Speaker addresses how truth causes division, citing Matthew 10:34-39 where Jesus warns that loving others more than Him renders one unworthy. While acknowledging this text describes inevitable consequences of union with God in hostile contexts like Muslim nations or first-century settings, the speaker clarifies it is not a command for modern Western Christians to divorce spouses or disown children. In post-Christian America, returning to historic Christianity may fracture families as culture idolizes feminism and rejects biblical patriarchy, yet believers must default to hope that children raised in the fear of the Lord remain faithful while willingly bearing Christ's reproach rather than denying Him. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Division to Unite With God00:09:16
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This morning, we continue our series through the Gospel according to Matthew, our text.
Is Matthew chapter 10, verse 34 through 39.
Again, our text is the gospel according to Matthew chapter 10, verse 34 through 39.
I'll read our text in its entirety.
When I finish reading the text, 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.
One final time, our text for today is Matthew chapter 10, verse 34 through 39.
The Bible says this Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth.
I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter in law against her mother in law, and a person's enemies will be those of his own household.
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
This is the word of the Lord.
All right, please be seated.
We'll go ahead and dive right in.
The first thing that we see in this text and multiple other texts throughout the scripture as a whole is this undeniable principle that truth divides.
Truth divides.
Our text begins in verse 34 by saying, Jesus saying, Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth.
I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
In your notes, I've written the following Jesus, who was heralded by angels as bringing peace, according to Luke's Gospel, chapter 2, verse 14, now claims that he brings a sword.
This is not a contradiction.
It's not a contradiction in terms.
That Jesus, on the one hand, comes to bring peace, he is the prince of peace.
But now he says that he has not come for peace, but rather to bring a sword.
This is not a contradiction, but rather meant to be a clarification.
Peace with God comes through Christ.
But this peace with God that is brought by Christ often brings division with the world.
The light of Christ is intolerable to a sinful world.
Truth divines.
John chapter 3, verses 16 through 21. Is one passage that our family has committed to memorizing.
And verses 19 and 20 specifically say this And this is the judgment.
The light, that being Christ, has come into the world.
And people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.
For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his works should be exposed.
If you back up just a couple verses prior in John chapter 3, we see that Jesus did not come into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
That's John chapter 3, verse, I can't remember, I think it's either 17 or 18.
So it's, you know, we all know John chapter 3, verse 16.
But then it goes further and says, He did not come to condemn the world, but rather the world might be saved through him.
So, Jesus did not come in his first coming in his incarnation in order to condemn the world, but to save the world as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world and as the light of God to bring light to earth.
But the byproduct of Jesus coming as light, as truth, as righteousness, the consequence of that.
Is that many people scurry away like rats, like cockroaches, hiding from the light?
So there's a difference.
There's a difference in Jesus saying, I've come to bring a sword, and that's my ultimate first aim.
Like I came, and my primary intention, and design, and desire, and goal is to be a home wrecker and to ruin marriages and make kids hate their parents and parents hate their kids.
That's not what our text today is saying.
Our text today is not against the importance of family and love for family and devotion to family.
That's not what Jesus is saying.
His ultimate goal was to bring unity, union, and peace with God, to reconcile sinners with God, but as a byproduct.
So it's not saying my chief goal is to wreck families.
No, my chief goal is to unite sinners with God by the blood of his cross.
But by doing so, The byproduct of that, the consequence of that, is that some families would be disrupted, that some marriages would be divided, that some children would in fact turn against their parents, and some parents would in fact turn against their children.
So Jesus is acknowledging that division is one of the consequences, an unavoidable consequence.
It's inevitable.
It doesn't mean it's going to happen in every case, with every family, with every relationship, but in general, in the macro, As the light of God, Jesus Christ, comes into a world that hates the light because their deeds are evil and therefore they like darkness because it conceals their guilt.
In that context, with wicked men who want to conceal and justify their sin by hiding in the darkness, when light comes into that kind of context, then necessarily one of the consequences will be twofold the aim, the actual aim, Peace with God.
But then the byproduct, division with men.
So the aim of Christ, he didn't come to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
He didn't come in order to wreck families.
He came to unite sinners to God.
But his chief goal of not coming to condemn, but to save, and not coming to divide, but to unite, the byproduct of that, because the world does involve many wicked people, The byproduct of that will be inevitably some shape or form or degree of division.
So that's important for us to recognize division was not Jesus' goal, just as condemnation was not his primary goal.
The goal was salvation, not condemnation, and union with God, not division with men.
But when Jesus comes as light to save, and inevitably many wicked men don't want to be saved, then condemnation is one of the byproducts.
