[0:00] Turn to the gospel according to Mark chapter 13. I have enjoyed the way we've restructured the service and done the offering right before the sermon with the music, but I'm going to read to you verses 1-13.
[0:41] And as he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, Look, teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings. And Jesus said to him, Do you see these great buildings?
[0:53] There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down. And as he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, Tell us, when will these things be and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?
[1:13] And Jesus began to say to them, See that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name saying, I am he, and they will lead many astray. And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed.
[1:26] This must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places.
[1:37] There will be famines. These are but the beginnings of the birth pains. But be on your guard, for they will deliver you over to councils, and you will be beaten in the synagogues, and you will take stand before governors and kings for my sake to bear witness before them.
[1:50] And the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations. And when they bring you to trial and deliver you over, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour.
[2:02] For it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. And brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death. And you will be hated by all for my name's sake.
[2:16] But the one who endures to the end will be saved. This is God's word to us. It was written for his glory and our good.
[2:26] We would all do well to listen to it in order to believe its promises and obey its commands. Let's pray together. Father God, we need you in this hour.
[2:39] And we would ask your favor on the preaching of your word today. It was written by you under the inspiration of the Spirit.
[2:50] Here, carried along by the pen of Mark. It was written for us. That we might know you and know how to better honor and glorify you with our lives.
[3:02] Exalt Jesus in our hearts and minds today so that he will be exalted in our living this week. We're dependent on you to accomplish this.
[3:14] And so we pray this in the name of Christ. Amen. Well, we find ourselves still in Wednesday of the Passion Week. You remember at the beginning of chapter 11, Jesus has entered into Jerusalem.
[3:28] It's called the Triumphal Entry. That evening he goes and he visits the temple and he can see that there's been this money-changing activity happening in the temple. He goes back out of Jerusalem to Bethel, comes back in on Tuesday, and for the second time in his ministry, goes and flips over tables and runs out money changers, stops it being used as a thoroughfare, a cut-through for the city, essentially shuts down all of this apostate swindling that's going on in this day.
[3:57] And he's immediately then challenged as he sets up camp on Wednesday in the temple by the religious elite of the day. And we've kind of seen these waves of aggression come at him, and he quickly shuts them down as they seek to trap him in such a way that he will be killed.
[4:18] He's not done yet, though. He still has some time and some things that he wants to teach, and so he waylays that, and we see him finally now stepping outside, still on Wednesday, but leaving the temple court, presumably through the east gate, down a steep path that crossed through the Kidron Valley, which is where all of the sacrificial blood flowed, which we'll get to learn more about in a month or so, to the Mount of Olives, where they observe what's going on from afar.
[4:52] And we see in this a question asked by an unidentified disciple. And I can't say for sure, but I want to imagine that it was Mark's kindness that spared naming the individual who asked the question, because he's apparently missed the point of Jesus' teaching that week, all about the spiritual bankruptcy of the system that existed there, and all that it included as they look back on this building, which was a rather magnificent building.
[5:24] It was a building that all of us would have been in awe at. But he hadn't seen that what Jesus was saying was that this was not where the worship of God take place.
[5:34] This was not the way in which God was meant to be worshipped. And so the question we see asked, look, teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings, this admiration of this.
[5:49] And it was certainly that. The Jewish historian Josephus tells us a bit about it in the Wars of the Jews. We read, Now the outward face of the temple in its front wanted nothing that was likely to surprise either men's minds or their eyes, for it was covered all over with plates of gold of great weight.
[6:09] And at the first rising of the sun reflected back a very fiery splendor and made those who forced themselves to look upon it to turn their eyes away just as they would have done at the sun's own rays.
[6:22] But this temple appeared to strangers when they were coming to it at a distance like a mountain covered with snow. For as to those parts of it that were not gilt or covered in gold, they were exceeding white.
[6:36] White rare stone. It made it look like a mountain of snow as you approached Jerusalem. This magnificent building. Jesus gives to us this direct prophecy that it will in fact be torn down.
[6:52] And he's not just simply referring to the building itself, although we're going to talk about that in a moment. But more than that, the system that the building represents would soon be destroyed.
[7:03] The building itself was destroyed in 70 A.D. Jesus says there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.
