Condition of the Heart - Religion to Redemption - Matthew S6E5

I want to invite you to open up your Bibles to the Book of Matthew chapter 23. If this is your first time, we are genuinely glad you're here. We grow in verse by verse through the text. We believe at 11 22 that our power and preaching is not in our cool stories, but in the Word of God. Amen? And so we are going through Matthew 23. It's the last public encounter that Jesus has with the Pharisees before He walks to the cross. Got a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time today. We're doing communion at the end of this. And so here's what I'm going to do. The first 12 verses of Matthew 23, what Jesus does is He has a very public encounter with the Pharisees. He's going to in front of a really large crowd expose their sin in a really loud public kind of way. The first 12 verses what He does is He gets to the heart of the root of their disease. And then starting in verse 13 through the end of the chapter, He goes through what the seven woes are. I'm going to read through those seven woes, briefly comment on them, and then we're going to drill down into the first 12 verses because that's where He gets to the heart of it. When I preached this series at the stone, my church back in the day, I did a seven week series on that. I'm about to do a seven week series in three and a half minutes. You ready? Let's see about on. Here we go. Matthew 23, 13. He says, "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces."

That's going to be important in a minute. "For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you travel across sea and land and make a single proselyte and when it becomes a proselyte, you make Him twice as much, a child of hell as yourselves." In other words, Jesus is saying, "You're crossing land and sea to get followers to follow you, but when you do, all you're doing is sending them to hell." He said, "Woe to you blind guides." You say, "If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing. But if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath. You blind fools, for which is greater, the gold or the temple that he has made that made the gold sacred." And you say, "If anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing. If anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath. You blind men, for which is greater. The gift on the altar that makes the gift sacred, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred." So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it, and whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by Him who dwells on it, and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God, and by Him who sits on it in other words. What they were doing is they were creating, that's the Pharisees, for themselves were religious loopholes that made them look awesome on the outside, but on the inside they weren't really worshiping God. And then in Matthew 23, 23, it's an important one. Jesus said, "Woe to you scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe, mitt, and dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faithfulness these you ought to have done without neglecting the others." Jesus says, "You guys are doing great at the external stuff that people can see. They're the stuff that's small, actually, but at the end of the day you're neglecting the stuff that God cares the most about, the weightier stuff, justice, mercy, faithfulness,

you blind guides, straining out a net and swallowing a camel." And in this next part, verse 25, one of the things that Jesus just nails down on these guys is, "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they're full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee first," that's going to be important, listen to this, "first, clean the inside of the cup and the plate and the outside may be clean also, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewash tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all in cleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to the others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. We're going to talk about that in a minute a lot. On the outside, they looked amazing. On the inside, they were rotten. Verse 29, "Woe to you Pharisees, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, will you build the tombs, the prophets, and decorate the monuments of the righteous." Listen, he said, there's say, "If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets. Thus, you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up then the measures of your father." What Jesus just said is, "You've got to say all the time that if we'd lived back in We would have listened to the Word of God, but what Jesus is saying is that the Word of God gentleman is standing right in front of you and you are about to send him to the cross. And then I want you to listen to one of the last things He says to them and listen to the intensity of which He says it. He says this publicly, Matthew 23, 33, kind of lands the plane, and He says, "You serpents, you brood of vipers. How are you to escape being sentenced to hell?" Like, "Man, Jesus, how do you feel about that? My goodness."

You know, one of the things that I focused on is I prepared for this message and it sort of hit me in a fresh way, was I began to think deeply about how Jesus dealt with the Pharisees and specifically the sin of the Pharisees, which is moralism and self-righteousness. It's fascinating to me how He dealt with their sin compared to how He dealt with the sin of what society would have considered their worst sinners, right? If you ask anybody in that culture who were the godliest people around, they said the Pharisees. And if you were to go and talk about the tax collector or like guys like Zacchaeus or the woman caught in adultery, people would have said those are the worst sinners around. But think about how Jesus dealt with people that were far from God compared to how He dealt with people that were far from God but thought they were close to God. I mean, think about the woman caught in adultery. How did He engage her and deal with her sin? This is a woman that was caught in the act of adultery. They've dragged her into the street, they've got rocks, they're going to stone her. And Jesus deals with her sin, but He does it arguably in a gentle way, gently, privately. He almost loves her, calls her to repentance in this gentle, loving way. Think about Zacchaeus. Y'all remember Zacchaeus? He's a wee little man. Y'all remember him? Zacchaeus. Here's the thing about Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was a cheating, lying extortionist that collaborated with Rome who was the enemy of the people of God. Y'all, this guy was a sinner. This dude was a sinner. This is the guy that you pray that your daughter did not bring home to meet you. Number one is you didn't want to have wee little grandchildren, amen? But more importantly, this dude was messed up.

