Turn your Bibles to Matthew 13. Matthew 13, we just finished the 40-day fast, the make room fast. My goodness, it was so good. At the 5.30 last week, Katie was up here with Ben and I, and she kind of outed me, if you remember that, just shared that I drank a milkshake on the fast.
It wasn't as smooth as for sure, milkshake. And so there was some true confessions. And then she proceeded to share another one of my failures on the fast. So we were on a like a spending freeze, or like discretionary spending, no discretionary spending throughout the fast.
And it was day two. I was on a liquid fast for three days. And so I'd stay two. I'm in it.
And I needed to go to the grocery store because we needed some food, you know? Because we're not eating what we normally eat. So you got to buy some new food, right? So it's just like, it's a sacrifice of buying more groceries, you know?
And so I'm there. And I'm hungry, you guys. I'm so hungry. And I'm in that spice aisle, you know?
Like you see the cayenne pepper and the salt and the pepper. And I look down. And there it was, right? If you guys know about this, if you're here last week, there it was.
And it was on sale. The cinnamon toast crunch. Cinnamon sugar mixture that I could put at my own house, whenever I want to, I could use that. And I could make my own cinnamon sugar toast.
And I knew what I saw it. I have to have that. I knew it. And all of the fast completely went out the window, right?
And I was like, I'm buying that for sure. And I cannot wait to have it. And on Saturday, I use that cinnamon toast crunch. Sugar.
All right. God is, yeah, you're so good. Yeah, that's right. But let's continue to press in.
The whole reason why the Lord invited us into this fast is because we want the kingdom, right? We want, we don't want just to read about the kingdom in the Bible. And we don't want to just hear about the kingdom when we hear about run ministries and what God is doing in Iraq and China and all of these places in Iran and all these places that he's moving in power. And it's like, the kingdom is happening.
What? I don't want it just over there. I want to hear, right? I want to see the kingdom here in our city, in our community, in our neighborhoods, right?
And that's what we're continuing to press into for a couple months. We've been in more of like a preparation season preparing for the parables of Matthew 13. And so Jesus talks about the kingdom in Matthew 13, and he shares parables. And so we've been learning about, OK, how does a Jewish rabbi teach parables?
How can we be disciples that understand what he's saying? We've been talking about what type of soil is my heart going to have? When his words hit my heart? Is my soil responsive?
Do I listen? An obey? Or am I just a listener, right? Am I getting puffed up in knowledge?
Or am I actually a doer of the word? So we've been going after all this. And a couple of weeks ago, we started this parable on the wheat and the tares or the wheat and the weeds. And I read it, but then we got hung up on one phrase in Matthew 13.
And it led us into this whole message, really the Holy Spirit sidelined me, and just took us in a completely different direction. And we talked fully about church discipline. And the topic of church discipline, we were in Matthew 18 and a lot of other passages. And that was, man, it was so the leadership of the Lord.
And I just am so reminded consistently, it seems like recently, he is just in father mode right now. He is fathering us as his children. I'm so grateful for his fathering. He's calling us into the light, out of darkness, into community.
He knows just what we need. And he's been such a fantastic leader. I mean, just amazing leader, which is not surprising, right? So we're going to go back to this passage.
I promise we'd go back to the parable of the wheat and the tares. And one of the things that the Lord's been working in us over 40 days is not being offended by what Jesus, the King, has to say, right? He's been kind of moving in our hearts, preparing our hearts to go, no matter the word, my answer is your disciple is yes. No matter what you have to say about the kingdom, I want it, right?
Because sometimes when you're used to the kingdom of the world, you're used to the kingdom of America. All of you guys have been swimming in the culture of America. That's the culture that you're used to. And now we're talking about a different kingdom.
And sometimes it's offensive when we learn about a different kingdom and a different culture in a different way. And we better just jump in. Matthew 13. Let's look at verse 24.
So what we're going to do is we're going to read Jesus' parable. And then we're going to read Jesus defining the terms of his parable for the second part. So Matthew 13, verse 24. He put another parable before them, saying, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed into his field.
