The World vs.

the Kingdom of God Jan 24/21

https://www.gty.org/library/topical-series-library/353/the-world-vs-the-kingdom-of-god

1-Our king will not be mocked Jan 24/21

https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/81-101/our-king-will-not-be-mocked

Luke 17, The Coming of the Kingdom

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Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, “The
kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed;
 21 nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”
22 
Then he said to the disciples, “The days are coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son
of Man, and you will not see it.
 23 They will say to you, ‘Look there!’ or ‘Look here!’ Do not go, do not set off in pursuit.
 24 For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be
in his day.
 25 But first he must endure much suffering and be rejected by this generation.
 26 Just as it was in the days of Noah, so too it will be in the days of the Son of Man.
 27 They were eating and drinking, and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day Noah entered
the ark, and the flood came and destroyed all of them.
 28 Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot: they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting
and building,
 29 but on the day that Lot left Sodom, it rained fire and sulfur from heaven and destroyed all of them
 30 —it will be like that on the day that the Son of Man is revealed.
 31 On that day, anyone on the housetop who has belongings in the house must not come down to take
them away; and likewise anyone in the field must not turn back.
 32 Remember Lot’s wife.
 33 Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.
 34 I tell you, on that night there will be two in one bed; one will be taken and the other left.
 35 There will be two women grinding meal together; one will be taken and the other left.”
 37 Then they asked him, “Where, Lord?” He said to them, “Where the corpse is, there the vultures will
gather.”
It may surprise you, but the Bible doesn’t advocate democracy. The Bible doesn’t mention, comment or
define democracy. There is no place in all of the Bible where you even find democracy. There is no
country revealed in Scripture where it existed; it is never affirmed by God.
Some Christians do not believe in freedom of religion, because that would violate the first commandment.
“Have no other gods.” Doesn’t the church need freedom of religion to move forward?” No. In no way
does any political law aid or hinder the church of Jesus Christ. We are a separate kingdom. Jesus: “My
kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world My servants would fight.”
We would fight if the kingdom were of the world. But this is not a kingdom that is part of this world, this
is a kingdom of another world. The church does not need help from the government. When Jesus said, “ I
will build My church, and the gates of hades, the gates of hell will not prevail against it,” He assured all
the forces of evil that would be relentlessly against the church the gates of hell would never be able to
thwart His purpose.
We need to be reminded that the world, in its social perspectives and even in its political perspectives, is
never intended to be a friend of the church or an ally in any way. John 15:18, “If the world hates you, you
know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own .”
There’s the issue. If you decide that you love the world, you can wiggle your way into it and draw out
some level of affection.
“But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates
you. If you are who I chose you to be, you will be hated by the world.” That does not thwart the purpose
of God for His church in the world. We don’t need laws nor politicians for Christ to build His church.”
“And remember the word that I said to you,” – Jesus said – ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If
they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. You’re
tied to Me.” By the way, “He who hates Me,” – He said – “hates My Father.”
John 16:33, “In this world you will have tribulation.” But” – He said – “I have overcome the world.” The
end of the story: Christ wins and we win in Christ. But losing now and winning then has nothing to do
with any political help.
The Bible doesn’t recommend, prefer, or even discuss democracy. The ancient world had kings. No other
form of government appears either in the Old Testament or the New Testament. We talk about God
giving common grace; and government is common grace to bring order to society, we understand that.
But do you also understand that the most common common grace of governmental character is a
monarchy; in fact, so common were kings that we find in the Old Testament no nation under any other
kind of government. So normal was it to have a king that the epic tragedy of Israel in the Old Testament
was that they wanted a king like all other pagan nations.
Was Israel a democracy? Never, it was a theocratic monarchy and God was King. Yahweh was their
King. The covenant God was their King. The Lord Yahweh was Israel’s King forever. We would think
that would be enough, right? Isaiah 44:6, “Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and His Redeemer, the
Lord of hosts: ‘I am first and I am the last, and besides Me there is no God.”
V8, “Is there any God besides Me? I know of none.” So the King of Israel is the one God. Isaiah 33:22,
“For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; He will save us.” That was the
confession of the people. Isaiah 43:15, “I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King.”
Malachi 1:14, “I am a great King.” So great a king was He that He was feared among the nations.
There’s only one God in the universe, He in His mercy and grace gave Himself to a people, the Jews, to be
their King. What an astonishing privilege, right? And everyone in the ancient world knew God was
Israel’s King. They knew about this God who had delivered them from Egypt. They knew about this God
whose power had drowned the Egyptian army. They knew about this God who had sustained them for
forty years in the wilderness. They knew about this God who had brought them into the land and allowed
them to conquer powerful resident enemies. And they knew that the people worshiped this God, because
when they came into the land they came in with the tabernacle, right, a tent?
Everywhere they went with a tent. They set up camp. All the tribes were around a little box called the ark
of the covenant. And the ark of the covenant had cherubim. Because God dwells in the presence of the
cherubim, that was the symbol of His throne. God is invisible, but God demonstrated His presence in a
symbolic way in the ark. And they carried the ark everywhere they went, put it in the middle, and all the
tribes focused in on the ark.
If you don’t think sin makes you stupid, get ready for this story. Under attack from some Midianites,
Israel decided they wanted a king. You mean they wanted another king other than God, Yahweh, the
God of the universe, the true King, Judge, Redeemer? Yes, they wanted a king. Who was overseeing life
in Israel before they had a king? God. It was a theocratic kingdom, and God had agents; those agents
were judges and prophets.
Judges 8:22, God used Gideon, he had just had a great victory. The men of Israel said to Gideon, ‘Rule
over us, both you and your son, also your son’s son, for you have delivered us from the hand of Midian.
Let’s start a family monarchy. You be our king.’ Gideon said to them, ‘I will not rule over you, nor shall
my son rule over you.’ Why? ‘The Lord shall rule over you. You don’t trade Him in for me, that’s
insane.’”
The last of the judges, 1 Samuel 3:19, an astonishing story. In a sense, it’s the end of the reign of God
over Israel. “Samuel grew and the Lord was with him and let none of his words fail. All Israel from Dan
even to Beersheba knew that Samuel was confirmed as a prophet of the Lord.” He was a judge and a
prophet. “And the Lord appeared again at Shiloh, because the Lord revealed Himself to Samuel at Shiloh
by the word of the Lord.” So this is exactly the way the kingdom should operate, right? God is the King
and He mediates His kingdom through the words that He gives to His prophets. The Lord had His way
with Samuel.
1 Samuel 4, “The word of Samuel came to all Israel. Now Israel went out to meet the Philistines in battle
and camped beside Ebenezer while the Philistines camped in Aphek. The Philistines drew up in battle
array to meet Israel. When the battle spread, Israel was defeated before the Philistines who killed about
four thousand men on the battlefield. When the people came into the camp, the elders of Israel said,
‘Why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines? Let us take to ourselves from Shiloh the ark
of the covenant of the Lord,’ – that is the symbol of God’s presence, that’s His throne – ‘let’s take that,
that it may come among us and deliver us from the power of our enemies.’” What you know has
happened is that the ark, which was the symbol of the actual presence of God in the midst of His
covenant people, has become a good luck charm.
Sin has made these people stupid. And even with as noble a prophet judge as Samuel, their stupidity
could not be avoided. So they lost the battle and lost lives, and they said, “We need to get God down
there; get the box.”
“So the people sent to Shiloh, and from there they carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord who sits
above the cherubim. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the ark of the
