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Father, we just thank you this
morning for, again, the privilege that we have to sit around the
table of the King. Lord, this is the day that we
remember your sacrifice. This is the day that we remember
the gift that you gave us of your Son. And so we pray, as
again, we are gonna open up your book. We're going to look into
it. We pray for the presence of your Holy Spirit to guide
and direct us on that journey and to, again, make it of permanent
value. And we pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen. Well, this is the day that we
remember Jesus Christ and His cross. And Jesus, on the night
before He died, He met with His disciples to celebrate one last
time a Passover supper with them. Matthew 26 describes it. It says,
Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing
had broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, Take, eat,
this is my body. And he took a cup, and when he
had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, drink of it,
all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured
out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not
drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when
I drink it new with you in my father's kingdom. Well, Jesus
took bread, and then he took wine, and he offered them up
as symbols of his flesh and his blood. And he asked the disciples
to eat the bread and drink the cup so that they might symbolically
eat his flesh. and drink his blood. He then
asked them to repeat the remembrance of this sacrifice on a regular
basis, and this is what we call the Lord's Table. And we celebrate
it once a month, and we do that by meditating on what the Lord
Jesus Christ did for us on the cross, and then by examining
ourselves, asking God's Holy Spirit to point out areas where
he's convicting us of sin, and by confessing our sins, and then
by participating in the elements. John 6.53 says, so Jesus said
to them, truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh
of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Well, again, we're following
the life of Christ. We're following it in the gospel of Mark. And
Jesus, if you recall, he has just finished observing a poor
widow casting her two pennies into the treasury, and he's lauding
her for her faith, for her generosity. And this is followed by the disciples
remarking about how marvelous this temple is, how gigantic
the stones are, how beautiful they are within it. And Jesus
responds in Mark 13 too. He says, do you see these great
buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another
that will not be thrown down. You see, Jesus had the ability
to literally see down through the corridors of time. And what
appeared to be massively permanent in the eyes of the disciples
was, in Jesus' eyes, nothing but a transient blip on the radar. And precisely as he had predicted
in A.D. 70, the Emperor Titus attacked
the temple and literally destroyed it. Now the ensuing fire that
took place in the temple, it melted all of the gold within
the temple, and it caused every single stone within it to be
taken apart later in pursuit of that gold. Quote, not one
stone was found on another. Now the disciples, they couldn't
even imagine the carnage that was going to take place years
in the future. And Jesus is then sitting them down. They've got
full view of the temple. And this is what he says. This
is Mark 13, 3. It says, As he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite
the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately,
Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign
when all these things are about to be accomplished? Well, the
first thing we need to do here is to put ourselves inside the
heads of the disciples. We want to see, we want to understand
what they were thinking when they're asking Jesus these questions.
I mean, he spoke directly about the temple and they responded
by asking him about all of these things that were to be accomplished.
Which means that in spite of the temple being destroyed, they
knew that there was a whole lot of other cataclysmic events that
were to take place. Again, but they understood them
within the context of Jesus becoming an earthly king. Now in spite
of all the different times Jesus had warned them, they were still
absolutely convinced that Jesus was going to successfully launch
a political revolution that would establish Israel as the cornerstone
of the world while crowning them as leaders of this new kingdom. You know, have you ever tried
to explain something to someone and you know they just are not
getting it? I mean, they question every single
thing that you say, and you can tell that they're taking it the
wrong way, or they're completely misunderstanding the details.
Well, that's what Jesus had to deal with repeatedly. Now, over
and over again, he explained that he was to be there as a
sacrificial lamb, willingly prepared to go to the slaughter. Back
in Mark 8, this is what it says. It says, he began to teach them
that the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by
the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed
and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. I mean, not only did the disciples
not understand what Jesus was telling them directly and plainly,
but it goes on to say, Peter then took him aside and began
to rebuke him. Well you know Matthew's gospel goes into even
more detail describing exactly what Jesus told the disciples
and again to absolutely no avail whatsoever. This is what Matthew's
gospel says. Jesus said, see we are going
up to Jerusalem and the Son of Man will be delivered over to
the chief priests and scribes and they will condemn him to
death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and
flogged and crucified and he will be raised on the third day.
I don't know how it's possible to be more direct, to be more
plain, to be more detailed in describing exactly what was going
to take place than these words that Jesus shared with the disciples.
