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8 4 it says shout for joy to the lord all the earth burst into jubilant song with music and let's keep that in mind as we worship together this morning please stand and worship with me my jesus my savior lord there is none like you all of my days i want to praise let every breath all that i am never cease to worship you shout to the lord all the earth let us sing power and majesty prays to the king mountains bow down and the seas will roar forever i have in you my jesus my savior lord there's none like you all of my days i want to praise my comfort all that i am never cease to worship you shout to the lord on the earth to the king mountains nothing compares you everyone needs compassion love that's never failing kindness of a savior the hope of nations savior he can move the mountains my god is mighty to save he is mighty to save forever author of salvation he rose and conquered the grave jesus conquered the grave so take me as you find me all my fears and failures fill my life again give my life to follow everything i believe in now i surrender savior he can move the mountains my god is mighty to save he is to save forever author of salvation he rose and conquered the grave jesus conquered the grave shining light and let the whole world see we're singing for the glory of the risen king jesus shining light and let the whole world see we're singing for the glory of the risen king savior he can move the mountains my god is mighty to save he is mighty to save forever author of salvation he rose and conquered the grave jesus conquered the grace heavenly armor will enter the land the battle belongs to the lord no weapons that's fashioned and glory to the lord and we sing glory and strength he's raised up a standard the power of his blood the battle belongs to the lord and we sing glory on our glory on our power and strength take courage my friend your redemption is near the battle belongs to the lord and we sing glory on our power and we sing glory on our power and strength to the lord and we sing glory on our power and strength to the lord dear god thank you for just again bringing us together and thank you for this community and this family please open our hearts and minds as we listen to the service this morning and please bless pastor don senior as he gives us this word this morning in jesus name amen please take this moment to greet one another good morning okay just want to go over our um announcements today so we still have the um list for serving in one of in any of our ministries to sign up in the back welcome center and we also have um just our directory flock which i'm going to be collecting today and putting together and then i'll print them out next week and you guys can just double check that i got everything right for you um so then this tuesday we have women's bible study at 9 30 a.m on wednesday we have our regular bible study continue the conversation at 6 30. on friday we have our youth and they meet together at seven o'clock and we also have tonight sat um men's zoom prayer and also next saturday we have men's fireside bible study and that's at 7 pm and also next sunday we have kayak at 1 pm heavenly father thank you so much for all that you do for us and for how you provide for us father god we pray that you use pastor dawn senior today lord and just use him as your vessel father god to speak to our hearts and help us to leave change today it's in your precious mighty powerful name we pray amen good morning the battle belongs to the lord i like that song that's it's a great one and don is a little under the weather so uh i got a call the other day saying hey is there any way you could put something together i said sure and uh as long as it's from the bible that he made that stipulation you know it's got to be from the i said oh done from the bible it's you know how he uses a small bible have you ever noticed that he uses a fairly small bible that he holds in his hand so i'm going to try to outdo him this morning i brought i i brought the smallest one i could find the problem is i can't read anything in it i don't know how he does that but anyway i'd like to take a look with you uh this morning by the way we should we should keep in mind there's a lot of people who are sort of uh sick of the church well that didn't sound right they're they're sick from the church there we go they're not sick of the church um and you know we should keep them all in prayer there's a lot going around and uh you know there's the cold weather too and everything so um appreciate your prayers for all those who are sort of struck struggling along uh would you turn in your bibles please to matthew chapter 17. we're going to take a look at two chapters i hope maybe just not quite but matthew chapter 17 is where we're going to start this again always fascinates me when the music that is chosen for our worship time fits in with the message and there's been no collusion you know no collaboration and you'll see as we as we get into it what i'm talking about i'm at that age uh where i never sometimes i have to take my glasses off so i can see better and i'm trying to figure out whether i need to do that this morning or not no i guess i'm okay let's have another word of prayer shall we as we get into it lord we come to your word this morning and we get into it we often may it get into us it's a living thing your words are alive and you've promised that just like the rain and the snow that accomplish what you want them to do so it is with your word you have a purpose for what we're looking at this morning you have someone here i'm sure who needs a little word of encouragement or a word of even maybe correction or a word of reminder and so lord i pray that you'll just take these uh passages that we're going to look at today and the points that i'm going to try to draw out from them to be a help to those who are here this morning in jesus name amen this headset thing is great i really like it you know i'm not i'm not kind of looking down worrying about this lapel mic and and all that it messes my hair up a little bit that's my only you know my only complaint but uh other than that it's it's really good in matthew chapter 17 we have four episodes that help us to see the true glory of jesus christ i love this chapter and you you probably if you think about it you probably know the lead up to it that uh gets into it where jesus asks uh his disciples who people are saying he is and uh it's it's peter who says you're the messiah you're the christ the son of the living god um and then within just a few verses when jesus predicts his death and that he's gonna have to die uh peter takes jesus aside and says hey you know don't talk like that that's never gonna happen to you it's