But while men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?
And he said to them, an enemy has done this. So the servants said to him, do you want us to go take care of it and pluck them up? But he said, no, less than gathering the weeds, you're going to root up the wheat, altogether with them. Verse 30, let both grow together and tilled the harvest.
And at harvest time, I will tell the reapers, hey, gather the weeds first, bind them in bundles to be burned, and then gather the wheat into my barn. Verse 36, then he left the crowds and he went into the house. And his disciples came to him in the house. And they said, hey, we get the mustard seed and leaven thing.
We got the parable of the sower down pat. We got it. But my goodness, would you explain the parable of the weeds of the field to us? And he answered and he said, hey, yeah, for sure.
The one who sows the good seed is me, the son of man. The field is the world. The good seed is the sons of the kingdom. That's you guys, sons of God, the followers of Jesus that have surrendered to the Lord.
The weeds are those that have not surrendered to me from Ephesians 2, those that were born under the power of the evil one, 39. And the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the close of the age and the reapers are angels. This is the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so it will be at the close of the age.
Jesus is talking, he's saying there's an age. There's like a period of time here that we're living in. So we are in this chapter of an age or a time period, an epoch. And what that means is that things are going along in history in a certain way, but there is going to be an end to the way things have been.
Are you seeing that? So there is going to be a closing of the chapter of how human history has been operating, how the world has been going on. There's actually going to be an end to that chapter. And Jesus is describing how the chapter is going to end.
Are you seeing that? So there's been thousands of years of this age, and when it's time to transition to the next age, these are some things that are going to happen. Yeah? All right.
So it will be at the close of the age. Verse 41, the Son of Man will send it. So Jesus is going to send his angels and they are going to gather out of his kingdom, all causes of sin and lawbreakers. And he is going to throw them into the fiery furnace in that place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
And then the righteous will shine like the Son in the kingdom of their father. He who has ears, let him hear. He who has ears, let him hear. It just reminds me of Revelation 2 and 3 where Jesus is writing these letters and he finishes every letter to every single church that is living in a pagan city.
There's these churches that he's writing to and he says, hey, he who has ears, let him hear. In other words, if you got ears, you got to use them. Right? Then you be a hearer and a doer of the word.
You listen and shamaw. You listen and obey. So he says he who has ears, let him hear. And so if you've been around a little bit, what we've been talking about is how does my Jewish Rabbi teach?
I want to track with what he's talking about because there's so many times if you read parables of Jesus where you're like, right? As Americans says, we're reading in English and we're trying to put two and two together. Right? And we've been learning as a community that there's different types of strategies that Jesus will ensue or he'll use, he'll put to work.
And one of those strategies is called Pardes. And that is this strategy where it's almost like different layers of the onion of what he's talking about. And so this first layer is called the Pashat, which is what is he talking about at face value? And then the next layer that kind of opens up a whole different world is called the Rames.
And the Rames is the Rabbi gives a little hint. In he embeds a little treasure, hint, clue, crumb, you know? And he says, hey, I'm going to leave that there for you. If you're hungry, you might discover it.
And once you kind of search after, is there something else going on and you find it? It's like Eureka. And then all of a sudden it's like your shovel hits a piece of, is that? Wait, what was, and you hit it?
And there's an excitement on your soul and you're like, whoa, okay. And then you just start digging vigorously and then all of a sudden the Drash or the Drash or however you want to say it, it starts unraveling. So like the revelation of what he was getting at begins to unravel. And then sometimes there's this mystical revelation that God gives you that is called the sod.
All right, now don't hold me to it if I'm mispronouncing any of those Hebrew words, but let's continue. All right, so that is how Jesus will share some of his parables. And we're going to talk about some of those things. So what is like the surface level meeting of this parable?
When Jesus is talking about this parable, he makes it really clear. There's going to be two types of plants in the world. There's going to be wheat who are the sons of God. And there's going to be the weed or the tear or the darnell, okay?
