NXR Podcast - THE SERMON - Jesus Chooses Blue-Collar Men
Aired: 2024-09-15
Duration: 01:13:55


=== Jesus Preaches in Matthew (12:22) ===

[00:00:03]  Amen.
[00:00:03]  Please join me in standing for the reading of God's Word.
[00:00:06]  Our text for today comes from Matthew chapter 4, verses 12 through 25.
[00:00:11]  Again, that's the Gospel of Matthew chapter 4, verses 12 through 25.
[00:00:15]  I'll read the text in its entirety when I finish reading the text.
[00:00:17]  I'm going to say, This is the Word of the Lord, at which point I would appreciate very much if you would respond by saying, Thanks be to God.
[00:00:23]  One final time, our text today is the Gospel according to Matthew chapter 4, verses 12 through 25.
[00:00:30]  The Bible says this Now, when he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee.
[00:00:36]  And leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles.
[00:00:58]  The people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, On them a light has dawned.
[00:01:09]  From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
[00:01:16]  While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.
[00:01:28]  And he said to them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.
[00:01:33]  Immediately they left their nets and followed him.
[00:01:36]  And going on from there, he saw two other brothers.
[00:01:40]  James, the son of Zebedee, and John his brother.
[00:01:44]  In the boat was Zebedee their father, mending their nets.
[00:01:47]  And he called them.
[00:01:49]  Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.
[00:01:53]  And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.
[00:02:05]  So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains.
[00:02:14]  Those oppressed by demons, those having seizures, and paralytics, and he healed them.
[00:02:20]  And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem in Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.
[00:02:30]  This is the word of the Lord.
[00:02:32]  All right, please be seated.
[00:02:33]  Let's go ahead and jump right in.
[00:02:38]  If I were to title this sermon, there's a few different prospective titles that could be selected.
[00:02:44]  One would be that Jesus prefers.
[00:02:48]  Manly men, hard men, strong men.
[00:02:53]  Another could be Jesus was a country preacher, or Jesus forsakes the elites and large cities for the rural country.
[00:03:05]  There's a lot in this text, a lot that seems incredibly relevant for our time and our place, our political and cultural moment that God and His providence has placed us in.
[00:03:17]  Some of these principles are timeless.
[00:03:20]  And universal, as with all the scripture.
[00:03:23]  And then some of them are within their context.
[00:03:25]  We have to be careful in exegeting scripture that we don't take something and make it a universal principle if it's simply descriptive rather than prescriptive.
[00:03:35]  The age old example that is often provided is with Judas, that he went after he was found to have betrayed Jesus.
[00:03:48]  The 30 shekels of silver, give the money back.
[00:03:53]  He ultimately went and took his own life.
[00:03:56]  And, you know, there's been the old adage, you know, somebody opening up the scripture and finding that verse and then saying, you know, turning the page again and thumbing randomly through the scripture to try to get a word from God.
[00:04:08]  And the next verse they find is, you know, a verse that says, and you go and do likewise.
[00:04:14]  You know, it's like, whoa, am I supposed to do the same thing?
[00:04:18]  That's not how to read the Bible.
[00:04:19]  That's not how to exegete scripture.
[00:04:21]  The Bible is not just a series of fortune cookies.
[00:04:24]  And so we do want to read scripture within its context.
[00:04:28]  But the scripture is filled with several commandments and principles that are universal.
[00:04:34]  They're timeless.
[00:04:35]  They are applicable and relevant and true in all times, in all places, and among all peoples.
[00:04:41]  And I think that there are plenty of those in our text today.
[00:04:45]  And some of them have to do with the doctrine of fleeing that there really is a time to flee.
[00:04:51]  And that's precisely what we find Jesus doing in the opening of our text today.
[00:04:57]  We're midway through the fourth.
[00:04:58]  Chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew.
[00:05:01]  And what we find in this chapter is that Jesus receives news that John the Baptist, his cousin, John the Baptist, has been arrested.
[00:05:12]  And it's upon receiving that news that Jesus withdraws.
[00:05:17]  That's the opening verse of our text.
[00:05:19]  Matthew chapter 4, verse 12.
[00:05:21]  Now, when he, he being Jesus, heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee.
[00:05:28]  And a little bit of the Geographic context for some of these towns.
[00:05:33]  Galilee is a region in which there were multiple towns, Nazareth being one of them.
[00:05:40]  And in Galilee, this region, it wasn't a bustling metropolis.
[00:05:45]  This would be like going to a county or an area in Oklahoma or Kansas or Texas 20 years ago before the disease of Austin spread throughout the land.
[00:06:03]  But that's what it would be like, that Jesus is withdrawing.
[00:06:07]  And he's withdrawing specifically from what we can tell looking at other gospel accounts, in particular, the gospel according to John.
[00:06:18]  Jesus is withdrawing from Jerusalem.
[00:06:21]  That's where he was previously.
[00:06:23]  So in Matthew's gospel, it kind of just transitions directly from Jesus being tempted in the wilderness by Satan, which is what we looked at the past two weeks.
[00:06:35]  And then we find in verse 12, the scene has now changed.
[00:06:39]  Jesus is withdrawing to the country, to Galilee, to a rural area.
[00:06:45]  But if we look at John's Gospel, if you have your notes by way of introduction, I've written this.
[00:06:51]  The Gospel of John reveals where Christ went in between his temptation and then his preaching in Galilee.
[00:06:59]  After his temptation, Christ went up to Jerusalem to the Passover.
[00:07:05]  Chapter 2.
[00:07:06]  And then we see his discussions with Nicodemus.
[00:07:10]  That's John chapter 3, which is also taking place in Jerusalem.
[00:07:15]  And his discussions with the woman of Samaria.
[00:07:18]  And that's in John chapter 4.
[00:07:21]  And then, after that, back in John's Gospel, we see him returning into Galilee and preaching there.
[00:07:29]  Now, what's most important for us from the very outset of our text today is to recognize that Jesus came to preach.
[00:07:38]  Now, Jesus came to earth for many reasons.
[00:07:43]  John the Baptist, when seeing Jesus, he says, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
[00:07:50]  And so it is biblically accurate and faithful to say that Jesus came to die.
[00:07:56]  That God gave him a body, that he took on flesh in his incarnation for precisely that reason.
[00:08:04]  And that's even fulfilling the scriptures in the Old Testament.
[00:08:08]  You know, that you have prepared for me a body.
[00:08:12]  For what purpose?
[00:08:13]  Why?
[00:08:14]  Why was God's anointed one, Jesus Christ, enfleshed?
[00:08:19]  Well, so that he could die.
[00:08:21]  The divine is immortal.
[00:08:23]  God cannot die.
[00:08:25]  God is without passions.
[00:08:27]  Not only that God does not emote passions in that sense, but in the Latin use of the term, passions is suffering.
[00:08:37]  Like the famous movie, The Passion of the Christ, speaking of the suffering of the Christ, the crucifixion of the Christ.
[00:08:45]  So the divine is immortal.
[00:08:46]  He does not suffer.
[00:08:48]  He is without passions, without suffering, and certainly without death.
[00:08:54]  But The divine second member of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, took on a second nature, a human nature, for the precise reason so that he could die, so that he could take upon himself the sins of his own and then receive the due penalty for those sins, which is, as Romans tells us, Romans 6 23, the wages of sin is death.
[00:09:20]  So Jesus came to die.
[00:09:23]  That's true.
[00:09:25]  But Jesus also came to preach.
[00:09:28]  Jesus is the great preacher, and all of the fantastic, incredible signs and wonders which he performed, all the miracles of Christ, his exercising of demons, his healings of those who are infirmed and sick, and even raising the dead.
[00:09:51]  All of these miraculous signs and wonders which Jesus performed were in service of Jesus.
[00:09:58]  His sermons, his preaching.
[00:10:01]  They were given as signs and wonders, verifying, validating, serving as his credentials that his preaching, his message, was in fact true.
[00:10:14]  That if anyone was to doubt, is this really a prophet?
[00:10:18]  Is this really a preacher sent from God?
[00:10:22]  Should we trust what he says?
[00:10:24]  What are your credentials?
[00:10:25]  Who sent you?
[00:10:27]  And Jesus would answer these kinds of questions, thinly veiled questions.
[00:10:32]  Accusations, depending who they were coming from.
[00:10:35]  And he would say, The Father sent me.
[00:10:38]  That I have two witnesses, in accordance with the law of Moses.
[00:10:44]  That I'm bearing witness, my Father bears witness, he's the one who sent me.
[00:10:48]  I'm not ministering of my own accord.
[00:10:50]  I have been commissioned and sent, and even the Spirit bears witness to my ministry.
[00:10:56]  And if that were not enough, my ministry has been validated furthermore by many signs.
[00:11:02]  Wonders.
[00:11:03]  The blind see, the deaf can hear, the lame can walk.
[00:11:10]  Jesus came for multiple reasons, but certainly we should not skip over too quickly the fact that Jesus came to preach.
[00:11:20]  And the first thing that we find in Matthew's gospel in the beginning of Jesus' preaching ministry is that he starts preaching in the country.
[00:11:32]  He starts preaching.
[00:11:33]  And the rural setting of Galilee.
[00:11:37]  And he quickly withdraws by intent, by design.
[00:11:43]  None of this is haphazard, but by design, he withdraws from Jerusalem, the capital city of Israel, and he begins his preaching ministry in Galilee.
[00:11:55]  And this doesn't mean that Jesus doesn't love Jerusalem.
[00:11:58]  We know elsewhere in the Gospels where he says, Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets, how much I've longed, like a mother hen who would gather her chicks under her wings.
[00:12:14]  For protection and nurturing.
[00:12:16]  How much have I longed to gather you, but you would not come to me.
[00:12:23]  So Jesus loves Jerusalem.