[7:14] There was a revolt that started a movement called the Zealot Movement in A.D. 66, which eventually led to Rome finally and fully sacking Jerusalem and destroying almost to the complete rubble, almost the entire city of Jerusalem.
[7:32] They saved a bit of the wall to show people how mighty the wall once was where the garrisons would camp, but the rest of it was torn down to the degree that they took the foundation stones of the wall and flipped them over just to show their power over this.
[7:47] You remember back in Mark 12, verses 13-17, there's this question asked by the Pharisees and Herodians about the tax. And should we pay this particular tax they're referring to known as the poll tax?
[8:01] And this was a tax that was instituted when Joseph and Mary traveled with baby Jesus in the belly to Bethlehem where he was born. They were being counted.
[8:14] And this is the way in which Rome said, not only is your land ours, but the people themselves belong to us. So this tax was a head tax paid as a citizen of Rome.
[8:25] And it was that that led to this revolt that eventually saw the temple destroyed. Again, Josephus in the Wars of the Jews, Now as soon as the army, the Roman army, had no more people to slay or to plunder because there remained none to be the objects of their fury, for they would not have spared any had there remained any other such work to be done, Caesar gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and temple.
[8:53] And so it was brought down, just as Jesus said that it would be, not too many years later. And they go from this place as they're traveling and they go and sit down on the Mount of Olives, presumably looking at the temple opposite of it.
[9:08] And Peter and James and John and Andrew get into the side and they say, tell us when will these things be? And what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?
[9:24] Now there is some debate concerning this text about what it means for this to have been fulfilled and accomplished. Certainly, we know that the temple itself was destroyed in A.D. 70.
[9:37] And there are some people that say that the entirety of this passage is fulfilled. For example, verse 10, and the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations.
[9:49] That that was in fact fulfilled, which is why the temple was then destroyed. And they base this argument off of passages like Colossians 1.23.
[10:01] Well, Paul writes, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.
[10:16] So they would say, see, look here, Paul says that the gospel was in fact proclaimed amongst the nations, and this is why we can now then presume that that's been fulfilled, and now the temple has been destroyed.
[10:29] But you get into some Greek issues with Colossians 1.23 if you don't study it carefully. This phrase which has been proclaimed, the word proclaimed there is in the aorist tense, which denotes no specific time whatsoever, meaning that Paul is not saying that it is a completed action done in the past, but he's defining the gospel and its scope, and that is that it is global in scope.
[10:58] So it would be improper to look at Colossians 1.23 and go back then to Mark 13.10 and say, oh, and the gospel has then been preached to all nations.
[11:10] We're going to say a bit more about that towards the end of the sermon. We'll come back to verse 10, but I want us at this point to see that this is not what Jesus is trying to communicate to them, simply summing up for them the things that will happen before the temple is destroyed.
[11:24] However, it is the question that the disciples are asking. They're saying, tell us all the things that are going to happen before the temple is destroyed. They still were so hungry to know the practical, the tangible things that could be known about the kingdom of God.
[11:39] They still seem to not understand that the kingdom of God primarily was going to come and bear in their hearts. This is the way in which God meant to establish His people, spirit and truth, a heart worship.
[11:56] And so I believe He's correcting their misconception as He goes on to tell them the things that are going to come to pass, including for us, verse 10, that all of this, the gospel must be proclaimed to all nations, putting a timeline, a way out there, a far-reaching timeline for them.
[12:14] Their question itself drew my mind back to Mark 8, verses 11 and 12, where the Pharisees seek a sign. And He says to them that a sign will not be given to this generation.
[12:27] They wanted to know the tangible. They wanted to be able to measure it. They wanted to be able to mark it out and know when the kingdom of God would fully arrive. It's not the way we walk.
[12:37] We walk by faith. So Jesus then begins to give them this prophetic information. And I think we can really quickly, in a chapter like chapter 13, get incredibly distracted into end-time theology, really trying to work out all the details and miss the point altogether.
[12:56] So we're going to deal with it in brief. There's a time and a place for it, and now is not the time, here is not the place, this morning. But we can't neglect it altogether.
[13:06] We need to look at kind of the driving force of what He's trying to say to them. And so in 5 through 9, He starts out by saying, see that no one leads you astray, and that many will come in His name, claiming to be Him, and they will lead many astray.