And we're just going to say tear to make it easy. All right, so there's the wheat and the tears. The wheat grow up and the tears grow up and they look identical to the naked eye. They look exactly the same.
But then, and I think we talked about this a couple of weeks ago at the 530. But then when the fruitfulness or the grain, it talks about Matthew 13, when the grain appears, what the wheat does or what the sons of God do is they begin to bow. You know, like have you ever seen a field of wheat and they're kind of like, you know, there's a bend to the wheat. But with the weeds, with the tears, they just stand straight up.
And the Lord is communicating something. He's kind of like, I want to pick up what he's laying down, right? There's a bow on sons of God towards the Lord, towards his leadership, right? I just think that's so cool.
And so there's this bow that the wheat have and you're able to define and go, that's a son of God, that's not. But it takes time to discern that. So what happens is the servants are going, hey, you got a bunch of problems in your field in the world. What are you going to do about it?
You got a big mess. And we see that Jesus as the king, as we're talking about the kingdom of heaven, we're wanting to know the whole reason why we're saying this is to know our king. Is that right? So I want to know what type of king he is.
And it seems like our king is not afraid of the mess. And this kind of breaks our brain because we don't like that as a bunch of church people. Mess. You want to know what mess means?
You want to know what tears growing next to wheat means? Well, first of all, I just think this is so profound. You know where Matthew 13 at the start, he's talking about the parable of the seeds and the sower. He sows his word into hearts.
Now this parable, the seed is something different. What is it? It's the sons of God. So he's going, I'm sowing you into the world.
He's going, this is my strategy. I'm going to sow men. I'm going to sow daughters. I'm going to sow sons into the world.
And they are going to grow up next to the wicked. They're going to have classmates that are wicked. They're going to have co-workers that are wicked. They're going to have neighbors that are wicked.
They're going to be surrounded by temptation in this age. And then we wonder why are all of these bad things happening in life? Obviously, there's so much that goes into the problem of evil. But I'm just saying, let's strip all of the problem of evil away and just focus on.
There's broken people that have not surrendered to Jesus and they're under deception under the rule of Satan. There's going to be a lot of problems in your life just because of that. And if you're in a Christian bubble, I want to, like, let's move beyond. Right?
Because the Lord is calling us out of the religion sphere. He doesn't want us just in non-profit land. He wants us to rub shoulders with the broken, rub shoulders with people that don't know Jesus. Right?
If you're not being inconvenienced or bothered or mistreated, you're probably not very close to the tears. But the Lord is going, and tears are going to be together. Right? Yeah?
Okay. And so what we don't like is that he is keeping the wicked around. You know what I'm saying? The sons of thunder, do you remember those guys?
In Luke 9? Do you know what they do? They're in Samaria. And they're like preparing, they're kind of like doing event planning for Jesus in Samaria.
They're trying to work on an event because Jesus is coming to town and they get rejected by the Samaritans in Luke 9. And they come over to Jesus and they're like, hey, Samaria doesn't want you. Should we call fire down from heaven on all of the Samaritans? Right?
There's sometimes this thing in us where it's like, this is not fair, this is unjust, and we have this justice thing about us. And there's a demand. I must have justice now. Have you ever seen a kid when their toy gets stolen?
The thing is in us. There's a fury. And but our king on the face value of this parable, our king is like, yeah, it's going to be messy. They're going to grow together.
Don't uproot them. Don't uproot those guys. And that's a, but there's an end of the age where there is justice. And now this is maybe even more offensive than the wicked are still going to be here.
Comingling with all of the righteous. All of the righteous, right? Justice in the spirit, still working on it in the soul, right? What's more upsetting is the end of the parable because Jesus is communicating.
There is going to be a close to this age. And how the new one starts and this one ends is that there is going to be people and all of the causes of sin are going to be put into a fiery furnace and there's going to be weeping and a gnashing of teeth. And that right there is a dividing line. And many of us, maybe there's some people that are on different pages and you're like, man, but I've gotten into the, Gehenna and the Hades and all of the definitions and I've landed in different ways.