amazing you know but aren't we all there sometimes where we're right there or you know saying the right stuff and then two minutes later we're blowing up at our wife or our kids or whatever um and so peter you know bless his heart uh he um has jesus saying to him get behind me satan if you've ever thought about that by the way that could mean either one of two things and there's no way to tell because we weren't there exactly how peter took it most of us assume that when jesus says to peter get behind me satan you're trying to stop me from carrying out the plan that god the father has for me most of us assume that he's kind of looking be at who's behind what satan is trying to do or what peter's trying to do that he's kind of not really saying peter you're a devil but kind of looking behind peter and saying satan's behind what you're saying there peter so get behind me satan but he may be saying to peter peter peter get behind me you know come around come up peter don't get in my face get behind me because what he says next is listen listen if you want to be my disciple you got to take up your cross and follow me see what i'm saying i don't know which it is or maybe it's both peter fall in line get behind me and by the way if you really want to be my disciple pete you're going to have to take up your cross deny yourself daily take up your cross and follow me so that's the background to chapter 17. but now in chapter 17 a few days later six days later actually we read that jesus took peter james and john his brother and he led them up on a high mountain by themselves and he was transfigured before them that word transfigured is a word that we get our english word metamorphosis from he was he was transformed he was what would be the word metamorphosized i guess uh he was totally transformed uh right in front of their eyes and they saw his face shine like the sun and his clothes became as white as the light it must have made quite an impact because many years later john who was one of the ones up there john would write in his gospel we beheld his glory the glory as of the only begotten of the father full of grace and truth and i got to believe that john was thinking back to this event on the mount of transfiguration when john and the others got to behold his glory to gaze upon not just notice it oh yeah look at that but to actually gaze upon the glory of jesus and then look at verse three i know you know this many of you who've been believers for a while know the bible you've read this you know and it's sort of like okay yeah i know what comes next but it's it's i want to try to if you're a jewish person up there this would be a shock a rule what happens next verse 3. and behold moses and elijah appeared to them talking with jesus now moses had been dead for over 1700 years and his body obviously was you know long gone so this is an example of the fact that they weren't just seeing an image of moses it wasn't like a you know some kind of a vision they were seeing moses and elijah so it lets us know that that people are conscious and alive even after they die which is exactly what paul tells us in his letters right it's one of the great hopes that we have believers it's one of the great hopes that we have that when death comes to someone who is in christ as paul would call it they don't really although we use the word they don't pass away they just go somewhere else they change their address you know they have to send a forwarding notice to to the u.s post office they're just moving to another location but they're very much alive and moses was very much alive making his appearance here with jesus now how how long had elijah been dead anybody there you go never died right we read about elijah that he's walking with the lord one day and he's walking with the lord one day and then he's not here and he's walking with the lord there so if you're playing bible trivia and it comes up who's the oldest man in the bible most of us think of methuselah right about my age um but really it's not it's elijah because he's still alive i mean he never died and some of us think that he's one of the ones who will be in in the book of revelation when it talks about there's going to be two witnesses who show up in jerusalem during the tribulation period some of us including wah think that he's going to be one of them but anyway elijah had been in heaven for over a thousand years or nearly a thousand years one of the questions sometimes people have asked me is how did how did the disciples know that it was moses and elijah did they have name tags hi i'm moses i mean and i think the answer is that over in luke we're not going to turn there but over in luke well it says right here that they they were talking to jesus right and over in luke it tells us what they were talking about luke says they were talking about jesus decease the greek word is exodus his departure which he was about to accomplish at jerusalem they were talking about the fact that jesus was going to die in matthew 16 jesus had told the disciples i'm going to go to jerusalem i'm going to die and that's when peter said whoa whoa whoa don't don't say that stuff um and now there moses and elijah show up and they're talking to jesus about the fact he's going to die and luke says it's a funny way to put it isn't it luke says they were talking to him about the death or the departure he was going to accomplish who talks about accomplishing their death you see jesus had to die that's why he came very important because even in christian circles people are trying to sort of water that down it seems to me i saw a post on facebook don't get your doctrine from facebook please you know if you believe this say amen copy and paste it and put it on your timeline and god will bless you today that's baloney so don't don't get your teaching from facebook and don't pass on teaching from facebook because a lot of it is not good so i saw a post from someone that ought to know better not from around here because we all know better you know don't we you know we're fine it's pray for the people out west you know they're the ones that need the help and this is from a friend of mine and um they from from my old church and they had a post up that said um the next time satan tries to hassle you about something you've done some sin tell him hey leave me alone because jesus already dropped all the charges and all kinds of people were going yeah okay right on yeah amen all right and it sounds kind of good you know and there's a little splinter of truth in it i guess but jesus didn't drop the charges that's what that's what some churches are teaching these days is that he just said hey you're all forgiven because i'm loved man i'm loved and i accept you and just the charges are gone he didn't drop