=== Pushing Back on Nature (10:19) ===

[00:12:25]  It's not that he hates the city, it's not that he hates the capital of Israel.
[00:12:30]  He loves Jerusalem.
[00:12:31]  But at the same time, he's honest about Jerusalem and he recognizes who they are.
[00:12:37]  And who is Jerusalem?
[00:12:39]  Killer of the prophets and those who would not come to Jesus.
[00:12:44]  That's what the city is.
[00:12:47]  What is the city?
[00:12:48]  A place that hates Jesus.
[00:12:53]  Now, it doesn't always have to be that way.
[00:12:54]  That's why I kind of, you know, started from the get go with this sermon by saying not all of these things are timeless, universal principles applicable in every place, in every time, with every people.
[00:13:07]  For instance, if we're not careful, I guess what I'm trying to communicate is if we're not careful, then we can.
[00:13:15]  Develop a subtle aversion in our hearts and minds towards all credentials, all well to do types of people and places.
[00:13:29]  We can kind of develop this subtle, or not so subtle in many cases, aversion towards institutions.
[00:13:37]  And it's worth remembering that in our own history, here in these United States, that there was a time where the most credentialed institutions.
[00:13:48]  And the largest cities of our country were the most Christian places you could be.
[00:13:54]  Princeton was Christian, and Harvard was Christian.
[00:13:59]  At all these places, these were seminaries with the most brilliant minds, and not just brilliant minds that have compromised and sold out, but brilliant minds attached by the grace of God to beating hearts that really did have genuine affection and love for Jesus Christ.
[00:14:17]  And we do need to be careful about this because the reality is our country.
[00:14:22]  Our country is simply too large.
[00:14:25]  And what I mean by that is not that we couldn't have more people eventually.
[00:14:30]  I believe that the knowledge of the glory of God, as the scripture says, one day will cover the whole face of the earth as the waters cover the sea.
[00:14:37]  And part of that is not just the work of an evangelist and spreading the gospel and God by the Holy Spirit and his ministry and power, regenerating hearts so that many are converted to faith in Jesus Christ.
[00:14:49]  That's part of it.
[00:14:50]  Certainly, that's the tip of the spear.
[00:14:51]  But part of it also is not just the great commission, right, spreading the gospel, but also the cultural mandate.
[00:14:58]  The Great Commission doesn't replace the cultural mandate.
[00:15:01]  That's the temptation of modern pietistic Christians we spiritualize everything.
[00:15:07]  We take every natural principle that you could find in the scripture and you give it a spiritual interpretation, but exclusively a spiritual interpretation.
[00:15:17]  So be fruitful and multiply, right?
[00:15:19]  Get married and have kids.
[00:15:21]  And what do we say?
[00:15:21]  Well, this is the New Testament.
[00:15:23]  And so the way we get married and have kids is we're married to Christ by joining his church and baptism and church membership.
[00:15:30]  And we have spiritual children by doing the work of an evangelist and preaching the gospel and seeing new Christians made.
[00:15:36]  Uh huh, that's great.
[00:15:38]  And it's that, and have some real kids.
[00:15:42]  Do both.
[00:15:43]  And I said, Well, I don't want to do the kid thing.
[00:15:45]  Why?
[00:15:45]  Because you'd have to get a job.
[00:15:47]  That's why.
[00:15:49]  Because it's hard.
[00:15:50]  It's hard.
[00:15:52]  But it's both.
[00:15:54]  It's both.
[00:15:54]  It's nature and it's the natural reality and the heavenly reality.
[00:16:00]  One simple principle, and many of you have probably heard it ad nauseum these last few years, and for good reason, because it seems like so much of evangelicalism has forgotten this.
[00:16:11]  But one just general, very basic principle that kind of serves as a compass that keeps you on track, it's like true north, is this short and simple phrase that grace does not eradicate or destroy nature, but rather grace elevates and restores nature.
[00:16:33]  Say that again grace does not eradicate or destroy nature, but rather what grace does is it elevates and restores nature.
[00:16:43]  Nature.
[00:16:44]  What does that mean?
[00:16:45]  It means that grace, God's grace, the spiritual heavenly realities of what God has, all his promises for us in Christ Jesus, and Christ's work that is actively working out, playing out before our very eyes, God restoring the world to himself in Christ Jesus.
[00:17:06]  That what this does is it doesn't get rid of natural law and natural principles, God's created order, the way that he made things originally in the beginning.
[00:17:17]  Which he said is good.
[00:17:19]  It doesn't get rid of these things or undo these things.
[00:17:22]  It simply restores these things.
[00:17:25]  Nature has been perverted, nature has been twisted and tweaked.
[00:17:31]  Nature itself actually cries out.
[00:17:33]  All the creation cries out with eager groans and expectations for the sons of God to be revealed.
[00:17:39]  Why?
[00:17:40]  Because the sons of God in some spiritual reality will replace nature?
[00:17:44]  No, but rather in the redemption of the sons of God, nature too knows that it will also be redeemed.
[00:17:51]  And restored right alongside the sons of God.
[00:17:55]  There's a dynamic difference.
[00:17:56]  What I'm saying is there's a dynamic difference in pushing back on the curse, the curse that is upon nature, which is good and right and part of the mandate of Christians.
[00:18:08]  There's a difference in pushing back on the curse that is upon nature versus pushing back on nature itself.
[00:18:14]  What's an example to illustrate that point?
[00:18:17]  Pushing back on the curse that is upon nature because sin entered the world would be like trying to cure cancer.
[00:18:25]  And doing so ethically.
[00:18:27]  Assuming that cancer is cured and it's cured ethically in a way that doesn't bring more harm than good, in a way that is permissible according to God's law and what God has provided in nature itself.
[00:18:42]  The Christians who are seeking for a cure and a solution to those kinds of problems, that's pushing back on the curse that is upon nature.
[00:18:52]  Trying to change your gender is not pushing back on the curse upon nature, but trying to push back on nature itself.
[00:18:59]  That's the difference.
[00:19:01]  And in those kinds of scenarios where you're trying not to push back the curse on nature, but push back against nature itself, the reality is that nature will always win.
[00:19:12]  Eventually.
[00:19:13]  Give it enough time, and nature finds a way.
[00:19:18]  As a wise prophet once said in Jurassic Park, nature finds a way.
[00:19:25]  I mean, that's basically the fundamental plot line.
[00:19:27]  Spoiler, if you don't want every single horror movie for the last 30 years to be spoiled, then go ahead and do earmuffs.
[00:19:33]  But for everybody else, if you're willing to have the plot spoiled, the basic plot line of every horror movie for the last 30 years is this Man seeks to elevate himself as God and somehow reverse nature.
[00:19:48]  And then nature wins.
[00:19:51]  That's pretty much what happens.
[00:19:53]  That nature finds a way, that nature wins, that you can, by God's grace, push back on the curse upon nature, but not nature itself.
[00:20:01]  So, what does that mean for grace restoring nature?
[00:20:06]  What does it look like for the grace of God to redeem men?
[00:20:11]  Well, it doesn't look like men no longer being men.
[00:20:14]  It looks like men being masculine, but being masculine in a righteous manner, a righteous masculinity.
[00:20:23]  Whereas you would hear from much of the church today, if asked, you know, what does it look like to be a man?
[00:20:31]  They basically would.
[00:20:33]  They would basically prescribe to you at least 90% of what the Bible says it looks like to be a woman.
[00:20:41]  And you'd be like, no, that's not true.
[00:20:43]  That's the world.
[00:20:45]  That's transgenderism.
[00:20:46]  Well, wait a second.
[00:20:48]  I mean, think about it.
[00:20:49]  From a young age, what are boys taught again and again?
[00:20:53]  Be quiet and gentle.
[00:20:56]  The Bible literally says that the beauty, inward beauty of the heart, of a woman is a quiet and gentle spirit.
[00:21:06]  But that's always, almost always, within even the realms of the church applied to men.
[00:21:13]  And then what kind of counsel and advice do women receive, especially young women?
[00:21:19]  You should be ambitious and assertive, strong.
[00:21:24]  How many times is that word strong prescribed these days to women?
[00:21:30]  And then how often is it prescribed to men?
[00:21:34]  Men are rarely told in today's culture and today's church culture to be strong.
[00:21:40]  Instead, men are told to be tolerant.
[00:21:44]  They're told to be gentle.
[00:21:45]  They're told to be quiet.
[00:21:49]  And women are told to be dominant, to be assertive, to be strong.
[00:21:54]  Don't be a doormat.
[00:21:55]  Don't let anybody walk over you.
[00:21:58]  You assert your will.
[00:22:01]  If you want good advice as a man, what you typically can do is just go to the Christian bookstore, find a book written for women, and follow that.
[00:22:14]  And if you want good advice as a woman, just kind of perk up your ear a little bit and listen to what evangelical pastors for the last 30 to 40 years have been telling men.
[00:22:25]  And do that.
[00:22:26]  Every time a pastor tells your husband to be quiet, say, That's for me.
[00:22:30]  I receive that.
[00:22:33]  And you'll do really well.
[00:22:34]  You'll do really well.
[00:22:37]  I guess what I'm saying, I'll just say it plainly the church hates men.
[00:22:41]  You know this.
[00:22:42]  That's why you're here.