All that I'm saying is I look at this passage and at face value, we see there is weeping and gnashing of teeth for those that reject Jesus as Lord. And there is perfect justice and wrath that gets poured out on every person that decides, I don't care. I don't want him. How many of you know that Jesus is laying on a cross giving of himself saying, I don't want you to have the wrath of God poured out on you.
I'm going to take the wrath of God poured out on me. If you surrender to me as the king, then you get grace and mercy poured out on you. And all of your unrighteousness is removed from you. So wrath doesn't come on your unrighteousness, but you actually experience mercy and grace.
And he's going, this is my good news. This is I'm giving myself to you. But if the human heart goes, I don't care. I'm good by myself and I don't need your Lordship.
What that means is I don't want you to be the king over me forever and especially not right now. And Jesus is going, I've done everything I can. I've gone 100% of the way in love. I've put myself out there.
I've literally taken on flesh. I'm God and I've become a man in so much humility to reveal my love for you and my affection for you and my design for you. And I'm laying it all out there. I'm coming 100% of the way.
And all you must be is a responsive, surrendered person to go, I'll let you love me. You can have my life. If the choice is, I'm good. There is no other payment for sin.
There is only one man's blood that can cleanse us from our sin nature and make us new. There's only one man's blood that can do it. And he laid on a tree 2000 years ago and he was a Jewish man and his name wasn't Jesus. It was Yeshua but it's okay that we call him Jesus.
And so there is a day of reckoning coming. There is a day of wrath. And I'll tell you this, us and the billions of people that have ever lived on the planet, we are going to witness that day. We can talk about what that day looks like and I think that in a couple weeks we'll probably get into the fish and the net parable and we're going to look at it.
But I'm telling you that day I believe we're going to arrive and we are going to witness judgment. And we are going to all have the same response. You are so right in how you judged. There is going to be, like we're going to witness a judgment and we're going to go, he is righteous in all he does.
And there is going to be, I'm so glad that I didn't have to be the one that was making the decisions and the calls but he is so righteous in every decision that he made. He is such a God of love. He's such a God of mercy. He's such a God of compassion and I believe we're going to get to that day and go, I love him.
There's going to be, oh my gosh, I love this God. And he is my king forever and I will be forever devoted to him. That will be our rightful response in that day of judgment. Every wrong thing, every sin done against us, every sin done by us, every sin that is grievous, every trauma.
I'm telling you this, there are people in our city walking in gross levels of wickedness, creating suffering that you could not imagine. And there is a day of reckoning coming. There is a day of payment and the people of God apply the mercy that Jesus applied on the cross and said, God have mercy on them. They know not what they do.
And we bleed for mercy on our abusers and on our enemies and on all of those that have created suffering in our lives because we know. We know that there's a day coming. The mark of a true believer says, I forgive them and God I plead that you would move heaven and earth to bring them to saving knowledge of Jesus so that they can get delivered from all their demonic influences that is created suffering after suffering after suffering. Lord, I plead the mercy over them.
That's how a believer responds after they go through the process of healing and forgiveness. They go, Lord, give them what they don't deserve. Eternal forgiveness. I didn't deserve it.
They for sure don't deserve it. Right? But you're worthy of even them surrendering. How could even they come to a saving knowledge of Jesus?
Unthinkable. How is that even possible? Only a God like you could do something that wild and crazy. That would just blow my mind, Lord.
I'll believe it. Even though how they were has damaged me in such a deep way that I'm still for the rest of my life, I'm going to deal with the suffering that they influence and they put into my story, you're healing me, you're piecing me together. But I know that there is full restoration for me. And I know somebody else did that to them.
I just feel that. I didn't say this at the 230. I just feel for some of us that have suffered the most hellish things. The Lord wants you to know, and I've talked about this before, that there is a day of wrath for all of the suffering that you've gone through.