When Jesus comes for union with God, But many people don't want union with God and will reject those who do embrace union with God, then division becomes one of the necessary byproducts.
So, truth does divide, not as its primary goal, but division will always be, in some various form or shape or degree, division with men will always be some byproduct of union with God.
To unite with God, It is to experience some division with men.
Second point this division, as it pertains specifically now to families, to households, I do believe, and I think that this is important to mention, and I think it's a consolation to us, that this kind of division that Jesus is describing, not just with the world in an abstract sense, not just, well, you know, the government won't like you.
You'll receive civil persecution.
You'll receive religious persecution from this group and these guys over here.
Jesus Does Not Play Nice00:10:13
But no, Jesus gets far more personal than that.
And he begins to describe the division that will invariably take place within a man's own family.
And so I think that it's worth mentioning that, of course, the words of Jesus are true.
Let God be true, though every man a liar.
So you're not going to find me ever disagreeing with Jesus.
That's not a good strategy.
Especially as a Christian pastor, right?
So Jesus is always right.
That's kind of a basic rule of thumb.
That said, it is important in our hermeneutics, how we read and study and interpret the scripture.
It is important.
We've talked about some general hermeneutical tools.
One is all scripture is for us, not all scripture is immediately, directly to us.
Well, here's another one not all scripture is prescriptive, prescribing, meaning commanding, saying, This is what you must do.
There are prescriptive passages in the Bible and there are descriptive passages.
There are multiple passages of scripture that are simply describing a scenario of something that did happen or will happen or as a possibility could happen.
There are multiple descriptive texts in the Bible that are not necessarily prescriptive.
So, Jesus is not, this is not a command.
Right?
I think we have to understand the language of our text today Jesus is not saying, if you follow me, you need to divorce your spouse.
If you follow me, you need to disown your kids.
If you follow me as a child, you must, you know, pack a backpack and run away from home and leave your parents.
That would be the language of a command must.
You must do this.
These are not commands that he's given.
This is not prescriptive.
He's not prescribing, commanding, it's descriptive.
What he's saying is, this is what will happen, not in every case, but in many cases.
So now take that hermeneutic, that way of reading the scripture, interpreting it, descriptive versus prescriptive, describing something versus commanding something, a moral imperative.
So this is not a moral imperative, it's not a prescription, it's not a command, it's a description.
So now take that hermeneutic with the hermeneutic that we've talked about in weeks prior all scripture is for us, but not all scripture is immediately and directly to us.
I think both of these hermeneutical tools apply in the case of our text today.
This is descriptive.
He's giving a description, not a command.
And it is fundamentally to the direct audience that he's speaking to.
It's for us.
That means it's still applicable.
It's still relevant to some degree.
It still matters, but it's not directly to us.
Now, who is his immediate audience as he's speaking here?
It's his disciples, and what is their context?
This is important.
The context of Jesus' disciples that he's speaking to are first generation Christians.
In the first century, in contexts that are both governmentally, in terms of the realm of the civil realm, politics, and religiously, going to be extremely hostile towards the Christian faith.
They're going to see Christianity as a novelty.
They are.
Right?
Judaism is going to see Christ as a blasphemer and a liar, claiming to be God when he's not.
And there's going to be, of course, necessarily, we can assume.
Hostility towards first century Christians.
And then at a civil level, even the Romans, they weren't quite as hostile as some of the religious persecution from the synagogues.
But even the Romans, they're like, well, okay, you can add Jesus to our pantheon of gods.
But when they assert that Christ, Christos Kyrios, that Christ is Lord and not Caesar, well, now all of a sudden the Romans are like, we were fine with Christianity being one extracurricular option among.
You know, this Norse god and that god, but now you're saying he's the only god, and that polytheism and all these other gods are false gods.
And you're saying not only is he a god worthy of private religious worship, but he's a king, and that there are political implications of his kingship, and that they rival and are superior to Caesar.
So, yeah, we're not a fan.
So, both at the political level with Gentiles, civil magistrates that are Gentiles, there was going to be persecution.
Toward Christianity in the first century.
Christianity coming as a novelty, and it was a novelty for that time.
No one was really familiar.
Nobody had any history, any context of the things that Jesus was saying.
They should have.
I mean, Jesus even says that to Nicodemus.
He says, You're a teacher in Israel, you're a religious teacher, ruler, and you don't know these things.
So it's not that it's a novelty in the truest sense that.
That there's no foreshadowing, no messianic prophecies, that God had never said these things before, and that He just turned on a dime with the incarnation of Christ.
That's not true.
God had been planning these things and speaking towards these things, prophesying these things since the very beginning, all the way back to the garden with Adam and Eve.
But because people were blind, right?
