Um, as as part of this morning, I struggled with. I mean, what do you what do you share when you think about what’s happened? Um, for us as a church family in, in the last few years and months. And I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it, and and there’s nothing really, I don’t think, worth sharing more than just the glory of Jesus. And that’s that’s what we’re about as a church. And when we think about what God has done here, and we think about all the effort that’s going into turning a ragtag building on the inside, falling apart into what it is now. Um, the thought that recurs in your mind as you’re laboring for months on end is this is for Jesus, man. This is all done for Jesus. And so this morning, as we’re thinking together about how good it is, I realized that as I share whatever I share this morning, I can talk about butterflies and birds and chickens or whatever. It doesn’t matter. This is just a glorious day. We can just sit back and celebrate. I mean, you think about the city of Lehi. We have built a church building to proclaim his name. What that means for us as a community and as a people, as we just celebrate his presence every Sunday morning or every day in our lives. I don’t care what I talk about. I just want to appreciate this moment. I want to give God the praise.
You know, you could stop for a minute. We could hash through all the people that have labored and sacrificed to be here. But I know they would echo the same thing as matter of fact, when they were coming in this morning talking to them, all they could say was, Praise God. Well, that’s what we’re here for. To praise his name. As I was thinking about this this morning, I’m going to move this thinking about this morning’s message. Uh, I was going through internet this week thinking about, you know, we have a new building and a new place to proclaim what we’re about as a church family and recognizing Jesus and his glory in this world. How how do we do that? How do we introduce Jesus to this world? I looked on internet and just googled the name Jesus to see what comes up, and I thought about just the pictures that we often see of Christ as we look at them. But. You go. Here we go. When you think about the thought of Jesus, when you talk about the name Jesus, the picture that comes to mind, if you were just to paint a description of the Jesus that you see on the internet, just based off of the pictures of Christ, what what kind of person would you describe him to be? And as I was looking and glancing through all these pictures, I thought, you know, you know, one of the things that comes to my mind is Jesus did not like to get dirty.
Man, he was always ready to be painted, wasn’t he? You think about what kind of job would this man have? I thought to myself, there is no way he was a carpenter. He was like a dry cleaner. I mean, he is the only man to ever live during this time period and have clean clothes. Everywhere you went. The boy was pristine. He had he had tied with bleach before. Tied with bleach was invented. And if he wasn’t a dry cleaner, by all means, he was definitely, definitely a hairstylist. You didn’t even have to ask. You know, he used conditioner every day. How did he get a blow dryer before there were blow dryers? How do you present Jesus to this world? Well, I tend to think. The result of not taking Jesus seriously is we don’t take his message seriously. And if we don’t come to understand who Jesus is, we certainly won’t embrace the message that Jesus shared. And so answering that question, how do we introduce Jesus to this world becomes important for us? Because on the decision of Jesus hinges life. John 17 three tells us, we’ve said it often as a church throughout the years. This is eternal life, that you may know him. The reason God created you, the reason Christ design you in this world, is that you may know him and know him for eternity. And that relationship begins in the moment that you trust in him.
How do you introduce Jesus to this world? Thinking about that question this week. It brought my mind to a passage of Scripture where I know of an individual who had the opportunity to introduce Jesus to this world. And I’ll tell you as I share this with you this morning. The way that this individual introduced Jesus into this world was simply by a message of proclamation. This is him. This is who he is. It’s time to call or commitment in your life and decision over Christ and who he will be in your world. It became a message of proclamation. And so as I talk about the way that we share Jesus and the context of Scripture today, today, because we’re about the glory of Christ and celebrating what he’s done in his life, it’s simply for us a message of proclamation and joy. That man that introduced Jesus was a man by the name of John the Baptist. Story goes, he went down by the Jordan River and he began to proclaim the coming of the king. I got to say, ladies, when we talk about John the Baptist, well, he was a looker, right? And he’s the kind of guy you want to take home to mom. Boy wore camel hair, and he had this, uh, diet of locusts and wild honey. And could you imagine going on a dinner date? And, honey, you got got a lag right there on your teeth. I mean, he’s the kind of guy that you wanted to brag about, right? But John the Baptist is.