the charges he took the charges upon himself isaiah 53 right god has laid on him the iniquity of us all he became a sin offering for you and for me the charges weren't dropped romans 3 23 says we're all guilty before god so god didn't look and say oh i dropped the charges i guess i was wrong after all you're really nice people no no no jesus took those charges and paid the penalty for us the charges were transferred to him it's a big difference big difference because the world wants to say even the christian world sometimes wants to say you're not all that bad jesus didn't die because he had to pay for your sins he died to show you how much god loves you and appreciates who you are you're just a spiffy person and god wanted to show that in a big way for god so loved the world see god is love well finish the rest of the verse please for god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son well why do you do that so jesus could come and say you're all great love y'all you wouldn't have had to die he could have just come and taught that and then gone back to heaven he came to die moses and elijah were talking to him about his death that he was going to accomplish at jerusalem and so here for a jewish person like peter james and john moses the law giver you know charlton heston and the exodus and the whole thing and elijah the great prophet of the old testament they're there to honor jesus they are there to shine the spotlight so to speak on him and i think that's how they were able to identify who moses and elijah were look at verse four good old peter peter peter says to jesus uh lord it's good to be here if you want let us make three tabernacles three little tents three little markers of some kind one for you one for moses and one for elijah now do you see a little problem with what peter said there yeah let's kind of put you all on equal billing right let's make three little booths or shelters or tabernacles it can be translated different ways a little remembrance of you and moses and elijah jesus and something else jesus plus fill in the blank uh right away in in our neck of the woods uh we may tend to think of those churches that uh would put mary in that blank or um we might think of the secular world that would say jesus and you know maybe the prophet muhammad and maybe some other great guru some other great feature but even in our circles let's be honest sometimes we come pretty close to to putting someone else maybe not on an equal footing but we want to put a little uh tip of the hat to them too we want to give some honor to them to your favorite bible teacher your favorite youtube videos that you watch your favorite books or your book author that you read jesus plus that guy or please jesus plus that woman who i really love her books and she helps me understand so much it's great that they do but be careful that you don't spend more time with them than you do with jesus right be careful that you don't spend more time getting from you know second hand what you uh than you do getting from firsthand so that was one little mistake that peter made but the other mistake is that he wanted to somehow enshrine that whole experience and i think that's a danger for us too sometimes we have a wonderful experience with the lord or we've been to some kind of a meeting or we've been to some kind of a well not right now you know with covet and everything but we've been to some kind of a conference or we've been to some kind of a of a special time of meeting and and it was it was just great it was a wonderful weekend oh man i wish i could bottle it and and take it home that kind of thing um we all have a tendency to do that and it's great to appreciate stuff but not to enshrine it right because the name of the game is living with the lord today not living with the lord on yesterday a few years back i went to buffalo uh it stopped off at buffalo i was driving somewhere else but i was driving by buffalo which is where i grew up buffalo new york and so i decided to to swing by my old church that i grew up in a lot of wonderful memories where i met my wife uh it's it's where i sang in fire it's where i preached my first sermon actually my second sermon and just a lot of memories and i was looking forward to really oh i'm going to swing by headstrong memorial baptist church good memories i drove over there and it had been sold it was no longer hedged memorial baptist church i have a past friend who kind of had the same thing happen when he went back to to visit a campground do i need to move this somehow tom okay i'm good all right i see that hand my pastor friend went back to visit a campground where he remembered as a as a young person back in the day you know dedicating his life to the lord throwing a log in the fire yeah lord this is me i'm gonna burn out for you man and he went back to the campground and it was now a high rise there wasn't even a camp anymore so there's always a little bit of a danger of trying to hang on to the past or remember the past and it's important and we'll see it in another way in a few minutes it's important that we understand that the past can be wonderful and we ought to appreciate it but we on ought not to turn it into a shrine where we come in and worship it or pay homage to it instead of worshiping the lord and what he's doing in our life today so we read on in verse 5. while peter was still speaking a bright cloud overshadowed them and suddenly a voice came out of the clouds saying this is my beloved son in whom i am well pleased hear him do those words this is my beloved son in whom i'm well pleased do they remind you of anything that happened to jesus earlier sure his baptism the only difference is that little bit at the end listen to him hear him so uh this is really the fulfillment of what moses himself had predicted remember moses before he died he said to the people of israel who he loved so much he said there's god is going to send a prophet like me he's going to come you listen to him and this is what uh god is saying here too that they should now listen to this prophet that moses who was there visiting on the mountain had said would come and so we read on in verse six when the disciples heard that they fell on their face faces and were greatly afraid but jesus came and touched them and said arise and don't be afraid when they had lifted up their eyes they say they saw no one but jesus only i don't know if you're into highlighting your bible or underlining your bible but if you are you might want to underline those two words jesus only because it's still the truth it's still what the world needs he's the only savior he's the only mediator he's the only authority in heaven and on earth he's the only road or path of access to god he's the only hope of the world and