When Jesus encountered him, publicly, he doesn't shame the guy, he doesn't publicly call him out on his sin, instead Jesus invites himself to dinner with this guy, which you just didn't do. He invites himself to dinner, and it's when he's at the guy's house that he engages Zacchaeus on his sin, but he does it privately and gently. And guys, I could keep going. But the point that I'm trying to make here is this, that when Jesus encountered people that were far from God, that were mired in their sin, he would engage their sin gently and lovingly, as he called them to repentance. But when he encountered the religious moralist, mired in self-righteousness, he publicly lays out their sin, and he ends the conversation by saying, "You boys are serpents," in other words, you remind me of Satan, and oh, by the way, y'all are going to hell. Now, here's the question I want to get to the bottom of today, why? Why does Jesus, when he encounters these guys, is he so pointed? Why does he publicly and loudly call them to their sin? We're going to do two things quickly this morning. We're going to get to the bottom of why Jesus engages the self-righteous moralist in that way, and two, more importantly, and I want you to hear this, I want you to evaluate your own hearts as we go through this. Church, as I studied for this, and I was kind of going through the points, one of the things that I did is I found myself when I'm looking at hypocrisy, and I was talking, writing down the legalism stuff that we're about to get into. I found my heart and my mind immediately going to all the other people out there that needed to hear this sermon, and started going through legalism, thinking about those, "Dern, Southern Badness," right? Thank God I'm not like those guys. Little theological joke there for you. to where you see this stuff coming into your heart and life because church, Jesus had an issue with it. Okay?

Y'all ready? Look at Matthew 23.1, again, they've come to Jesus, they've asked Him a question, He returned their question with a question, made them look really dumb, they made the decision, they're not asking Jesus any more questions. Jesus turns to the crowd that He gathered in front of the disciples and He begins to, in front of the Pharisees and everybody else, lay out their sin. And Jesus said to the crowds and to the disciples, the scribes and the Pharisees, sit on Moses seat. Church, that's important, listen. What that means is this, Jesus publicly said something, He said, "Look, these guys occupy a position of God given authority to teach the Word of God to the people." And so Jesus says, "Look, they're in a place of authority and they're calling and that's important is to preach and to teach the Word of God to the people of God." And He says, "So do," in verse 3, He says, "So do whatever, do and observe whatever they tell you." Now He said, "In other words, if they're teaching the Word of God, you do what they tell you to do." He said, "But not the works that they do. For they preach, but they do not practice." If you take a note, here's the first heart issue that Jesus reveals about the sin of the Pharisees. He says, "The first thing these guys are dealing with," and the reason He had such a problem with them is because they were just mired in hypocrisy, mired in hypocrisy. And here's the thing that hit me as I studied this, hypocrisy definitely means that they were preaching one thing and doing another, that's what He just said. And these guys did deal with that level of hypocrisy. They would stand up and publicly teach, "Thou shall not murder," and they're going to murder Jesus. Y'all with me? But there's a different kind of hypocrisy that Jesus engages throughout the Scripture

and it's this. I'll show you biblically in a second and this is where I think we really need to be evaluating. If we see this in our own lives, church, for these guys, what I believe Jesus had a bigger issue as this, is their hypocrisy or rather their hypocrisy meant that their holiness was external and it was not internal. Their holiness was external, but it was not internal. Look at Matthew 15-7. Don't turn there. Just listen. This is Jesus speaking to the Pharisees. He says, "You hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you when He said, 'This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.'" Y'all see that? These guys were honoring God with their mouths, right? They were honoring God with their mouths. They'd stand up publicly and they'd preach and they'd honor God and listen, they would dress in all these amazing religious robes and amazing garb and they looked holy on the outside and here's the other thing that's important. They were doing all these religious activities that made them look holy. Everybody would have thought these guys were righteous, but Jesus said, "Here's the thing. As much as you're honoring God with your mouth, as much as you look righteous on the outside, as much as you're doing all this religious activity, Jesus' point is you're doing all of it completely divorced from a spiritual affection for God." And that's what He's talking about when He's dealing with the sin of hypocrisy. Church, do you see that? That kind of hypocrisy in your life, where your lips honor God, but inside your heart is far from God. I want to tell you, let's bring this a little closer to home because I think it's so easy to kind of see what these guys were doing and think, "Man, you stupid Pharisees or whatever," but I would argue that maybe the strongest rebuke that Jesus ever gave to a group of