And that day happened in its entirety on the cross 2000 years ago. And the wrath, God has perfect memory. You know that? He has perfect memory.
And he remembers every detail from every angle of that injustice. And he is the Lord of wrath and justice and vengeance for what was done to us. That's the type of king we serve, a king of vengeance. And the reason why is because he's a lover.
You can't have perfect love without perfect justice. You can't be a husband. See abuse happen to your wife. And be indifferent.
You can't be a bridegroom. See your bride suffer at the hands of somebody else. And be, whatever, perfect love demands perfect justice and wrath. That's the type of day that Jesus is talking about at the close of the end of the age.
All right. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. Jesus, we thank you that you are the king that laid down your life for your enemies.
And we're so grateful that we get to be following a king like you that knows how to define what true justice is. And that there is a close to this age of brokenness. And I'm so glad that I don't have a seat at the table for judging and that I don't have to be judging right now whether they're going to be a tear or a wheat. I thank you that that's not my job.
My job is just to bow and be a wheat. In Jesus' name, amen. This is what I want us to do. I want us to write down next to weeping and gnashing in your Bible.
If you're somebody that writes in your Bible in the margins, some of you don't do that, that's okay. But if you do, I want you to write next to weeping and gnashing of teeth. I want you to write a reference that you can look at later. It's Lamentations 216.
Lamentations 216 next to weeping and gnashing. You can just write a line from that phrase and write out Lamentations 216. These are just kind of bonuses here for you. I want you to write next to Shine Like the Sun in verse 43.
I want you to write next to that Daniel 12, 3. Daniel 12, 3. And then next to fiery furnace, I want you to write down Daniel 3. Lamentations in Daniel is written during the same time period, okay?
But we're going to turn to Daniel 3. Daniel 3, it's right before Hosea, right after Ezekiel. Turn your Bible to Daniel 3 with me. I believe that the crumb or the hint in this parable is actually the phrase fiery furnace from Daniel 3.
And there is so much here in this story. If you're not familiar with Daniel 3, it's the story of the fiery furnace where Shadrach, Meshach and Abindigal are thrown into the fiery furnace. And I want to give context to this passage because what we're going to do is we're going to read this together in groups of two or three. And we're going to read the whole chapter out loud together in little groups.
And then we're going to discuss it together, okay? So this is going to be just so fun to follow the rabbit trails with the rabbit trails, right? It's not bunny trails. Both, both either.
So what I want to do is just paint the historical context and then we're going to jump into Daniel 3, okay? Is everybody good? I know I talked about judgment and wrath and we're like, oh, we're pulling out of that into a different layer that the Lord has for us, okay? All right, are we okay?
All right, Daniel 3, what's happening in this passage is Israel. This is about 600 years. Everybody say 600. This is 600 years before Jesus is born, okay?
So we've got Judah, which is made up of two tribes of Israel and then tribes of the Kingdom of Israel. And then we've got Israel that has 10 tribes and they divided after Solomon's son and David's grandson. They were just not good leaders. And so they divided, okay?
The kingdom got divided. And so now Judah, which is descendants of two tribes of Israel, they are hanging out and this is where Jerusalem is, okay? So Jerusalem is within this geographical area. That's where the temple is.
So Solomon, David's son, built a temple. Here they are a couple hundred years later and they are in disobedience to God. They are doing idol worship. They are getting married to foreign peoples that are introducing them to pagan worship.
They're not caring for the media among them. They are rebelling and God is raising up prophet after prophet to say repent and they're just disregarding what God is saying and they're disregarding the prophets. And so what happens is Babylon comes in and it's this empire that's growing in Babylon conquers Egypt and Judah at the same time. So what Babylon does in 600 or so BC is they steal away all of the best and brightest of Israel's royal families, okay?
So all of the people that are, all of the kids, the teens, the pre-teens that are part of the royal family that are highly educated, they actually get brought to Babylon. They get taken away from their families and they get placed into like the Nebuchadnezzar's courts of his government, all right? Are we tracking? So they are exiles.