=== Arrogance and National Limits (04:28) ===

[00:22:44]  That's why you're not here.
[00:22:45]  And that other church that you could be in.
[00:22:48]  Because you're a man and you're tired of being hated.
[00:22:51]  And hopefully there are some other reasons as well, and I think there are, but that's one of them.
[00:22:55]  It's one of the reasons why churches like ours are growing.
[00:22:59]  Well, that's a pseudo grace.
[00:23:02]  It's not real biblical grace.
[00:23:03]  It's a pseudo facade of grace seeking to eradicate God's natural design rather than elevate and restore it.
[00:23:11]  That's pushing back not on the curse of sin that is upon nature, but pushing back on nature itself.
[00:23:17]  And that play inevitably always fails.
[00:23:21]  It only appears optically, a thin veneer, it only appears to succeed and only temporarily, only for a moment in the big scheme of things, but it always eventually fails.
[00:23:36]  So, all that being said, the point is going back to institutions, going back to our country, all these things, the knowledge of the glory of God covering the whole earth, as the waters cover the sea, eventually we will have, as the not just great commission, but also cultural mandate, nature.
[00:23:54]  As this is obeyed and followed as well, we will have more image bearers filling the earth.
[00:24:00]  I don't believe that the earth is overpopulated, not even close.
[00:24:04]  It's not about population.
[00:24:07]  That's not the problem.
[00:24:09]  That's not the argument being made.
[00:24:12]  However, I will say again, as I said earlier, these United States, I believe the country is too big.
[00:24:21]  It's too big.
[00:24:22]  And that doesn't mean overpopulated.
[00:24:25]  But what I mean by that is, you cannot have a country of 330 million people and not have any credentialed, trustworthy institutions.
[00:24:37]  I don't have the time, nor do I have the knowledge, the skills, or experience every time my kids are sick to go on WebMD and pretend to be a doctor.
[00:24:52]  And I really don't think it's arrogance.
[00:24:54]  For most of us, maybe a few exceptions, but for the most part, I don't think it's that half of the country in 2020 just was blinded by pure, unadulterated arrogance and just woke up one day and said, I'm a doctor now.
[00:25:10]  I don't think that's what happened.
[00:25:13]  I think instead what happened was that half of the country realized, but they're lying to me.
[00:25:21]  We know they're lying because they keep flip flopping.
[00:25:24]  Masks aren't effective.
[00:25:26]  Oh, by the way, now you have to wear a mask.
[00:25:30]  Six feet.
[00:25:32]  Where'd you get the data?
[00:25:33]  We made it up.
[00:25:37]  The vaccine, it's safe.
[00:25:40]  And perfectly healthy 30 year old basketball players in the NBA, they've always just fallen over randomly in the middle of a game with heart arrest.
[00:25:48]  We know.
[00:25:49]  It's always the way that the world has worked.
[00:25:53]  Well, half of the country, I think, woke up, and I don't think it was arrogance.
[00:25:56]  I think it was just.
[00:25:58]  Wait a second.
[00:25:59]  They're trying to kill us.
[00:26:03]  And the other half of the country, it's not that they're humble, it's that they're stupid.
[00:26:11]  There's another name for it to be more polite.
[00:26:12]  I shouldn't say stupid, I should use the proper term.
[00:26:15]  They're Democrats.
[00:26:20]  So, the point is that a nation as large as ours is, we can't be experts in everything.
[00:26:29]  It is actually a blessing.
[00:26:32]  I've said this before with some of the podcasts that I've produced.
[00:26:37]  If God would be so kind that eventually, I don't know, maybe it's 10 years or 50 years or 100 years, but if America really does get back to its Christian roots and we have, by the grace of God, a Christian nation again, if Christian nationalism or whatever you want to call it, if that becomes a reality, I think, I could be wrong, but I think one of the conditions of that reality is that someone like Joel Webbin would not have a YouTube channel.
[00:27:05]  With over 100,000 subscribers.
[00:27:07]  And do you know why?