[13:24] So it's a warning. Once again, as we saw back in verse 38 of chapter 12, a warning against false teachers, particularly ones that are going to claim to be the Christ themselves, but we can certainly broaden it beyond that as well.
[13:39] Those who are going to take advantage of the way in which the world is functioning, the wars and the earthquakes, all these calamities that we see, to gather to themselves followers.
[13:51] People like Margaret Rowan, the prophetess, quote-unquote, of the Seventh-day Adventists, who said the world would come to end in 1925. Jehovah's Witnesses, which have been writing and writing and writing and writing.
[14:03] 1975 was the big year for them. Not sure what they say now. Or guys like Pat Robertson, the chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network, a station you should block on your TV, who first said that the world would come to end in 1982, and now, 2007, haven't heard a new proclamation.
[14:22] I tried to find to see if Pat Robertson's telling us when the world will end now. This is a dangerous thing. It's not for us to know. The Scriptures even teach us that. And yet, many men will claim that they know when the world will end and lead people astray.
[14:41] We should know that it is going to end, and we should see that the signs are here, that it is coming to an end. But that doesn't change what we do and how we live.
[14:54] We should always live in light of that reality. Observing the effects of sin on the world. Look at the things that he says. Wars. Rumors of wars.
[15:07] We live in a day like this, do we not? Nation rising against nation. Kingdom against kingdom. Earthquakes. Famines. He says, but these are the beginnings of the birth pains.
[15:21] Paul uses a very similar language in Romans 8. Verse 19-22, he writes, For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of what?
[15:34] The sons of God. For the creation was subjected to fertility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
[15:51] For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And that is that the world itself is longing for the day when Christ will come and restore all things.
[16:08] And Jesus here is saying, and Paul is later saying, that the things we are seeing is the beginning of that process. Now I have a four-year-old and a two-year-old, and so I have, as a faithful husband, walked beside a labor.
[16:25] I have not been in labor, praise God. Nothing I will ever experience. I can't possibly imagine exactly what it feels like. I will not be one of those fools who puts the electricity on their stomachs.
[16:37] Have you seen those guys that experience the pain of labor? No thank you. But certainly in Sam's labor, they increased in intensity. It started off at one level of pain, a talking, even happy time kind of a pain, to a, if you crack another joke, I will kill you kind of a pain.
[16:57] When Sam goes quiet and she's hurting, leave her alone. Just leave her alone. But all of this led up to, all of the suffering that my wife experienced, all led up to a final, great deal of joy.
[17:13] I couldn't believe it. On the day that she had caged, she said, I want to have another one. I went, are you kidding me? Did you just, do you have any idea what you just went through? But joy filled her heart so much.
[17:25] And this is the way in which the creation is groaning and longing for the returning of Christ. For the church to be completed one day. For the new heaven and the new earth to be established.
[17:36] And this is what's happening in that. There will be pain before this great, great deal of joy. And he doesn't simply limit it to the apostles.
[17:46] This is expanded to us as well. The apostles are going to be part of it in their suffering for the kingdom. They're going to be delivered. They're supposed to be on their guard. Delivered to councils. Beaten in synagogues.
[17:58] Standing before governors and kings. Verse 12. Brother will deliver brother over to death and the father is child. And children will rise up against parents and have them put to death.
[18:09] And you will be hated by all. For my name's sake. Look at the breadth of this pain that will be experienced. That it's going to go down into the family unit.
[18:20] Many of you experience this kind of tension in your families as those who claim the name of Christ. Trying to be around them at mealtimes and do things and hear the conversations.
[18:31] And see that they don't exalt Him in their words or in their living at all. Jesus says here it will get much more severe than that. That children will deliver parents and parents' children to death.
[18:47] We will take place in this suffering. It's recorded in John 15. Verse 18 and 19. Jesus says, If the world hates you, know that it has hated Me before it hated you.
[19:01] If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. But because you are not of the world, because I chose you out of the world, therefore, the world hates you. Jesus Christ, our Lord, who came to be a servant of all, has already told us now in the Gospel of Mark three times, He said to the apostles, this is what's going to happen when I go to Jerusalem.