people that were doing stuff for God but their hearts were far from God was not Pharisees. I think you'd make a strong argument that the harshest rebuke He ever gave was a really successful Christian church in the New Testament, right? You ever heard of the church at Ephesus? Revelation 2. Here's the thing you need to know about the church at Ephesus. These guys were eternally successful in just about every measurable way. He's got to like the Church of 1122 back in Now keep in mind this is in Revelation, Jesus died, he's risen from the grave, he's ascended into heaven, and he is speaking now to John, the revelator who's writing this down, and what Jesus is doing is speaking to the seven churches in the New Testament. I want to read to you Revelation 2-1 because he says something I think is really important. What Jesus is doing here is some red letters, he is describing himself to the church. I want you to listen to how he describes himself. He says to the angel, or that's the messenger, of the church and Ephesus right, and Jesus describes himself this way. He said the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, and watch what he says. Jesus said, "I'm the one who walks among the seven golden lampstands." The fascinating way that Jesus just described himself. The church, why does Jesus describe himself and say to the church, "Hey, I need you to know something." I'm the one that walks among the seven golden lampstands. Well the seven golden lampstands were the seven churches of the New Testament. And Jesus said, "Here's what I want you to know, church and Ephesus. I am the one who walks among you." That's so important. That's what he's saying here. He's saying that his presence is in the church. Listen, we know that Jesus is, or rather God is omnipresent, so he's present everywhere

all the time, but we also know, 11, 22, that the Lord does not manifest his presence everywhere all the time. And so what Jesus is reminding the church, he said, "I want you to know something." He said, "I am blessing your church with being present in a powerful way in your church." I am the one that's walking among your lampstand. Listen, I want to just stop right there and say something. Pastor Joby has said this, we're calling it, what we're experiencing right now at 1122 is revival. Amen? We are seeing an unbelievable movement of God in this church that we can never take for granted, and that's why at this point is as important as anything you're going to hear. I'm going to tell you something. As good as that man can preach, and I think he's the greatest preacher in the United States of America, as incredible as a leader, as we have in this church, in this man, in this staff, in all the systems, in all the buildings, I am telling you, I have been doing this long enough to know that the reason that we are experiencing what we are experiencing is for whatever reason by the grace of God he has chosen to pour out his presence on this church. He is here. He is walking among our lampstand, and that's why we cannot ever take what he's about to say for granted. Revelation 2, 2, Jesus says something powerfully. He said, "I know your works." I put that in the sermon because I want you to know what he's saying. Jesus just said, "I pay attention to the church. I pay attention to what you're doing." And then he gives them all the things they're doing right, I'm going to go through them quickly. He tells them this. He goes, "Here's what you're doing right." He goes, "You're living on mission for God.

You're not the frozen chosen, man. You're a people that is living, you're living it out the doors like you're living it in the doors. You're telling people about Jesus you're living on mission. This was the church that was holding high theology. This was not a seeker-friendly kind of thing. These were people that cared about the Word of God said that you don't put up with false prophets, when you find evil men in your midst, you put them to the test and you find them to be false. He says, "I see that you're enduring for the namesake of Jesus." It's the Word that you just described when a woman back in the day was carrying a water pot on her head. He's saying, "I see that you are carrying and enduring under the weight of the gospel that you're not giving up." And then he says something interesting. He said, "I love the fact that you're not doing the deeds of the nicholations which I hate." I remember being a young youth pastor and thinking that I'd never heard Jesus say the H Word before. And so I looked it up and the nicholations were doing this church. They were bending in an effort to reach the culture. They were bending so far to the culture that they'd stop being salt and light in the culture. And Jesus said, "I hate that." He said, "So you're living on mission. You're holding high theology. You're enduring under the weight of the gospel for the name of Christ. You're not bending to the culture." And I don't know about y'all, but that sounds like a pretty amazing church. Kind of church. I'd want to pass her, but you know the rest of it, Revelation 2-4.