=== Reconciling with Christian Roots (04:29) ===

[00:27:12]  Because you would have more order, you would have more standards.
[00:27:18]  There was a time that the New York Times, if they got something wrong the very next day, they had to print a retraction on the first page, say, We missed that.
[00:27:26]  There were journalistic standards.
[00:27:29]  And nowadays, it's like your choices are this you can go to the elites and you can be professionally lied to, or you can go to the homegrown, organic, You know, back halls of YouTube, whatever,
[00:27:46]  and find Joel Webbin, you know, and find the King's Hall and whatever, whatever your fancy is, and hear people who are not lying to you, but just to be frank, there are not journalistic standards for a podcaster.
[00:28:05]  There aren't.
[00:28:07]  So you've got guys who are doing their best, but are probably missing some things.
[00:28:13]  The difference is.
[00:28:14]  Do I want people who are intentionally missing things and the things that they're missing on purpose are the things that will kill me because they want me and my family dead?
[00:28:24]  Or guys who accidentally miss things and in general they get the general truth right but they miss some details because, back to the text, they're like Jesus' disciples, blue collar, rural, Galilee fishermen, and they're a little bit rough around the edges.
[00:28:44]  What I'm trying to say is that what Jesus does in our text today.
[00:28:49]  Leaving Jerusalem, leaving the city, leaving all the credentialed scribes, Sadducees, and Pharisees, and going to the countryside and choosing blue collar fishermen to be his disciples, I don't believe is a universal, timeless principle to say degrees don't matter, credentials don't matter, the realm of academia is of no benefit.
[00:29:19]  I don't think that that's the principle we should glean from the text today, and I'm tempted to.
[00:29:24]  Just to be honest.
[00:29:26]  But I think that that would be eisegeting, that is, reading into the text, the opinions of man, rather than exegeting, reading out of the text, what God actually intends.
[00:29:36]  A lot of times we see ourselves in the scripture a little bit more than we should.
[00:29:42]  We should see ourselves in the scripture at some level because really all that is at the root level is simply trying to apply the scripture, not just reading it in a heavy way where it's all theoretical, but reading it in a practical way.
[00:29:57]  Where we're trying to apply the scripture and its principles to our daily lives.
[00:30:01]  That's good.
[00:30:02]  That's what Christians should do.
[00:30:05]  But there's a way of going beyond that where we're not merely looking for practical application, but there's a way of reading the text where it's no longer Christ centered, but it's me centered, and where every text of the Bible essentially, you know, what is the general interpretation?
[00:30:23]  Well, the general interpretation of every text of the Bible is that come to find out everything I'm doing is great.
[00:30:31]  And the Bible affirms everything about me.
[00:30:34]  And I don't really even need to change a thing.
[00:30:36]  Right?
[00:30:36]  There'd be a way of reading our text today that says you should go to churches in the country, in Wahlberg, with pastors who intentionally don't have a PhD.
[00:30:50]  Oh, what a coincidence!
[00:30:52]  You know, it works great.
[00:30:56]  I think that there is some truth there that's timely in different seasons, different eras of time.
[00:31:04]  And I think that we're living in one of those times.
[00:31:06]  But I don't think it's timeless, that it's universal, applying in all places and all times.
[00:31:12]  Christendom is something that you have to reconcile with.
[00:31:16]  You have to reconcile with the reality that in the West, in Europe, and in America, we had 1,500 years of civilization built off of the Christian worldview, the principles of Scripture, and it wasn't just country bumpkins, it was incredibly learned.
[00:31:40]  Men.

=== Building New Institutions (02:57) ===

[00:31:41]  It was philosophers, doctors, academics, institutions, art, all these things.
[00:31:50]  It wasn't just the Shire, it was Gondor.
[00:31:56]  It was the capitals of civilization.
[00:31:59]  And I do believe that that is the goal that the knowledge of the glory of God really would cover the whole earth.
[00:32:06]  And you're not going to win the whole earth if you don't win institutions.
[00:32:12]  Now, what do you do if all of your institutions have discredited themselves?
[00:32:17]  Well, there's a lot of debate about that.
[00:32:20]  Do you do the long march through the institutions?
[00:32:22]  That's what leftists did.
[00:32:23]  That's what Marxists did.
[00:32:25]  And they told us that that's what they were doing.
[00:32:27]  They made their manifesto and all their plans 40, 50 years ago, and they were patient, played the long game.
[00:32:34]  And slowly but surely, they walked through all the institutions.
[00:32:39]  They walked through the universities.
[00:32:41]  They walked through media.
[00:32:42]  They walked through all these different things to.
[00:32:45]  The hospitals and medicine, and they won.
[00:32:51]  They absolutely won.
[00:32:53]  Academia is, it belongs to leftists.
[00:32:57]  It no longer belongs to conservatives.
[00:32:59]  And for every college you can name that might be, well, what about, you know, Hillsdale?
[00:33:05]  You know, okay, maybe, you know, and there's one versus a hundred or a thousand.
[00:33:15]  Conservatives lost.
[00:33:17]  And part of the reason that we lost is because, well, part of it is because conservatives always try to play fair.
[00:33:24]  Conservatives always try to be nice.
[00:33:26]  Conservatives, it's like, well, that would be wrong.
[00:33:30]  That's using the same standards that the left uses.
[00:33:33]  And, you know, like, I remember seeing a picture one time where it was an epitaph, a tombstone, and it says, Here lies conservatism.
[00:33:43]  And then the quote on it was, Could you imagine if the standards were reversed?
[00:33:50]  That doesn't work.
[00:33:51]  It's not enough.
[00:33:53]  It's not enough to just take the high ground.
[00:33:57]  Well, we won't have double standards.
[00:33:58]  We'll have real standards.
[00:33:59]  That doesn't work.
[00:34:01]  Eventually, you have to take institutions, or you can do what Christians and conservatives have done for hundreds of years you can build new ones.
[00:34:10]  But once you build those new institutions, you actually have to keep them.
[00:34:15]  And you can't look at the principles of compassion that really are Christian principles etched out for us in Scripture and allow compassion.
[00:34:24]  To ultimately become a virus.
[00:34:26]  It becomes weaponized by people who hate you, hate your children, and are used against you so that everything you build is taken from you over and over and over again.