That Jesus came into a world that was filled with darkness because of the spiritual blindness of the religious rulers of the day.
And the spiritual blindness of all these Gentile civil rulers, it appeared as though Christianity was a complete novelty.
And Christianity at the civil level posed a threat to politicians.
And at the religious level also posed a threat.
It posed a threat to Judaism, but it also posed a threat to all the different forms of paganism.
Because paganism was supposed to play nice with other gods.
It was polytheism friendly.
Whereas Christianity, Jesus doesn't play nice.
I don't know if you ever saw it, it's not that I hate even referencing Marvel comic books because it's just, they're lame.
Not even because it's necessarily immoral, but it's just, it's like, that's embarrassing.
So that's almost like referencing Star Wars.
It's almost on that level.
But there's one scene, okay, one scene where the Hulk, you know, Loki, The brother of Thor is being arrogant and talking up his, I'm a god.
And then the Hulk just grabs him and starts smashing him back and forth and he says, Puny God.
It's a good line.
And that's how Christianity works with every other religion.
Jesus doesn't play nice with other gods.
Jesus, like the Hulk, he grabs pagan gods, pagan deities, and he smashes them and says, Puny God.
Jesus doesn't share his glory.
Jesus will never be content to be one God in the pantheon of many.
That's not the way Christianity works.
Christianity is not only the supremacy of Christ, that he is above all other gods, but the exclusivity of Christ.
He alone is God.
There are no other gods.
There are other angelic beings.
There are, you could even argue, maybe like a demigod kind of theology.
I think that some of the Roman and And Greek mythology actually has many threads of truth to it.
Things like Hercules.
It's like, well, that's just made up.
Maybe.
But the idea that Hercules was like part God, but then also part mortal, and that he had supernatural strength and was able to destroy dragons and things like that like, call me a sucker for some of the nerdotry type stuff in the Bible, but I believe it.
I'm like, so then how do you explain Hercules?
Nephilim.
That's how you explain it.
He had, you know, I think he had fallen angel, patriarch.
And a human mother, you know, and he was part angel, part human.
He was one of the Nephilim with supernatural strength in a time where there were many creatures and dragons and monsters in the world.
I believe that dragons were real.
It's like, oh, well, dinosaurs or just dragons.
You can just say that, dragons.
And I think Hercules killed a bunch of dragons and saved the day and was also probably terrible, though.
I don't think he was.
He was a hero in the physical sense and strength and those kinds of things, like Samson.
But unlike Samson, Samson wasn't fantastic, but I think Hercules was probably much worse.
I don't think that Hercules is in heaven.
I do not believe he was a Christian.
I don't believe he loved the Lord.
But I think that there's some truth in those things.
So the idea of there being other gods, if we're saying lowercase g gods, if we're talking about a divine council, we're talking about angels, cherubim, those kinds of things, and fallen angels being lowercase g gods, then fine.
There are other gods in that sense.
True God who created all other things.
So Jesus is above all the other lowercase gods Baal, Molech, all these other gods, which I believe, well, I don't think it's just made up.
I don't think all these false gods that we see in the Old Testament are just made up.
That's my point of bringing up Hercules and Nephilim and these kinds of things and fallen angels.
I do think there is a sense in which there are other gods, but they're lowercase g created gods.
They're fallen angels.
The Cost of Discipleship Today00:15:34
And so in that case, it's the supremacy of Christ.
He is above them.
And then there are other cases in the sense of if we're talking about capital G God, then it's the exclusivity of Christ that there are no other gods in that creator type sense.
So Jesus doesn't play nice with false gods, he doesn't play nice with false gods.
Religions.
This is a descriptive text and it's immediately to his disciples in the first century, first generation Christians.
It's for us, but immediately to them.
And because this context in the first century was a pagan polytheistic context, and there's also Judaism and many religious rulers who hated Christ and turned against him, produced false witnesses to get him crucified, all those kinds of things, being a Christian in the first century.
Was going to mean persecution.
It will always mean some level of difficulty, some challenge, some suffering, in all times and all places.
There's always a cost.
We talked about this last week.
Always a cost to discipleship, the cost of discipleship.
But in the first century, I believe that that cost was uniquely high.
So, what does that mean?
What does that mean for us?
What it means is that the description Jesus is providing of breaking up families, number one, what we've already established, This is not his primary aim.
There's a difference in Jesus coming to save, but people rejecting him, and so then condemnation being one of the consequences.
There's a difference in Jesus coming to unite people with God, but because men love the darkness and he comes as the light of the world, and men love the darkness because their works were evil, there's, as a necessary byproduct of this union with God, it creates, as a consequence, division with men, right?
So that's the first thing, is Jesus' chief aim.
