Good to see you this morning in God's house. Appreciate you being here. Please take hold of your Bibles and open them to Matthew chapter 10. Matthew chapter 10. Jesus gives us some further instruction on authority. That seems to be the teaching of the book of Matthew. Matthew chapter 10. Once again, we're going to pick up the scene here beginning in verse 7 of our text. Those willing and able, I'm going to ask that you stand with me please as I read with you the word of God. Jesus speaking says, as you go, preach, saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand. heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons, freely receive, freely give. All right, what a command. Well, let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for its truth. We thank you, Heavenly Father, for the hour before us to study it, to understand it, and to have it applied to our lives. Help us to learn from even the mistakes that the Jews made. Help us not to make the same mistake that they made and have a disbelief in you and your power and your ability. Help us to leave this building completely aware of our authority over evil through Jesus Christ. In His name we pray. Amen. Thank you and pleased to be seated. Well, I've discovered that there's some people, some people, who love to go to school. They count it, that's something they look forward to, they anticipate. Wow, I get up, I'm able to get up today, I'm going to go to school. I'm excited about doing that. On the other hand, there are people who are not quite as excited as they are to go to school, but some people enjoy learning and reading and studying, you know, and doing homework, I guess. I assume they enjoy doing homework. And if you're one of those people, God bless you. You know, it's wonderful to be able to have that kind of an attitude. You know, that's the way God's gifted you, and that's the way God's turned you, and that's great. But God has gifted us all differently, and higher education is not for everybody. You know, it's just not for everybody. And there are a lot of people at the University of Arkansas that don't need to be at the University of Arkansas. They don't need to be there. They don't need to go in there. They need to go somewhere else and do something else. But we have a culture today that has this idea that that's what you got to do. And so they send their kids here and try to get them an education. But if you're only measuring success by the financial results, you got the wrong gauge. You got the wrong gauge. Yes, you can make money going and getting a higher education. You can make more money sometimes. Sometimes, not all the time. But we still live in a country where hard work and entrepreneurship, you can still make it. If you're willing to put in the hours, you're willing to put in the time, you're willing to put in the effort, you can still make it in our country. If you still have integrity, you can still make it in our country. Hard work is still a valuable commodity in our country. The Bible says this in Proverbs 14, 23, In all labor there is profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty. The Proverbs said, in all labor there is profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty. And then again, commit your works to the Lord and your plans will be established. Proverbs 16 and 3. But there is a time when you learn all you can learn and you need to go to work. You need to stop learning and you need to start applying what you have learned and what you know. Whether you learned that from a study at the University of Arkansas, whether you learned it from a mentor, whether you were an apprentice, or whether you learned it at home, you have to apply what you learn at some time. It just can't stay in your head. You have to go to work. And so that's kind of where the apostles were. It was time to go to work. They've been studying the life of Christ. Christ's been taking them around from place to place for a while now. And so Christ says, okay guys, gather up here. You've got to go to work. It's not enough for you to follow me around. It's not enough for you to just learn what I've been preaching and know what I've been preaching. It's time for you to get out here and it's time for you to preach what I've been preaching. It's time for you to apply what you've been learning over this time. And so that's kind of where we're at in our study of Matthew, okay? It's time for them to be sent out on their own. This was only their initial lesson. Now they were going to learn a lot more. They had a lot more to learn, obviously. But now was the time for them to at least go out and do a little bit under the auspices and guidance of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And so the time had come for them to use their authority and use their power. But you notice in previous study, last week we looked at this idea. Jesus put some limitations on them. He's going to send them out, but He says, okay, here are your limits. I want you to go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. I don't want you to go to the Gentiles. I don't want you to go to the Samaritans. He says, I want to put some limits on you. And when you turn your keys over to your children for the first time, you know they can take the car out by themselves. You don't just turn your child loose with the keys to the car. You say, OK, where are you going? And here's the limitations. This is how far you can go. You can't go any further than this. So you set some limits on your kids when you first set them out with a car because you want them to build up some experience. You know, and you want to build up some confidence. Well, this is kind of the way with Jesus Christ, He says, okay, wait a minute now, I want you to, we're going to put some limits on you here, until you get a little more experience. Now, at the end of the book of Matthew, He says, I want you to go out and make disciples of the whole world. But He doesn't do that here. He