But you know how the disciples responded. This is the next verse,
this is the very next verse, verse 20. It's describing some
of the disciples and their response. It says, Then the mother of the
sons of Zebedee came up to him with her sons, and kneeling before
him, she asked him for something. And he said to her, What do you
want? She said to him, Say that these two sons of mine are to
sit, one at your right hand, and one at your left, in your
kingdom. You know, I don't know why Jesus at that point didn't
say, what part of mocked, flogged, condemned, and crucified don't
you understand? But instead, he simply told him
that the future plans for the kingdom were in the father's
hands instead of his. It says, he said to him, you
will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and to my left
is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has
been prepared by my father. So just picture, here is Jesus. He knows full well that this
is his last week on earth. He knows that his disciples still
have absolutely no clue what's going on. And so he addresses
their questions with an eye not just to their immediate future,
but to a future that includes every one of us. It says, and
Jesus began to say to them, see that no one leads you astray.
Many will come in my name saying, I am he, and they will lead many
astray. Well, this much we know from
Simon Bar-Koba in the second century to Sung-Yong Moon in
the 20th century, along with a half dozen or so even now in
the 21st century, there have been literally hundreds of people
through every single century, men and women both, who've claimed
to be the Messiah. I mean, you have to understand
when Jesus made that statement, he was still just the leader of
a small band of followers, and they had absolutely no political
power whatsoever. But for the last 2,000 years,
just as Jesus said, there's been a slew of people coming in his
name. Jesus told the disciples something
very important. He told them when he returns, the entire world
is going to know it. This is what he said in Matthew
24. He said, see I have told you ahead of time. So if anyone
tells you there he is out in the wilderness, do not go out.
Or here he is in the inner rooms, do not believe it. For as lightning
that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be
the coming of the Son of Man. You see when Jesus arrives for
the second time, everyone on earth is going to know it. And
they're going to know it instantly. So the one thing all of these
false Jesuses have in common is the failure to alert the world
instantly at the moment of their coming. Understand that's just
what Jesus is promising. You know, one commentator suggested
that Jesus' actual return is going to be like an atomic bomb
going off on your front lawn for every single inhabitant of
planet Earth. And so anyone who suggests that
he's out in the wilderness or somewhere out in the inner rooms,
they're trying to deceive you. I mean, understand, Jesus has
this near impossible task to undertake here. He's trying to
explain to the disciples with the same type of pinpoint accuracy
the events of the next few decades, while tying them to the events
of his return, which is going to be thousands of years later. Because understand, in their
wildest imaginations, the disciples, they could have never imagined
the 2,000 years that's already occurred between Jesus ascending
into heaven and his return. I mean, they thought it was a
matter of moments, of days, weeks, maybe months, not centuries. As the elders begin distributing
the bread, I'd like us to take a moment, just consider the presence
that we find ourself in right now. You see we actually have
a huge advantage that the disciples never had in spite of the fact
that they were face to face with Jesus. Jesus has told us ahead
of time exactly what's going to take place when he returns.
He also told us what to expect before then because things are
unfolding exactly as the scripture said they would. The question
we need to ask ourselves this morning is are we taking advantage
of the opportunities that these times are giving us. 1 Corinthians 11 says, But let
a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and
drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in
an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning
the Lord's body. For this reason, many are weak
and sick among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge
ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are
chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the
world. And again, each month I say the same thing. Communion
is an extremely serious undertaking. To enter into communion in an
unworthy manner is to literally court disaster. If you're not
absolutely confident that you are a child of the King, if you
haven't by faith trusted in Christ as your Savior, Or if you first
need to be reconciled to your brother or sister before you
bring the sacrifice of yourself to this altar, then just pass
the elements on. If you don't feel right about
participating, err on the side of caution and make sure you
get right with God first. And I say this each time as well.
On the other hand, you can make the mistake of thinking, okay,
I'm not spotlessly perfect. I'm not worthy to receive communion.