Was not to bring condemnation and it was not to divide families.
Number two, getting a little bit more contextual, all these families breaking up, what Jesus is telling his disciples, that was historically true.
It was absolutely true and sadly, it was fairly common in the first century.
And so they needed to be aware.
This is what it's going to be like ordinarily.
Not universally, not in every case, but it will be somewhat the norm.
There will be many households and many marriages and many families that will actually divide.
So, not just division with civil rulers or with religious rulers, someone somewhere out there, but there will be division, stark, severe division in your own families.
And that was absolutely true.
And not only was it true in the first century, but I think that principle is normative, not just in the first century, but in any place.
Where you have first generation Christians.
And we've seen this kind of pan out within church history.
Wherever the gospel goes to a new place, a new country, a new nation, a new people, and it's coming for the first time initially, in that context, where the gospel is introduced for the first time to a people who have never heard the gospel before, there tends to be an incredible amount of division.
And division not just in the culture broadly or politically or religiously, but even at the level of the family.
There are families that break apart.
You see, Muslim nations, where the gospel comes to a nation that has been Islamic for centuries.
And if God would be so kind to send a Christian revival there, evangelists, and a bunch of Muslims are converting and getting saved.
I've talked to Muslims who are like, Yeah, my parents tried to kill me when I converted to Christ.
They put poison, literally, they put poison in my food, and I ate it, and I almost died.
Or they called the authorities, and I was imprisoned and beaten.
And that's actually a pretty common story when the gospel comes initially to a place that is ravaged by spiritual darkness, false religion, totalitarian civil rulers and governments.
And there's never really been, at least not at any significant number, Christians among that people in that place ever before.
So, wherever you have first, not just the first century, This was true in the case of Jesus speaking to his disciples.
But wherever you have not just the first century, but first generation Christians in any place in any century, you will experience, in the beginning, there will be incredible division.
Now, here's my point my point is that this text, which is descriptive, not prescriptive, and which is for us, but not immediately to us, having established all of that, this text should not be used by Christians in America.
To assuage the conscience and justify ourselves, console ourselves for division in our families.
That should not be normative in all places for all times.
Once the gospel has taken root in a culture, among a people, and you've had multiple subsequent generations of Christians, faithful Christians, and centuries of Christianity, you should not have, in terms of it being normative, A bunch of broken families.
You shouldn't.
That would not.
So if we're looking around and we're saying, I know a bunch of people who are following Christ, and because of that decision and that fidelity to Christ, their family is broken up, and their kids grew up and don't serve the Lord, or their wife left them, or this, and you know what?
But that's just, that's what Jesus promised, and that's what the Bible says.
He'll turn, you know, from now on, the household of five, there'll be two against three and three against two.
No, no.
I refuse to believe that.
I refuse to believe that Jesus is saying that for all peoples in all places in all times, if you have, if you're fruitful and multiply, right, children are a heritage of blessing from the Lord and blesses the man whose quiver is full.
So if you believe the word of God and you're seeking to obey the word of God and having several children, that Jesus is telling us in this text, That it's Russian roulette, and that if you have five children or more, you can expect about a 50% ratio of about half of your children going to hell and abandoning the faith and abandoning you and being estranged and never talking to you again.
I do not believe that is the meaning of our text today.
I don't think that's what Jesus is saying.
I don't think Jesus is saying, well, you need to get married because it's good, you need to have many kids because it's good, and you should expect half of them.
To turn against you and to go to hell.
No, Jesus is saying in the first century, with first generation Christians in a polytheistic context and in this Judaizing context, with religious rulers in Israel who are trying to crucify me, and spoil alert, if you've never read the story, they end up being successful.
In that context, yes, following me.
There will be a heavy, steep cost to discipleship, and it won't just be division in the broader culture, but division even at the level of the family.
That would be normative.
I think that's what Jesus is saying.
But as the seed, the mustard seed, grows into an all encompassing tree, as the leaven works through the whole batch of dough, as the Christian gospel takes root among a people, in a society, in a culture, and centuries go by, Then that should not be the case.
And here's the deal historically, it wasn't.
It wasn't.
And we should be encouraged by that.
In Europe, for centuries, the norm was my parents are Christian, and I'm Christian, and my kids are Christian.
And the family was not broken up, the households were not divided.
The whole society, the whole culture was Christian.
It was, because that's what happens with a society that has a gospel seed planted that matures over centuries.
Now, today, this is now making it relevant for us.
What about us?
I do think, to give some pastoral application, I do think that we are in a unique moment, that we are in a post Christian context here in the West.
Now, I'm praying by God's grace that He would be merciful and that the tide would turn.