says, I don't want you to go to the Gentiles, and I don't want you to go to the Samaritans. I only want you to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Okay, and we looked at that last week, because it's kind of strange to us. Because we're thinking, oh, wait a minute. Jesus is prejudice. You know, we have a big deal about being prejudiced in the United States of America. We're not allowed to be prejudiced here. You know, if you show any prejudice whatsoever, you're in trouble. But Jesus obviously showed some prejudicism here, right? I mean, he said, you can't go talk to the Gentiles. I want you all talking to your people and your people alone. Just, you know, people the same color of skin you have, people the same color of hair you have, people the same color of eyes you have. Don't go messing around with the Gentiles. Okay, but we know Jesus isn't isn't prejudiced, okay? He has a plan. He's working his plan here. And, you know, he's not against the Gentiles. He's not against the Samaritans. As a matter of fact, we find in places in the Gospel where he does talk to Gentiles. But Jesus wants to evangelize the world. That's always been the plan, to evangelize the world. To save all men. For all men can come to the knowledge of God through Jesus Christ. It's always been the plan. And it's just a pretty big target, you know, to evangelize the world. Well, you remember God calling Israel. Remember God calling Abraham. And he calls Abraham and says, I want you to come out of the earth of the Chaldeans. I'm going to send you to the promised land here. But I'm going to do something for you. So he makes a promise to Abraham. And he makes him the father of the nation of Israel. And he's going to raise up Israel. Why is he going to raise up Israel? He's going to raise up the nation of Israel to evangelize the world. That's the whole purpose of the nation of Israel. God said to Abraham, look, I'm going to make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing and I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you I will curse and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. He said in you all the families of the earth are going to be blessed. What did it mean? He meant, well, through you and through your progeny is going to come the nation of Israel. Not only out of the nation of Israel, it's going to come the Messiah, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. So yes, all the world's going to be blessed through the nation of Israel as they come out of Abraham's loins. But Israel's job is to make known to the world what God is like, and that He alone is the Savior, and that there is no other Savior. Israel's work is to make God known through their obedience to the laws that He gave them. He told the nation of Israel, I am holy, you be holy. I want you to show the world how holy I am. And I'm going to give you these laws to show the world how holy I am. And secondly, after you do that, I'm going to bring through you the Messiah, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and the King of Kings, and He's going to fulfill the prophecies that I'm giving you. So, Israel failed. Okay? Israel failed. They messed up. They messed up. And they perverted the laws that God had given to them. And as a result of perverting the laws, Israel was giving to the world a perverted view of God. God has so designed us in such a way that the way we live demonstrates to the world the kind of God we're serving. God has so constructed us, so built us, that His purpose is that the way we live, the way we behave, is manifesting to the people around us the kind of God that we believe in. You cannot separate that. That's the way we have been built. Everybody, everybody, everybody, everybody who is living, breathing, is presenting to the world their view of God. It is impossible to separate the atheist, the agnostic, the heathen in the jungle somewhere in Africa, and the rapist, and the murderer, and the old ordinary guy who you're working with. We're all presenting to the world a picture of what we believe about God and what we believe Him to be. You cannot stop that presentation. Jesus Christ is the only one who ever, ever, ever, ever, ever presented to the world a perfect picture of who God was by the way that He conducted Himself upon the earth. That was His purpose, obviously, because Jesus said, you know, Jesus said, look, I'm going to go away. And He was talking to the disciples, and He said, I'm going to go away. And one of them turned and said, well, where are you going to go? He said, well, I'm going to go to the Father. And Jesus said to him, he has seen Me, has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? He says, I've shown you the Father. I've lived it. I've manifested it. But now that Jesus is on the scene here, He's giving Israel one more chance. Go to the sheep in the lost house of Israel. I want you to go to them and go to them alone and give them one more opportunity to repent and get right with God. And if they continue to reject the message and the messenger, then he's going to turn to the church. He's going to turn away from Israel and he's going to turn to the church. So verse 7. So he says in verse 7, look. As you go, I want you to preach, saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Now, we don't have to spend a lot of time here. We've been over this many times before. This is not the last time we're going to see it, either, that Jesus makes this message to them about why he came and what he's doing. Suffice it to say that he was going to send his apostles out, and he says, here's what I want you to preach. I want you to preach what you've been hearing me say, okay? I've been preaching about this. Now, it is your turn to go preach about it. And listen, this was a highly anticipated message. I mean, he is coming to the nation of Israel. And he's preaching to them the coming of the kingdom. This is what they've been waiting for. This is what they've