boy does the world need hope right things look really kind of hopeless if there's one thing we should have learned more than maybe anything else from the last few months is that politics isn't the answer i don't care what your party is or if you're proudly independent or if you're thinking of joining a new party that might be started by someone we all know politics is not the answer read the bible politics is the problem it's going to be a big problem in the future under the antichrist he's the only hope of the world he's the only judge of the world and he's the only payment for our sin now verse 9 as they came down from the mountain jesus commanded them and said tell the vision to no one until the son of man is risen from the dead don't tell anybody about this guys keep it to yourself why would he say that in this particular case i think it's because who's going to believe the word of three people who say hey guess what we saw and you didn't you know no i think that jesus knew that it wouldn't have been of any value for them to start talking about what had happened up on the mountain would have raised more questions than anything maybe a little bit of jealousy which was already a problem between the disciples paul tells us that it was really the resurrection that made the difference where he was seen by over 500 at one time and he was alive for 40 days before he reached heaven and all of that kind of thing the conversation that they had during the transfiguration showed the disciples that jesus death was not just something he was mentioning but was a an integral part of god's master plan and was necessary even for earlier generations like moses and elijah their sins were forgiven by the death of christ on the cross they were looking forward to that we look back to that but that's what happened sometimes people wonder well how how in the world can somebody dying on a cross over two thousand years ago how in the world can that somehow make a difference for me how can that have any effect on my sins or on my life one of the illustrations i like to sometimes use is think about the state of hawaii or the state of alaska the 49th and 50th states there was a time if you lived in hawaii let's say probably better to think of hawaii than alaska we got alaska coming you know tomorrow or whatever but anyway um suppose you lived in hawaii and i forget what year they came in it was in the 50s maybe 1958 maybe around there i don't really remember but anyway there was a time if you had grown up in hawaii let's say where uh you could not have said hey we celebrate the fourth of july man you know it's awesome independence day you wouldn't have said that but once hawaii became a state then you could say we're going to celebrate the fourth of july america's independence and all of a sudden just by hawaii becoming a state all the past history of the united states and george washington and thomas jefferson and abraham lincoln and all the all the stuff that belonged to the united states suddenly became part of you as a citizen not only of hawaii anymore but a citizen of the united states you see that well in a similar way it's not it's not an identical match but that's the kind of thing that happens when someone becomes a believer in jesus even though what he did all those years ago happened all those years ago it has relevance and it has bearing as an effect on you as soon as you come under what he did and you can say i now celebrate what jesus did for me as my savior and i'm going to follow him as my lord because of what happened 2000 years ago in verse 10 the disciples have a question for jesus why is it they ask that describes the experts in jewish laws say that elijah must come first and jesus explains to them thinking in terms of the book of malachi where it says that before the great and terrible day of the lord god will send his messenger to prepare the way before him and in judaism still to this day at every seder a door is left open in case he lied to the prophet should show up because they still if they're you know traditional jews anyway they uh still think that elijah will come before the coming of the messiah but jesus back in chapter 11 had already told his disciples that john the baptist had come in the spirit and power of elijah elijah himself was there on the mountain that they were just leaving and as i mentioned before some of us believe that elijah himself will appear before jesus comes the second time and so jesus answers them by saying elijah is coming first and he will restore all things but i say to you that elijah has come already john the baptist and they did not know him but did to him whatever they wished likewise the son of man is also about to suffer at their hands and then the disciples understood that he was talking about john the baptist now episode two when they had come to the multitude a man came to him kneeling down to him and saying lord have mercy on my son because he's an epileptic and suffers severely he often falls into the fire and often into the water probably you know in a pond or something so i thought so i brought him to your disciples but they couldn't cure him you know the disciples were i think being impacted by the seeds of doubt that the pharisees and the sadducees were planting all during jesus ministry and i think some of that was starting to sort of work in the disciples and and that may have had part of a part to play in their inability to help this boy um their faith was maybe beginning to falter and uh their efforts were you know uh beginning to not work anymore you remember that earlier in jesus ministry he sent the disciples out 70 of them remember and he sent them out with the power and the authority to heal and to cast out demons and they came back all excited oh man even the demons were like you know dropping out of the sky it's like we're going out we use your name to cast out demons it was awesome so they had done that and yet this time not so much powerless in the presence of this demon plagued boy i do think they were having a hard time because the pharisees had been chipping away at their and i think they were still having a hard time dealing with what jesus was trying to tell them i'm gonna die i'm going to jerusalem to die hey guys moses and elijah are talking to me about death and i think they would still have a hard time with that whole thing this verse here in verse 18 um if we read on jesus answered and said oh faithless and perverse generation how long shall i be with you how long shall i bear with you bring the boy here to me and jesus rebuked the demon that's the first mention that behind this boy's troubles his seizures was demonic influence and jesus you know leaves no doubt afterwards jesus rebuked the demon it came out of him and the child