And I think that there are some signs, not that guarantee that's going to happen, but there are some signs of hope.
Lots of signs that are discouraging and disheartening.
But there also are some signs of hope.
And so I don't think that we should ultimately, utterly despair.
I think that the tide could turn.
However, if you're in a context, so our context is not like a Muslim country, like I described earlier, or the first century in Rome.
So our context is not a context where the gospel has never gone before.
But it is a context that has moved past the gospel, that is in a post Christian season.
And because we are, in many ways, a post Christian nation, a post Christian society, Or a Christian country, but that's currently in the midst of apostasy.
That describes America, that describes much of Europe.
They're even further along in that apostasy.
It's even worse.
And because we're currently living in that moment, a return to historic Christianity.
So, in our context, you could talk about Jesus and the exclusivity even of Jesus and not necessarily experience stark division in your household, in your family.
Because we have had Christianity here today, the language is kind of there.
It's not utterly foreign.
It's not utterly foreign.
But if you begin getting back to historic Christianity and what the Bible would actually teach in regards to some of the idols of our day, I talked about this last week, then because we are not just a Christian nation, but in many ways a post Christian nation, then I think you actually could experience some of those divisions even at the level of a household, even at the level of a marriage.
For instance, let me give an example.
Biblical patriarchy.
So we are, again, it's not like our American context is, you know, Christianity is not a novelty for us.
But historic Christianity for this particular generation kind of is a novelty.
Historic Christianity in our context, in our nation, has been lost for so long that most people, when they hear this, is the Bible's historic biblical view of marriage.
And husband and wife.
Most people today, because we have abandoned that for a few generations at this point, for most people today, even professing to be Christians, they would hear that as utterly strange in form.
And that actually could be, because feminism is such an idol, people worship it, that actually could pan out to be a point of division, even division in the household, even at the level of dividing a marriage.
That actually is possible in our context today.
And the whole while, you know, the two spouses dividing and the one that is kicking at the goads and rebelling against the Bible's view of patriarchy, the whole time that person claiming, blue in the face, claiming, I love Jesus.
I'm a Christian.
I'm a Christian.
My favorite thing about Christianity is that it empowers women.
You know, you're like, what?
What Christianity are you talking about?
You know, the Christianity that says you can be anything you want to be and that men and women are equal and anything you can do, I can do better, I can do anything better than you, right?
That was one of my favorite worship songs growing up.
So, what are you talking about?
But let's just be honest that has been Christianity for all intents and purposes in our Western context for about 70 years and arguably longer.
So, what I'm trying to say is our text today, it is true that there is an immense cost to discipleship.
Following Jesus requires our willingness to take up our cross, to embrace suffering for His name's sake.
That suffering comes in many forms, but one of the main forms is division, a sword, divide.
That division will be with the world, someone, somewhere out there, but in some cases it will be division even at home, with a family.
I don't believe Jesus is saying, That in all times, in all places, in all generations, forever, no matter what, children, having children, being fruitful and multiplying is a crapshoot.
And you can just kind of count on 40 to 50% of them going to hell.
I just, I refuse to believe that that's a biblical teaching.
I believe that that's not a prescription, but a description of wherever Christianity comes in a first generation, first generation Christians.
So it was true.
It was going to be exceedingly true in the case of who Jesus is immediately speaking to, his disciples in the first century.
I think it is also very, very similar to that description of breaking up families, even in other centuries, not just the first century, but in other centuries when the gospel goes to a new nation, a new context, and it's making first generation Christians.
And although this is, I'm not happy about this, I do think that we should be aware of this.
I think it could also have that effect, not saying always, not universally, but it could have that effect of breaking up even marriages and even estranging children, breaking up families in a nation where it's not first generation Christians, where the gospel has been there for a long time, but a nation that is post Christian, that has abandoned the Christian faith.
Breaking Up Post-Christian Families00:04:18
So that any person who embraces historic Christianity looks like.
It looks foreign.
It looks like they're out in left field.
And in some ways, I think the division in that context so, a non Christianized context, you're going to have some divided families.
And a post Christianized context where it's been Christianized and then Christianity, at least historic Christianity, biblical Christianity, has been thoroughly abandoned that could actually, I'm not saying this as a hard, fast rule.
But it's as a possibility that could actually be even worse.
Because then you actually have a culture, a populace that's immunized to Christianity.
They actually have other places, it's like, well, Christianity is foreign.
But in a post Christian society, they've had just enough of Christianity to think they know what it is, to think that they're the expert.
I mean, how many times have you talked to someone?
Who has terrible theology?
They're a raging feminist or they're a raging dispensationalist or whatever.