been looking for. This is what they've been expecting. The king is here. The Messiah is here. The king of here. It should have been exciting. That's what it should have been, right? That's what they were looking for. It's a wonderful message. It's an exciting message. Anticipated message. So if you go do something, and you preach something, and people have a hard time accepting what you're preaching, they have a hard time believing what you're preaching, what do you do? What do you do? What do you do? When people aren't necessarily going to accept what you're doing or what you're saying as truth, what are you going to do? How are you going to convince them? Well, you're going to give them credentials, right? You're going to prove to them that what you're saying is true. If you think someone is going to doubt that you can do the job, you give them the credentials and you say, well, look, I got a degree here from the University of Arkansas. And this degree says that, you know, I can do the job. That's your credentials. You prove them that you can do what you say you can do, that you're qualified to do the work. And so, you know, Jesus knows that his disciples are going to need some credentials. that they're going to go with the message that he has, and they haven't necessarily gravitated toward Jesus. And so he's thinking, well, you know, if they haven't gravitated toward me, they're not going to gravitate toward my disciples either. And so I'm going to have to, you know, somehow give them some credentials, something to corroborate the message that the kingdom is at hand. And so it gives them the credentials. Well, what are the credentials? They're the kingdom, power, and authority manifest through what he calls here healing the sick, causing the blind to see, healing the diseased, causing the lame to walk, casting out the demons, and raising the dead. Pretty impressive. Pretty impressive. I mean, you know, if you're doing this stuff, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. So you would think, you would think that They're going to get on board, right? They're going to believe. They're going to accept. They're going to embrace. They're going to go. You would think that, but we know that's not what happened. I mean, as impressive as what Jesus did, as impressive as what the apostles were doing, you know, and their message and their works were in tandem here. The miracles were amazing feats. Their purpose was not to impress, though. Their purpose wasn't just to astonish or to woo. It was to prove that they were preaching the truth that the kingdom was at hand and Jesus was the Messiah, but they didn't get on board. They didn't get on board, folks. You know, if you were there, and you were in their sandals, and you saw this stuff going on, do you think you would have gotten on board with Jesus and the disciples? Let me tell you, you would not. You would not, you wouldn't be any different, you wouldn't be any different than these Jews at this particular time. Even if you were listening to the same thing that they were preaching, and seeing what they were doing, even though the sick were being healed, and the hungry were being fed, and the dead were being raised, the deal was, even though they were doing all this stuff before the Jews, to the Jews, this wasn't their primary view of what their Messiah should be like. Listen, Jesus was not kingly enough. He wasn't surrounded by royalty. He didn't really, as far as they were concerned, he didn't come from the right stock, because his mom and dad, his dad was a carpenter, you know? I mean, his family was poor. He was from Nazareth! He was from Nazareth, folks! And he didn't pose a threat to the Roman government. He didn't bring national peace. The religious leaders of the day had rejected him and said, listen, you need a Jesus Christ, and the stuff that he's doing, he's doing by the power of the devil and the demons. Don't accept him! They not only had a preconception of what their Messiah should be like, they had a preconception of what the truth was. How many of you ever have watched a movie, gone into the movie, watched a movie, and then after the movie you come out of the movie disappointed? You ever done that? The movie didn't live up to the hype. I mean, you'd heard about the movie, you'd read about the movie, and you had preconceptions. When you went into the movie house, it didn't happen. You ever go into a restaurant, people come along and say, oh, you gotta go to this restaurant, man, it's the best restaurant in the whole world. Man, you read the reviews, you say, oh yeah, I'm gonna go to this restaurant, it's gonna be really good. And so you go to the restaurant, you sit down, they bring out the food, you eat the food, you walk out of the restaurant and say, man, that was disappointing. Why? Because you had in your mind some preconceptions about how that food was going to be. Have you ever bought anything online? You know, and you're anticipating the day that arrives, you know, the United States Postal Service is sending you updates on when it's going to get there, you know, and you're looking for the day that it says it's going to be in your mailbox today by 8 o'clock tonight, you know, and so you're looking forward to it. And it finally gets you, you open a box and you take it out and you try it on or whatever you do with it. It doesn't fit, it doesn't work, whatever the case may be. And you're disappointed. Why? Because you had these preconceptions in your mind and you were disappointed because it didn't measure up to what you thought it would be based on everything that you had heard in the reviews that you had read. It just didn't work out. You ever had that experience? The power of preconceptions. The power of preconceptions. They can hurt us or they can help us. They can be good or they can be bad. You say, well, what makes the difference? One is based on a lie and one is based on a truth. One is based on a lie, and one is based on truth. We