=== The Empire Dies (09:18) ===

[00:34:39]  So Jesus flees to Galilee.
[00:34:41]  He goes to countrymen.
[00:34:43]  He goes to unlearned men.
[00:34:45]  He goes to hard men.
[00:34:47]  Fishing is not only something outside the realm of academia, it's not just that fishermen.
[00:34:55]  are men without degrees.
[00:34:57]  It's not just that they're doing hard work, but they're doing hazardous work.
[00:35:02]  Fishing is dangerous, especially at that time.
[00:35:06]  I mean, just think of the instances that we have in the gospel narratives of them on a fishing rig, a boat, in the sea, and a great storm arises.
[00:35:16]  It threatens to capsize the boat, and the disciples of Jesus are convinced that they're going to die.
[00:35:23]  And they're convinced because they've been in scenarios like this before.
[00:35:28]  Jesus goes to unlearned men, hardworking men, blue collar men, And men who are also dangerous men.
[00:35:38]  They are well familiarized with peril, with hazard, and with challenges.
[00:35:45]  This is where Jesus goes.
[00:35:47]  This is where the gospel of Jesus begins.
[00:35:50]  This is the origin place of Jesus' preaching ministry.
[00:35:55]  But I want us to keep the 30,000-foot view in mind.
[00:36:00]  This is where Jesus starts once everything has been perverted.
[00:36:05]  Once every institution has been captured.
[00:36:09]  When Jesus comes on the scene, think about this.
[00:36:12]  When Jesus comes on the scene, the religion of that day had been utterly and completely perverted.
[00:36:23]  Every ounce of it had been twisted to where basically you could do, like I said, humorously but truthfully earlier, what's your advice for men?
[00:36:34]  Okay, I'll do the opposite.
[00:36:35]  What's your advice for women?
[00:36:36]  Okay, I'll do the opposite.
[00:36:38]  That's what Jesus was coming into.
[00:36:40]  I mean, Jesus basically, the summation of almost all of his sermons is the Pharisees are saying this, do the opposite.
[00:36:49]  God's word, the Mosaic law, in its root form, before it was twisted and perverted and tweaked, actually was the opposite.
[00:37:00]  That's the moment, the cultural moment, the political moment that Jesus comes into.
[00:37:07]  He comes into a moment where the church has been captured.
[00:37:11]  Judaism has been captured.
[00:37:15]  For 400 years, the word of the Lord was rare.
[00:37:18]  The skies had been turned to brass so that there were no prophets.
[00:37:25]  No one was hearing the word of the Lord, and the religious rulers of the day, the scribes and the Pharisees and the lawyers, they had all perverted the truth of God to where the doctrines of man had so eclipsed the word of God that.
[00:37:43]  If anyone was to go to the synagogue and hear a sermon, they would have been told everything that God actually hates instead of the things that God loves.
[00:37:54]  That's the religious scene that Jesus comes into, the cultural scene that Jesus comes into.
[00:38:00]  And the political scene is that Israel is under the thumb of Rome.
[00:38:08]  Israel is a conquered nation, that their rulers are not really for them.
[00:38:18]  Their rulers are Romans.
[00:38:21]  They don't actually have a country anymore.
[00:38:23]  They get to pretend to have a country.
[00:38:27]  They get to have their pretend religion and their pretend culture, but not anything that's real.
[00:38:35]  They don't have real liberty.
[00:38:36]  They don't have real freedom.
[00:38:38]  They're a province of an empire, a political empire that has conquered them wholesale.
[00:38:46]  And it is not for them, but for itself and its elites.
[00:38:52]  In other words, again, I don't want to ice a jeet.
[00:38:56]  I'm trying all this as a disclaimer to preach the Word of God faithfully.
[00:39:00]  But the point is, the scene that Jesus arrives on in his preaching ministry is a lot like what's going on with us today.
[00:39:13]  The Pharisees and Sadducees and religious rulers, they've all been bought and paid for.
[00:39:19]  They're corrupt and perverse, and they're teaching the doctrines of men in such a way that it completely overshadows and eclipses, and worse than that, it doesn't just hide, but it perverts and twists.
[00:39:30]  The truth of God to say the very opposite of what God intended.
[00:39:35]  That's the church.
[00:39:36]  And then politically, the nation of Israel is conquered by foreigners with an elite empire that hates them and is selling them out every chance that they get.
[00:39:50]  And their own people, the worst of their own people, Israelites, are who?
[00:39:56]  The tax collectors who sell themselves out to Rome to further.
[00:40:02]  Exploit their own people by excessive taxation.
[00:40:07]  Israel is a tax farm for Rome.
[00:40:11]  So it's in that scene, right?
[00:40:14]  Does that sound familiar to anyone?
[00:40:16]  You feel like, huh?
[00:40:18]  It's in that political, cultural, religious scene, framework, that Jesus arrives and comes into his public ministry.
[00:40:29]  And then Jesus gets word at the beginning of our text, verse 12, the opening verse.
[00:40:34]  That John, his predecessor, who had come to pave the way of the Lord, to preach repentance for the kingdom of God is at hand, this John, John the Baptist, a relative of his, a precursor of Christ, had been arrested.
[00:40:52]  And Jesus' first instinct, his immediate reaction, we should move to the country.
[00:41:01]  We should get out of the city.
[00:41:03]  Jerusalem, not a good place to be.
[00:41:07]  We'll go to Galilee.
[00:41:09]  And I need to assemble a team.
[00:41:13]  Now remember, Jesus isn't just thinking about the next three years, give or take, of his earthly ministry.
[00:41:19]  First and foremost, don't forget the disclaimers.
[00:41:22]  Okay, don't do the 12-second clip.
[00:41:28]  The disclaimer, Jesus came as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world.
[00:41:32]  Behold, you have prepared a body for me.
[00:41:34]  He came to die.
[00:41:37]  But he also came to give his life as a ransom for the many, to raise from the grave on the third day bodily resurrection, but then to also commission his apostles and disciples to go out and to spread the gospel in what way?
[00:41:56]  The very way that he told them.
[00:41:58]  Like a mustard seed that would be planted, that would grow into a tree that wouldn't just be hidden away in some remote corner of the earth, but it would be an all-world encompassing tree, a dominant tree.
[00:42:11]  It would fill the whole earth.
[00:42:12]  And cover it.
[00:42:14]  Or like a little leaven that would work through the whole batch of dough and cause all of it to be permeated and rise with this gospel yeast.
[00:42:25]  Jesus came, in some sense, we can say, Jesus says, I tell you the truth, that unless a seed goes into the ground, the earth, and dies, when a seed is planted, it dies, and out of it springs new life.
[00:42:40]  Unless a seed is planted, Dies.
[00:42:44]  What is that likened to?
[00:42:46]  Going under the ground.
[00:42:49]  You have to dig a little hole and go under the ground and then cover it up and it dies.
[00:42:55]  It's burial.
[00:42:56]  Jesus says, unless a seed goes into the ground and dies, it cannot bear much fruit.
[00:43:03]  He's speaking of himself.
[00:43:05]  That he, in some sense, we could argue what he says elsewhere about the mustard seed.
[00:43:10]  He is the mustard seed.
[00:43:11]  There's a sense in which the gospel is, but also Christ himself, the living word, the Logos, the word of God.
[00:43:18]  He is the word incarnate.
[00:43:19]  He is the mustard seed.
[00:43:21]  And he did die.
[00:43:22]  And he was planted in the ground, in the tomb, under the ground.
[00:43:25]  And he did spring forth those first shoots.
[00:43:29]  Green shoots of life on the third day, risen from the dead, and his work and his ministry didn't stop there, but then he commissioned his apostles, and everything that we needed to know that was sufficient for us was inscripturated by the writing of the apostles under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
[00:43:46]  And then that word of God for 2,000 years now has been spread to millions and millions of disciples of Jesus, and all of his promises are in fact being fulfilled.