And at some point in the conversation, you hear them say something like this Well, I have been a Christian for 40 years, having my 15 minute quiet time every day.
I've been a member of a blank church, usually like First Baptist or 17th Baptist, or whatever.
For 40 years, I've taught Sunday school, and you're going to come and you're going to lecture me.
And it's like, yeah, you're wrong.
And if you're like, I've never seen a scenario like that, go and watch the interview between Tucker Carlson and Tel Aviv Ted, Ted Cruz.
I mean, that's literally exactly what he said on the largest podcast, one of the largest podcasts in the world.
So I'm not making up some kind of rare case that's hyperbolic that never happens.
He literally, it was an appeal, right?
When you're arguing, there's different logical fallacies.
One is a claim to authority.
When you're like, basically, what makes it a logical fallacy is when you're saying, just believe me, bro, because of my title.
So, what was his claim to authority in that moment?
He wasn't claiming he had authority as a state senator.
He wasn't saying his political position gives him authority.
His claim to authority is he's like, I grew up in church and went to Sunday school.
Remember that line for those of you who watched the interview?
I've gone to Sunday school.
I've been going to Sunday school my whole life since I was a kid and I was raised in church.
And my Bible tells me, and then he begins to quote a verse that's not in the Bible.
You know, those who bless Israel.
And Tucker Carlson, he's, I like this about, you know, Tucker.
Sometimes I'm like, I don't like that.
But this, I like, like Tucker will, people are like, oh, he's so charming.
It's a play.
It's a play.
It's not genuine.
He's like, really?
The Bible says that?
Support the government of Israel?
Support Netanyahu?
The Bible?
What verse is that?
Where's that in the Bible?
And then he immediately says, where it is in the Bible?
Like, he knows the answer to the question.
But he also knows that Tel Aviv Ted does not know the answer to the question.
And so he's making, he's like being, like playing coy, playing innocent, but also making Tel Aviv Ted look really stupid.
And he is really stupid.
So it wasn't that hard to do.
But my point is, that aired live, not live, but to millions of people.
And so what I'm describing is not some obscure example that, you know, it's a one in a thousand scenario.
No, this happens all the time.
In a post Christian context, in some ways, the division could be even more severe because you have people who are immunized to Christianity.
They've received just enough of a dose of Christian vernacular.
And some Christian traditions and a Christian veneer to think, to be convinced that they're Christian experts.
They're the most Christian of any Christian that's ever Christianed, you know?
Serious Consequences in Modern Contexts00:07:08
And so then when you say, well, I don't think that, it's like, well, I disagree with Pam Bondi because I think she's hiding the Epstein files.
And I'd be like, yeah, but also I don't like Pam Bondi because she's a woman.
And she shouldn't be in public, not in politics.
You know, like the meme is like, you and I are not the same.
You don't like it for this reason.
I don't like it.
It's like, I don't like Pam Bondi because of her positions.
I'm like, I don't like Pam Bondi because she needs to be at home.
I like her.
I don't mean person.
I think she's probably a sweet woman.
I think she'd be extra sweet at home.
That's, you know, and so my point is you say something like that, and in a post Christian society that has enough Christianity.
Immunization injected into their own.
Like our society has had enough Christianity vaccines to basically be at the point now where you say something like that and they're like, What witchcraft are you uttering?
I'm like, What do you mean witchcraft?
This is what every society has always believed, whether you were Christian or not, for thousands of years.
And they're like, You just said the most heinous.
Like, do you worship the devil?
I said, I just said, I think women should be mothers and be at home and not be in politics.
It's like, are you casting an incantation right now?
Are you trying?
It's like, what's going on?
But it's so foreign.
It's so foreign.
So, all that being said, I'm going to land the plane.
All that being said, my point is, Jesus is not prescribing what to do.
Not until the end of the text when he says, take up your cross.
That is a prescription.
But the middle, the majority of our text is a description where Jesus is not saying what we should do, but he's saying what will happen.
I don't believe Jesus is saying this will happen.
In every place at every time with every generation of Christians.
I don't believe that's the point.
I believe that in places that are saturated with the gospel, that become Christianized like the West historically was, Europe and America, then you can have prolonged periods of time, centuries even, where great great grandparents love Jesus and great grandparents love Jesus and grandparents love Jesus and parents love Jesus and you love Jesus.
You can have generation after generation after generation where you don't have divorce.
Where it's exceedingly rare.
Families remain intact.
The parents love Jesus.
The kids love Jesus.
The grandkids love Jesus.
And I believe that that's the goal.
That that has happened.
And by God's grace, it could happen again.
And that's what each of us should be hoping for.
So we should not be, especially for mothers.
Here's another pastoral application for mothers.