The enemy loves that mistake as well. Because being a child
of the king doesn't mean that you don't sin. It doesn't mean
that you don't fall or fail. It means that you recognize that
the salvation you have received is a gift that no one's capable
of earning simply by being good. And so we repeat Dane Ortlund's
words. He says, in the kingdom of God, the one thing that qualifies
you is knowing you don't qualify. And the one thing that disqualifies
you is thinking that you do. It also means that when we do
fail, we are aware that we have sinned. And the reason why we're
aware of our sin is because we have the Spirit of Christ within
us. And so we grieve as children who know that we have a Father
who longs to forgive and cleanse us. This is what God says in
1 John 1. He says, If we confess our sins,
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from
all unrighteousness. So again, just to reiterate,
being a child of the King doesn't mean that you're spotless. It
means that when we sin, we understand we have somebody up in heaven
right now speaking on our behalf. 1 John 2 says, My dear children,
I write this to you so that you will not sin, but if anybody
does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ,
the righteous one. And that's our key. Because we
have Jesus's righteousness and not our own. We have this alien
righteousness that didn't belong to us. It belonged to him and
he gave it to us. Because of that we are free now to eat from
this table. So if you love your Lord, don't
deny yourself the privilege that he purchased for you. As we said,
he lived the life that we were supposed to live, died the death
we deserve to die, so that we could be made worthy of heaven. And understand, God's not gonna
love you any more tomorrow than he does right here, right now,
today. Because from before the foundations
of the earth, God chose to place his love on you. And God saw
back then every single sin you would ever commit in the future,
and still he chose to shower his love on you. And so before
we participate, I just want you to ask God to show you how you
can use our present day circumstances to reach out to this world. 1
Corinthians 11.23 says, For I received from the Lord, but I also delivered
to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed,
took bread. And when he had given thanks,
he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do
this in remembrance of me. So take and eat. Elders, if you would begin distributing
the cup. I want to go back to the conversation
that Jesus is having with the disciples. It's called the Olivet
Discourse because that's exactly where it took place. And it's
considered by many to be one of the most difficult passages
in all of Scripture to understand. And the reason why, there's a
whole bunch of different understandings of what Jesus is saying. And
one of the reasons why is because his description and his prophecy
is twofold. I mean he's describing to the
disciples what's going to be happening in the immediate future.
And at the same time he's using those events to describe events
that's going to take place thousands of years later when he returns. And so this is what he goes on
to say in verse 7. He says, when you hear of wars, and rumors
of wars, do not be alarmed. This must take place, but the
end is not yet. For nation will rise against
nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in
various places. There will be famines. These are but the beginning
of the birth pangs. Again, Jesus is speaking of wars,
and rumors of wars, and we know all about that. We've got three
going on right now. According to the Council on Foreign
Relations, there are 26 wars ongoing right now. And that includes
the three that we're very aware of, the Russia-Ukraine war, the
Israeli-Palestinian war, and the rebellion in Yemen. There's
other sources that claim that there are 56 ongoing wars right
now, if you include skirmishes as well. And obviously, rumors
of war occupy the evening news. Hezbollah sends rockets into
Israel itself. The Houdini rebels send missiles
towards American warships. Jesus goes on to say, for nation
will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. And
we know the Greek term for nation is the word ethno. So Jesus is
saying, ethnic groups are going to rise against other ethnic
groups. And whether it's nations or ethnic
groups, there's no doubt that's been on the rise, not just in
this country, but all over Europe, all over the rest of the world.
And then, of course, there's earthquakes and famine, which
is literally, again, breaking out all over the world. But there's
a very important point that Jesus is making here. And not only
the disciples, but most of the world seems not to have grasped
it. Jesus is making the point that
all of these signs are not pointers to the end of time, are not pointers
to the second coming. I mean, let me just say that
again. Jesus is making it clear that these are not signs of his
imminent return. He says they're beginning of
birth pains. Listen to how Baker's New Testament commentary responds.
He says, they mark the beginning, says Jesus. They do not mark
the end, therefore do not be alarmed. He says, in spite of
this clear warning which our Lord gave to his disciples, many
present-day church members are filled with admiration for the
minister or evangelist who speaks learnedly about, quote, the signs
of the times, and strives to show his audience that this or
that terrible battle, serious earthquake, or devastating famine,
quote, on the basis of prophecy, is the invaluable sign of Christ's
imminent return. It's not. I mean, these birth
pangs, they've been going on for over 2,000 years. And so
it is, Jesus tells the disciples, a prophecy that is actually twofold. It applies directly to the disciples'
immediate circumstances, but it also turns out to apply to
the imminent return of Christ at the end of time. And so Jesus
goes on to say in verse 9, he says, But be on your guard, for
they will deliver you over to councils, and you will be beaten
in synagogues, and you will stand before governors and kings for
my sake, to bear witness before them. Well, this warning clearly
seems to be aimed at the disciples' present-day situation, because
we know that's precisely what happened to them. It's precisely
what happened in the early church. But then Jesus makes a statement
that describes why there's been over 2,000 years since the early
predictions became end time predictions. Jesus says in verse 10, and the
gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations. So why hasn't
Jesus come yet? It's because that task has not
yet been finished. You know, one of the most wrenched-out-of-context
scriptures in the entire Bible is the one that you find in 2
Peter 3.9. Folks say, God is not wishing
that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
Understand, this is not a scripture that's describing God's plans
for the world. It's not a scripture that describes universal salvation
either. You've got to understand, once
again, when you put this verse in context, It becomes quite
clear that God is describing the astounding patience he has
waiting for the last of his promised sheep to enter the sheepfold.