He’s born six months before Jesus, and the Bible calls him the forerunner. His his job in the world was to proclaim the name and the coming of the Messiah. And as John introduced Jesus to the world, this is what he said. In those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah. And he quotes the book of Isaiah. And he says, A voice of one calling in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight paths for him. John’s message for the people. His proclamation was very simple for them. Simplifying this text. This is what he’s saying. The King is coming and prepare the roads. He’s saying to the people, it’s a tradition in this time period when a king would travel into a land and he would visit a people group in order to prepare for the coming of this king, they would literally go through the streets and they would flatten out their streets, making that path straight. So when the king’s arrival would come through this town, he could travel with ease. In John’s telling the people, the king and his kingdom is coming for you. We ask the question, how do we share Jesus to this world? The message that John the Baptist gave and the message that Jesus gave in Mark 114 is the King, and the kingdom is coming for you.
Jesus said in John 14, right after John the Baptist was taken into prison, excuse me? Mark 114, he says, after John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. The time has come, he said, the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news. The idea of repentance in Scripture is a very simple word that we oftentimes like to complicate. Really just means the turning of your heart. It’s saying to the people in Jesus is proclaiming to the people, listen, your heart is wayward, your heart is pursuing other idols. Your heart is going in an opposite direction of me. Your king is coming. And what I’m proclaiming to you is that you turn your heart from this world and you turn it to me. When you understand the thought that Jesus is carrying in this passage, and the thought that John is carrying in this passage, this message of proclamation echoes throughout all of the Gospels. Jesus’s purpose and intention in everything that he did was, from this point forward, was to validate the King had come for you and for me. Every act of healing, every miracle that took place, every thing that Jesus did, was to validate the message that the kingdom of God was here, and it was here for you. He is King. We read the stories about Jesus throughout the scriptures. You see the way that Christ spoke of his kingdom throughout the gospel messages.
In Matthew chapter five and verse to chapter seven. The story tells us that one of the first things that Jesus did was he preached a message to the people, and the question that they had, as they heard Jesus speaking to them was, what is this kingdom like? If our King has come and our king is asking us to turn our hearts to his kingdom, what is this kingdom about? When Jesus preaches his most famous sermon that we’ve referred to as the sermon on the Mount, where he takes the people up on this mountain and he has them gather around and he sits them down. In chapter five, he begins to orate for the next two chapters to these people what the kingdom was all about. And he says, blessed are you when you hunger and thirst for righteousness. Jesus goes on throughout this, this message, and he begins to share more and more about his kingdom. And eventually he gets to the portion of the Scripture where he says in chapter six, this then is how you should pray Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done. God’s desire within our lives is that we would be people that pursued the King and His kingdom. To repent and turn to him. Not that the kingdom would be completely fulfilled until the return of Christ and and revelation 19 but that our pursuit in our life would be for this great glory and this great kingdom, whether it be laboring in a bar to a church right in your own family and home, a community in which you live, the thought that resides within our mind is that we belong to a king in his kingdom.
Jesus goes on within the context of that sermon and he says in verse 33, seek ye first the kingdom of God. Jesus is about his kingship within his kingdom, and he knows he’s created you for eternal life. And he’s telling the people that your heart’s desire should be in tune to this kingdom. One of the greatest stories that I’ve come to find within the scriptures comes in the book of Matthew in chapter 14. Everything that Jesus did was to proclaim this kingdom, to share this kingdom with the people. There’s a part of the Bible where Jesus feeds this multitude. It calls it 5000 men, not including women and children. So you got to think, if everybody had one kid, or maybe the 2.5 and the dog on this journey, I mean, you’re looking at 20,000 people at this event. Jesus feeding 5000 people. You think about the miracle of that moment. You know, when I look at Jesus’s miracles to me, before I understood why Jesus shared this within the scripture, uh, when I looked at this miracle, I thought, well, he just fed people, you know, when he makes a leg grow back and he helps a blind man to see that’s a that’s a big deal.