They get taken away and now they are in like an internship under King Nebuchadnezzar's government. And what they are doing, they have food provided for them but it's not food from home, it's Babylonian food. They got clothes given to them and it's Babylonian clothing. They got classes that they're going through and it's about Babylonian literature, it's about Babylonian culture, it's about Babylonian art.
They are in spiritual experiences that is about worshiping Babylonian gods. Are you hearing what they're doing? So what they're doing is they're trying to influence these young leaders with Babylonian culture and trying to lace into these leaders, into their DNA, Babylon, with the express purpose of sending them back to their homeland and having Babylonian culture get infused into Israel so that it continues to be a part of the Babylonian empire and they don't have resistance and they don't have like people fighting back in the empire but they basically manipulated them with culture. Are you tracking?
Hey. So we've got a couple friends that many of us are aware of, right? We've got some friends Daniel, Hananiah, Mieshell, and Azariah, also known as Belchasar, Shadrach, Mieshach, and Abednego. And those guys are some of the youth that got stolen away from Judah, plopped into the internship in the King's quarters and now we're picking up.
Okay. Now we're picking up into the story and what we're going to do is we're going to read together and this is what I want to, are you guys still tracking? Okay. What I want to do is focus on two things when we read this together.
First thing is I want you to notice things that seem to mirror the parable that Jesus shared of the wheat and the tears because they're like mirroring each other in a lot of different ways. They're like overlapping one another and I want you to notice that as you're reading it together. The second thing I want us to do is I want us to contrast, I want you to notice how is King Nebuchadnezzar different than King Jesus? Okay.
So those are the two things I want you to focus on. First is how are they mirroring each other and then second is how is King Nebuchadnezzar different from King Jesus? All right. So I want you to start with at least one other person.
If you see somebody around that's not in a group, I want you to just invite them into your group. We're going to read for about five minutes or so out loud and then I want us to discuss for five minutes. Okay. Everybody say we got it.
All right. Ready, set, go. All right. All right.
We're going to gather back. We're going to gather back together. All right. You guys got to talk to me a little bit.
We're going to wrap up in a few minutes but we're going to go after one more passage real quick and then we're going to wrap up. Hey, you got to talk to me. Tell me just audience participation. What did you notice is maybe the contrast between the kings.
Ones filled with fury and ones filled with love and fury? Yes. That's so good. Yeah.
What else? Wow. One demands obedience and one doesn't. You were going to say the same thing.
One demands worship. One doesn't. Yeah. That's good.
Altimatums. Nebuchadnezzar has ultimatums and Jesus is not expressing ultimatums. Yeah. Worshipping, a living king versus worshiping an idol.
Come on. So good. One more. What you got?
Marla. Stop it. Whoa. All right.
For those of you that are listening back or you're in the back of the room. Fire works. One king's fire doesn't. That's good.
That's a good word. She said it better. And then we go home. That's right.
Honestly. I think as we look at these stories and we contrast the kings, I think one of the things that sticks out to me is Nebuchadnezzar demands immediate punishment. And King Jesus is letting the wheat and the tares grow up next to each other. Right?
That how Jesus is leading is he leads in a way that is patient and not insecure. Insecure leaders, they hear about a dissension and they go, they must pay. Confident leaders. They go, that's all right.
Mess is always pretty normal for leadership. And Jesus as a leader, he has his servants coming to him just like Nebuchadnezzar has servants coming to him saying, wait a second. Aren't you a good leader? Right?
Wait, I thought you so good seed. And then Jesus' response is I did, but there's an enemy. And they're going, well, we can fix the problem. And he goes, I hope all things.
I believe all things. I love. I keep no record of wrong. And I am a God of faith.
I call things as though they aren't. And so I want us to turn to 2 Peter 3. I believe this is another passage that kind of mirrors these two passages. This is how Jesus is not the leader that provoked Christians to do the crusades.