Jesus says, "But this I have against you. you have abandoned. Just like the Old Testament Pharisees somewhere along the way, this unbelievable church was doing all this stuff for God and they stopped doing it out of an overflow of their love for God. Do you all remember what Jesus said to them was going to happen? This amazing church, you know this amazing stuff, didn't come back to the most important thing, sitting at the feet of Jesus, giving Him their heart, it's one of the most haunting verses in the entire Bible, Revelation 2.5, you said remember, therefore, from where you have fallen, repent, and do the work you did at first watch. He said, "If not, here it is, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place." You remember how Jesus described Himself? He said, "I'm the one that walks among the seven golden lampstands. I'm the one whose presence is showing up among your church." Jesus said, "If you don't come back to the place where everything you're doing is out of an overflow of your love for Jesus, I'm going to remove your lampstand from its place." In other words, I'm going to remove the blessing of my presence from your church. Church says a lot of things I'd rather do than be a part of a church, since the presence of Jesus is not at. Here's what Jesus just said. He got bad news and goodness, here's bad news. Jesus just said, "If we love church more than we love Jesus, then Jesus will have no part of our church." He's saying, "If we love our mission more than we love our Savior, then our Savior will have no part of our mission." He's saying, "If we love worship more than we love the object of our worship, then the object of our worship will have no part of our worship." Church, are you all hearing me? So important that more than anything else, we as a church make sure we are sitting at his feet doing it because of our love for the person of Jesus Christ.

And if we ever stop, if we ever stop, may he remove his lampstand and make no mistake, he will. The person that just said, "Amen the lattice," was Joby Martin down on the front, Pastor Joby Martin. He said, "Amen." And that's why we never will get our eyes off of Jesus. Listen, here's the good news though. The good news is that Jesus just said more than anything in the world, more than how you dress, more than how you follow the rules, more than anything you do for God, what Jesus wants from you and from us more than anything else is just our hearts. And that's really good news. So that's hypocrisy. Honor God with their lips. Or far from him, number two, listen, I'm going to go through this quick, Matthew 23, 4, Jesus said, "They tied up heavy burdens, hard to bear. And they laid them on people's shoulders, but they themselves were not willing to move them with a finger." Second thing that Jesus reveals there is their legalism, legalism. Now listen, here's how I would define it. This is important. These guys were elevating their traditions above the Word of God. They were elevating their traditions above the Word of God. And Jesus says that is causing following God to be a burden to people. The Pharisees had a really bad habit of taking the commandment of God and the law of God, and they would add stuff to it. Jesus called it the commandments of man or the traditions of man. And they would add stuff to it. Their own rules. And then what they do is they took their little man-made commandments and their man-made rules and they would put them on the same level that they did the Word of God.

And when you didn't follow their extra rules, they would crack you to the white meat just like you would like sin against God. Right? And that's what Jesus tells them later on. He says, "Look, in vain do you worship me because you teach as doctrine the commandments of men." It would be like this, "What would be a command of God? It would be honor the Sabbath and keep it holy." Everybody check this out. Did y'all know that's meant to be a blessing to you? That's not meant to be a beat down to you. God did that because He wanted you to rest. Sounds amazing to me. He wants you to rest. He wants you to take a day where you rest. He wants you to take a day where you focus on Him. He wants you to take a day where you focus on your family. He wants you to take a day where you trust the Lord with your work. Doesn't that sound great? But then what the Pharisees were doing is they would take their traditions. So here's what that means. You can't pick like a grain of wheat from your own crop and feed yourself with it because that's work you filthy sinner. Oh, and, you know, like if your ox falls in the well, you got to leave him until the next day and hope he's still alive because you can't get him out of the well because that's work you filthy sinner, and then they leave Jesus and they're like, "Jesus, you can't heal anybody on the Sabbath because that's work." And Jesus looks at him and says, "Here's the thing, boys, you're taking your traditions and you're raising them to the levels of the Word of God and you are causing following God to be a burden to the people of God."