covenant of God. As the ark of the covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel shouted with a
great shout, so that the earth resounded.” Why? Because God showed up, the good luck charm. “When
the Philistines heard the noise of the shout, they said, ‘What does the noise of this great shout in the camp
of the Hebrews mean?’ Then they understood that the ark of the Lord had come into the camp. The
Philistines were afraid, for they said, ‘God has come into the camp.’ And they said, ‘Woe to us! For
nothing like this has happened before.” They feared the God of Israel because they knew the history of
His power. They feared Him more than Israel love Him.
“Woe to us,” they said. “Who will deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods? These are the gods who
smote the Egyptians with all kinds of plagues in the wilderness. Take courage and be men, O Philistines,
or you will become slaves to the Hebrews, as they have been slaves to you; therefore, be men and fight.”
So, pep talk: “You can’t be intimidated by this God, you’ve got to go to war.”
“So the Philistines fought, Israel was defeated, every man fled to his tent; and the slaughter was very
great, and there fell of Israel thirty thousand foot soldiers.” God is saying, “You’re not using Me as a
magic charm.” “The ark of God” – V11 – “was taken,” – the Philistines took God – “and the two sons of
Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, died.”
Didn’t turn out so well, did it? Somebody said, “Get God and we’ll win. They got God and they were
massacred. What happened? V18, First, “Eli fell over backward, broke his neck and died because he was
old and heavy. His daughter-in-law, Phinehas’ wife, was pregnant about to give birth; when she heard
the news that the ark of God was taken, that her father-in-law and her husband had died, she kneeled
down and gave birth, for her pains came upon her. And about the time of her death the women who
stood by her said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, for you have given birth to a son.’”
She dies in childbirth. Hophni and Phinehas are dead, Eli is dead, thirty thousand soldiers are dead. The
wife of Phinehas is giving birth; she’s dead, the child lives. “And about the time of her death they said,
‘Don’t be afraid, you’ve given birth to a son.’ She didn’t answer or pay attention.” Listen to this: “She
called the Ichabod, which means, ‘The glory has departed from Israel,’ because the ark of God was taken
and because of her father-in-law and her husband. She said, ‘The glory has departed from Israel, for the
ark of God was taken.’” Do you know what she means? “God’s gone. We may have a box, but we don’t
have God.”
1 Samuel 5, if you think that’s a problem for Israel, imagine what a problem it is for the Philistines; now
they have God. “The Philistines took the ark of God, brought it from Ebenezer and to Ashdod. Philistines
took the ark of God and brought it to the house of Dagon and set it by Dagon.” Dagon was kind of a
reverse mermaid: male, fish head, human legs, bizarre idol.
“So when the Ashdodites arose in the next morning,” – after setting God – imagine the ark of the
covenant next to Dagon. “They came early in the morning and Dagon had fallen on its face to the ground
before the ark of the Lord, and they said, ‘Oh, somebody knocked him over.’ So they took Dagon and set
him in his place. But when they arose the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen on his face to the
ground before the ark of the Lord, and only this time the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands
were cut off on the threshold; and the trunk of Dagon was left to him. ‘Somebody decapitated that idol.’”
You’re not putting him in the same place with the true and living God.
That was the end of the religion of Dagon obviously. V5, “Neither the priests of Dagon nor all who enter
Dagon’s house tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day.” That religion went out of
existence immediately. I mean, if the God of Israel can whack off your head and your hands, we don’t
need you.
“So the men of Ashdod saw that it was so and they said, ‘The ark of the God of Israel must not remain
with us, for His hand is severe on us and on Dagon our god.’ So they sent and gathered all the lords of the
Philistines to them and said, ‘What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel?’ And they said, ‘Let the
ark of God be brought around to Gath. Send it out of here, send it to another town.’” Gath, that’s where
Goliath was from.
“So they took the ark to Gath, they brought it around, and the hand of the Lord was against that city
with very great confusion. He smote the men of the city, young and old, so that tumors broke out on
them. So they said, ‘Get that thing out of town.’ They sent it to Ekron. The ark came to Ekron, and the
Ekronites cried out, ‘Yikes, they brought the ark of the God of Israel around to us to kill us and our
people.’” This is a problem to have God on your hands, and to be mocking God and dishonoring God in
all these ways is a very deadly kind of activity.
So they had a meeting, V11: “They gathered all the lords of the Philistines and said, ‘Send away the ark
of the God of Israel, and let it return to its own place, so that it will not kill us and our people.’ For there
was a deadly confusion throughout the city; the hand of God was very heavy there. And the men who
didn’t die were smitten with tumors and the cry of the city went up to heaven.” God is just leaving a
slaughter everywhere the ark goes.
1 Samuel 6, “The ark of the Lord was in the country of the Philistines for seven months. And the
Philistines called for the priests and the diviners, saying, ‘What shall we do with the ark of the Lord? Tell
us how we shall send it to its place.’” This is most interesting. “They said, ‘If you send away the ark of the
God of Israel, do not send it empty; but you shall surely return to Him a guilt offering.’”
These are Pagans saying this: “Don’t just send that back, send that back with a guilt offering.” Meaning,
“Send it back with something that indicates you know you violated that God. Admit that what happened
to you is what you deserved because you violated that God.” “What do we send?” Fascinating.
“They said, ‘Well, what shall be the guilt offering which we return to Him?’ And they said, ‘five golden
tumors and five golden mice.’” Why? That’s called a votive offering. You create something that
resembles the punishment: the mice because of the plague; the tumor because of the tumors. So they were
making mice and tumors to send back as a way to say to the offended God, “Please, we recognize that we
have offended You.” V5, sums it up: “If we give glory to the God of Israel, perhaps He will ease His hand
from you, your gods, and your land. Get God out of here and don’t send Him back empty, send Him back
with recognition that you have sinned against Him.”
1 Samuel 6:17, these are the golden tumors. This is getting more serious. They are so afraid of this deity
that they start making these votive representations of His judgment in gold, golden tumors and golden
mice, and they set it on the ark, V18, to send it back.
Came to Beth-shemesh. “He struck down some of the men of Beth-shemesh because they had looked into
the ark of the Lord.” What? Yes. There were things in the ark, right? They looked. “Fifty thousand plus
God killed, and the people mourned because the Lord had struck the people with a great slaughter.” V20,
“The men of Beth-shemesh said, ‘Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God?’” You can’t
survive an encounter with Him that is sinful. The ark then was taken to Kiriath-jearim. It stayed there
for twenty years, and all the house of Israel lamented.
1 Samuel 7, “Samuel spoke to all the house of Israel, saying, ‘If you return to the Lord with all your
heart, remove the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you’ – oh, here’s the problem; God didn’t
defend them because they had turned to idols – ‘and direct your hearts to the Lord and serve Him alone;
He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines.’ So the sons of Israel removed the Baals and the
Ashtaroth and served the Lord alone. And Samuel said, ‘Gather all Israel to Mizpah and I will pray to
the Lord for you.’” That was a revival maybe?
V6, “They gathered to Mizpah, drew water, poured it out before the Lord, fasted, said, ‘We’ve sinned
against the Lord.’” Confession. V8, “Samuel says, ‘You’d better keep it up. Do not cease to cry to the
Lord our God.’”
Just for the sake of time, V15, God gave them peace with their enemies. “Samuel judged Israel all the
days of his life. He used to go annually on a circuit to Bethel and Gilgal and Mizpah, and he judged Israel
in all these places.” Remember now, when it says he judged Israel he was passing on to them the word of
the Lord. “Then his return was to Ramah, for his house was there. There he judged Israel; built there an
altar.”
They have God as their king, the God who led them through the plagues in Egypt, drowned the entire
Egyptian army, brought them through the wilderness, into the Promised Land, gave them victory over
their enemies. God who has just put on His power display, slaughtering all kinds of alien Pagans. They
now have God back, they have a faithful judge. Maybe this is permanent, right?
1 Samuel 8, Israel Demands a King
1
 When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel.
 2 The name of his first-born son was Jo′el, and the name of his second, Abi′jah; they were judges in Beer-
sheba.
 3 Yet his sons did not walk in his ways, but turned aside after gain; they took bribes and perverted
justice.
 Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah,
4 