[19:21] I'm going to be delivered up, I'm going to be killed, and then I'm going to rise again. This is the way in which I'm coming to ransom many for myself.
[19:32] And somehow, we think we're better than Him. That we ourselves won't suffer in the same way. That it won't be given to us as the same kind of task.
[19:44] Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3.12, Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
[19:55] It's a reality, a necessity of Christian living. Not that we ask for it or that we invite it upon ourselves, but He's telling us that it will happen. Those of us who are disciples of Jesus Christ, those of us who laid down our lives to pursue Him with all that we have, are going to experience suffering in this world.
[20:17] But we don't have to be concerned about this. We have a hope. A lasting hope. An eternal hope. A hope that helps us drive through momentary affliction.
[20:30] And we have a helper. In verse 11, When they bring you to trial and deliver you over, do be anxious beforehand what you are to say.
[20:42] But say, whatever is giving you that effort is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, promise this to them. And it comes in Acts 1, verses 7 and 8.
[20:55] He said to them, It is not for you to know times or seasons. Isn't this a fitting verse? It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father is fixed by His own authority. Verse 8, But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
[21:13] And in chapter 2, the Spirit in fact does come on them with power. And Peter preaches his great sermon on the day of Pentecost. And thousands and thousands are included in the church's number on that day.
[21:27] We don't have to be anxious. We have a helper in this. One who will carry us along and who will speak on our behalf. Why are we so afraid to open our mouths and share the Gospel?
[21:41] We have a helper. A person of the triune God that Jesus has said will speak on our behalf. To what end?
[21:53] The last half of verse 9, to bear witness before them. Verse 10, And the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, must first be proclaimed to all nations.
[22:06] In the last half of verse 13, but the one who endures to the end. will be saved. How are we to function? How are we to live?
[22:16] As the apostles are about to be left behind by Jesus Christ, they're about to stay where they are, empowered by the Spirit, what is their task? The very mission that's set before them?
[22:27] And that is for them to go into the world and make disciples of Jesus Christ. To proclaim His greatness, to be a witness before these councils that they'll be brought before.
[22:38] To proclaim the good news of the Gospel, not simply to make converts, but to make those who will endure to the end, which is the necessity of the Christian life.
[22:51] If your heart is regenerate, if God has in fact changed who you are, you will not go back on that. And I would say to you that it is an impossibility that you could, you will in fact, endure to the end for His name.
[23:08] So all of this will come to pass. The entire passage will come to pass back on verse 10 when the Gospel is proclaimed to all nations. We see a glimpse of heaven in Revelation 5-9.
[23:23] John writes, And they sang a new song saying, Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, this is Christ, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.
[23:41] God has always been about His global glory. And He is still about that to this day because the task is yet to be finished because the end is not here.
[23:56] Now as we look at the world, there's a lot of statistics out there. I'm just going to give you a few. Categorically, we tend to talk about peoples in terms of unreached, reached, unreached, and unengaged.
[24:12] The definition of unreached is typically a group that has less than 2% that claim to be Christians. This is a broad definition of what Christian even means, self-professing Christians.
[24:27] It is estimated that of the 7.1 billion people alive in the world today, 2.91 billion of them live in unreached people groups with little or no access to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
[24:40] So unreached being less than 2% of the population that just says, just professes to be a Christian. According to Joshua Project, which is a great website if you ever want to peruse it, there are approximately 16,500 unique people groups in the world with about 6,900 of them considered unreached.
[25:01] Now, unengaged unreached people groups, according to finishing the task, there are 440 unengaged unreached people groups with populations over 25,000 together numbering over 24 million souls that are still beyond the reach of the gospel.
[25:23] These 440 are perhaps the neediest of the needy as they are unengaged, which means that no church, no missionary, no mission agency, no one has yet taken responsibility to tell them about Jesus Christ.
[25:34] Nothing has happened with an unengaged people. And beloved, this should break our hearts. as you look back over this past year at your activity for the kingdom, it should break our hearts that we know that the end is coming.
[25:55] We don't know when, but it will come. Jesus will someday return and judge the world. Those who are not in Christ will be eternally damned, and we do almost nothing about it.
[26:09] Shame on us. The great aim of our lives is to be given to the mission of God in the world. And that is, He came to seek and save the lost.
