describe this division within a family. A father against a son, a son against a father, and so forth through the family. What is it that he's driving at? Now he's not in any way taking away what the Bible has to say about the relationships within a home. A husband loving his wife, a wife respecting her husband, children obeying their parents, He's not in any way saying the goal is division in terms of just the normal principles of family life. Sometimes there is division in the family, sometimes brought on by sin. And grace helps deal with that and helps soften those things and work through those things to bring unity back. But what is it that he's driving at? What he's driving at here is that the demand that you have, that the gospel demands of you, is an absolute, complete devotion, allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ. He needs to be more important in your life than husband or wife, child, possessions, job, anything. Christ needs to become first, and that will often bring division, because people won't like that. You and I know very well we have brothers and sisters around the world who live in countries where when they make a profession of faith, they will be ostracized, some will lose their lives. You read in the prayer sheet in the bulletin about those in Asia who are suffering persecution. Pastors in prison, been in prison for three years and not even charged yet. And allegiance to Jesus Christ, complete and total allegiance to him will sometimes bring division. Jesus says, that's what I'm calling you to. I'm calling you to that kind of allegiance to me. The second crisis for you particularly is you need to understand the moment in which you live, the time in which you live. You remember that At the beginning of chapter 11, there was a conflict building between Jesus and the Pharisees because they were accusing him of casting out demons by the prince of the demons. And Jesus responded, well, if I cast out demons by the prince of the demons, who do your disciples cast them out? But he goes on to say, but if I drive out the demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come to you. and the kingdom of God had come to them. It was obvious and evident before them. It's clear. And Jesus confronts them with their hypocrisy in verses 54 and following, 54 and 55. He says, you know how to interpret the weather. You can see the clouds and you can see the aspects of the earth and the sky. You can interpret the weather. The south wind, it's gonna make it hot. They know the little ditty, read at night, sailors delight, read in the morning, sailors take warning. But then he goes on to say, you hypocrites, how is it that you can discern the face of the sky and the earth, but you can't discern this time? You don't understand this time, you can't interpret it properly. You can't recognize it. It's right there in front of them and they don't see it. Why don't they see it? Because it's unclear? No, it's because it's perfectly clear they don't want it. They hate it. They're jealous of Christ. Turn to Luke 19.44. This is part of Jesus' lament as he's coming into Jerusalem. We have a similar statement. In Luke 19.44, They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you. It's a different word, same basic point. They didn't know the time of God's visitation. God was visiting them. God had come to them in the person of Christ and they didn't see it, they didn't know it. They didn't understand the times and the evidence is there for all to see. His words, he spoke as no man had spoken. His astounding miracles, they couldn't understand it because their hearts were hard against them. And the challenge of this crisis for you is that you are called to understand the moment in which you live. And again, this has nothing to do with all the prophetic speculation that goes on in many places. Turn to 2 Corinthians 6, verses one and two. In 2 Corinthians 6, In verse one, Paul writes, as God's fellow workers, we urge you not to receive God's grace in vain. For he says, in the time of my favor, I heard you. And in the day of salvation, I helped you. I tell you, now is the time of God's favor. Now is the day of salvation. When you think about how do we apply what Jesus is saying to those people, it's that we recognize that now is the moment God is at work in your life. This isn't something magical or mystical. It's a plain understanding that this is the moment God has given to us. This is the moment he's working in our lives, and we are to take stock of that. If there's someone for you to be reconciled with, now is the time to do it. If there's something for you to repent of, repent of it. If there's an exercise of faith you need to do, it's your moment of opportunity. Now is the time of God's favor. And you and I need to see that though Jesus was right in front of them and they missed it, See, the moment we have now is God's gift to us. And we're not guaranteed tomorrow. You say, well, I'll repent tomorrow. You may not have tomorrow. And there's a sense of we need to appreciate what God is doing in our lives right now and claim it and use that opportunity. And the third crisis for you in particular, and me, is Jesus says, verse 57, why don't you judge for yourselves what is right? As you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, try hard to be reconciled to him on the way. This person, this little parable, the man's being taken to judgment. And it only makes common sense that you would do everything in your power to be reconciled before you get to the place of judgment. Because if you get there, you'll be arrested, you'll be imprisoned, and you won't get out until you pay the last penny. The reality is, each of us, you and me, we are on the road to judgment. We are on that path. We have that in our future. And on that day, the problem for the unbeliever is that when they arrive on that day, before the judge, they have no defense attorney. And they stand naked before the eyes of God's holiness. And the hope of the believer is as we're traveling the path, and we persevere and pursue Jesus Christ, we embrace him by faith, we seek forgiveness from him, that when we arrive at that place, we will look and see our defense attorney standing at God's right hand. John would write it this way in 1 John 2, he says, my dear children, I write to this to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the father, a paraclete, a defender. If anyone does sin, we have a defense attorney with the father. The NIV embellishes a little bit in an appropriate way. We have one who speaks to the Father in our defense, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. You see, you and I are on that same path. But if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and you trust in him, you have hope that when you arrive, you will have your defense attorney and you won't have to say anything. But the defense attorney will say he says it all. The gospel invitation through all of these things is to call you to faith. Call you to walk. Christ has laid the foundation. He's experienced the baptism of wrath against our sin. But then he calls on us, the gospel call says to us, come, believe in Christ and may he be first in your life. The gospel call says, now's the moment to see God at work in your life and follow in faith and walk in obedience. The gospel call invites you to say there's a path away from the judgment that's going to come. walk in your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The people of Jesus today were blind to all this. And the prayer that we need to make is, Lord, open our eyes that we might see what you have for us in Christ, in that hope. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we do thank you for the gospel and its invitation, its call to faith. We pray that you will help us to see that and follow in faith and hope that Christ would be first in our lives, that we would use the time that you've given to us, and that we would walk in hope that Christ will be with us to the very end. We ask the Lord for your help in this, in Jesus' name, amen.