Just getting something to eat. Everybody gets something to eat every day. You just go to the restaurant, right? You think about the the details of this miracle, what it would mean in the time of Christ to feed this many people. There’s no refrigeration. Modern stoves and electricity are out the window. How many people you’ve got to gather together just to get some bread? And this miracle is written within Scripture as Jesus feeding 5000 people with just two fish and five loaves. And I thought to myself, as you think, if you think about that in itself, it’s profound. But do you know that the the idea and the main point of this miracle is not that Jesus fed 5000 people. The point of the miracle is what Jesus did after he fed 5000 people. It tells us at the end of the story, as Jesus is gathering people to feed them, he he says they all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up 12 basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about 5000 men besides women and children. The miracle in what Jesus did was that Jesus, after he fed these 5000 people as he collected 12 baskets. And when I was studying this portion of scripture as a young guy trying to figure out why in the world, why does he just tell us 12 baskets? Why is that even a big deal? And what Jesus is saying to us as he’s gathering these people together and he’s feeding them, you recognize within the nation of Israel there are 12 tribes, and the king has come to his nation, to Israel, and he’s just fed them.
And they says in this passage, they are satisfied. And after they’re satisfied with their king, the king says, oh, gods, there’s more. There is a basket here for every tribe of this nation I will always satisfy. The miracle that Jesus is sharing with us is that Jesus isn’t just enough for your life. Jesus and His kingdom is more than enough for your life. Interesting thing about this story is when you read in chapter 14 about the miracle of Christ sharing the the worth of his kingdom and satisfying our lives is that in chapter 15, it goes on to tell another story about the feeding of the 4000. I don’t know about you, but when I read about the feeding of 5000, the feeding of 4000 just isn’t that impressive. Big deal. Jesus, you’ve already done five. Why share the feeding of the 5000 right after? Or the feeding of the 4000 right after? You share the feeding of the 5000. What’s the big deal with that? Well, again, the miracle of the story comes at the end. And as you read about this story in chapter 15, what you begin to discover is that Jesus, as he fed the 5000, there are 5 or 4000 people there, by the way, I counted right.
As he fed that multitude. The story behind the story tells us that in 20 and verse 21 it says, leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And the story goes like this Jesus has ministered to the nation of Israel. And now, for the first time, Jesus is going to the Gentiles. Jesus travels to the region of the Gentiles. He stays at a home. He eats a meal. He blesses a Gentile lady as he leaves, tear and side. And it tells us that the multitude of Gentiles follow him. These people are after. They’ve seen his worth, they’ve seen his goodness, and they’re hungry for more. It tells us as they’re following after Jesus, they’re in a desolate place. They have no food, they have no provision. Three days they’ve gone without and Jesus again decides it’s time to feed them. The story goes like this. In 37 they all ate and were satisfied, and afterwards the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was 4000 men, besides women and children. Story for you is this. Not only did Jesus come to the nation of Israel and show the satisfaction that his kingdom can bring by bringing back the 12 baskets full. When you read in Scripture, the number seven is a number of completion. And what Jesus is saying as they gather seven baskets full for us is that the King has not only come to the nation of Israel, the King has come to the entire world.