Nebuchadnezzar is the leader that provoked Christians to do the crusades. It wasn't Jesus. The crusades are going, hey, we are going to kill you, Muslim, or we're going to kill you Jew, unless you surrender to Jesus. And Jesus says, I am going to Terry, and I'm going to not return because I'm believing that none should perish and all come to the saving knowledge of me.
Right? So Peter 3, and I want to start in verse 8. Say amen if you're there. Hey, don't overlook this one fact, beloved, with the Lord one days as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.
The Lord isn't slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but he's patient towards you. Not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief and then the heavens will pass away with the roar and the heavenly bodies will be burned up like the fiery furnace and dissolved. And the earth and the works that are done in it will be exposed.
Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people should you be? What type of wheat should you be? You should be the wheat that bows before the Lord in holiness and godliness waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of the Lord because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn. But according to his promise, we are waiting for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
Therefore, beloved, are you with me? Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish and at shalom. And count the patience of our Lord as salvation. Just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him, as he does in all his letters, when he speaks to them of these matters, there are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist in their own destruction as they do the other scriptures.
You therefore, beloved, know in this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. Now in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, to him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity, amen. Jesus is the leader that is willing to be misunderstood when he taries. How many of you know that when things are a mess and when there's injustice, it can feel like there's accusation that goes up, you know, it works up the ranks?
Whenever things aren't going well, who hears about it, the leader, right? So there's this accusation towards heaven. Why are all of these bad things happening? Why are the wicked succeeding?
Do you hear David and his cries? It's like Psalm 73. Why are the wicked prosper? Why are they excelling?
Why are they doing better? Why are they wealthy? Why are they blessed? Right?
And Jesus is willing to take the hits for the sake of mercy because he's going, Lord, I just see him leaning over to the Father going, I want to go, I want to come back. But you and I know there's more. Right? Let's just wait a little bit longer.
I want more from every tribe and tongue and nation and people. He's going, I want more tears to turn into wheat. Don't you know that he's going, don't uproot them. They could still turn.
Their destiny isn't set. I got something for him that none should perish. He's going, yeah, we're going to wait on this. I'm going to let it be messy all the way up into the inn because I want that tear to turn to a wheat.
I want that slave to turn to a son. I want that man that is stuck in debt and I want him to be living. I want the orphans. I want them to be heirs.
I want those that are lost to be found. I want enemies to be friends. I want the wicked to be redeemed. I want slaves into sons and I want those that are destined to burn.
I want them shining like the sun. I want them to shine like the son of Daniel 12, 3. I know who they are. You think that Jesus just came for you?
No, he's going, Father, you sit me because you so loved all of the good church people. No, no, no. He so loved the world. He so loved the tears.
He so loved you and me when we were tears, when we came out of the womb and we were sons of the enemy and then God of Ephesians 2. And then he by his grace we've been saved, not by our works, not by the works of tears. It's by the grace of the Lord Jesus that we're saved. It's because he waited until we showed up in 2025 in all of our mess and he's going, I'm going to tear you.
Don't you know that you're on this earth and you're following Jesus right now because Jesus tarried? He said, wait a little bit longer. There's a way a little bit longer in our King. He's going, there's going to be more wheat that are going to bow and they're going to do it in a context.
Listen, they're going to do it in a context like Revelation 18. Do you know what Revelation 18 is about? It's about Babylon. And when I look at Revelation 18, do you know what I see?
I see America all over it. All of these descriptors about Babylon, this demonic culture, I put up American culture next to Babylonian culture. Same thing, but God is raising up. Those that are like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
Those that are willing to go, all I got is a bow in Babylon. I got a bow on the inside of me that goes, I will not bow to any other image. I will not give myself to any other lover. I will not bow to any type of idolatry or the ways of this world.
I've got a bow for one King. I got a bow for one Lord. And it's the one that's going to come back. He's going to bring justice, but he's going to Terri a little bit longer.