was cured from that very hour and then the disciples came to jesus privately and said why could we not cast it out notice that christ didn't rebuke the disease he rebuked the demon there's some confusion because of some teaching in some christian circles these days about where sickness and natural disasters like floods and tornadoes earthquakes tsunamis where they come from ultimately who's behind them and there's a teaching that really disturbs me because i think it's unbiblical that says ultimately it's god i don't believe the bible teaches that for a minute what i do believe is it says that god has the ability to be in control of those things so that he permits some things to happen when he could step in and choose us not to but i believe the bible is very clear that all the disruptions and the disorders in nature whether it's a disease physical disease or whether it's a physical disaster like a hurricane or a tornado all of those can be traced back to the kingdom of evil and the one who's in charge of that satan i'm not saying that if you have a flat tire the devil did it that's not my point i mentioned that because i actually had a fellow at one of my churches who was teaching the kids that in the church he was telling them stories about whenever he gets a flat tire he casts out the flat tire demon okay that's like off the wall but at the same time we've got to be careful not to swing the other way to where a very well known and highly respected and i respect he's a good teacher he's very popular says that if someone has cancer it was sent to them by god i don't agree allowed by god absolutely because he could step in and heal that cancer he could minimize that cancer but authored by god is the source of the cancer no because we live in a fallen world and in a fallen world sin and evil are dominant until the world is restored when jesus comes back so this boy and the story of this boy and jesus healing him reminds us that whether it was epilepsy as we think of it today or whether it was some other kind of seizure related physical problem it was triggered by satan as all disorders of nature ultimately are verse 20 is interesting because jesus says to the disciples when they ask him why couldn't we do that he says it's because of your unbelief stop and think about that for a minute they had tried to cure him they tried to heal the boy right because the dad says to jesus your disciples couldn't do it they must have had some faith because they wouldn't even have tried the fact that they had cast out demons before like i said when they went out with the 70 but couldn't deal with this one suggests to me anyway at least two things one is that when it comes to demons there are apparently some who are tougher than others and i think that's true during my ministry there are only two times that i can honestly say that i was dealing with someone who was being plagued by a demon and i gotta tell you the second one was way way way harder to try to deal with than the first time so i do believe that there are some demons that and some demonic works that can be really really harder than others but i think the more important thing that stands out to me is that apparently just because you had faith back then doesn't mean you have faith now it's not like your cell phone plan where minutes might carry over to the next month faith doesn't work that way it doesn't sort of carry over yesterday's faith isn't going to cut it for today because sort of by definition faith is an at the moment kind of thing for me to hit something today and go well lord last week man i really was trusting you no no no that's that's not the name of the game that's not the way it works faith isn't like a bank account that that's sort of you know it's just kind of accruing and you can draw out of it it's not that kind of a thing faith doesn't carry over it's always present tense the demon working on this boy caused a lot of trouble and matthew doesn't mention it but even uh over in the parallel passages you can read about when they brought the boy to jesus and when jesus was going to do his thing the boy shrieked and fell down and everybody was like oh man he's gone he's dead so the demon was really resisting satan's goal is always destructive satan's goal for anybody believer or unbeliever is always to tear down think about job or look what happened to judas once satan entered his heart or how about those pigs in matthew with the demoniac and the demons go out and they go into the pigs and you get devil's ham yeah and many other examples too satan even in pigs wants to destroy wants to destroy and so jesus says in verse 21 and i know it's not in some manuscripts and all that stuff but it belongs there this kind let me back up for just a minute because of your unbelief for assuredly i say to you if you have faith as a mustard seed you will say to this mountain move from here to there and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you hey we just sang about that right you can move the mountains thing to sing it man it's another thing to believe it do you believe it jesus says if you have faith as a mustard seed you will say to this mountain move from here to there which kind of tells me it's not how much faith it isn't like you know if you've got 20 pounds of faith that's going to do a lot more than 10 pounds of faith it's that you have faith that you do trust that when god and your faith line up god's will and your faith come together ain't nothing going to stop you you can do it nothing will be impossible for you not because of you but because of your faith in the god for whom nothing is impossible however jesus said this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting i don't think jesus was saying you know you guys should have called the prayer meeting before you tried dealing with this boy obviously he wasn't saying you should have been fat you know it was all happening right then i think what jesus is getting at is this there are some things that have to be in place before you get to the time that you need them why do uh military men and women who are in the reserves or the national guard why do they spend one weekend a month and and one or two weeks during the summer training training training training preparing preparing preparing because once there's a water once going to battle it's too late then to get ready for battle and i think that's the point jesus is making in verse 21. there are some things in our lives that if we hold off on preparing for them until they're here we've sort of missed the chance to be as strong as we need to be i think he's saying to the disciples you need to be living a life of prayer so you learn how to depend on me and you learn how to trust in me and watch me work you need to be living a life