=== Pragmatism and Compromise (15:33) ===

[00:43:57]  But politically, culturally, and religiously, you have to know what time it is.
[00:44:03]  Remember the sons of Issachar who are commended because it says they knew the times, and we forget the second half.
[00:44:12]  It says the sons of Issachar who knew the times and what Israel, and you and I, church, we are Israel.
[00:44:22]  They knew the times, the sons of Issachar, and they knew what Israel ought to do.
[00:44:27]  We need sons of Issachar today who know what time it is, and they also know what Israel, that is, the church, What Israel ought to do.
[00:44:39]  And I think, again, I've prefaced, I've given every clarification that I can possibly think of.
[00:44:46]  I don't know if this would be applicable in the 1700s.
[00:44:51]  I don't know if this would be a good, you know, a good sermon to be preached at Princeton, you know, in its inauguration, you know, a couple hundred years, 250 years ago.
[00:45:09]  But I think it's good today.
[00:45:10]  I think it's timely today.
[00:45:14]  This idea of, okay, sons of Issachar, knowing the times and knowing what Israel ought to do, what time is it?
[00:45:19]  I think it's a very similar time to the scene that Jesus comes on.
[00:45:24]  That if you're in the city, they'll throw you in jail, like John.
[00:45:31]  And it's a good time to temporarily and tactfully, not indefinitely, we win.
[00:45:38]  And we don't just win in the 17th dimension.
[00:45:40]  I believe by the grace of God, We win up there and we win down here.
[00:45:45]  Both.
[00:45:46]  We will win.
[00:45:48]  But the question is how?
[00:45:50]  What strategy should we immediately deploy?
[00:45:54]  We can't afford to be foolish ideologues.
[00:46:00]  We can't afford to just, Leroy Jenkins, just to run in with no plan and just immediately get arrested and thrown in jail.
[00:46:12]  Pragmatism, I understand.
[00:46:15]  We just got done over the last 30 years as the Reformed Church collectively demonizing pragmatism.
[00:46:23]  I get it.
[00:46:24]  But I think we threw out a few babies with that bathwater.
[00:46:29]  I really do.
[00:46:31]  The whole assault from the Reformed Church on pragmatism, what it was supposed to be, was in the context of the regular principle of worship on the Lord's Day.
[00:46:43]  Yes, we despise pragmatism.
[00:46:46]  When it comes to seeker friendly church services with laser lights and fog machines and 18 minute TED Talks and a watered down gospel that's powerless to save.
[00:46:57]  Yes, in that sense, we despise pragmatism.
[00:47:02]  But we're not, we should not, as Christians, despise pragmatic strategies across the board.
[00:47:09]  I only made it to church today by being pragmatic.
[00:47:13]  I remembered directions.
[00:47:15]  I took certain turns.
[00:47:17]  I made sure there was gasoline in our minivan.
[00:47:21]  You can't not be pragmatic at all.
[00:47:25]  It's like, well, let's just, no compromise.
[00:47:29]  No compromise.
[00:47:31]  Let's just be faithful.
[00:47:32]  They're murdering babies.
[00:47:33]  I hear you.
[00:47:34]  And I love your heart and I see the sentiment.
[00:47:38]  But let's be honest.
[00:47:39]  If you really just want to be faithful and if you're not going to be, if you really were to be consistent and despise pragmatism all the way, then you should be bombing abortion clinics.
[00:47:51]  Why aren't you, coward?
[00:47:54]  Why are you compromising?
[00:48:01]  Because at the end of the day, you're not an idiot.
[00:48:04]  And just like me, and just like anybody else, you actually do have standards.
[00:48:09]  You actually are playing the long game.
[00:48:11]  You actually are pragmatic.
[00:48:13]  You actually realize that you have a wife and children that you need to feed and you need a job.
[00:48:17]  You can't be thrown in prison.
[00:48:19]  And that's not the way, ultimately, to win in the long run.
[00:48:24]  Everyone's pragmatic, is my point.
[00:48:27]  The question is when and how.
[00:48:29]  When and how and where.
[00:48:32]  And I think we need to be honest about that.
[00:48:35]  We need to be honest that idealism is not a strength, it's not an advantage.
[00:48:43]  And to be exclusively pragmatic at the cost of any and every ideal, that is, any and every principle, then, yeah, of course, that's sinful also.
[00:48:55]  But we need to be wise, innocent as doves, but also as cunning as doves.
[00:49:00]  As serpents.
[00:49:02]  There is such a category, such a thing as a temporary, tactful retreat.
[00:49:09]  Jesus, in other words, all this building to this point, Jesus did not sin by hearing John was arrested, I should get out of Jerusalem.
[00:49:19]  That was not a sin.
[00:49:22]  It's not a sin that we have families in our church who decided, yeah, we're leaving Canada.
[00:49:28]  It is not a sin that we have families in our church who said, yeah, California probably isn't.
[00:49:33]  The wisest place to be.
[00:49:35]  It's not a sin that Andrew Isker is leaving his hometown and his home church where he grew up and then became the pastor as a young adult.
[00:49:44]  I mean, it's hard, it's gut wrenching.
[00:49:46]  These are people that he loves, and he's trying in his defense to bring as many of them as will come with him as possible, but they're leaving and they're moving to Tennessee.
[00:49:56]  And they're doing so because, in part, his oldest son has severe autism.
[00:50:03]  Very severe.
[00:50:07]  And right now, there is a targeted attack on children with special needs that they would be deceived and perverted against their parents, convinced that somehow God made a mistake.
[00:50:24]  I won't be more detailed than that.
[00:50:26]  You know what I mean.
[00:50:27]  You're in the wrong body, that kind of thing.
[00:50:30]  And then they are taken if their parents disagree.
[00:50:35]  They are taken.
[00:50:36]  There are stories right now.
[00:50:39]  Right now.
[00:50:40]  Because of Tim Walz.
[00:50:41]  Tim Wald's the running mate of Kamala Harris.
[00:50:43]  That's the governor of Andrew Isker State.
[00:50:48]  That's his governor.
[00:50:50]  And kids, just like Andrew's firstborn child, who he named Boniface, kids like him are being taken from Christian parents.
[00:51:02]  And they don't know about it.
[00:51:04]  And so Andrew Isker is compromising and sinning, giving up.
[00:51:11]  He's quitting.
[00:51:12]  No, he's just not being an idiot.
[00:51:16]  The title of the sermon today could just as easily be Jesus preached to men and wasn't an idiot.
[00:51:24]  You're allowed to be wise.
[00:51:27]  And there is a certain point, and there's a fine line here, but there's a certain point where wisdom becomes a euphemism for fear.
[00:51:35]  That is true.
[00:51:36]  Right?
[00:51:37]  Peter could probably make a bunch of arguments from wisdom about why it's not wise to get out of a boat and try to walk on water in the middle of a storm.
[00:51:50]  But in that context, all of his wisdom arguments would actually be fear.