all have preconceptions, and some of them are based on lies, and some are based on truth. Did you know, preconceptions, you know, I always thought they were coffee beans. They're not. They're coffee seeds. You'd be disappointed, maybe. You know, they tell you, oh yeah, you can see the wall of China from outer space. Did you know if you go to outer space and look down on America, or on China, not America, it's not on China, it's inside, if you look down on the Earth, you won't see the wall of China from outer space, even though they tell you you can. Not gonna happen. Can't see it. You know, I heard, you know, and you see the pictures all the time, the Vikings, you know, and how the Vikings have their little horns on their helmets. Bentley says that's not true. And it's true, it's not true. You know? If you were to meet a Viking in the Viking days, they wouldn't have horns on their helmets. You'd be disappointed. Your preconception would be wrong. You know, they say today in the United States of America that we have race problems. Reality is there's no such thing as a race. The reality is that racism is based on Darwin's evolutionary lie. If you don't believe that, go get Darwin's book and look at the little pictures in there that has mankind's evolution. The Jews had a preconception that was a misconception because it was based on a lie about the Messiah and it led them down the wrong path. And they followed the path and they rejected their Savior, they rejected the Redeemer, they rejected the Lamb of God that was slain for the sins of the world, they rejected the King, they rejected the Messiah because of the lies that they had believed to be the truth. The Jewish religious culture was rampant with lies. And it created a misconception about the Messiah. And here's the real kicker. Because they had a misconception about the Messiah, they had a misconception about God. Wait a minute, preacher, you're stepping over the line. You're stepping over the line. Preacher, remember now, you're talking about the Jews, right? You're talking about the seed of Abraham. You're talking about the people who gave us the Bible. And you're telling us they had a misconception of God? You're talking about the people who had the law? And you're telling me that they had a misconception of who God was? You're telling me that? I'm telling you that. The Jews had a misperception of who God was. Anytime you have a misconception of who Jesus Christ is, you have a misconception of God. Anytime that your conception of God does not include Jesus Christ, you have a misconception of Jesus Christ and God both. They go together. They go together. They are inseparable. Remember what the Scripture says. The Scripture says, Remember that you were at the time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. Paul was saying that particular passage of Scripture. Look, here's Christ. Remember that you are at one time separated from Christ. And then he comes down to the end of verse in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 12, and he says, You are also without God. Without Christ, without God. Without God, without Christ is not God. If you reject Jesus Christ, you reject God. And if your God does not include Jesus Christ, you don't have a conception of God. People think, oh, I'm spiritual today because I believe in God. And they go through all this stuff and they claim to be so spiritual. That is absolutely not true. Because if your concept of God does not include Jesus Christ, you don't have a concept of who God is. Period. That is the truth. Regardless of what our culture tells us, it cannot be otherwise. Jesus Christ is what makes God, God. And God is what makes Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ. Now, in light of that, I want to say this. All lies lead to a misconception of God. You might want to reject that statement, and that's okay. You know, I understand that. I believe it to be true. But all lies lead to a misconception of God. You see, let me try to explain that to you. What I mean by that is, how many of you remember what happened in the Garden of Eden? I know that you're familiar with Adam and Eve, and I know that you know what happened in the Garden of Eden. I'm going to review it for a second here. But do you remember what took place in the Garden of Eden? Here you have the serpent coming to Eve. You remember what happened in the discussion between the serpent and Eve? A servant comes to Eve and convinced her that God was lying. Right? That's the deal. God was lying. God wasn't telling the truth. And it was okay for her to eat the forbidden fruit. It was, you know, God wasn't telling the truth about that. You're not going to die. Satan presented a false idea of who God was. That God was not telling the truth. And that God wanted all power for himself and he didn't want to share with anybody. But she would disobey God that she could actually become like God. She believed the lie that she could become like God. In fact, nobody can become like God. Nobody can. She believed that human beings could become divine. That's because she had a false concept of the enormity, immensity, infinity of God. And Satan blinded her to the truth by appealing to her own pride. That's always the way it works. Always, always, always, always. Satan's going to appeal to your pride. He's going to blind you. The truth was that she was created in the image and likeness of God, as we all are. You say, what does that mean? That means you are created to reflect the moral goodness of God. That is your job. There's a huge difference between being God and reflecting His moral goodness. You don't have to be God to reflect His moral goodness. You have been created as a moral being. That's why we have moral loss. You cast, when you lie, you are casting to the world an image of God and you are casting the wrong image of who he is. All lies are a reflection on who God is. I don't care if you're a car salesman, a used car salesman. I