You should not be tossing and turning in bed at night thinking that the probability is that.
One or more of your kids are going to reject Christ and go to hell.
I don't believe that that is the Christian instinct.
I don't believe that's God's will for mothers.
I don't.
I believe you should be defaulting.
That doesn't mean it's a promise.
It doesn't mean, I should say, it doesn't mean that it's a 100% guarantee.
But you should be defaulting on the general principle that ordinarily, if you and your husband are both Christians, that your children will grow up to be Christians if you raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord.
That should be the default posture of a parent.
So, not entitlement, not presumption that God owes me.
It's not that.
It's not arrogance.
But it's also not insecurity and fear.
Half of our kids will probably grow up and go to hell.
No.
It should be a restful position, a hopeful position, a trusting position in the Lord that if both parents are covenant Christians and we love the Lord and we're seeking to raise our children in a Christian manner, then we should trust that, generally speaking, normally, Ordinarily, our kids will grow up to be Christians.
I think that that's the normative pattern of Scripture.
And we have texts of Scripture that God keeps steadfast covenant to the thousandth generation of those who love Him and obey His commandments.
And so we should trust that.
We should not be fearful with our kids, but we also shouldn't be apathetic and lazy.
So we should be diligent in raising our children, but not diligence that comes out of insecurity and fearfulness.
And what Jesus is describing here, it was true.
Jesus never lies.
But he does not say in this text, this will always happen in every generation, in every century, in every place, forever, no matter what, until I return.
That's not in the text.
To come away with that interpretation is to eisege, that's to read into the text something that Jesus did not explicitly say.
So I think we should take the text seriously, the words of Jesus seriously.
I think in our historical context, being a post Christian nation, We should take these words especially seriously and not be surprised when we have in laws and outlaws who maybe think that we went crazy and that because we hold to this theology or that historical Christian position, that, well, you're a part of a cult.
It's like, yeah, you would think that because you're a part of a cult called liberalism.
You're a liberal, you're a boss babe feminist.
And you disagree with everyone throughout all of Christian history until the last like 40 years.
So, of course, you think that.
But because we're in this post Christian society, we shouldn't be surprised when there's division, even in extended families, even in households.
But that does not mean that it has to be that way forever.
I do believe, I do believe that by God's grace, it's all Him, we can't make it happen apart from Him.
But if he would be so kind, we've had Christianity in the West before where generation after generation after generation feared the Lord and where families were not broken up.
Maybe some cases, but it was extreme.
It was not the norm.
Most families remained intact where divorce was at all time lows, where divorce was foreign, unheard of.
And that children grew up and loved the Lord just like their parents did.
That is, I'm not just talking about something that.
Might happen in some crazy post millennial pipe dream.
I'm talking about something that already did happen.
It happened here and happened not that long ago.
True Christianity Is Total Surrender00:09:49
If we pan out, we're thinking, generally speaking, it was fairly recent.
It happened here and it happened recently.
And by God's grace, it can, believe it or not, it can happen again.
We're not promised it's going to happen again in our generation or even in our children's generation, but it can happen and we should work for that to happen.
That the knowledge of the glory of God would cover the whole earth as the waters cover the sea, and that our nation particularly would be so saturated in the Christian faith and fidelity to Christ.
That it becomes normative that marriages stay together and that children grow up honoring their parents and worshiping the same God that they do.
That should be the goal.
And our text today, there's nothing in our text today that says that that somehow is impossible and can't happen.
So let's finish with denying the cross is denying Christ.
Jesus says this Whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds his life will lose it.
Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
I wrote in your notes this The cross here is not meant to represent suffering.
Merely in general, just general suffering.
It is specifically the symbol, in this case, this context, the cross is a specific symbol of shame and death and self denial.
True Christianity is not easy believism, it is total surrender.
In short, to deny the cross in that sense, the cross representing shame from the world that denies Christ, or death to the world that denies Christ, or self denial to your flesh.
That seeks to go against Christ, and that sense, and the cross representing that, if you are to deny that cross, then it is to deny Christ.
To deny the cross in that sense is a denial of Christ.
R.C. Sproul used to say, when Jesus calls a man, he bids him come and die.
When Jesus says to take up the cross and follow him, and if we were to deny the cross, that ultimately is to deny him.
The cross in this context is not just speaking about general suffering.
Because here's the thing to a large degree, general suffering is something that's outside of our control.
You can't sit there and have cancer, for instance, and say that by default of having cancer, which is a form of suffering, then you've embraced your cross to follow Jesus.
Well, pagans get cancer, atheists get cancer.