And they give you a real quick illustration of where I see this being played out. I see it in Christian private school. Now, listen, I love Christian private school. My kids went to Christian private school and it was, I got an amazing education. I coached football for four years. Christian private school got three Texas high school state championship rings from a Christian private school. Guys, I got bling from a Christian private school. God does amazing things there, so don't email me. But I want you to know that I've seen this in them. And so, and then we'll bring it home in a second, but give an example of what would be like a law or a commandment of God meant to be a blessing. Let's talk about modesty. God asks us to dress modestly. Why? What's the heart of God for dressing modestly? It's simple. He just doesn't want you to go dress out there and look like a hooch. That's it. That's the heart of God. That's it. God just doesn't want you to look like a hooch, just wants you to honor God with the way that you dress. But Christian private schools thought, all right, we're going to take it another step. Here's what not looking like a hooch means. You've got to have a 14-inch length parent of shorts, not 13 and a half. You can't have any stubble on your face. Man, you can't have hair past your ears. I was doing these notes and it hit me that Jesus couldn't have gone to my kids' Christian private school.

My son, my son came into school one day and he was wearing the shorts that his mama bought him. We found out they were 13 and a half inches. The headmaster was walking down the hallway with a ruler, stops him, John Daniel Carter, your dad's a preacher. He's like, "I know." He's like, "Let me put the ruler on those pants." He said, "Young man, those are 13 and a half. Why do you have 13 and a half-inch pants?" He's like, "I don't know. Headmaster." He's like, "My mom bought him. I didn't mean to." And so let me ask you, is J.D. rebelling against God? Is J.D. rebelling against the school? No. It's the pants his mama bought him. He's poor. He ain't got enough money to go buy more pants. Y'all, they gave him detention, here's the word I'm looking for. You know how ready my kids were to get out of that school at the end of it? Became a burden. But it's easy to rail on Christian private school, but you know where we do this a lot is in our parenting. You know how the fair-sakele spirit will show up in our parenting? Is when we focus more on the rules than we do trying to draw our children's hearts to the heart of God. I want to give you parents -- I didn't preach on parenting for the longest time because I wanted to make sure that my parents weren't -- or my kids rather weren't idiots, but they're all awesome.

And so I'm going to talk about parenting for a second. John 14, 15, parents, this is for you. Check this out. John 14, 15, Jesus said this, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." Now my whole life, growing up, I thought Jesus was saying it like this. If you really love me, you do what I tell you to do. Y'all know that's not what he's saying? What he's saying is that if you would just love me, then the result will be that you'll keep my commandments. Do y'all see the difference? He's saying that the root needs to be love, and then the fruit will be obedience. Parents, we do that a lot of times the opposite. We try to make obedience the root and hope that love of God will be the fruit. That's why -- that's opposite of what we ought to be doing. That's what Jesus said in Matthew 23, 25, "You blind Pharisee, first, first clean the inside of the cup and the plate." That the outside may also be clean, just like if you'll just love me, then the result will be if all our kids And we are not teaching them to do that out of an overflow of our love for Jesus, then we are not discipling our children. We're just turning them into little Pharisees, y'all. The number one job as a parent, first and foremost, is to not make followers of rules. Our number one job is to make followers of Jesus. Right. So the first thing we see, hypocrisy. Holiness was external and internal, legalism. They were elevating their traditions about the Word of God. Number three, we're gonna do this really fast.

Jesus reveals their sin of self-exaltation. They were doing everything they did not to point people to God, but to point people to themselves. Let me read Matthew 23.5, Jesus said they do all their deeds to be seen by others, for they make the phylacteries broad on their fringes long, in other words, they would wear all this external religious stuff to make themselves look important. They love the places of honor at feast and best seats in the synagogue. They love being honored. Or seven in greetings in the marketplace as being called Rabbi. Verse eight, but you are not to be called Rabbi. You're not to have one teacher and you're all brothers. You call no man your father on earth, or you have one father who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, or you have one instructor, the Christ, the greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Listen, what Jesus is saying is that when you're out there loving people, exalting you and loving people, honoring you and everything you find your heart one day and everything you're doing it, you're doing it. So people will look at you and not looking at Jesus than you are literally going against the heart of God. He's like whoever exalts himself will be humbled.

Whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Scripture says God opposes the proud, that's pride. God opposes the proud, y'all, there's a lot of things I wanna do in life, but I don't wanna be opposed by God. These guys were, they took everything that was supposed to point people to God and they turned it into a stage and made themselves the star. They took everything that was supposed to point people to God's glory and they were pointing people to their own glory. And if you wanna have a fascinating Bible study, go do a Bible study on the glory of God and how he cares about his glory. It's like I will not share my glory with another, the Lord's Prayer. What's the first thing he asked us to pray? Our Father is art in heaven, who art in heaven? I say it with me, hallowed be your name. Our feet supposed to hit the floor and the first thing we're supposed to pray is God today. I want your name to be exalted above my name. These guys were doing the opposite. Church, everything you do in life, everything you do, everything you say, every action, you're sending one of two messages. Look at God or look at me. Jesus is saying, man, these guys, all they care about is themselves and they've missed the heart of God last one. Jesus is gonna reveal, and this is a really, really big one

for them and for us. Fourth thing Jesus reveals before he goes into the specific woes, which are the manifesting symptoms of the four root issues is obstruction. These guys, their sin was the sin of obstruction. And here's what I mean, look at verse 13. It's the first low and I believe he starts with this one because this might be the biggest one. He said, but woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. If you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in, I want you to, can we go back to the beginning of that real quick? I want you guys to read that one more time, but woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, for you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. Jesus said, your hypocrisy, your legalism, your pointing people to yourself, instead of God, here's the result. Here's what it's doing. It's actually shutting the door to heaven in people's faces. And the reason Jesus has such a problem with that is because that again is the absolute contradiction in the opposite of everything he was about and everything we were called to be. I wanna remind you of something that Jesus said to Peter. And we have, and we focus on the first couple of verses, but there's something that Jesus said to Peter

and Caesarea Philippi that we don't pay a ton of attention to, but you guys remember. He said, you know, who do people say they am? Who do you say they am? Peter said, you Christ, Son of the living God. Jesus said, you're right. Blessed are you, Son of our General, for flesh and blood do not reveal that to you, but our Father, who is in heaven, reveal that to you. And Peter, upon this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And that's such a height verse that we stop right there. And we don't get to the next part, which is really important. Matthew 16, 19, watch what it says. Jesus said, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatever you bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven. And whatever you loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven. Peter said, here's, or rather Jesus said something to Peter. Here's what you need to know, Peter. If you're a person of the confession and he's talking to you and me, if you believe he's the Christ and the Son of the living God, what Jesus just said is, I have given you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. 1122, what do keys do? They open doors. He said, here's what you're gonna do. Here's how the church is gonna run over the gates of hell as everybody of the confession is gonna have the keys

to the kingdom and you're gonna open the door so that people can walk in. Make no mistake, that's sunk in the people. Peter's mine because short time later, after the resurrection and the ascension of Christ, Peter would write a letter in 1 Peter. And in chapter two, he's gonna say something to the people of God. He's talking to the church here. I wanna read it to you. We're almost done hanging with me. 1 Peter 2, 9, he's talking to the people of God. And he says, but you are a chosen race and he says, you are a royal priesthood. That would have made the church's mouths drop open. He said, you are a priest. Those people would have thought of me. Priest are people that draw people into the presence of God. Not just any priests, it's the royal priests, royal priests are the ones that served in the presence of the king. And Peter said, here's what you need to know, Christian. You're just not some random everyday person living your life. You, believer, are a royal priest. Why am I telling you this? Today, 1122, if you ever wondered why you have the job you have, did I accident? You ever wondered why you're the dad of the kids you are?

The mom, the business owner. You ever wondered why you're in the school you're in? The neighborhood you're in? Scripture is clear, I believe it's an ax that the word of God says that God chose for you before you were born, the boundaries of your habitation and the place that you would live, the span of your life and the place that you would live, you are where you are in the time that you are because God wanted you in that time and place and listen, I'm gonna tell you something. The reason that you have the job that you have, listen, it's because God needed a priest with the keys of the kingdom in that job. The reason that you're in the neighborhood that you're at, the reason that you're a father of the kids that you have or the mother of the kids that you have or the grandfather of the kids that you have or you're on the team that you're on or the neighborhood or whatever it is because God in that place for those people needed a priest with the keys of the kingdom of God in the place that you are, I'm gonna ask you a simple question, we're about to do the Lord's up. The Pharisees were shutting the door of the kingdom in people's faces. Our calling is to be a people who are very identity. The reason we get up and we breathe air in the morning one is to belong to Jesus and to love Him, but then go out to our jobs and our schools