of fasting to help you get over yourselves and what you want and what you need and what you want you know i said that you need to have certain disciplines disciple discipline there's a connection you need to have certain disciplines in your life as a believer if you're going to be ready when the time comes for what god brings your way jesus spent a lot of time praying didn't he if you read the gospels you often read that he goes off sometimes he if he wasn't successful sometimes he'd go to try to be alone he'd get away and people would just follow him crowds would come like the feeding of the five thousand that's he was trying to get out of there and they came and they followed him and he ended up ministering to them but the point is that he still prayed regularly and gosh i guess if he needed to maybe you and i do too now the third episode a little a little new detail here about what's coming for jesus in verses 22 and 23 while they were staying in galilee jesus said to them the son of man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men and they will kill him in the third day he will be raised up that new detail is that not only was he going to go to jerusalem to die but he was going to be betrayed by someone jesus was using every possible way he could think of to prepare his disciples for the terrible things that were going to be coming look at their reaction it says at the end of verse 23 they were exceedingly sorrowful it was so hard for them to hear what he had to say almost incomprehensible and most of the things christ taught them about his death and his resurrection were to remain sort of like i don't get it i don't understand it until after the events themselves you know we sometimes look at that and uh we kind of think man uh these guys were kind of slow on the pickup they weren't exactly the brightest bulbs on the christmas tree you know uh what's wrong with them but to try to understand such an enormous truth that god was in christ dying for the sins of the world i mean i think it was just really straining their ability to comprehend to the breaking point and i think there's a danger that we get a little maybe smug about how much better we understand well we've got the rest of the story for one thing right but for another thing if you ever kind of do start thinking you know those guys were come on what's wrong with you dopes um here's a suggestion for your devotions read the book of revelation see how well you can figure it out without help without your favorite bible teacher bible commentary oh that note says it must be this you know just read the book of revelation and maybe you'll uh maybe you'll get not knocked down a little peg or two now episode episode four i love this one too when they had come to capernaum the tax collector shows up uh-oh those who received the temple tax came to peter and said does your teacher not pay the temple tax peter said yeah he does yeah and then when they got back into the house jesus anticipated and he said what do you think simon from whom do the kings of the earth take customs or taxes from their sons the princes in other words or from strangers i by the way i think peter might have been a little surprised why are you bringing that up jesus apparently jesus wasn't with peter when those tax collectors came because it says that when peter got back to the house jesus anticipated what peter was going to say that must have been a little bit like whoa how did you know to ask that question lord but anyway uh peter says well no the king doesn't tax his own sons he taxes strangers so this whole thing is about the temple tax which back in that day based on old testament verses was a tax that was meant to support the priest and in jesus day in the old testament it had been a half shekel a shekel was a weight a measure of weight by the time of jesus day they went to coins they were using coins it was two drachmas which was a greek name given to coin it was it was about a day or two wages for the average worker you'd be paid one or two drugs and that was what the tax was probably jesus had paid it often you know just as a regular thing yeah you know we got to pay the tax but the tax collectors here are trying to do they're trying to set jesus up because here's what happened if christ pays the tax then it means that he's not anything special right he's just an ordinary jew rabbis didn't have to pay the tax they were exempt so he's not even a rabbi why are you guys following him you see so if he pays the tax it's sort of like saying i'm i'm no one any different than anybody else if he said well i am a rabbi so i should be exempt then they would say oh so you were only a rabbi i thought you said you were the messiah big difference now you're telling the truth so they catch them there if you refuse to pay it then they'd say you're breaking the law you have no respect for what the old testament said jesus in his usual way manages to kind of kill two birds with one stone first of all saying to peter who pays the tax if you're the king or you're the king's son does he make you pay the tax and peter goes no he's trying to say peter this is who i am i'm the son of the king so i'm exempt i don't have to pay that tax but he then goes on to say to peter in verse 26 the sons are free nevertheless lest we offend them go to the sea cast in a hook take the fish that comes up first and when you have opened its mouth you will find a piece of money what wow let's go ice fishing after church see if we can increase the offering you know it's kind of cuckoo but jesus isn't paying the tax out of obligation he's paying the tax in order not to stir up controversy as he says lest we offend them go let's go fishing you go fishing so he just doesn't want to cause offense let's not stir up controversy not quite time yet peter to shake things up not quite time yet and so he pays the tax and he buys his time obviously we're not going to probably find money to pay our taxes by going fishing and checking the mouth of the first fish that we catch most of the time when i go fishing i never catch anything anyway but jesus can still work miracles and at times he does work miracles i think to help us fulfill our financial obligations we may not find money in a fish's mouth but we may find it in a box which if you think about it is pretty cool too there were times when i was pastoring and when i you know at the end of the service when you go out to greet people set my bible down and i'd come back before we left for the for the house and i'd uh find a check or 20 bill in my bible somebody stuck in there they saw my bible laying there they just said you know sometimes there'd be a little note for you pastor and i'd always be like wow why wasn't it a hundred dollars no i never did that but just a