That doesn't necessarily mean that the key here, and I'll go back and read the text, the key here, Is suffering, and we saw this in the case of persecution, and now we're seeing it in the case of suffering.
It's for Christ's namesake, it's for Jesus' namesake.
Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
It's not just losing your life.
There are lots of ways to make life go poorly for yourself, there are lots of foolish decisions that you can make, and there are lots of people who, either by foolishness or just by happenstance, they lose their life.
Literally, physically lose their life, get into some accident and die, or have their life destroyed financially or relationally or whatever it may be.
There are plenty of people who have lost their life.
But they didn't lose it for Christ's namesake.
What Jesus has in view here, the cross is not just losing your job, general examples of suffering, getting sick, losing a child.
The cross here represents taking up your cross specifically, meaning bearing the reproach of Christ.
Being willing to be publicly associated with the cause of Christ for Christ's name's sake.
Bearing a reproach from the world.
Being mocked by the world.
Being shamed by the world specifically because of your voluntary, deliberate association and fidelity to Jesus.
That's the cross in view here.
And anyone who's willing to take up that cross.
Will find, not lose his life, but find his life, eternal life, true life in Jesus.
And anyone who's not willing to do that, who denies the cross, meaning he will not be willing to suffer reproach from the world for Christ's sake, ultimately has not just denied the cross, but his denial of the cross really is a denial of Christ himself.
And then that references back to last week's text where Jesus says, If you will not be willing to name me before men, then I will be ashamed of you and deny you before my Father.
And that's not just some crazy hypothetical.
Jesus is being quite serious.
That in the final analysis, if we deny Christ before men, he will deny us before his Father.
And that does not mean that we lost our salvation, but that simply serves as an evidence and proof that we never truly belong to Christ to begin with.
We may have sat in a Christian church.
We may have done some Christian things outwardly.
But if we're not willing, if we're willing to deny Christ by denying our cross, we're not willing to suffer any reproach from the world whatsoever.
When the going gets tough, we back out.
Your very soul is at stake.
It is a big deal.
So take up your cross, meaning be willing to publicly name Christ, even at the cost of shame.
And rejection from the world.
Knowing that by doing this, by accepting the cross, we are accepting Christ.
And if we accept Christ, that's an evidence that He has truly accepted us.
And we know that that reproach from the world can come, and in the most severe cases, even as division and reproach from among our own families.
That's not prescriptive, it should not be the norm in all times and all places.
Toward it not being the norm, and the ways that we disciple our children, the ways that we foster healthy Christian marriages.
But we should recognize wherever there are first generation Christians, there will be division, not just culturally, but even in families.
And sadly, because we live in a post Christian context here in America, anyone who is a first generation, the first generation for a while, in the last three or four generations, first generation historic Christian, not just Christianese, but historic Christian, may experience.
Division, even in the context of the family.
And so it shouldn't surprise us.
But it's not fatalistic.
It's not written in the stars.
That's not what the text is saying.
It doesn't have to be that way.
We should trust and work towards it not being that way.
And if it is that way, it's because our nation for generations now has abandoned Christ to where, for all intents and purposes, those who are prescribed to historic Christianity really are first generation Christians here in America.
And that's sad.
It's sad.
It didn't have to be that way, but it is that way.
And it is the reality.
But it doesn't have to be that way forever.
Let's pray.
Father, I do pray that our nation would repent.
I do pray, Lord, that historic Christianity would be embraced, that liberalism, pretending to be Christianity, would be rejected, secularism with Christian aspects would be rejected.
And Lord, I pray that we would be, in your kindness, the generation that returns to traditional Christianity and to the truth of your word.
And Lord, we pray that our children would embrace that too, that you would use us to.
Train up our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, and that they would embrace the Christian faith, embrace you as Savior, and that there would be a new heritage and a new legacy that begins with us and extends to our children and to our grandchildren, and so on and so forth.
But we pray that that would be the legacy that we leave behind.
And with us, in many cases, it being first generation, that we would not be surprised if in laws and parents and aunts and uncles or brothers and sisters reject us.
That we seek to be wise, that we feel that pain and grieve, but that we wouldn't ultimately allow that to scare us into being convinced or deceived that somehow we really have embraced something for it.
When the reality is that no, it's everybody else has embraced something for it.
The Christianity today, Christianity light, a neutered, hamstrung Christianity, modern Christianity, that's the foreign substance, that's the outlier.
And so, Lord, I pray that you would encourage us and that we would look to historic Christian figures throughout the ages and what they believed and what they taught and what they said, and that we'd be comforted and consoled by that in those moments when we're tempted to think maybe we're crazy, that we would be reminded and encouraged by you that we're not, and that we would stay steady, stay to the task, and not abandon the faith.