[26:23] That's why He came. And we're meant to be part of that work, not because He needs us. Hear this, God doesn't need you. Don't begin to think so much of yourself.
[26:36] But God loves you. And God knows the best thing for you is to have more of Him. And you know how you do that? You join Him and you walk alongside Him in the work that He's accomplishing in the world.
[26:47] You get busy about the work of God and you experience Him in it. We can, of course, argue over definitions, talk about unreached and unengaged, but one thing can't be argued, the end has not yet come, so the job is yet to be finished.
[27:07] And we should see this as the people of God as a great opportunity to have our joy made complete in advancing the gospel where we live and beyond.
[27:21] Look at Paul's attitude concerning preaching of the gospel. He writes in 1 Corinthians 9.16, For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting, for necessity is laid upon me.
[27:35] Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel. Are we ashamed of the gospel?
[27:51] Paul says in Romans 1 that he's not ashamed of it because it's the power of God for salvation. salvation. It's what snatches people out of the fires of hell. And we don't warn them.
[28:02] How cold and callous are we? Wes reminded me this week of a great sermon which is from the book of Revelation by a pastor I love by the name of Arturo Azerdia.
[28:17] If you ever want to peruse his stuff, spiritempoweredpreaching.com maybe.org I encourage you to check it out. But he tells this story of a dangerous sea coast where shipwrecks often occur and on that sea coast was a single crude life-saving station with only one boat, a small hut where people could come in and be warmed after surviving a wreck.
[28:42] And many, many lives were saved by this little station. They were all about the work of getting out into the sea and saving those who were tossed overboard in these wrecks. So much so that it became famous.
[28:53] And many of those who had been saved by the station or heard telling of the station wanted to in some way become associated with it. And so they gave of their money and they soon became embarrassed by the crude nature of the little station, the little hut and the single boat.
[29:09] So they enlarged its size and they improved its interior to the degree that it became a place they desired to spend their free hours. A lot like a small club, a bit of a monument to life-saving.
[29:25] Soon the members were no longer interested on going on life-saving missions, having to be trained, getting out and doing the hard work. So they hired life-saving crews.
[29:37] They began to pay some men who went off and did that on their behalf. And as many people were saved by the newly hired life-saving crew, the people they plucked from the ocean ruined the general appeal of the club.
[29:50] After all, they were wet and distraught and they needed further assistance. They needed people to come alongside them and help them. And so a committee was quickly formed to address the issue and a building outside of the life-saving station was promptly built to clean up these individuals before they were permitted inside the station.
[30:08] A meeting soon was held where some of the members insisted that the primary purpose of the life-saving station was to save lives. After all, they were a life-saving station and they were simply told they could go down the coast and begin another life-saving station and so they did.
[30:25] Over some years, the process repeated itself, the new station becoming like the old, and this repeated itself again and again. If you visit that coast today, you will find many life-saving stations.
[30:40] Shipwrecks are still common in those waters, waters, but most everyone drowns. This is the place that we live, right?
[30:52] People damned to hell for eternity because of their lost state. And we get together in the niceties of our club, and we don't get out there and get and brave the oceans and be where they are and share the good news of Jesus Christ with them.
[31:10] drag them back onto shore. Beloved, if we are to be disciples of Jesus Christ, even claim His name, we are to follow Him where He leads.
[31:24] And what did He come to do? Luke 19.10, the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. We spend so much of our time distracted by absolute vanity in America.
[31:41] We are entering one of the seasons that ought to be so much about Jesus Christ and come so much about the vanity of this world. I absolutely want to throw up my Thanksgiving meal with this Black Friday insanity that goes on.
[31:59] Pursuing the frivolity, the stuff that fades away, it means absolutely nothing. We take so much effort to position ourselves, to compare ourselves to others, to look good by what we have and what we can do, the leisure of our days.
[32:17] It's a shame. Let me give you an insane version of this, which is not too unlike much of what we do. Did you know that in 18th century England, wealthy landowners, there was a trend for a while where they competed with one another to have hermits living on their properties in a hermitage.
[32:38] they would build them tiny little homes and they would hire a guy to grow a long white beard and wear robes and not talk to anybody but just hang out in the garden.