Proof of that is thus far he's waited 2,000 years. This entire
verse is about God's patience. Understand, the verse before
that says patience sees a thousand years as a day, and a day as
a thousand years. And the verse itself says, the
Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise, as some count slowness,
but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish,
but that all should reach repentance. Well, that promise is not universal
salvation. Instead, it's a promise that
God's going to patiently wait till the very last of his sheep
enter into the sheepfold. And that's a promise that he
made right from the start. In 2 Thessalonians, he says,
because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through
sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. And
again, it points to these two completely different time periods
that Jesus is addressing in the Olivet Discourse. There's a short-term
explanation for the disciples of what's going to take place
in the near future, along with a long-term prophecy of Jesus'
return. And we saw that's exactly what
took place. You know, the disciples themselves, they were handed
over to the councils. They were beaten in the synagogues.
They stood before governors and kings for the sake of Jesus.
And they did bear witness. But we also know that Jesus was
telling his disciples what he said to them applied not just
to their future, but to our future as well. And so we ask, okay,
well, how about us? I mean, during the last 2,000
years, there's been countless times that believers faced the
very same fate that the disciples did. Again, Jesus' prophecy has
an immediate fulfillment and a long-term fulfillment going
all the way up to right now, today. I mean, it's highly unlikely
that we in the U.S. are gonna be finding ourselves
in the same situation as the disciples, but let me tell you,
folks in Asia, South America, and Africa, they certainly might.
So how do we respond when we find ourselves having to defend
our faith or the gospel? Or simply try to share the good
news with someone who may be less physically threatening,
but still threatening? I mean, you might be thinking,
well, I really, I just don't have opportunities to share the
gospel. But God is giving us all kinds
of opportunities that we might never have had in the past. I
mean, they don't come wrapped in a pretty silver bow. But let
me tell you, those opportunities are there for the taking. And
the best example I can give you is the opening of the Summer
Olympics. I mean, everybody has an opinion. And everybody's talking
about the slap in the face that that putrid display was to the
gospel. And again, I'm sure you've heard
the arguments on both sides. Some say, oh, no, it was just
a display of a Dionysian bacchanal, where drag queens get drunk and
act like they're at orgies. I mean, that's offered as an
explanation. That's offered as an excuse for
what this was. And what France claims to have
wanted to show the world, if it wasn't a direct attack on
Christianity, it was certainly an attack on decency itself. And it was nonetheless putrid.
But guess what? Everybody's got an opinion about
it. My opinion was it was simply
a display of the inherent hatred that mankind has for his creator,
displayed now on a worldwide stage. You have to understand,
this entire display was designed to promote outrage. In the case
of believers, it's to provoke nothing more than a shrug of
the shoulders. Listen to what God says in Psalm 2. He says,
Why do the nations rage, and peoples plot in vain? The kings
of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together
against the Lord, and against His anointed, saying, Let us
burst their bonds apart, and cast away their cords from us.
He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord holds them in derision. See, the King of the universe,
who gave these folks the very breath they breathe as they're
mocking Him, He is still sovereign. And so how do we respond? Well,
I think scripture gives us very clear marching orders in 1 John
3.13. It says, do not marvel, my brethren, if the world hates
you. Okay. Those are the orders. Do not marvel. This is humans doing precisely
what humans do. Shaking their fist at the very
God who gives them life. I said, so what do we make of
this opening ceremony? Well, at the very least, it gives
us all kinds of openings to discuss the gospel itself. Now, I'm very
thankful that France gave us a picture of what flat-out rebellion
towards God actually looks like. Because I can take that picture
to describe the feeling that every single one of us has had
that wants to shake its fist at the God who created us. I
mean, I can go back to the Garden of Eden and describe the implications
of Adam's fall. How his one act of rebellion
turned the entire race against its creator and created the chasm
that only God could fill. And that the very Jesus, who
inadvertently or obviously was being mocked with that display,
was God himself. who came to earth to pay the
price of our rebellion, to live a perfect life and offer that
life up on a cross so that we could have our record wiped clean
and stand before God, now worthy of his heaven. In that sense,
France did us a great service. So now when we get involved in
these discussions, well, can we rely on the same miraculous
intervention of God that Jesus promised to his disciples? Well,
I think the answer to that is, well, that depends. Listen to
what Jesus told his disciples about their present day situation
in verse 11. He says, When they bring you
to trial and deliver you over, do not be anxious beforehand
what you are to say, but say whatever is given to you in that
hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. Well, I
think you can see how this text applied perfectly to the immediate
future of the disciples. Peter's perhaps the best example
of what it means to just trust that God's going to give you
the words to speak at the precise moment you need to speak them.