The number of completion was presented here to say not just Israel, but everyone who comes to Christ will not find the the kingdom of just meeting their needs, but satisfying above and beyond anything they can imagine. Everything that Jesus did was about his kingship and his kingdom coming for you. Bible tells us. As Jesus went around proclaiming his kingdom, he grabbed a 12 ragtag individuals that he called disciples. I’m pretty sure Judas is the crazy one on the right. I always want to pinpoint him first in case something happens. Jesus picked the 12 disciples to go into this world and proclaim that kingdom a message of proclamation and scripture. We sometimes refer to them as as apostles. The Bible says that he chose 12. Here’s the reason Jesus chose 12. There’s 12 tribes in Israel, and so the king selected 12 from the nation of Israel to go into this world and proclaim his name to Israel. We know Jesus didn’t just stop there. Jesus also chose the 70. In Luke chapter ten and verse one, Jesus selected 70 individuals to make that proclamation of his kingdom. Ask yourself the question to this point. Numbers have been pretty important. Y y 70 Jesus, did he just pick some arbitrary number? Maybe. Maybe that was all the people that showed up. Why did Jesus pick 70 when the Bible tells us in Luke ten, now after this, the Lord appointed 70 others and sent them in pairs ahead of him to every city in place where he himself was going to come.
Studying about the 70. We’ll discover that in the nation of Israel there was a Hebrew tradition. As you read in Genesis chapter 11, you’ll find the story of the Tower of Babel. And the story of the Tower of Babel. These people decided that they wanted to build these towers in recognition of themselves, in honor of themselves and worshiping of themselves. And Jesus looked, or God, excuse me? And Jesus looked down in chapter 11 in Genesis, and it tells us that he confounded the world by giving them different languages. And from Genesis chapter 11, nations were born. And the Hebrew tradition goes like this in Genesis chapter 11, as the nations was were born from Genesis chapter 11, you find 70 dialects, 70 people, groups that come out of the Tower of Babel. And so when Jesus shows up on the scene and he’s proclaiming his kingdom, he’s proclaiming his glory. When he picks 70 individuals, he is saying to this world, your King is coming for all nations and all people. The king is coming for you. Jesus as he chose these individuals, he cleverly borrowed some terms from the culture. He used words like apostle and gospel and the beauty of using those words or what they represent to the kingship of Christ. So when a king would go into battle, as Jesus did for you and for me on the cross.
Came to pay for our sins. And as the king would go into battle, the people of that kingdom desired to know. Did the king win or we victorious? Or does someone else own us? And when a king would go into battle, as the battle raged and the victory was won, the king would select a messenger to go back to the town and proclaim to the people, the king has won. The term that they used for that messenger was apostle, and the words that he proclaimed in that city was the gospel. And what Jesus is saying to us as he selects those 12 and as he selects those 70s, he’s saying, go into the city as messengers for me and just proclaim my goodness and glory, because the King has come for you. If you don’t get Jesus. You miss that message. Jesus is more than a get out of hell free card, or a way to make you feel good about yourself. He is king. And as he came into this world, he proclaimed himself as king. And Jesus knew the value of this kingdom. He tells us in the Bible. It says in Matthew 13, the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again, and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. How much is the kingdom worth? It’s worth everything.
John and Jesus sharing this message for us. It brings us to a pinnacle moment in our lives. We’ve got to make a decision. We look at the world and the value and its worth to us, and we look at the message of the King and his kingdom, and we’re faced with the choice which kingdom do I pursue? Which king do I follow? Jesus reminds us his kingdom is worth it. One of the ways we know that his kingdom is worth it is that if it wasn’t, he wouldn’t have bothered coming. If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t have given the most expensive sacrifice of his own life for you. And so John and Jesus, in proclaiming this message to us, is that the ears may hear and the life may make a choice over what they do with this king. Bible describes it in many different ways. John calls it repent. Jesus says repent and believe within the passage of Scripture. In John 316, the famous verse, it says that we are to believe in him. We shall not perish, but have everlasting life. Jesus is coming to this world for you, you must ask yourself the question, What is Jesus attempting to save you from? I mean, the very name of Jesus shares with us an identity of his nature and the purpose of his coming Jesus Christ. Yeshua Hamashiach literally means the saving Anointed One or the Saving King. His name is a proclamation to you as to his purpose for your life.