don't care if you work for Procter and Gamble and you're selling toilet paper. If you're lying about your product, You are casting a reflection upon who God is and who you're supposed to be. You're lying to your spouse, you're lying to your parents, you're lying to your teacher, you're lying to your instructor, you're lying to your friends, you're lying to your brother, you're lying to your sisters. You are casting a reflection upon God and creating a false image of who he is. And the Bible says that's why God hates the lie. Not just because it's a lie, because it's a false image of who he is. So he hates the lie. Jews had a false concept of God. Yes, the chosen people of God. Yes, the descendants of Abraham. Yes, those who had the law of Moses. Yes, those people. They had a false image of God. You say, how so? Because they believed the lie. You say, well, what lie did they believe? They believed that God would accept them on the basis of their own righteousness. They believed that. They were under the impression of most people today that if you have enough good works, if you've got enough good stuff built up on the positive side to overcome the bad side of your life, that God is somehow going to accept you and you're going to be in His favor. They believed that. A lot of people believe that today. Most people believe that today. That reveals that they have a misconception of God because of a misconception of His righteousness. God's righteousness is such that if you make one little bitty misstep, you're going to hell. You say, people really don't like to hear that. Listen to me. Hell is a reflection of how righteous God is. That's what hell is. Most people think they have a wrong conception of hell because they have a wrong conception of God. They think that it's just some place that we're supposed to scare people with. You Christians, you go out here and you preach about hell and you scare people into being, say, no, no, no, no, no, no. No. You think that's just a place where really evil people go. That's what hell is. You know, hell is just a place of punishment. No, hell is a reflection of how just and holy and righteous God is. See, one of the reasons there's a hell is because God is so righteous. And as such, he demands all of us to be equally righteous with him. You remember what the scripture says? Be ye holy because I am holy. And you can translate that, be ye righteous because I am righteous. There beats in the heart of every human being a moral compass. And God put that moral compass in the heart of every human being. And that moral compass is the Ten Commandments. Don't politicize the Ten Commandments, please. I know, I am aware, I listen to the news. And I know that they're saying, oh you can't post the Ten Commandments because they're Christian. Don't politicize the Ten Commandments. They are divine. They are God's commandments. They're not a political football. They are God's reality. And we don't need to back away from that. And we don't need to deny that. And we don't need to stop short of anything of the fact that they are God's. You say, people don't like that. I know they don't. It's because innately in them is God, and who He is, and what He is like, and what He demands, and that He is righteous. Of course they don't like it. Of course they want to do away with it. The Jews had a hard time with it. Listen, the only way for Jesus to have the righteousness of God was to be God. Don't you make the same mistake that the Jews made. We're going to give you an opportunity to avoid the mistake that the Jews made. We're going to offer you an invitation hymn this morning. for you to contemplate as the Spirit of God works upon you. Our musicians come forward and we prepare for this hymn. Don't make the same mistake that the Jews made by rejecting Jesus Christ. Our musicians are coming and they're going to offer you an invitation to make it right with God today. To make it right. The scripture says, therefore the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ. so that we may be justified by faith." What? So that we may be justified by faith. Everybody here is already guilty of breaking the law. And without Christ, you are already on the road to hell. It's not that you're going to hell, but that without Christ you are as good as in hell if you died right now. According to God's ledgers, without Christ, you are hell bound. You are guilty of sin and Jesus Christ is the only one who can wipe your sin out. But you have to repent. You say, what does that mean? To repent. I hear it so often. It means that you have to stop believing and trusting that you can make it. Because you cannot. You don't have it in you. You cannot make it on your own. You cannot make it without Christ. Because He possesses the righteousness that you need. confess your inability and your weakness to obey God and put your faith in Christ. I'm going to ask that you stand with me, please, as we begin our invitation, part of our service this morning. And as you're standing, let's bow our heads and close our eyes. Father, we come before you. We desperately need a reality check. We desperately need to put our salvation in check and see if we are genuinely saved. To see if we have really come to that place where your spirit has brought us to a realization of the enormity of our sin and the incomplete ability that we have to do anything about it. that Jesus Christ, that the Spirit has fallen upon us with such a reality, that Jesus has become more real to us than we ever imagined, and that the necessity of His blood has become more powerful than anything we could have ever wanted. And it's possible, possible, for us to have made false professions of faith, and therefore having a false hope of eternal life, and therefore having a false perception, a preconception that will not hold when we stand before you on judgment day. Give us assurance if we belong and disturb us if we don't. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.