 5 and said to him, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint for us a
king to govern us like all the nations.”
HERE ARE THE CROOKED POLITICIANS
 6 But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to govern us.” And Samuel prayed to
the Lord.
 7 And the Lord said to Samuel, “Hearken to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they
have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.
 8 According to all the deeds which they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt
even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you.
 9 Now then, hearken to their voice; only, you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the
king who shall reign over them.”
10 
So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking a king from him.
 11 He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint
them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots;
 12 and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow
his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots.
 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.
 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants.
 15 He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants.
 16 He will take your menservants and maidservants, and the best of your cattle and your asses, and put
them to his work.
 17 He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves.
 18 And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but
the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
Israel’s Request for a King Granted
But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; and they said, “No! but we will have a king over
19 

us,
 20 that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight
our battles.”
 21 And when Samuel had heard all the words of the people, he repeated them in the ears of the Lord.
 22 And the Lord said to Samuel, “Hearken to their voice, and make them a king.” Samuel then said to the
men of Israel, “Go every man to his city.”
1 Samuel 12:12, “A king shall reign over you, although the Lord your God was your king.” This is the
epic apostacy of Israel. 1 Samuel 10:17, Samuel calls the people together at Mizpah; and he said to the
sons of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “I brought Israel up from Egypt, I delivered you
from the hand of the Egyptians, from the power of all the kingdoms that were oppressing you.’ But you
have today rejected your God, who delivers you from all your calamities and your distresses; yet you
have said, “No, but set a king over us!” Now therefore, present yourselves before the Lord by your tribes
and by your clans.’“Thus Samuel brought all the tribes of Israel near, and the tribe of Benjamin was
taken by lot.”
Since any king in Israel was supposed to be from the tribe of Judah. “Then he brought the tribe of
Benjamin near by its families, and the Matrite family was taken. Saul the son of Kish was found.” Saul?
Why him? Well, we already know, because V23, “He was taller than anybody else, and more tall, dark,
handsome, and cowardly.” V22, “Where’s Saul? He’s hiding in the baggage.” “Oh, great. We’ve got a
tall, dark, handsome guy in the baggage hiding.”
What did he do? He looked for lost donkeys, it was his job. Unfortunately, didn’t do it very well, couldn’t
find them. He went all over, he couldn’t find them. Somebody said, “Oh, they’re already back home.”
Tall, dark, handsome, cowardly, donkey finder. Sin makes you stupid and it makes you make stupid
choices about leadership. Who trades in the eternal God for a tall, dark, handsome, stupid donkey finder,
who wants to hide in the baggage?
So why did God allow this? As a judgment. “You want a king? I’ll give you a king that will show you how
foolish you are to turn from God.” Saul is the anti-king. He’s the illustration of the worst kind of ruler.
That’s God’s whole point. Saul was a complete disaster, and we know the sad story of it.
1 Samuel 15:23, a postmortem on Saul, “Rebellion is as the sin of divination, insubordination is as
iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He has also rejected you from
being king.” Saul was such a disaster, the people rejected the Lord to get Saul, and then the Lord
rejected Saul because Saul rejected Him. “Saul said to Samuel, ‘I’ve sinned. I’ve indeed transgressed the
command of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and listed to their voice.” There’s the
coward hiding in the baggage. He fears the people. Tall, dark, handsome, empty-headed, donkey finder, a
total disaster.
1 Samuel 15:35, “The Lord regretted He had made Saul king over Israel.” Oh, by the way, Samuel said,
“There’s not going to be any future for you, you’re done. The next king won’t come from your family.”
Again, the wisdom from below is demonic. Sin makes you stupid.
The Lord was kind to them. David. And David was like Samuel. Twice it says, “ The Lord was with him.”
He was a man with a heart for God. But God reminded them with Saul that when you trade Him in for
anyone else, that wicked insanity is devastating, beyond shocking to me.
Hosea 13, pronouncing judgment on Israel, or Ephraim, listen to this, “When Ephraim spoke, there was
trembling. He exalted himself in Israel, but through Baal he did wrong and died. And now they sin more
and more, and make for themselves molten images, idols skillfully made from their silver, all of them the
work of craftsmen. They say of them, ‘Let the men who sacrifice kiss the calves!’ Therefore they will be
like the morning cloud, like dew which soon disappears, like chaff which is blown away from the
threshing floor and like smoke from a chimney.” They’re going to disappear, they’re going to vaporize
God says.
“Since I have been the Lord your God since the land of Egypt; and you were not to know any god except
Me, for there is no savior besides Me. I cared for you in the wilderness, in the land of drought. As they
had their pasture, they became satisfied, and being satisfied, their heart became proud; therefore they
forgot Me.” As He lets them in the land of milk and honey, they forgot Him.
“So I will be like a lion to them; like a leopard I will lie in wait by the wayside. I will encounter them like
a bear robbed of her cubs, and I will tear open their chests; there I will also devour them like a lioness, as
a wild beast would tear them.” He’s promising them divine judgment, it came at the hands of the
Assyrians who came in about 732 to take them all away, and they never returned.
“It is your destruction, O Israel, that you are against Me, against your help.” How does it happen?
“Where now is your king that he may save you in all your cities, and your judges of whom you requested,
‘Give me a king and princes’? I gave you a king in My anger and took him away in My wrath .” 11 “These
will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his
chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots;
Imperfect verbs for continuous action. “I kept giving you kings in My anger and kept taking away in My
wrath,” in the northern kingdom God gave them ten kings, all of them evil, wicked kings. He gave it as a
judgment, He took them away as a judgment. The Lord said, “You wanted a king, I gave you kings. I put
them there in My anger, I removed them in My wrath. Your idolatry continued and it all ended after
those ten kings and you going into captivity.” So when you trade the true King for any other king, you
have mocked God. Is there hope?
Hosea 14, A Plea for Repentance
1
 Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God,
    for you have stumbled because of your iniquity.
Take with you words and return to the Lord; say to him,
2 

    “Take away all iniquity; accept that which is good and we will render
    the fruit of our lips.
Assyria shall not save us, we will not ride upon horses;
3 

and we will say no more, ‘Our God,’ to the work of our hands.
In thee the orphan finds mercy.”
The heart of God through the prophet’s crying.
Assurance of Forgiveness
4 
I will heal their faithlessness; I will love them freely,
    for my anger has turned from them.
5 
I will be as the dew to Israel; he shall blossom as the lily,
    he shall strike root as the poplar;
his shoots shall spread out; his beauty shall be like the olive,
6 

    and his fragrance like Lebanon.

They shall return and dwell beneath my shadow,
7 

    they shall flourish as a garden;

they shall blossom as the vine,
    their fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebanon.
O E′phraim, what have I to do with idols?
8 

    It is I who answer and look after you.

I am like an evergreen cypress,
    from me comes your fruit.
Whoever is wise, let him understand these things;
9 

    whoever is discerning, let him know them; for the ways of the Lord are right,
    and the upright walk in them, but transgressors stumble in them.
Who is your god? Who is your king?” Two hundred years of warning before the captivity came. Israel
turned in their king, the true and living God for a sequence of wicked rulers. They chose a fake, a fraud.
They chose an anti-king, an antichrist, over the eternal King of the universe. God promised to send a
king, 2 Samuel 7, “I’m going to send someone out of your loins who will have an everlasting kingdom.”
The gospel of Luke, word comes down from heaven to Mary from an angel, “You’ll conceive in your
womb and bear a son and you will name Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the
Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David, and He’ll reign over the
house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.” Isaiah said, “That Child born to us will
be Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Father of Eternity.” He came, the true King again, it all
culminated when they had to make a choice. Did they want the true King? Did they want a thief and a
robber named Barabbas?
The same kind of horrendous, sinful stupidity John 18:33, “Pilate enters the Praetorium, says to Jesus,
‘Are You the King of the Jews?’ Jesus answered, ‘Are you saying this on your own initiative, or did
others tell you about Me?’ Pilate said, ‘I’m not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and chief priests delivered
You to me; what have You done?’ Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom
were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews;
but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.’ Pilate said to Him, ‘So You are a king?’ Jesus answered,
‘You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, for this I have come into the world, to
testify to the truth.’ – and here’s the key – ‘Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.’ Pilate said to
Him,” – cynically – ‘What is truth?’
“When he said this, he went out again to the Jews and said to them, ‘I find no guilt in Him. But you have
a custom that I release someone for you at the Passover; do you wish then that I release for you the King
of the Jews?’ So they cried out again, saying, ‘Not this Man, but’ – who? – ‘Barabbas,’” over Jesus.
That’s the folly.
John 19:15, “Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your
King?” Chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.”
There’s only one true king, right? The tragedy of Israel’s history, the tragedy of human history is that the
world doesn’t want to recognize the true King, the true and living God and His Son. But God has already
determined His Son will be King.
Psalm 2, God’s Promise to His Anointed
1 
Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain?
2 
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together,
    against the Lord and his anointed, saying,
3 
“Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us.”
4 
He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord has them in derision.
Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying,
5 

“I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.”

6 

I will tell of the decree of the Lord:

7 

He said to me, “You are my son; today I have begotten you.

8 
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
    and the ends of the earth your possession.
You shall break them with a rod of iron,
9 

    and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth.
10 

11 
Serve the Lord with fear, with trembling
 12 kiss his feet, or he will be angry, and you will perish in the way;
    for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Happy are all who take refuge in him. You’d better take your refuge in the true King, right?
So, the story of Israel is a story of blasphemy, a story of abomination, a story of apostacy, a story of
defection. Inconceivably a story of trading in the one true God for the anti-king, the wicked king, the
foolish king: Saul. Trading in the Lord Jesus Christ ultimately for the antichrist fool named Caesar.
So they finally want to bring the ark back. There was a prescription for how the ark was to be moved. It
had rings, and you put up a long pole so that no one ever touched the ark. Took long poles, put them
through the rings, carried it that way.
They didn’t do that. 2 Samuel 6:3, “They placed the ark of God on a new cart” What is that? That’s a
clear violation of God’s order, “so they could bring it from the house of Abinadab which is on the hill. A
couple of guys named Uzzah and Ahio were leading the new cart. So they brought it with the ark of God
from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill; and Ahio was walking ahead of the ark. Meanwhile,
David and all his house of Israel were celebrating before the Lord with all kinds of instruments made of
fir wood, and with harps, lyres, tambourines, castanets, cymbals.” This is like a coronation now. God’s
coming back, they’re going to reenthrone God in the place where He belongs.
V6, “When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out toward the ark of God, took
hold of it, for the oxen nearly upset it.” Started to topple off, the ark, so Uzzah reached out to steady it.
V7, “The anger of the Lord burned against Uzzah, and God struck him down there for his irreverence;
and he died by the ark of God.”
You better be careful when you put your hand on God. I thought of that in that inauguration. You can
say whatever you want to say, but when you touch the ark, when you place your hand on the throne of
God because God is enthroned in His word, and you place your hand on the Word of God and pledge to
do the very things that blaspheme His name, you talk about a high risk action. All Uzzah did was what he
thought was showing some respect. God doesn’t want your respect, He wants your obedience. Don’t
advocate the slaughter of babies in the womb.
Don’t tell me you want to destroy masculinity, femininity, marriage. Don’t tell me you want to fill the
world with LGBTQ people in leadership; you want to justify transgender activity. Don’t tell me you want
to invite more Muslims in who represent a religion from hell and then put your hand on the throne of
God. You can make any pledge you want; don’t mock God.
A final word, just a reminder: “The deeds of the flesh are evident: immorality, impurity, sensuality,
idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissentions, factions, envy,
drunkenness, carousing and things like these, which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that
those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
Seek the kingdom by seeking the King. Repent, the King is here, receive the gospel.