And he's going to Terri because he's the God of mercy, because he's the God of love, because he's the God of grace. And he doesn't want anybody to perish. He doesn't want that guy that's the worst of the worst. He doesn't want that guy that is hopeless.
He's so far away from the Lord that there's no hope or no, there's hope. He's the one on their heels. I remember Andy Bird said that he's the shepherd that's on their heels. And I just believe that God of glory and greatness, the ancient of days that we worship tonight, he's going to come on the clouds, but he's waiting on the clouds.
He's waiting before he goes on those clouds and he rides on the clouds. And we see redemption in the sky and every eye is going to see him. I believe he's going to sweep many into the kingdom and there's going to be less mourning at his appearance and there's going to be more praise at his appearance because he's just willing to Terri a little bit longer. This is the King that we serve and this is what I want to be true about me.
I want it to be true about me that I believe all things. I want it to be true about me that I'm going Lord. I know there's room for one more. I know there's time for one more.
I want to believe with him. He must think. He must think that if there's delay, it means less perishing. Lord, I want more brothers and sisters.
I want more in the family and I'm going to believe for all of my friends that don't know Jesus. I want to just call you into intercession as a people. Do you not know that you have words as sons that have been planted into the field as you look up to the Lord of the harvest and you go, God, send labors into the fields and draw men unto repentance with your cords of loving kindness that he's going to send you as a son in the field and he's going to answer you in your prayer for your friend that doesn't know Jesus. I want to encourage you.
You start praying more. You start believing more in the car on your way to work, on your way to school when you're riding your bike. When you're going across camps, I want you to start believing for your nominal friends. All of your friends that think they're Christians but they're not surrendered.
I want you to believe for the nominal Christians of the city. I want you to believe those that are going to have their hearts grow cold in a day of trouble. We're going to start believing for them. We're going to start believing.
God, you're going to get them. You're going to draw them in this hour. Sweep them into connection. Sweep them into fascination.
Sweep them into surrender. Lord, that they would surrender to you. They wouldn't just give you lip service. Full on surrender.
Let's all stand. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. This is the distinction of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed to go in Daniel.
There was a devotion. There was a bow that they had on them in Babylon. So Lord, we say that it's our design that you've given us to shine like the stars. You've given us yourself as one that will bring justice and bring a close to the end of this age.
You've placed us as sons, intermingled with the wicked. It's for such a time as this that we've been placed and planted where we are. It's for such a time as this that our assignment, like class said yesterday, that our assignment is where it's at right now because you're a king of long suffering, mercy and love. And so God, we ask, give us your heart for the tears.
Give us your heart. We want to be like you where you looked up and you saw the key us in the tree. Lord, open our eyes to see the zakias is all throughout the Twin Cities. Open up our eyes to see that the fields are ripe.
Open up our eyes. We are the laborers. Lord, open up our eyes to see that we've got beautiful feet and we've got seeds in our hands and we're the soers and the reapers. God help us.
Help us. It's not just for the evangelists. It's not just for the gifted evangelists. It's all of us.
You've given all of us a go. And so God, we come before you. We ask, give us a grace to love. Give us a grace to love the mess.
Love those that are far. Love those that are wicked. Love those that are evil. Love those that are our enemies.
Help us in this hour. I see many of you actually repenting from bitterness and resentment for how the wicked have wronged you. You're in repentance and forgiveness and the Lord's going to give you grace. The grace is going to give you grace to long suffer love.
Oh God, we follow you. We love you. We love you, Jesus. Help us.
Just all throughout the room. You can just say to the Lord, Lord, help me. Help me to be like you. I want to follow you.
I want to have a, I want the kingdom. Lord, help me to be like my brothers and sisters. All throughout the East that love their enemies and those that persecute them. It's the age of amnesty.
It's the age of there's time to surrender and pledge allegiance to King Jesus. There's only one age where we have this opportunity. Having not seen him, pledging allegiance to him. Jesus, we pledge allegiance to you.
We surrender to you. Thank you for being this type of King. King that's confident. A King that's unmoved in his love.
And Jesus, name.