He’s coming to save you. And the question we ask is, what exactly King are you saving me from? Bible says it in a few different ways. In John 112 it says this about you and I. As we make our decision to trust in Christ, it says, but as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name. Believe in literally means to trust in. Jesus is saying to you and to eye, you owe a debt to the King. Bible says it very simply in Romans 323, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God to our King. We owe a debt, a debt that we could not pay. And Christ has come to pay it for you. And he tells us in John 112, as many as received him, to them became the children of God. The text is saying to us, not everyone is a child of God. The embracing of the King becomes significant to your life and embracing the King and his kingdom, you become the child of this king. Jesus said it very pointedly. What does he save us from in John eight? It tells us in John eight and verse 22 where I am going, you cannot come. He’s talking to the Pharisees here. And he was saying to them, you are from below, and I am from above. You are of this world. I’m not of this world.
Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins. For unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins. All joking aside, it’s just a serious moment. Regardless of your background, regardless of where you’ve been or what you believe, Jesus is very pointed in the scripture. He comes to this place in our lives not only to present his kingdom to the nation of Israel, but to present the kingdom to you. This is eternal life, that you may know him and as many as received him. To them he became gave the right to become the children of God. But unless you believe and who he is. Your sins will separate you from him. The King Has Come for you. And a favorite story in the context of what Jesus is describing here comes in Luke chapter 23. Down to the end of his life on the cross, Jesus had a previous meeting with Pilate and Pilate asked him, are you King? And? And Jesus response was, you have said so. And so Pilate places on the top of Jesus’s cross the King of the Jews, and he hangs there in mockery. And as he’s hanging in Luke chapter 23, the Bible tells us that there’s two thieves on either side of Jesus. One mocks him and the other turns to him and says, this man does not deserve this. We deserve what we’ve gotten, but this man does not deserve this. And in that moment, unable to lift a finger, unable to do anything to serve God, being a thief.
And in that day, it didn’t just mean you stole something, okay? A thief could have been a murderer. Could have been. Could have been anything horrific. He’s hanging on the cross, and he turns to Jesus in a moment of faith. At the end of his life, he says, remember me. Remember me in your kingdom. Jesus turns back. And he says, this day, this day you will be with me in Paradise. The Bible says it beautifully. This description in Ephesians two. And describing what the King has done for my life and for yours as you trust in him. Rs. For for grace. By grace you’ve been saved through faith. Meaning you did nothing to earn the king’s favor. But he loves you, and the kingdom is coming for you. And it’s by his grace that he’s saving you. It’s not of yourselves. There’s nothing you can do for God that he can’t do for himself anyway. It’s the gift. Not of works, lest any man should boast. Why were you created? You’re created for the king. God created you, that you may know him and celebrate him and enjoy Him in His kingdom forever. He made it easy for you, but it cost him everything because his desire is to offer you all that he has, that you may bask in the glory of his presence forever. He knows the greatest goodness of your life and the best satisfaction you can ever receive.
It tells us in John 15, his joy in you and your joy may complete. Jesus designed you to find your life in him and through him. So the question is simple. We believe and trust. Everybody bow your heads and close your eyes for just a moment. You think about the context of this every time you open the Word of God? Jesus is a king about his kingdom. The King has come to offer you his kingdom to those who trust in him. You serve a kingdom that is unshakable to those who have yet to find the peace of knowing the Lord, the King has come for you. It doesn’t matter where you’ve been or what you believe, Jesus’s message is simple. He’s already paid it all. And he’s asking you to trust. And so in your heart it can be as simple as the thief on the cross. Jesus, remember me in your kingdom. King. I’m taking my heart and I’m turning it from this world. And I’m giving it to you. You are my king. You are my king. In these moments as you think about Christ and His kingship in your life, and just ask that you confess that before. Let’s go to the Lord and say, Jesus, I accept you as my King. God, thank you for what you’ve done. God, thank you for bringing your kingdom and laying it all down for me that I may know you for eternity. It’s that easy. Jesus has come for you.