2-The kingdom of light amidst the kingdom of darkness. Jan 31/21

https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/81-102/the-kingdom-of-light-amidst-the-kingdom-of-darkness

It’s very apparent to us now that we who are in the invisible kingdom are living in the middle of another
kingdom. When Jesus prayed to the Father, He didn’t say, “Take them out of the world,” He said, “Keep
them from the Evil One.” We have to be in the world, otherwise we can’t preach the gospel. We are an
invisible kingdom in the middle of a visible kingdom that is getting wicker all the time.  
Luke 17, The Coming of the Kingdom
20 
Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, he answered them, “The kingdom
of God is not coming with signs to be observed;
 21 nor will they say, ‘Lo, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”
 And he said to the disciples, “The days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son
22 

of man, and you will not see it.

 23 And they will say to you, ‘Lo, there!’ or ‘Lo, here!’ Do not go, do not follow them.
 24 For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of man be in
his day.
 25 But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.
 26 As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of man.
 27 They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the
ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.
 28 Likewise as it was in the days of Lot—they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they
built,
 29 but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom fire and brimstone rained from heaven and destroyed
them all—
 30 so will it be on the day when the Son of man is revealed.
 31 On that day, let him who is on the housetop, with his goods in the house, not come down to take them
away; and likewise let him who is in the field not turn back.
 32 Remember Lot’s wife.
 33 Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.
 34 I tell you, in that night there will be two men in one bed; one will be taken and the other left.
 35 There will be two women grinding together; one will be taken and the other left.”
 37 And they said to him, “Where, Lord?” He said to them, “Where the body is, there the eagles will be
gathered together.”
Jesus was questioned by the Pharisees as to when the kingdom of God was coming. They thought it was
still future; they were looking for a kingdom in the future, and the kingdom was there because the King
was there. Colombia has been gradually becoming a kingdom with a king, an evil kingdom with an evil
king and his evil agents.
Romans 1, The Guilt of Humankind
18 
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by
their wickedness suppress the truth.
 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
 20 Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are,
have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse;
 21 for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became
futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.
 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools;
 23 and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or
four-footed animals or reptiles.
24 
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among
themselves,
  25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the
Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
26 
For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for
unnatural,
 27 and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for
one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their
error.
28 
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that
should not be done.
 29 They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit,
craftiness, they are gossips,
 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents,
 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
 32 They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even
applaud others who practice them.
V18, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven.” It could be eternal wrath. It could be
eschatological wrath, the wrath that’s described in the book of Revelation. It could be the wrath of
sowing and reaping, built in judgment to certain behaviors. But this wrath is not any of those, it’s wrath
“against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” So it’s a
kind of wrath that has to unfold on a society that is suppressing the truth. Wherever you have a society
suppressing the truth, it is characterized by ungodliness and unrighteousness.
V19-20, “That which is known about God,” “is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For
since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and His divine nature, have
been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” God
has revealed Himself to the degree that man is without excuse if he doesn’t acknowledge the existence of
God; when men suppress that knowledge in ungodliness and unrighteousness, a wrath comes out of
heaven for those, V21, “who knew God, did not honor Him as God or give thanks, they became empty in
their speculations, their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools.” It comes
on a society that inexcusably turned against the living God who is the Creator of all. In the case of our
society, turns against the revelation of Scripture, which has been available to everyone. Those who reject
God are fools. When I talk about an evil kingdom I’m also talking about an evil kingdom made up of
fools.
“They exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of
birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.” You might say that’s ancient animism or it’s
modern environmentalism. “Therefore” (here’s the judgment) “God gave them over,” language of
turning someone over to prison for incarceration and execution. When a society turns from God, that had
the knowledge of God by creation and Scripture, when they give up on the truth of God and exchange
God for a materialistic, secular worldview. That form of social, national, cultural apostasy leads to God
giving them up, turning them over. What does that look like?
First, V24, “God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be
dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the
creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.” So the first thing you would see in a
culture under judgment is a sexual revolution: immorality, impurity, lust unbounded, “dishonoring their
bodies among them,” pornography as a norm.
Second, V26: “God then gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural
function for that which is unnatural,” (Lesbianism) “and in the same way also the men abandoned the
natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing
indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error,” SDS. First you’ll have a
sexual revolution, second you’ll have a homosexual revolution.
Third, V28, “Just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a
depraved mind.” That’s a mind that doesn’t function. There’s a kind of insanity. Not accepting reality.
Multiple genders. What comes out of that insanity that we’re seeing now, we are not even dealing with
reality: we’re making laws to make the insane feel normal.
What comes out of that? V29-31, “All kinds of things that are not proper, all unrighteousness,
wickedness, greed, evil, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, haters of God, insolent,
arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy,
unloving, unmerciful.” That’s what we get in that culture of insanity.
An insanity so severe that, ignoring what they know, because it’s built into the fabric of their humanity,
the law of God is written in the heart. In our case, we’ve had the Bible. V32, “And even though they know
the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same,
but give hearty approval to those who practice them.” They make them legal.
Why are we where we are? Because we’re under this wrath. This is not just us. Acts 14, “God has allowed
all the nations to go their own way.” This is the cycle of human history. We are now in an evil kingdom.
The kingdom we’re in is so evil that God’s wrath has been unleashed; we’ve been living in it for decades
now from the sexual revolution, through the homosexual revolution, to the reprobate mind where you
can’t even think straight and reality and fantasy are mingled.
The evil kingdom holds its power by one thing: lies. That’s what Paul said: “They exchanged,” V25, “the
truth of God for a lie.” The evil kingdom gains its power by lies. It holds its power by lies by suppressing
the truth. What the evil kingdom fears most is truth. The kingdom of darkness, the evil kingdom has a
ruler.
Jesus said to religious Jews who rejected God, John 8:44-45, “You are of your father the devil, and you
want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the
truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks the lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he
is a liar and the father of lies. But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me.”
V47, “He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you’re not
of God.” If you’re in the evil kingdom of darkness, Satan the archetypal liar propagates lies through that
kingdom, and that’s all you can believe because you have no capacity to believe the truth. What
threatens the kingdom of lies is truth. The liar’s history is pretty well-known. God created Adam and
Eve, put them in the garden, gave them a command. Satan showed up, the liar, and told Eve that God
lied: “You’re not going to die; God lied to you.” She believed the liar, and the whole human race fell.
1 John 5-19, “We know that we are God’s children, and that the whole world lies under the power of the
evil one.” The lap of the Evil One is a lap of lies. We will be in a heaven with truth, Revelation 22,
“14 Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter
the city by the gates. 15 Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters,
and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.” The kingdom of darkness is a kingdom of lies. Even
humanity recognizes the importance of truth. Plato:, “No one is more hated than he who speaks the
truth.” George Orwell: “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak
it.”
This is not new to us; this is essentially the indictment of Isaiah against Israel. Isaiah 5:20, “Woe to those
who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; who substitute
bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” That’s what happens. The evil kingdom switches everything.
Everything is inside-out and upside-down.
Here is an axiom to remember: “A society is defined by what it will not tolerate.” When God wanted us
to know His will, He didn’t say, “Let Me give you ten suggestions of what would be good behaviors.” He
gave us Ten Commandments, because life is always going to be defined by what you tolerate.
In the past, even in our country, there was a traditional Judeo-Christian, biblical, conventional morality,
and there were laws against certain kinds of behaviors. When you violated those traditional laws drawn
from Scripture there was shame. Those of you who went to college probably read The Scarlet Letter by
Nathaniel Hawthorne. A look at 1850 of early America and the sad story of Hester Prynne who
committed adultery and had to go through the rest of her life with an A stamped on her. That was the old
culture, where biblical morality still had sway and shame was connected to the things that the Bible
assigns shame. That culture and the cultures that followed, adultery was scorned, fornication was looked