little blessing just a little thank you lord we we we needed a little bit of help this week and it was just a little reminder of how god provides maybe not in the mouth of the fish but maybe in some other way and then look at what jesus says at the very end he says peter you'll find that money i want you to take that money and i want you to give it to them for me and for you i love that peter i'm going to pay for you too there's going to be enough money in that old fish's mouth that there'll be enough for both of us i want to look i want to just kind of dip a toe in the water into chapter 18 because i want to point something out to you that may help you reading the gospels on your own in chapter 18 really this this whole chapter sort of the disciples trying to figure out this whole kingdom of heaven thing you know jesus has been talking to them about the kingdom of heaven is like this and it's like this and it's like this you've been told that in judaism you should not uh murder anybody and that's true that's true but in the kingdom of heaven it works like this don't even think about it don't even hold it in your heart boy they that's that's taking it a little bit that's raising the bar lord i don't know if i can pertain to that you can't you can't stay tuned it's why i'm going to jerusalem and so the disciples are trying to this whole kingdom of heaven thing it's like whoa whoa wait a minute and so when when we read in chapter 18 maybe because jesus has been talking about going and dying they come to him and say so who's the greatest in the kingdom of heaven and maybe they're thinking i don't know if jesus dies who's in charge if he dies who's the head man i don't know but they come to jesus with with that question still having a hard time with this whole thing or maybe they just had sort of a muhammad ali attitude some of you old enough to remember him i'm the greatest you know the boxer cassius clay muhammad ali and they somehow don't get it that the whole idea of who's the greatest is a contradiction in terms when it comes to god's kingdom because greatness in god's kingdom is very different someone asked the playwright george bernard shaw once uh mr shaw if you could at any time in history when would you choose to live he said oh i would have liked to have been alive in the days of napoleon and the the person said why is that he said because back then there's only one person who thought he was napoleon now it is it's everybody kind of that way today too and so jesus responds to their who's greatest in the kingdom giving a little sunday school lesson and i love this little sunday school lesson jesus verse 2 of matthew 18. jesus called the little child to him set him there right up front and he says assuredly i say to you unless you are converted and become as little children you will by no means enter the kingdom don't worry about whose greatest once you're in you won't even get there unless you become as little children now i want to point a couple of little greek things out to you that word assuredly is the word amen now think about this with me for a minute when do we say amen yeah at the end of prayer or if i said to you hey can i get an amen what would you say yeah so excited yeah you'd say amen it's the same in in judaism people didn't say amen for what they were about to say they said what had just been said or what just had happened amen see what i mean i i can use it that way to say you get it amen to what i just said and i want to suggest to you that that most of the time in the gospels when jesus starts out a sentence that and often in the king james it's verily verily and it's a double amen in greek amen amen i say to you new king james tends to translate it assuredly but it's the word in greek it's the word amen i want to suggest to you that the amen belongs with what was just said or what just happened not what's coming next so let's look at this jesus calls a little child to him puts him up in the front and says hey guys amen who's greatest in the kingdom amen right here and then he goes on to say i say to you unless you are converted and that word converted means turned unless you turn unless you repent unless something in you changes he's not talking about you got to convert from being a jew to being a christian there was no such thing as christianity yet so he's not saying you've got to give up judaism and become a christian no he's saying unless you change on the inside unless you turn unless something in you goes 180 you're not even going to get into the kingdom unless you become like a child two things about the sunday school lesson number one how childish can you guys be let's bring a little kid up here you want to talk about the kingdom of heaven amen right here childish what's wrong with you but of course the other thing he's trying to say is you got to be childlike when i called for this kid when i when i called for this kid to come up he trusted me or she don't know which one was trusted me came up gotta be like this little child trusting humble that's what matters because in the kingdom of heaven as he says in the kingdom of heaven it's whoever humbles himself as this little child who is actually the greatest and then he says but this will close verse 5 whoever receives one little child like this in my name receives me i think there are two applications that we can make from his statement one is that you know sometimes in bible-believing churches like ours who do believe that all have sinned and that we need to be born again because the bible does teach that but sometimes when it comes to dealing with little children we may treat them like little pagans and and almost feel as though we're compelled to try to force them to somehow pray a prayer for salvation when they're like three years old i don't think that's the right approach jesus says these little ones who believe in me receive them as you would receive me and i think we need to let god work in their little minds and hearts and foster that by letting them know of christ's love for them and how much he loved little children and telling them the stories of jesus rather than trying to look at them as little sinners or or you know little budding little sinners you know you see what i'm saying i'm not saying they're innocent i'm not saying there's no such you know we all know that's not true but i am saying that sometimes our treatment of children can be to look at them the wrong way i guess and to not see them as those who have a willingness to believe in jesus and in whom jesus is working welcome a little child as you would welcome me i didn't say that he did and maybe you're like me i remember a lot of the sunday school songs that i learned when i was a little kid growing up in that church in buffalo that got sold i