[00:51:56]  Because being on the water, when Jesus is on the water and gives the command, is the safest and wisest place to be.
[00:52:06]  So it's all about the context, it's about knowing the times.
[00:52:12]  You know, what day, what time, and what place in God's providence has He placed us?
[00:52:18]  And for what purpose?
[00:52:20]  And what's the strategy moving forward?
[00:52:22]  And how can we have ideals and principles with zero compromise and yet ideals without being ideologues?
[00:52:31]  And pragmatic and all the practical strategies that we can possibly employ, but without being exclusively pragmatic at the cost of any principles.
[00:52:42]  In other words, following Jesus in all times, in all places, but especially in our time, in our place, it's not.
[00:52:50]  Easy.
[00:52:51]  It's not as simple as we would like to make it.
[00:52:54]  It requires wisdom.
[00:52:56]  It requires thought.
[00:53:00]  And little, poignant, one liner Jesus juke statements.
[00:53:08]  You know what the Jesus juke is?
[00:53:10]  In case you haven't come across it, you have.
[00:53:13]  That's kind of, I think, a helpful title for it.
[00:53:15]  The Jesus juke is 20,000 Haitians in Springfield, Ohio.
[00:53:22]  Well, God's so merciful, the Great Commission is coming to us.
[00:53:26]  That's a Jesus juke.
[00:53:29]  That's saying, well, just preach the gospel, right?
[00:53:31]  That if you apply that consistently, it's like there's an intruder breaking down our front door in the middle of the night.
[00:53:36]  Preach the gospel.
[00:53:38]  No.
[00:53:40]  Grab your gun.
[00:53:43]  You can preach as you shoot them, that's fine, you know, as long as it doesn't distract you from your aim.
[00:53:50]  But no, that again is.
[00:53:53]  The common denominator that I'm noticing right now in the evangelical church is a complete forsaking of nature.
[00:53:59]  Everything spiritualized, everything steamrolled, everything is oversimplified, overgeneralized, everything is a 17th dimension, eternal application.
[00:54:13]  Our Christian forefathers would be rolling in their graves.
[00:54:19]  Our Christian forefathers, they recognized nature.
[00:54:24]  They recognized natural law.
[00:54:27]  They recognized the created order that God had a way that he designed the world and that it was good.
[00:54:33]  They didn't go against the grain of nature.
[00:54:36]  They applied the gospel and theology with nature, and they were blessed for it.
[00:54:42]  Part of the reason that we are being cursed and under God's judgment is we have rebelled against God, in part by rebelling against his natural order and what he has made.
[00:54:56]  Gender or sex, something that God made male and female, he made them.
[00:55:03]  Nations and borders.
[00:55:06]  Something that God institutes.
[00:55:08]  The book of Acts says that He sets their times and their borders.
[00:55:12]  God made this.
[00:55:15]  These are natural things, a part of God's order.
[00:55:17]  We do well to work within the bounds of nature and not against the bounds of nature.
[00:55:26]  So Jesus was a preacher.
[00:55:27]  I'm going to go quick now through all these things.
[00:55:30]  Matthew Henry says this He was a preacher.
[00:55:33]  The subject which Christ dwelt upon now in his preaching, and it was indeed the sum and substance of all his preaching.
[00:55:40]  Was the very same that John the Baptist, preceding Christ, also preached on, which is what?
[00:55:46]  We saw it in Matthew chapter 3, verse 2.
[00:55:50]  Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is here.
[00:55:53]  It's at hand.
[00:55:54]  That's the same thing that Jesus is now preaching in Galilee, in the countryside.
[00:55:59]  He's preaching the same message.
[00:56:00]  It's verse 17 of our text.
[00:56:02]  From that time, Jesus began to preach saying, Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.
[00:56:08]  The kingdom of God is near.
[00:56:11]  Matthew Henry says, The gospel is the same.
[00:56:14]  The same in its substance.
[00:56:16]  Its application may differ, but its substance, its message is the same under various dispensations.
[00:56:22]  Meaning, whether it's the 1700s or the first century or wherever you are, whenever you are, the gospel is the same.
[00:56:31]  Matthew Henry furthermore goes on and says that the gospel is a gospel of repentance.
[00:56:37]  This he preached.
[00:56:39]  Jesus preached as gospel repent.
[00:56:42]  Note, the doctrine of repentance is right gospel doctrine.
[00:56:46]  The sweet and gracious Jesus, whose lips drop as a honeycomb, he preached repentance.
[00:56:53]  Why?
[00:56:54]  For it is an unspeakable privilege that room is left for repentance.
[00:57:00]  One of the things that I remember I realized years ago, I remember talking with a friend, and we were arguing about sin, whether or not something was inherent, like some inherent character trait.
[00:57:17]  I just, nature, right?
[00:57:19]  I'm just born with this.
[00:57:20]  Or whether or not it was like, no, this, maybe you have a propensity towards this, but it really is sin.
[00:57:28]  It's conscious and willful and immoral and wrong.
[00:57:31]  And I remember going back and forth and back and forth, and then eventually coming to the conclusion, and I know it sounds ironic, but it's true, that there's a hopefulness.
[00:57:41]  Sounds funny, but there's a hopefulness with sin.
[00:57:44]  Do you know why?
[00:57:46]  Because sin can be changed, sin can be repented of.
[00:57:53]  If it's something that's not sin and it really is just ingrained in nature, then it can't be changed.
[00:57:59]  A lot of times, well, this is just the way I am.
[00:58:01]  This is just my personality.
[00:58:04]  This is the way God made me.
[00:58:06]  No, no, you're just immoral.
[00:58:11]  You're sinful.
[00:58:13]  And that's good news.
[00:58:14]  How's that good news?
[00:58:16]  Because sin can change.
[00:58:19]  And so Jesus isn't berating people.
[00:58:21]  When Jesus is going around preaching the same message that John the Baptist preached, the message of Repentance.
[00:58:27]  Notice that this was good news.
[00:58:32]  It wasn't good news plus repentance.
[00:58:35]  The good news included repentance.
[00:58:38]  How is repentance good news?
[00:58:40]  Because hope, the very essence of hope, you could almost define hope as this Hope is the potential that change can happen.
[00:58:51]  That's what hope is.
[00:58:52]  Hope is the idea, it's the belief.
[00:58:55]  It's the belief that circumstances, that our person, that our environment, that the world, that whatever it is that right now feels so hopeless.
[00:59:05]  That these things, by the grace of God, don't always have to be.
[00:59:09]  That these things can change.
[00:59:12]  And that's what repentance is.
[00:59:13]  The message, the sermon of repentance, is a sermon that says, Repent, change.
[00:59:20]  But what's implied in that very sermon is this change with God is possible.
[00:59:26]  That with man, these things are impossible, but all things are possible with God.