down on, homosexuality was hardly talked about. Lesbianism was rare because women have a natural
instinct to bear children with a husband. Transgender, beyond imagination. These things were virtually
unacceptable.
Then came the rejection of God, of Scripture, and so the transcendent, sacred authority whose law was a
standard for everyone gave rise to what Carl Trueman calls “the modern self,” where sovereignty goes
from an external, sacred standard of God to the individual. Now we have self-styled sovereignty over
their own life and can declare themselves to be anything he wants to be.
God was rejected, the Bible’s rejected, and with it, biblical morality; everything goes to individualism. As
a result, what our society will not tolerate is exactly the opposite of what it would not tolerate in the past.
So we are now in an overturned morality. This society is making laws to normalize and justify sin.
If you disagree with this, you’re a domestic terrorist, an extremist. If you disagree, you’re a danger;
you’re breaking the law; you’re a homophobic; transphobic; you need to be silenced; you need to be
terminated; you need to be marginalized. Maybe you need to be silenced all together, removed or
canceled.
Laws are being made to criminalize righteousness, to silence, terminate truth speakers. Half of the states
in America have such laws. An Air Force chaplain was removed from his duty because he gave a message
against sexual immorality; he was dismissed. You either bake the cake or go to jail.
The new king can’t stop making rules, can he? You say, “Why are you calling us a monarchy?” Because
of executive orders that are just endless. That’s unilateral rule. The king and the kingdom of lies will not
tolerate the truth. To speak the truth is the greatest threat. They define it as hate speech, personal
animus, and now as I said, domestic terrorism. And to sort of create theater about that, they put fences
around the Capitol building and 30,000 troops, as if we are such a frightening enemy that they need to
arm Washington to defend themselves.
There can be no civil liberties for those who tell the truth; there can be no freedom of speech for those
who tell the truth, because they invade safe spaces, they trigger people. So the king and his lying agents
must demonize the truth tellers. Then they need to demonize the past; they need to kill history. They need
to go back so past moral standards don’t crawl up out of the grave and offend somebody. Strong societies
have their foundation in sacred truth; they have a transcendent standard. When that is removed, what
you have is barbarism, according to one writer. Barbarism means paganism, lack of civilization. So the
trend here is exactly what Romans 1 said. It’s ungodliness and unrighteousness, godless paganism, hating
God, hating Christ, hating the Scripture, hating the true church, and fearing the truth.
There was a Taiwanese general who was asked a question by a medical doctor about how Taiwan escaped
the pandemic initially. He said: “We have an entire department in the Taiwanese government that
monitors Chinese social media, and everything they censor we know to be the truth.” If you’re living in a
reversed world, you have to think in reverse. You’re being lied to all the time.
Satan is the liar king; with a massive supernatural force of demons against whom we wrestle. His
children are liars. The kingdom of darkness is known by its lies. This has penetrated the most sacred
halls of our government, Supreme Court. In 2013 the US Supreme Court struck down the Defense of
Marriage Act to make way for homosexual behavior and marriage, and actually declared in their filing
that religious objections to homosexuality come from hate. God is out; prayer is out. The Ten
Commandments are out; get those off the wall. The Bible is out; blasphemy is in. Immorality is to be
protected, laws are to be made and enforced to normalize perversion. There can’t be any dissent. That’s
why their Twitter accounts are being taken down. And big tech is in cahoots with this paganism; and for
the first time in human history they can shut down anybody they want.
2 Corinthians 10,
3 
Indeed, we live as human beings, but we do not wage war according to human standards;
 4 for the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy
strongholds. We destroy arguments
 5 and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to
obey Christ.
 6 We are ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete.
V1, He doesn’t mean sin, but humanity. V2, We can’t fight this spiritual battle with human strategies.
We’ve to realize that we’re assaulting fortresses; palaces, forts, prisons, and tombs. We’re assaulting
massive stone edifices; we have to destroy them, we don’t expect to do it with human ingenuity or
strategy.
What fortresses? “We are destroying logismos,” ideas, ideologies, philosophies, speculations. We destroy
lies, defined “and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God.” We as a church in the
world have the responsibility to assault the fortresses of lies, that´s why we’re here, to smash down every
idea raised up against the true knowledge of God.
Then on the positive, “and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.” That’s magnificent language,
isn’t it? We turn people from lies to the truth; that’s why we’re here. So do you understand what a threat
we are? We exist in the world for one purpose, and that is to expose the lies and to bring the truth. When
lies dominate the kingdom at every point, when they are the foundation of the society’s laws, we are not
tolerable. But we are the kingdom; the kingdom is here because the King is here.
God is our King. Psalm 47:7, “God is the King of all the earth.” Psalm 74:12, “God is my king.” Psalm
45:6, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; a scepter of uprightness is the scepter of Your
kingdom.” Psalm 10:16, “The Lord is King forever and ever.” Jeremiah 10:10, “But the Lord is the true
God; He is the living God and the everlasting King. The nations cannot survive His indignation.” Isaiah
33:22, “The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king. He will save us.” He doesn’t
need investigating, except to find the truth about Him on the pages of Scripture. He´s holy, holy, holy.
Deuteronomy 10, The Essence of the Law
12 
“And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk
in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,
 13 and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I command you this day for your
good?
 14 Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it;
 15 yet the Lord set his heart in love upon your fathers and chose their descendants after them, you above
all peoples, as at this day.
  16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.
 17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the terrible God,
who is not partial and takes no bribe. 
Unlike politicians, “He doesn’t take a bribe.” God created man in His image, we had a democracy then.
When I think about that, I think about it in three terms:
First reality: is that we can relate, relationships. God is Trinity, so the image of God is the ability to have
relationship, relate. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He created him in God’s image, so relating must have
been in their minds.
Second reality: is to create, not procreate, every living thing procreates, but to create something other
than yourself. This is where the image of God is most often seen in the massive amount of creation from
technology to art and everything in between that comes out of man. Man has that component, not just to
procreate, monkeys don’t write symphonies, but to write a symphony.
Third reality: God created man in His image to relate, create, and dominate. Dominate? Yes. Man’s king
of the earth. Genesis 1:26, “Let’s make man in Our image,” first thing He says, “according to Our
likeness; and let them rule.” V28, “Let them rule.” It’s a Hebrew word, radah. It means “to dominate by
force.”
So Adam was created to be a king; that’s right. God’s ultimate plan is for a king to reign forever, right?
When men fell, when Adam fell, his crown was taken away and Satan became king. We now live,
according to Acts 26, in the dominion of Satan. But God promised that there would come a greater king
who would crush Satan’s head. But until He came, and even after He came, all human history is the story
of the usurper, the evil king, Satan, ruling the world through other evil kings, until the coming of the
King of righteousness.
Even the best of kings is evil. They’re all fakes and frauds. In some sense, they’re all part of the kingdom
of darkness, because the system is in the darkness. We’re grateful when there are rulers that are
Christians. But the reality is that Satan rules the world, the whole world lies in His power, and so it’s just
a series of evil kingdoms. They can be influenced by Christianity, but eventually they fall into evil, as
we’ve seen. All these kings are previews of Antichrist, all of them.
1 John 2:18, “Children, it is the last hour! As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many
antichrists have come. From this we know that it is the last hour.” Any godless leader is an antichrist.
History reflects that God designed kings to be the norm; and when a king is relatively good, there is
blessing because the government functions to punish evildoers and to protect those who do good, like
Romans 13 lays it out. But history reflects that kings, by God’s design, are a common grace given to us;
but there’s no expectation that they would do what the righteous King will do, and that is to rule
according to the will of God. Evil kings then are more pictures of Antichrist than they are of Christ.
Few glimpses of pictures of Christ. David, a man after God’s own heart, 1 Samuel 13. All along, God has
some Christ-honoring rulers, but none of them can picture perfectly the final Ruler, nor can any of them
crush Satan. Even a believing ruler in a nation can’t overpower the darkness, can’t vanquish the usurper.
Two illustrations of this. First, Daniel 2:37, the pagan king Nebuchadnezzar had these dreams. “You, O
king, are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength
and the glory.” Really? He was dreaming that about himself; that’s a problem. By Daniel 4, he’s
spending seven years out in the field like a beast until he learns that the true God reigns. You may think
you reign as some king, but only God reigns.
The New Testament counterpart, one of the most serious warnings to evil rulers is the account of Herod,
who is impressed with himself as Nebuchadnezzar was. Acts 12:20, “On an appointed day,” V21, “Herod
put on his royal apparel, took his seat on the rostrum” (the judgment seat) “and began delivering an
address to the people. The people kept crying out, ‘The voice of a god and not of a man!’ And
immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he didn’t give God the glory, and he was eaten by
worms and died.” Next verse: “But the word of God continued to grow and to be multiplied.” The king
will die; the word will live. No matter what the king does, he will die and the word will live.
The New Testament is the introduction of the perfect king: our Lord Jesus Christ. Luke 1:30, an angel
comes to Mary, Gabriel says, “Don’t be afraid; you have found favor with God. And behold, you will
conceive in your womb and bear a son, you shall call His name Jesus. He will be great and will be called
the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; and He will
reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.” This is the annunciation that
the true King has arrived. From then on, this is something important. Luke 8:1, “He began going around
from one city and village to another, proclaiming and preaching the kingdom of God.” The kingdom had
come because the King had come.
Luke 9, “He called the twelve together, gave them power and authority over all the demons, healed
diseases. And He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God.” V26, “Whoever is ashamed of Me and
My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the
Father and of the holy angels. And I say to you truthfully, there are some of those standing here who will
not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.”
Luke 10:9, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” Luke 11:20, “The kingdom of God has come
upon you.” Luke 12:31, “Seek His kingdom, and these will be added to you. Do not be afraid, little flock,
for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom.” All the way through Luke.
John 18, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight.
But My kingdom is not of this world.” So who is in this kingdom, this kingdom of light in the midst of the
kingdom of darkness? Those who are born again. John 3:3, Jesus said, “Unless you’re born again you
can’t see the kingdom of God. You have to be born from above.”
To those who are regenerate and those who repent, “Repent, for the kingdom is here,” Matthew 4:17. For
those who are humble and broken over their sin, hear these words of our Lord: “Blessed are the poor in
spirit,” the spiritually bankrupt “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn over
their sin, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are
those who hunger and thirst for righteousness they know they don’t have, they will be satisfied. Blessed
are the merciful, they’ll receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, they’ll see God. Blessed are the
peacemakers, they’ll be called sons of God. Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of
righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
What identifies you as in the kingdom is, spiritual bankruptcy that comes to God, mourning over your
sin, crying out for His righteousness that you do not possess, receiving that righteousness which manifests
itself in meekness, mercy, purity, peace, and persecution. It’s the dependent who is in the kingdom. He
said, “Unless you become like a little child, you can’t enter My kingdom,” Matthew 18.
Mark 1:14, “Jesus came, into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying,” (Important) “The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come.” The invisible kingdom, the spiritual kingdom. “Repent and
believe in the gospel.’”
How do I get out of the kingdom of darkness, that will be destroyed, into the kingdom of light? I must be
regenerated; a work from heaven. I must repent; that’s a work that the Spirit does to convict me of sin,
righteousness and judgment. I must recognize my spiritual bankruptcy and poverty, and that there is no
righteousness which can at all satisfy God’s requirement for a kingdom citizen. We must understand that
we are utterly dependent, we have nothing to offer God, we come like a child, with no accomplishments.
We have to believe!
A king was there. The Jews were not interested in that king, as our nation is not interested in Him. Acts
2:22, “Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with
miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves
know—this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a
cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.” John put it this way: “He came unto His own
and His own received Him not.” He was in the world, the world was made by Him, and the world knew
Him not. Acts 2:24, “But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was
impossible for Him to be held in its power.” There is a king you can’t kill; He already died and rose and
lives forever.
Revelation 1:5, “Jesus Christ, the faithful witness [the prōtotokos, the premier One from the dead], and
the ruler of the kings of the earth. To Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood—and
He has made us to be a kingdom, [a kingdom of priests]” Which means we have direct and total access to
the Holy of Holies, “to His God and Father—to Him.” The faithful witness, firstborn from the dead, the
ruler of the kings of the earth, to Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood, to Him
who made us to be a kingdom, to Him who made us priests to His God and Father, “to Him be the glory
and the dominion forever and ever.” And everybody said, “Amen.” This is our King.
The kingdom is here. The King is here, He lives in His people: Christ in you, the hope of glory. But the
day is coming when He will come to establish His kingdom on earth. Revelation 11:15, “Seventh angel
sounded; and there were voices, loud voices in heaven, saying, The kingdom of the world has become the
kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.” Right now the kingdom of the world is not His, it’s ruled by
wicked kings. It’s under the rule of Satan. But the day is coming when the kingdom of the world, not just
the invisible kingdom, but the visible kingdom, the world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of
His Christ, He will reign forever. V18 says there’ll be wrath when He comes, and He will destroy those
who rejected Him.
Revelation 19:11, “I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful
and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. His eyes are a flame of fire, and on His head
are many diadems; He has a name written on Him which no one knows except Himself. He’s clothed with
a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies which are in heaven,
clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses. From His mouth comes a
sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He
treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty. And on His robe and on His thigh He has
a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.” And every eye will see Him. Right now the
King is invisible. The true King is here, He lives in His people, lives in you and me.
Now not everybody who claims to be in the kingdom is in the kingdom. I hear very wicked people say
they’re religious, they’re spiritual, they go to a certain church. Listen to the words of our Lord in
Matthew 7: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Not everyone who goes to Mass one day and the next day makes laws that blaspheme God should expect
to be going to heaven. “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but
he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord,
Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, Your name perform many
miracles?’” That’s very religious. “I’ll declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me.’” Why did
He not know them? It’s the character of their lives that is the acid test of whether they are kingdom
citizens or not. We know the kingdom is mixed. Matthew 13, “The wheat and tares grow together; only
the angels can separate.”
So how do we respond? If you’re a non-Christian let me say this to you: repent and believe in the gospel;
the King is here, the kingdom is here. Matthew 6:33, “Seek His kingdom and His righteousness, and all
these things will be added to you.” What things? The things that you will ever need in time and eternity.
What is the reward of coming into the kingdom? Well, the truth will make you free.  Luke 22:29-30, “And
just as My Father granted Me a kingdom, I grant you that you may eat and drink at My table in the
kingdom,” – you get to be at the head table in the eternal kingdom and sit forever with Christ; oh, not
just at the table, Revelation 3:21 – “and sit down with Me on My throne, as I sat on My Father’s throne.”
So if you are a non-Christian, the kingdom is here, the King is here; repent and believe the gospel.
Now what about a Christian? Well, you could take a cue from the apostle Paul. The apostle Paul in his
calling from God showed us essentially what we all should be doing. He says to King Agrippa, giving his
testimony in Acts 26, “I did not prove disobedient to the heavenly vision. The Lord gave me a vision, a
call, and I was obedient.” So what was that obedience? “I kept declaring both to those of Damascus first,
and also at Jerusalem and then throughout all the region of Judea, and even to the Gentiles. From where
I started in Damascus to the whole Gentile world, I declared the message,” what was the message? “that
they should repent and turn to God.” So you’re a believer? What’s your responsibility? The same thing:
“Go into all the world and preach the gospel.”
We are unique people. 1 Peter 2:9-10, “You’re a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people
for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of
darkness into His marvelous light.” That’s why we’re here, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of
Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; and those excellencies are intolerable in
the kingdom of lies. You are aliens, you are strangers. Keep your behavior excellent, even when they
slander you, even when they persecute you. So I would suggest that this is what we do. And blessed are
you when you’re persecuted, for that’s evidence you’re in the kingdom.
1 Timothy 2, “First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made
on behalf of all men,” Are you ready for this? “for kings and for all who are in authority.” So what are
we supposed to be doing for the evil king and the evil empire and all his evil agents? What’s our
responsibility? Proclaim the truth and do what? Pray. What do we pray for? We pray for their salvation,
V4, “It is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior to do that, because God desires all men to be
saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.” So we have to proclaim the truth. We can’t hedge. We
can’t compromise. We can’t hide it. We can’t soften it. We proclaim the truth, and we pray for the
salvation of those in leadership, from the president on down.
2 Timothy 2:22-26, “Flee youthful lusts, pursue righteousness with those who call on the Lord from a
pure heart.” Be a part of the family of God, the fellowship of those who are calling on the Lord from a
pure heart. Don’t get caught up in stupid arguments like evangelicals. “Refuse foolish and ignorant
speculations, they just produce quarrels. The Lord’s slave must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all,
able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps
God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses
and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will .” So there we are
again; we’re going after people who are caught in the snare of the devil. That requires obedience to the
commission, prayer, and the truth, because we’re leading them to the truth. We’re bringing every
thought captive to Christ.
Revelation 1:5, This is the benediction. “Now, to Jesus Christ, the faithful witness,” He’s our model for
faithful witness. “the firstborn from the dead,” we followed Him; we were dead and we live, “the ruler of
the kings of the earth.” And we reign in Him “To Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His
blood—and He has made us to be a kingdom, priests with access to His God and Father—to Him be the
glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.” V7, “Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every
eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. So it is
to be. Amen.”