remember jesus loves me i remember building on the solid rock is important because the house falls flat i remember the verses i learned when i was a little kid i still remem remember them to this day jesus works little children because they haven't become old enough yet to be skeptical doubting that can't be true their tendency is to want to say oh that's awesome that that happened in the bible but the other point jesus made he says unless you enter the kingdom as a little child many people come into the kingdom of god as little children they don't know anything they don't have bible knowledge quite often they're new believers their children in the faith we need to receive them and welcome them too i don't like it when people complain about well the new people in the church i hope there are new people in the church that's the name of the game and of course they're not going to say all the right stuff and quote all the right words and sing all the right songs or whatever they may not measure up to some standard that we have for them i've told you guys before that when i was in grad school out in illinois my wife and i worked with a young couple whose marriage was on the rocks i mean ready to go get the divorce the pastor of the church that marie and i were helping out in called us because we were about the same age and said hey could you have a bible study with these guys and pray for them and get to know them and work with them we did they were coming to our little church there in round lake illinois but they still smoked both of them and so the minute the service was over boom out in the parking lot they went to light up you know what happened a couple of people in the church asked to meet with the church board and me i knew we were meeting with them to complain about their smoking they wanted them to be no welcome at our little congregation because they were seen every sunday lighting up as soon as they got out the door i had all i could do to say some very non-christian things at that meeting you couldn't tell those people what was really going on all about their marriage problems and what was happening code of conduct in that home church in buffalo when i was growing up our organist was a woman named lois she was in her 30s and back then it was a custom in our congregation anyway for the women to wear a little i guess it's called a pill hat a little hat just a small hat the women did the organist always did lois and always remember us probably in junior high when lois showed up one sunday without her head and some people tried to prevent her from playing the organ because she wasn't wearing her hat the following couple of sundays a whole bunch of women stopped wearing their hats and i thought they were going to throw lois out of the congregation chuck smith tells the story that one of their buildings that the hippies were coming and they were coming as they were seems to me there ought to be a hymn written about that something about just as i am you know but uh write it if you feel that chuck smith noticed that the hippies were coming and they were coming in off the beach they were coming in wearing sandals they were coming in you know dressed like hippies from the beach and they just put new carpeting down in the sanctuary so some of the church leaders came to chuck smith and said hey pastor smith we got a problem these hippies are coming in they're tracking in sand you got to tell them to clean up and while we're at it they really gotta shampoo their hair and they really ought to be wearing a decent shirt not coming in like mr hawaii chuck smith responded and said i'll tell you guys what if that's because of the new carpet let's tear up the new carpet because these kids are more important to reach for christ than having a new carpet for us old-timers to enjoy probably didn't set very well but my favorite story about this welcoming a new believer without taking out the tape measure and kind of going i don't know people always hear or not is the story about a scottish fellow who was just a mill worker quite a drinker but he'd come to christ and he wanted to meet with the church elders because he wanted to be baptized one of the elders was a little suspicious of this guy not sure he knows the bible well enough to be baptized yet and so we asked him um where was it that jesus turned the water into wine where did that happen do you know the answer by the way cana yeah good you could be a member of this church i mean be baptized this guy didn't know the answer so he said to them i don't know where it was that jesus turned water into wine they thought for a minute but i can tell you this over at my house he's turning whiskey into furniture and that sort of shut the elder up you see jesus was making a difference in this guy's life and the money that he used to spend on whiskey he was now using to get furniture into his home it's not how much you know it's not whether you're saying the right thing dressing the right way acting the right way it's that you've come to christ and he's made a difference because in the kingdom of heaven you have to come as a little child you may not know much you may not look the part but you know the lord and you trust him and you're humble enough to say i'm just starting out but please welcome me and so i want to say to anyone this morning who's relatively new to our congregation you're welcome here if you're following the lord and for those of you who may say well i'm here but i'm not sure i'm at that point yet where i'm really following the lord guess what you're welcome here too because we want to help you understand so that you can intelligently knowing what you're doing follow the lord jesus christ not because we're anything special who have done that but because he is so amazingly special that's why moses and elijah were saying keep your eyes on him listen to him and so lord jesus as we leave today may we leave trusting and humble children may we leave keeping our eyes fixed on you and as we do as we do trust you may you give us the faith and confidence in you to believe that nothing is impossible in jesus name amen please stand in worship please stand and worship with me this morning how deep the fathers love for us how vast beyond a measure that he should give his only son to make his treasure how great the pain of searing lost the father turned his face away as wounds which bring many songs to glory behold upon the cross my sin upon his shoulders ashamed i hear my mocking voice his dying breath has brought me life i know that it is anything no gifts no power no wisdom but i will boast in jesus christ is death and resurrection why should i gain from his reward i cannot give an answer but this i know with all my heart his wounds have paid my rent is in the meantime of god