and our teams and our families and be a priest with the keys to open doors so that people far from God who Jesus loves so much could walk through the door. I'll say this and we'll do the Lord's up. I was hanging out with Pastor Britt a few nights ago at some folks houses doing some 11, 22 stuff and Pastor Britt was praying at the end of it and something just came out of his mouth but I picked up my phone and wrote it down because it was so hype right in the middle of the prayer. And when he said amen, I was like, I'm going to preach it when I preach in a couple of weeks. And I tell him, I'm probably not going to give you credit. But I am. It was him. Y'all, he said something so cool, and I'm going to say this and we'll pray. He prayed Jesus. The reason that every day we get up, and we ought to strive to see one more person. Enter into the kingdom because every single person that enters the kingdom, that's one person closer to the trumpet sounding and you coming back for us. That's why we do it. Let's pray. Church, you have the keys to the kingdom. Jesus gave them to you. You are a priest. It's who you are. Out of an overflow of our love for Christ, let's go open doors. Father, we love you. I thank you for your word. I thank you for its power. And Lord, I want to thank you publicly.

Thank you, Jesus, for walking among this lampstand. For blessing us with your presence. Father, may we never do this for any other reason, but the glory of your name. Father, I pray for every person in this room, especially anyone in the room that is a priest, Lord, that they found themselves sort of struggling with some of that stuff in their heart. Lord, I pray they would come home to you today. Let's give their heart to you. We love you. We praise you and we thank you for who you are and what you've done. In Jesus' name, amen, amen. Church, we're going to take a minute and we're going to do communion together and remind our hearts of what this is all about. After that interaction with the Pharisees, Jesus is going to be on a collision course with the cross, where He will willingly lay down His life for you. And for me, He's going to willingly shed His blood as a once and for all time payment for your sin and for my sin. But on the night that He would be betrayed, He brought His men into a room and they were celebrating the Passover. Church, in your hand, you have some bread and you have a little cup that represents the body of Christ and the blood of Christ. I'm going to walk through both of those elements at the end. We're all going to take those two things together. And so on the night that Jesus was betrayed and He's with His boys, He held up some bread and He broke it in half with this. And He held it up and He said, "Men, this is my body." And He said, "It's going to be broken for you."

He said, "So tonight, we're going to take in, we're going to eat this bread. This time I want you to do it in remembrance of me." And then He took the cup and He held it up and this is when it gets really good. He said, "This is the cup of a new promise, a new covenant that I'm making with you, this cup, it represents my blood and it's going to be poured out, it's going to be shed for the forgiveness of your sins, the wants, and for all time, every sin you've ever committed, it's going to be my blood, it's going to be poured out for your forgiveness." He said, "Take it and drink it, and often as you do, do it in remembrance of me, church, that word remember. It means to go as far and intensely into the memory of that moment as you can." And so right now I want you to take the bread, I don't want you to put it in your mouth and I want you to remember the broken body of Jesus Christ. Do it now. It's the body of Christ broken for you. Now I want you to take the cup, I want you to drink it, and as you do, remember the blood of Christ that was shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. This is the blood of Christ, shed for you. Bring it up. - Father, we thank you for the sacrifice that you made that today we are our forgiven people. Lord, may we leave this place today and live as people of the gospel and open the doors so that many could come in. Thank you for your blood. Thank you for your body. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen, Church, would you stand with me today? We are gonna respond because that's what we do at 11.22. You don't just hear the word of God, but it's so important that we respond to it. There's a couple of ways you can do it. I want you to listen, we do this every week. I want you to hear this. Number one is we're gonna sing.

And I don't know if you guys notice, but we have got a really good reason to worship God. Amen? Here's the other thing we're gonna do. We say this every week, but I want you to think about it just a little bit differently. We ask you sometimes to give. You tell me I'm giving you first and your best to God. Some of you, it hit me, I've been there. You give because it's what you're supposed to do. That's legalism. That's fair sayism. Maybe today what you need to do is not sing. You don't need to come down here, but you need to write a check and you need to do it out of an overflow of your love for Jesus Christ. Some of you need to do that today. I'm gonna leave that with you and God. And the last thing is we want you to respond. Down here at the front we have some carpets for you folks with bad knees. And even if you got good knees or bad knees. Y'all, Thursday night, this place was packed and a lot of it was parents and I loved it. I got choked up. I brought down here, there was a father. He had his three children and the kids were on their knees and their dad was just weeping, praying over them. That's the gospel.

So I'm gonna need to grab your family. Come down here and pray over them. And you grab your wife if your kids aren't in here and pray that you would lead them in the gospel. Church, love you, let's respond to God. He is worthy and he is worthy of our praise. Let's pray. (gentle music) (gentle music) [MUSIC PLAYING]