And it's easy to forget when you read Peter's epistles, or
John's for that matter, that these men, they were uneducated
tradesmen. They went fishing for a living.
And yet when they were called before government authorities
or church authorities, they found themselves waxing eloquent, not
because of any skill that they had, but because of the presence
of the Holy Spirit. You know, the book of Acts describes
an incident in which Peter heals a crippled beggar who had been
stuck in one spot for years. And that miracle draws this huge
crowd. And so Peter turns to the crowd
and begins to address them. This is what he says. He says,
fellow Israelites, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare
at us as if by our own power or godliness we have made this
man walk? And the God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed,
and you disowned him before Pilate, though he decided to let him
go. You disowned the Holy One and the Righteous One, and asked
that a murderer be released to you. You killed the author of
life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of
this. By faith in the name of Jesus,
this man, whom you see and know was made strong, it is Jesus'
name. And the faith comes through him
that has completely healed him, as you can all see. Now, fellow
Israelites, I know that you acted in his ignorance, as did your
leaders. But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold
to all the prophets, saying that his Messiah would suffer. Repent
then and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out that
times of refreshing may come from the Lord. I mean you read
these words and you forget these are coming from an ignorant quote-unquote
fisherman. This is a guy who had no training,
no education when it comes to things theological. And so it's
astounding how eloquent Peter sounds knowing what his background
was. And that's just what Jesus promised.
In fact, others knew his background. The fact wasn't lost on the religious
leaders and the authorities as well. Acts 4.13, it says, when
they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized they were
unschooled ordinary men, they were astonished and took note
that these men had been with Jesus. So Peter clearly gives
evidence that God miraculously had given him the very words
that he needed as he needed them. So the question that we want
to bring to hear right here and right now is, can we expect the
same kind of miraculous intervention? You know, if we get into difficult
discussions, can we expect a miraculous transfer of wisdom and information
from the Holy Spirit to us as we're speaking? Well, I would say wisdom, yes.
Information, I don't think so. You see, it seems to be a very
narrow set of circumstances that God is describing here. What
he's saying is if you get arrested and you're brought before a council
or a court or a governor and you're called on to defend the
faith publicly, I think you can certainly trust that God is going
to give you the words for that moment. But you know, ever since
the church began, it's been involved in the task of sharing the gospel
for better and for worse. And scripture takes great pains
to point out that sometimes sharing the gospel is a gloriously simple
task. and other times it's ingloriously
complicated. Sometimes the gospel makes you
smell the sweet fragrance of life itself, and sometimes sharing
that gospel stinks of death itself. And those aren't my words, those
are the Apostle Paul's. In 2 Corinthians 2.15 he says, For we are to God
the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and
among those who are perishing. To the one, we are the aroma
of death, leading to death. To the other, the aroma of life,
leading to life. And who is sufficient for these
things? And again, that last statement sums up exactly how
we should view every single opportunity we have to share the gospel.
Quote, who is sufficient for these things? Nobody. I mean,
we may stumble, we may stutter, we may fall. We might make complete
fools of ourselves, but understand, we may be mocked. But God is
never mocked. There's no time whatsoever when
you honestly share from the Word of God that God is not honored
in some way and glorified in another. You know the dear brothers
who taught me as a brand new believer insisted that every
time you quote the Bible you move people towards becoming
believers. And they would quote Isaiah's words in that effect.
Isaiah 55 says, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth.
It shall not return to me void, but shall accomplish what I please.
It shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it. Well, what
they weren't taking into account with that last statement was
these words. It shall prosper in the thing
for which I sent it. Well, you know, sometimes that's
the glory of salvation. But sometimes it's the glory
of judgment. Because God wastes nothing. And
sometimes when your gospel reeks of the stench of death, and people
respond accordingly, you're gonna think, this is not worth it,
this is not worth taking that kind of a risk. But God is saying
literally that every time you honestly share the truth of the
gospel, you bring glory and honor to God, regardless of how your
testimony is received. I mean the disciples learned
very quickly what that savor of sweet life or the stench of
death felt like. And we too should be willing
to experience both knowing in the end the God that we are after
is a God whose glory matters the most. Furthermore, Christ's
warning to his disciples once again contains advice for our
present day and clearly an understanding of what's going to be taking
place just prior to his return during the tribulation when those
birth pangs begin in earnest. This is what he says in verse
12. He says, and brother will deliver brother over to death.
And the father is child. And children will rise against
parents and have them put to death. And you will be hated
by all for my name's sake. But the one who endures to the
end will be saved." So again, to take Jesus' words, to put
it mildly, things are going to get much, much worse than they've
ever been. And again, I'm speaking in a very parochial sense. I
mean, to many in parts of the world where Christianity is persecuted,
those words already describe their present day experience.
I mean, here in the United States, we haven't experienced anything
like our brothers and sisters throughout the world have experienced.
I mean, there's no doubt there are some right here right now
today who've had their own brothers deliver them over to death. There
are some who have had their own children betray them. And one
thing we can certainly know and understand, thanks to incidents
like the opening of the Olympics, is that the gospel and the God
that it represents is clearly hated by this world. And what
does God tell us directly about that? He says, don't marvel. Do not marvel, my brethren, if
the world hates you. So as you take the cup, ask God
for the grace and the courage to, just like the disciples,
Use whatever present-day circumstances we have to share the most important
truth there is, and that is the gospel. 1 Corinthians 11 says,
in the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying,
this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often
as you drink it in remembrance of me. So take and drink. One final note, this is our head,
hands, and feet where we try to have some kind of practical
understanding of what it means to remember Jesus. And I want
to go back to our present day circumstances, our present day
situation. And one of the most popular new terms to enter into
the lexicon of our present day understanding is the word gaslighting.
I mean, gaslighting means lying on such a wholesale level that
the person receiving the lies either begins to believe it or
starts thinking that they're crazy. We're in full swing now
with the political season, so we're going to be hearing both
sides complaining about the gaslighting that's taking place. Well, I
just want to say that the gaslighting about this Olympic event was
literally off the charts. When the whole world reacted,
the authorities simply lied that it was merely the celebration
of a pagan feast. Trust me, it was not. You know,
those drag queens, they were posed in exactly the same position
that the apostles were in da Vinci's painting. And at one
press conference, an Olympic official even slipped. He told
the press this was a reinterpretation of da Vinci's painting of The
Last Supper. And the point is, it was designed
to attack exactly what we've been celebrating this morning.
And so our marching orders with regard to this display is, as
I said, not to marvel, not to get upset, depressed, or fearful. But on the other hand, God says,
don't be naive. We spent the last hour looking
at Jesus's predictions of the way things are going to be, and
we see those predictions unfolding before our very eyes. Part of
the practical solution to remembering Jesus lies in preparing ourself
for how the enemy is going to respond as we come down to what
might be the end. I mean, we know we're in the
birth pangs. And God alone knows when the actual birth is going
to take place. But until then, it's our task to stay one step
ahead of the gas lighters. And scripture is how we do that.
Listen to what 2 Thessalonians says. It says, the coming of
the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with
all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception
among those who perish, because they did not receive the love
of the truth that they might be saved. And for this reason,
God will send them strong delusion that they should believe the
lie, that they may all be condemned who did not believe the truth,
but had pleasure in unrighteousness. Understand forewarned is forearmed. Let's pray. Father, I thank you
that what took place at the opening of the Olympics was literally
a gift from France to us. It gave us and gives us the opportunity
to share our opinion with all of the opinions that are flying
around. I pray, I pray for each and every
person in this room. I pray if they hear that opportunity
that they might just perk up their ears and send up a prayer
to you, to the Holy Spirit, to give them the opportunity to
share just what the gospel means, just what the source of that
mockery actually is. Give us opportunity, we pray,
to turn what is obviously a slight on the gospel into something
that gives us the opportunity to preach it and preach it well.
And I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
The Olivet Discourse
Series The Life of Christ
| Sermon ID | 8424165326127 |
| Duration | 38:50 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Mark 13-14 |
| Language | English |
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