[32:48] This was his job to do. The ones who had the most money actually were able to contract these guys. They would contract them typically for a period of seven years and at the end of that time they would pay them enough that they would never have to work again.
[33:02] So it was an appealing draw for someone with no skills but a long white beard. Because the emotion of the day that was most valued was melancholy.
[33:14] So the hermit was to sit contemplatively. Those who couldn't afford the hermit, the real life hermit, would get a mannequin or sometimes an animatron, I guess.
[33:29] A puppet that would be worked by a lesser servant, one that didn't have a long white beard, would lay behind him and work his hands and arms. When people came walking by on the streets. This has been replaced by the garden gnome.
[33:41] This is the origin of the garden gnome if you weren't making the connection yourself. Insane, right? Competing with such a stupid thing.
[33:53] If you ever get to visit England, apparently these little homes still exist in these big fancy house gardens. What's your hermit? What thing do you care so much about that you wouldn't give it up to follow Christ?
[34:09] Beloved, we have many of them. Would you give it all? Would you sacrifice every bit of it to gain more of Jesus? I think we initially say, yes, of course, I would.
[34:24] Your heart needs to catch up to your head. We would look different. We would spend our days differently. We would do different things. If we loved Him the way we should.
[34:35] If we desired Him the way that we should. Listen to John's correction in 1 John chapter 2. Do not love the world or the things in the world.
[34:49] If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, and the desires of the eyes, and pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world.
[35:00] And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. What is the will of God?
[35:12] That we would seek and save the lost. That we would be disciples who make disciples. You want to know what it looks like in verse 13 to endure to the end?
[35:23] It's that in spite of all of this activity going on around us, in spite of the way in which the world is going to hate us, the way we're going to suffer in this world, we still make disciples.
[35:35] We still show people a more excellent thing than all of the frivolity of this world, all the things that they can touch, all the little bobs, and all the little whistles of this world.
[35:45] We show them that Jesus is better. And we do that in our own experience, and we do that in the way we live, in our display, and we do that in our proclamation.
[36:00] We must go and show the world. Do you long for the return of Christ? I do. Is there anything in this world that you want to see accomplished before Jesus comes back?
[36:14] It's an idol. You just need to stop worshiping it. Come, Lord Jesus, come. It should be the cry of our hearts every single day. And we ought to be about the work, not that we can change the date, but we ought to be about the work of getting to that day as the Gospels proclaim to all nations.
[36:33] The primary thing, not just for your pastor. It's my job to do spiritual things and not yours. It's our job to do spiritual things. It's our job to reach out and love this community and beyond with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
[36:48] I just play a different role in that process. What is your role in that process? Submit yourself to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, whose son is the Christ, back in chapter 12.
[37:04] We talked about what it meant to submit yourself. Do you get up daily and do you say to God, you rule over my day. I'm going to die to myself today. I'm going to pick up my cross.
[37:14] I'm going to follow you wherever you'll lead me. I won't be anxious. I'll open my mouth and I'll speak because I know that I have the Spirit. I know that the Gospel is the power of God for salvation. Do with me what you will this day and begin to seek out the opportunities.
[37:30] So many of us are so spiritually fat because we get fed and we get fed and we get fed and we never go exercise our faith at all. You combine those two things, you begin to learn things, you learn doctrine and you affirm it by experience and your faith will grow exponentially.
[37:51] I promise you. Begin to ask that God would put you in situations to work things out. Young people, you're in a stage in your life where you're preparing for the next step. This is not true of the Gospel.
[38:03] You've been recruited as an ambassador. You claim the name of Christ, you are His and He's got a mission for you. Go get to the mission. You don't spend years languishing getting ready for the mission.
[38:15] The mission is now. The mission is your roommate and your classmates and the places that you work. be active about this. When was the last time you or someone you knew saw someone come to faith in Christ?
[38:28] Christ? It's a piercing question, is it not? We should see people coming in droves to know the one and only Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
[38:43] Do you believe that God wants to do this in our communities? I do. I think He has plans for this area. I think He has people that He loves desperately, that He wants to be part of the family.
[38:55] I want to be a part of that. I want to be involved in that process of bringing people into the fold, bringing them underneath the Great Shepherd. What is wrong with us?
[39:08] let's pray. Let's pray. Let's pray. Let's pray.