=== Unlearn to Repent (14:24) ===

[00:59:30]  Your problem is not just Rome, and your problem is not just the corrupt religious system around you.
[00:59:37]  Your deepest problem is your sin.
[00:59:39]  And that can change.
[00:59:42]  Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.
[00:59:46]  Jesus preached the gospel, and his gospel was a gospel of repentance.
[00:59:52]  And this wasn't against that which is hopeful, that which is rightly called good news, but it was the very essence of good news.
[01:00:00]  It is a privilege that room is left for repentance.
[01:00:04]  So that's Jesus' preaching ministry.
[01:00:06]  He begins it in Galilee, the countryside.
[01:00:09]  He intentionally flees from Jerusalem, but remember, later on, he goes back.
[01:00:15]  It is okay to temporarily and tactfully for a time retreat from large captured cities that hate God, that hate Christianity, and that hate his people.
[01:00:27]  There is a principle there, a timely, perhaps not timeless, but a timely principle that we should consider.
[01:00:35]  Lastly, in the calling of his disciples, I've already said it, but going a little bit more detail now, here at the very end, Jesus calls hard men.
[01:00:46]  Hard men.
[01:00:47]  Matthew Henry says it like this Here on the banks of the sea, Christ was walking to call his disciples, not in Herod's court, for few mighty and noble were called, and not to Jerusalem among the chief priests and the elders, but rather Jesus goes to the Sea of Galilee.
[01:01:09]  Jesus is assembling a team.
[01:01:12]  And where does he think to head hunt for his team?
[01:01:16]  He says, I should go to the country.
[01:01:19]  I need to get blue collar men.
[01:01:22]  Men who have not been corrupted by all the perversion of the day.
[01:01:30]  Men who need to learn.
[01:01:32]  They were unlearned men, and that doesn't, Jesus, notice, you don't, again, isegesis is not good.
[01:01:37]  We don't want to say Jesus preferred unlearned men, and after three years with Jesus, Jesus intentionally made sure that they were still unlearned men.
[01:01:46]  No.
[01:01:47]  Now that would be twisting the text.
[01:01:50]  No, these men who were unlearned became learned men.
[01:01:58]  Jesus discipled them.
[01:02:01]  He taught them for three years.
[01:02:04]  These men attended the greatest seminary the earth has ever held, with the greatest professor, the greatest teacher known to man, the second member of the Trinity, the Son of God Himself.
[01:02:19]  So Jesus went to find men.
[01:02:23]  Not to find men who were non academic and who would never be academic, but to find men who could be taught.
[01:02:31]  He wasn't trying to find men who were never taught so that they would stay that way.
[01:02:34]  He was trying men who, up to that point, had not been taught so that they would only have to do half the work.
[01:02:41]  Do you know what I mean by that, half the work?
[01:02:44]  For intellectuals today, because all of our institutions have been captured, to teach them, you have to do twice the work.
[01:02:52]  They have to learn, but first they have to unlearn.
[01:02:56]  The disciples didn't have to unlearn, they just had to learn.
[01:03:01]  And so that's part of the reason why Jesus chooses them.
[01:03:05]  He chooses these men.
[01:03:07]  Galilee was a remote part of the nation.
[01:03:09]  The inhabitants were less cultivated and refined, their very language was broad and uncouth to the curious.
[01:03:16]  Their speech betrayed them.
[01:03:18]  These guys were rough around the edges.
[01:03:21]  These guys, they used some words.
[01:03:25]  That probably they didn't use after being with Jesus.
[01:03:30]  But initially, these guys were rough around the edges.
[01:03:33]  These were hard men.
[01:03:35]  Going a little bit more detail here, four characteristics of these first four men that Jesus chooses.
[01:03:42]  He chooses sets of two brothers.
[01:03:46]  They were poor, they were unlearned, as we've just discussed, but they were also men of industry, business, they had jobs, they weren't unemployed.
[01:03:58]  And they knew how to deal with hardships.
[01:04:02]  As I said earlier, it's not just hard work fishing, but it's perilous work, dangerous.
[01:04:07]  So they were poor.
[01:04:08]  If they had estates or any considerable stock in trade, Matthew Henry says, then they would not have made fishing their trade.
[01:04:17]  Fishing was not something that you would do if you were rich.
[01:04:25]  These are not recreational fishing guys.
[01:04:27]  It's not that Jesus finds them fishing and Jesus just happened to catch them on holiday.
[01:04:32]  On vacation.
[01:04:34]  No, this is their livelihood, and it's a livelihood that you would not choose if you were a person of means.
[01:04:41]  They were not.
[01:04:42]  They were poor.
[01:04:43]  Second, they were unlearned men, not bred up on books or literature as Moses was.
[01:04:50]  They were not conversant with all the learning of the Egyptians.
[01:04:53]  Yet, this will not justify, I like that Matthew Henry adds this it will not justify the bold intrusion of ignorant and unqualified men into the work of ministry.
[01:05:06]  That's a good qualifier.
[01:05:07]  That's why I've spent so much time laboring.
[01:05:11]  If you have not been professionally trained by modern seminaries today, praise God.
[01:05:20]  But if you use that as an excuse to not ever learn at all, then you're a fool.
[01:05:26]  You're a fool.
[01:05:29]  The fact that Jesus chose unlearned men is not, it should not be preached or interpreted in such a way to say Jesus prefers unlearned men.
[01:05:39]  People who don't read.
[01:05:41]  No.
[01:05:42]  No.
[01:05:44]  Read.
[01:05:45]  Study.
[01:05:47]  Learn.
[01:05:48]  But also be like the sons of Issachar and know the times.
[01:05:52]  And if you're living in a time where all of academia, including evangelical academia and all the seminaries, have been captured, where the professors right now are teaching, you know, seven point lessons of why we need more immigrants from Haiti.
[01:06:09]  then yeah, you shouldn't go to seminary if that's the times you're living in.
[01:06:14]  But you should learn.
[01:06:16]  You should learn.
[01:06:18]  You should read from better men, older men, men who taught things well.
[01:06:25]  Number three, they're not just poor and unlearned, but they were men of business, Matthew Henry says.
[01:06:31]  They were working men who had been bred up to labor.
[01:06:36]  Note, diligence in an honest calling is pleasing to Christ and no hindrance to a holy life.
[01:06:44]  I'm just trying to keep my options open.
[01:06:46]  I feel like the Lord might be calling me to ministry.
[01:06:49]  You know, so I don't want to get a full time job.
[01:06:53]  I don't want to be too busy.
[01:06:55]  I want to be ready and willing so that if Jesus comes like he did to the disciples and he calls me, I'm ready to follow him.
[01:07:02]  Well, that's not the men that he called.
[01:07:05]  Jesus didn't call men on the unemployment line, Jesus did not come and call men on welfare.
[01:07:15]  Jesus came and called men with full time jobs, and guess what?
[01:07:20]  If Jesus calls you, you can always leave.
[01:07:23]  They dropped their nets and followed him.
[01:07:25]  Especially the sons of Zebedee, it says they weren't just fishing at that moment, they were mending their nets.
[01:07:31]  That's a good time to call someone who's fishing.
[01:07:34]  That's the equivalent of, like, I just got hung, or I have a massive bird's nest in my reel, and Jesus comes and says, Drop your pole.
[01:07:42]  It's like, Praise God.
[01:07:45]  That is fantastic.
[01:07:46]  That's good news.
[01:07:47]  That's the gospel right there.
[01:07:48]  That's good news.
[01:07:49]  Come and follow me.
[01:07:50]  Somebody else can untangle the line.
[01:07:53]  But the point is, these men had something to drop.
[01:07:57]  They weren't just sitting under, you know, just sitting in the courtyard and just doing nothing and receiving unemployment and a free handout.
[01:08:06]  They were men of business.
[01:08:08]  Diligence and an honest trade, is basically what Henry is saying, is pleasing to Christ and it will not hinder you to a holy life.
[01:08:17]  If anything, it's even further, idle people.
[01:08:21]  Lie more open to the temptations of Satan than to the calls of God.
[01:08:28]  It's the person who is busy, who is busy with work.
[01:08:33]  That person is more insulated to the temptation and wiles of the devil and more suitable for the callings of God than the person who is idle.
[01:08:42]  Lastly, number four, they were men who were accustomed to hardships, hazards.
[01:08:47]  The fisher's trade, more than any other, is laborious and perilous.
[01:08:52]  Fishermen must be often wet and cold.
[01:08:55]  They must watch and wait and toil and often in perils by waters.
[01:09:00]  Note, those who have learned to bear hardships and run hazards are best prepared for the fellowship and discipleship of Jesus Christ.
[01:09:09]  Good soldiers of Christ must endure hardness.
[01:09:14]  Jesus called poor men, unlearned men, employed hardworking men, and men who were familiar with danger.
[01:09:26]  And they were not men who would easily blush or shy away from hazards and perils.
[01:09:34]  That's the kind of men that Jesus called.
[01:09:37]  And he found these men not in Jerusalem.
[01:09:40]  He did not find these men in the house of Herod.
[01:09:45]  These were not men of credentials, and they were not men of the urban city.
[01:09:50]  They were men of the country, men who were faithful, men who were hardworking and ready to receive the call of Jesus.
[01:10:00]  That may not be a timeless principle.
[01:10:03]  There was a time when Princeton and Harvard were good places to be.
[01:10:07]  But that time has long been past.
[01:10:10]  And I think that right now the lay of the land is similar to the landscape in the day of Jesus.
[01:10:17]  Politically, we've been captured by elites who have sold us out.
[01:10:22]  They do not love the native heritage of American people.
[01:10:27]  They prefer foreigners.
[01:10:29]  It is by design.
[01:10:31]  They want us to be conquered and destroyed.
[01:10:35]  And in the evangelical scene, the level of the church, culture, and religion, You have a Christianity that is virtually unrecognizable to the Christianity that Jesus taught.
[01:10:50]  Where everything is spiritualized, nature has been fully forsaken, every principle of the Bible has been turned into somehow another tool for turning America into a communist nation faster.
[01:11:06]  What did Jesus teach?
[01:11:08]  More immigration.
[01:11:09]  Really?
[01:11:11]  What did Jesus teach?
[01:11:13]  Socialism.
[01:11:14]  Really?
[01:11:16]  What did Jesus teach?
[01:11:18]  Feminism.
[01:11:18]  Really?
[01:11:20]  At every level, every principle of Scripture has basically, by evangelicals, by pastors, been twisted to such a degree it's unrecognizable.
[01:11:33]  You can basically read the latest book by Russell Moore and then read just the policies of Kamala Harris, and lo and behold, what a coincidence.
[01:11:43]  One and the same.
[01:11:45]  One and the same.
[01:11:47]  That's where we're at.
[01:11:49]  And in that cultural political moment, yeah, I think you do well to get out of the city.
[01:11:55]  You do well to be unlearned in the academic professional sense, but still disciplined and reading.
[01:12:02]  You do well to be employed and hard working, but maybe not rich and well off like the elites.
[01:12:09]  You do well to be familiarized with danger and peril and challenge, to be a hard man who doesn't blush with difficulty.
[01:12:20]  You do well to be that kind of person and to be in a rural place, that kind of place, ready to be faithful day in and day out, receiving the call of Jesus.
[01:12:32]  But remember, the end of the story, if we look at human history, if we look at church history, Jesus goes, he picks rural men, but within just a few hundred years, all the capital cities are taken.
[01:12:45]  They're eventually Christianized.
[01:12:48]  Christianity doesn't stay rural, it starts rural, but eventually, The yeast works through the whole batch of dough, the mustard seed grows, and eventually the cities become beacons of light of Christendom.
[01:13:02]  And that light shines bright for centuries, arguably well over a thousand years.
[01:13:09]  Because of rebellion and apostasy, that light has faded, and we have been on a decline.
[01:13:16]  The West has been declining for quite a while now.
[01:13:20]  And so perhaps it's time to start back over in the countryside.
[01:13:26]  And eventually, as we build new institutions, as we raise up new faithful men, and as cities continue to capitulate and collapse, eventually the goal is that we would go back in and we would take what the enemy has stolen, and that the knowledge of the glory of God really would fill the whole earth as the waters cover the sea.
[01:13:48]  Father, bless your word to your people.
[01:13:49]  We pray that it would bring you glory.
[01:13:51]  Give us the strength to carry it out.
[01:13:53]  In Jesus' name, amen.