The kingdom of light amidst the kingdom of darkness

 3-Gods kingdom is not of this world Feb 7/21
https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/81-103/gods-kingdom-is-not-of-this-world

Every form of racism, critical race theory, intersectionality, systemic racism, White privilege, the
oppressed and the oppressors, other issues coming out of the feminist agenda and homosexual agenda,
has done no small amount of damage to leaders, churches, relationships, schools, denominations; and the
damage is far from over. It is now aided and abetted by the entire power structure of the United States of
America; unfortunately unwitting, undiscerning evangelicals got sucked into the philosophies behind all
of this racism, they’ve taken up that cause, and has created chaos with regard to the clarity of the gospel
message, because they keep talking about it as if it was part of the gospel, which it is clearly not. Neither
is it part of the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God; it is just the latest version of human philosophy
coming to fruition.
It started about three hundred years ago with the Enlightenment. Some philosophers, Rousseau the most
well-known, who had a very simple agenda: eliminate God and Christianity. To demonstrate that people
are good, and it’s society that makes them bad, overturn the biblical doctrine of human depravity. He
was such a brilliant writer that he had an amazing impact. He was followed by people like Marx, who
turned it toward economics; Freud, who turned it toward sex. Carried down to our day today; and
unfortunately the church has lacked discernment to understand when they’ve picked up the devil’s
causes.
John 18,
Jesus answered, “My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants
36 

would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world.
There’s no connection between the kingdom of God and the world.
Romans 8,
7 
For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, indeed it cannot;
 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
We heard the echo, still hearing in our ears, of the fact that there is a distinction between the flesh and
the spirit, those in the flesh cannot please God. The flesh, the world, the kingdom of darkness, one in the
same.
Luke 17, The Coming of the Kingdom
20 
Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, he answered them, “The kingdom
of God is not coming with signs to be observed;
21 
nor will they say, ‘Lo, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”
The kingdom is here because the King is here, He’s here alive in His church. So His kingdom has nothing
to do with this world; His kingdom is here, separate from the world.
Matthew 16, Peter’s Declaration about Jesus
13 
Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesare′a Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do men say
that the Son of man is?”
 14 And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Eli′jah, and others Jeremiah or one of the
prophets.”
 15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
 16 Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
 17 And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this
to you, but my Father who is in heaven.
 18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not
prevail against it.
 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
 20 Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.
Jesus Foretells His Death and Resurrection
21 
From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things
from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.
 22 And Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to
you.”
 23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on
the side of God, but of men.”
The Cross and Self-Denial
24 
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his
cross and follow me.
 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
 26 For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give
in return for his life?
 27 For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every
man for what he has done.
  28 Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of
man coming in his kingdom.”
How in the world in one moment can you be a spokesman for God and then a voice for Satan? When you
cross the line from God’s interests to man’s. “Get behind Me, Satan”? Hupage. “Go away, Satan.” Same
verb used in Matthew 4:10, at the temptation He dismissed the devil. Strong, intense emotion. Fierce
rebuke. Jesus speaks to Peter as the voice of Satan exactly the same way He spoke to Satan himself. The
most devastating rebuke to a disciple: “You’re in partnership with the devil because you picked up man’s
cause.” This is crushing. “Peter” means stone. “You are a rock, now you are a stumbling stone. You’re in
the way of God’s purposes. You’re not setting your mind on God’s interests.” Colossians 3, “Set your
mind on things above and not on things on the earth.” This is the worst rebuke, and for a loving disciple
who just hit the high point of his life, the low point must have been completely crushing.
The devil’s way is to get people who confess the truth caught up in the devil’s work, crossing from the
kingdom of light back into the kingdom of darkness to convince us the kingdom of light can advance
without suffering. “You don’t need to go to the cross. We can get You what You need without the cross.”
He says to Jesus exactly what the devil had said: “I’ll give You all the kingdoms of the world, just bow
down to me.” Peter’s recycling that same temptation: “You don’t need to die, there’s another way. You
don’t need to suffer. You can make concessions. You can make compromises with the dark kingdom.”
Peter’s sin has been repeated incessantly through church history, where people who declare that they
believe the truth about Christ make alliances with Satan. Christians have been trying to use the world,
the darkness, the flesh, the spiritually dead, to somehow help Jesus build His kingdom, and they have
struck deals with the devil. Every effort to advance the kingdom by means of a worldly scheme is an
attempt to do God’s work the devil’s way, to avoid suffering, rejection and hostility. Is the temptation
the devil gave and that Peter recycled.
Did we forget that we lose our lives for the gospel? Did we forget that there’s no crown without a cross?
That’s always the devil’s temptation: “Hey, we’ll advance the church by having a very powerful lobby
group in Washington DC, manipulating politicians. We’ll advance the kingdom by cleverly developing
some strategies for the church to win over the kingdom of darkness citizens, to pull them in. We’ll be
accepting and tolerant, we won’t talk about sin. We’ll devise some worldly means to make them feel like
this is normal life; this is going to be like a concert they went to, or a TED Talk they heard.” All of it has
one thing in mind: to avoid the suffering that comes with the confrontation of the gospel.
While we know the gospel is good news, the first message of the gospel is, “You are a sinner and you are
on your way to eternal hell.” This culture does not want to hear that. For 300 years they’ve been building
a philosophy that is now in full fruition that people are basically good and they have a right to be
whoever they are. This is their philosophy in a nutshell. The reason people are unfulfilled is because there
is a historic white patriarchy who has created religion, which is false, since there is no God. They use
religion to oppress and incarcerate the people in general. They have created laws, given them religion as
a covering, sort of sacred blanket, in order to prevent people from doing what they want to do: “We’ve
got to throw all that off and let everybody whatever they want to be,” that’s how you get to a hundred
genders. It all started when they wanted to say man is good, it’s culture that makes him bad, it’s the elite
who rose to the top who created the culture that inhibits their sexual desires. They wanted a philosophy,
to cancel God and morality so they could live wretched lives. Nothing noble about it.
How is it that the church has taken up that cause, cultural Marxism or whatever? Good intentions and a
love for Christ prompting efforts to advance the kingdom by political lobbying by pragmatism, by social
change, by shallow gospel, by entertainment, emotional manipulation, acceptance of sin, is to overthrow
the purpose of God and to do the devil’s work.
2 Corinthians 10,
 5 
We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought
captive to obey Christ,
 6 being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete.
Our Lord’s way is to stay on your side, the kingdom of light; we have to smash these ideological
fortifications raised up against the knowledge of God and liberate the people who are held captive by
those things, and lead them, in every sense, to the knowledge of Christ.
1 John 2,
15 
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in
him.
 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the
Father but is of the world.
 17 And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides for ever.
James 3, Two Kinds of Wisdom
13 
Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good life let him show his works in the meekness of
wisdom.
 14 But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the
truth.
 15 This wisdom is not such as comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish.
 16 For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.
 17 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good
fruits, without uncertainty or insincerity.
 18 And the harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
James 4, Friendship with the World
1
 What causes wars, and what causes fightings among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your
members?
 2 You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war.
You do not have, because you do not ask.
 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
 4 Unfaithful creatures! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore
whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
 5 Or do you suppose it is in vain that the scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit which he has
made to dwell in us”?
 6 But he gives more grace; therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
 8 Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your
hearts, you men of double mind.
 9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to dejection.
 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you.
Partnering with the devil is no positive strategy. The kingdom of light needs no help from the devil. The
world with its corruption is on the way to destruction, offers us absolutely nothing. How do we relate to
the world separated from it? We, by compassion and mandate, we don’t court it, we warn the world. We
don’t adopt its ideas, we don’t take up its causes, we warn it. If we end up taking up its causes, the
compromises are totally destructive: destructive to the clarity of our message and destructive to the very
life of the church, which is supposed to be unified in love. The kingdom is righteousness, joy, and peace.
Evangelicalism has become like Peter, offering a better way than bold, compassionate proclamation of
the gospel that offends the sinner; a better way that seeks popularity and acceptance, rather than
hostility and rejection; a way that is very different from the way of our Lord. The apostles turned the
world upside-down with absolutely no help from it. The evil kingdom of darkness hates all that loves
God. The kingdom of darkness loves all that God hates.
Our evil rulers have exchanged the truth of God for lies, Romans 1. It’s a kingdom under the power of
the ultimate liar, Satan. They worship the creature more than the Creator. They suppress the truth. They
are under judgment. Godless rulers are many, all throughout human history; we saw that in the Old
Testament. They’re all previews of the final godless ruler, the Antichrist. That’s why the New Testament
says, “There are many antichrists.” There’s a final one.
Revelation 13 The First Beast
1
 And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems upon its horns
and a blasphemous name upon its heads.
 2 And the beast that I saw was like a leopard, its feet were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s
mouth. And to it the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority.
 3 One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth
followed the beast with wonder.
 4 Men worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast,
saying, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?”
5 
And the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to
exercise authority for forty-two months;
 6 it opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling, that is,
those who dwell in heaven.
 7 Also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And authority was given it over
every tribe and people and tongue and nation,
 8 and all who dwell on earth will worship it, every one whose name has not been written before the
foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb that was slain.
 9 If any one has an ear, let him hear:
10 
If any one is to be taken captive,
    to captivity he goes;
if any one slays with the sword,
    with the sword must he be slain.
Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.
We’re headed toward the ultimate God-hater, the Antichrist. But every godless, Christ-hating ruler in
human history has been a preview of the final Antichrist.
Two kingdoms: one is God’s, the other is Satan’s; one is marked by truth, the other by lies; one exalts
Christ, the other exalts Antichrist. Those kingdoms cannot mix. All that always goes wrong in history
with the church is when the church endeavors to do that. The Bible warns us about that, Ephesians 5:5,
“For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an
idolater, has an entrance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words,
for because of these things the wrath of god comes upon the sons of disobedience.” Do you see it? They’re
immoral, impure, covetous, idolaters; no part in the kingdom of Christ and God. Don’t be deceived by
them, they’re under divine wrath, they’re the sons of disobedience.
V7, “Therefore do not be partakers with them; for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in
the Lord; walk as children of Light.” That’s just so basic. Stay on your side “(for the fruit of the Light
consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth.)” What are you doing over on the side of lies,
deception bitterness, anger, hatred, rancor and vengeance? What are you doing on that side?
Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic is useless.
Colossians 2:6, “Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him,” (walk in light,
walk in Christ) “having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith,
just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.”
What characterizes the people who walk in Christ? They are overflowing with Gratitude. Does that seem
like a dominating reality in the evangelical world, thankfulness? V8, “See to it that no one takes you
captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the
elementary principles of the world, rather than to Christ.” Don’t let anybody seduce you away from
Christ. Colossians 3:1, “You’ve been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ
is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on things that are on earth.”
That’s pretty simple, isn’t it?
V12, “You’ve been chosen of God, holy, beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility,
gentleness, patience; bearing with one another, forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against
anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. Beyond all these things put on love, which is the
perfect bond of unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Let the word of Christ richly dwell in
you.” V17, “Whatever you do in word and deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks
through Him to God the Father.”
That’s how the Christian life is to be lived. We’re not angry, we’re not hostile, we’re not rancorous, we’re
not vengeful, we’re not screaming about inequities; we don’t live that way. We stay on the side of
righteousness, peace, joy, and gratitude, because our sins have been forgiven. Who am I to go out and
demand anything of anybody who have no right to the forgiveness God has given me?
2 Corinthians 6, The Temple of the Living God
14 
Do not be mismated with unbelievers. For what partnership have righteousness and iniquity? Or what
fellowship has light with darkness?
 15 What accord has Christ with Be′lial? Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?
 16 What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God
said,
“I will live in them and move among them,
and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord,
17 

and touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you,

 and I will be a father to you,
18 

and you shall be my sons and daughters,

says the Lord Almighty.”
This is the most direct and powerful attack on compromise. Two kingdoms: one is marked by
righteousness, light, Christ, believers, and God; the other is marked by lawlessness, darkness, Belial
(satan), unbelievers, and idols. There is no possibility of those two coming together in any common cause
that has any spiritual or eternal significance, no possibility, none whatsoever.
Now one kingdom is old, another is new; one is earthly, another is heavenly; one is deadly, the other is
life-giving; one is material, the other is spiritual; one is lying, the other is truthful. So the command, V14,
“Do not be bound together with unbelievers.” “Does that mean if you’re married to an unbeliever,
divorce them?” No, Paul dealt with that in chapter 7. “If you’re married to an unbeliever, you stay with
them.”
Does that mean that we become monastics and we go live in a cave?” No. Paul actually says in this very
same letter that he became all things to all men that he might win some. John 17, Jesus prays, “ Father, I
don’t ask that You take them out of the world, I ask that You keep them from the Evil One. They have to
be here to fulfill the Great Commission. Don’t let them get seduced by Satan. Don’t let them get pulled
over into the kingdom of darkness.”
I was listening to a pastor who was reciting some of the current issues in the Lutheran church, the
Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, and his heart was broken because it was basically under the
control of lesbians and transgender people. How does that happen? It doesn’t happen all of a sudden, it
happens by long sequence of small compromises.
Don’t be bound together. Talking about all kinds of laws, agriculture. He’s talking about donkeys and
oxen and clothes. Deuteronomy 22:10, “You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together.” That’s
just pretty practical. Try to hook up a donkey and an ox to the same cart? They have two different
natures, they have two different gaits, two different temperaments. That’s a prohibition. They can’t
function together in a common effort; and that is what’s behind this statement. You can’t bring the
kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light together in any common cause. You can’t pick up the
world’s causes and link them to the divine cause and mandate of the gospel.
Jeremiah 2, God Pleads with Israel to Repent
1
 The word of the Lord came to me, saying,
 2 “Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem, Thus says the Lord,
I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride,
how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown.
Israel was holy to the Lord, the first fruits of his harvest.
3 

All who ate of it became guilty; evil came upon them, says the Lord.”
4 
Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel.
 5 Thus says the Lord:
“What wrong did your fathers find in me
    that they went far from me,
and went after worthlessness, and became worthless?
They did not say, ‘Where is the Lord
6 

    who brought us up from the land of Egypt,

who led us in the wilderness, in a land of deserts and pits,
in a land of drought and deep darkness,
     in a land that none passes through,
    where no man dwells?’
And I brought you into a plentiful land
7 

    to enjoy its fruits and its good things.

But when you came in you defiled my land,
    and made my heritage an abomination.
8 
The priests did not say, ‘Where is the Lord?’
    Those who handle the law did not know me;
the rulers transgressed against me;
    the prophets prophesied by Ba′al,
    and went after things that do not profit.
9 
“Therefore I still contend with you, says the Lord,
    and with your children’s children I will contend.
10 
For cross to the coasts of Cyprus and see,
    or send to Kedar and examine with care;
    see if there has been such a thing.
Has a nation changed its gods,
11 

    even though they are no gods?

But my people have changed their glory
    for that which does not profit.
Be appalled, O heavens, at this,
12 

    be shocked, be utterly desolate,

                says the Lord,
for my people have committed two evils:
13 

    they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters,

    and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns, that can hold no water.
V13, here’s the problem: Who does that? What kind of folly is that? That’s what they did. God was not
enough, they had to make all kinds of forays into the darkness. All Satan ever wants to do is disrupt the
work of God; Are we clear about that? Do you think he wants to help? Satan wants to disrupt the work
of God, according to what Scripture says, two ways: one, by joining the church, by sowing tares among
the wheat, Matthew 13; two, by seducing the church to join the world. People of God are constantly
warned against that.
Romans 16, Final Instructions
17 
I appeal to you, brethren, to take note of those who create dissensions and difficulties, in opposition to
the doctrine which you have been taught; avoid them.
 18 For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by fair and flattering
words they deceive the hearts of the simple-minded.
19 
For while your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, I would have you wise as to what is
good and guileless as to what is evil;
 20 then the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be
with you.
You don’t want him as an ally, and you don’t need to fear him either. Currently, turning the church into
a racist, feminist, homosexual battleground by picking up the philosophies of the darkness is a violation
of this simple command. The kingdom of light joining the bitter, vengeful, graceless philosophy, godless
philosophy spawned out of 300 years of God-hating, Christ-rejecting, anti-family, anti-Christian atheists,
who were driven by sexual perversion. Bringing the kingdom of light into any connection to that is
unthinkable.
But they say people are basically good, and Christianity denies that; and that has to be overturned.
People need to know they’re good and they should be able to do anything they want to do; and it’s only
the bad people who got into power and made laws against all sexual behavior. Man should be free
because, basically, he’s good. Let him do whatever he wants; don’t restrain him. That’s what religion has
done. We need to get rid of religion. That’s the bottom line difference at the start in the gospel. We say
man is basically what? Evil. In the kingdom of darkness, man is basically good.
Mark 7,
18 
And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes
into a man from outside cannot defile him,
 19 since it enters, not his heart but his stomach, and so passes on?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.)
 20 And he said, “What comes out of a man is what defiles a man.
 21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery,
 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.
 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man.”
The problem is not what somebody did to your ancestors, the problem is you. It’s you. When Christians
give up that point they cut the gospel off at its start.
“God looked at the earth,” (Genesis 6) “and said, ‘Nothing but evil continually.’” They had a completely
different view of humanity in the kingdom of darkness, that man is basically good, and so he ought to be
able to do whatever he wants. The kingdom of light has had too much influence, and it’s taken away
freedom. “We’re going to get rid of the kingdom of light; we’re going to get rid of all of it, every bit of it;
get it out of our culture, and we’re going to become obsessed with sex, not just at a personal level and
pornography, but at a political level, so that all you want to talk about is the rights of people who are
perverted sexually because they’ve overthrown God, at least they think they have.
Paul supports the command in V14 by looking into three areas, which will be obvious: the past, the
present, and the future. But let me just start with the past. “Bound together” is drawn out of
that Deuteronomy 22:10 passage about the ox and the donkey; and that reminds us prohibitions in the
Old Testament with regard to Israel. I read you from Jeremiah. But let me just remind you of things that
God said to Israel about being bound together with unbelievers.
Let’s look at the past. Exodus 23:31-32; “I’ll fix your boundary in the Promised Land from the Read Sea
to the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the River Euphrates; I will deliver the inhabitants
of the land into your hand, and you will drive them out before you.” That’s pretty serious. God knew the
impact of Pagans living side-by-side with the Jewish people, so He told them, “You need to drive them
out; this is your land. I gave it to Abraham in a covenant promise.” V32, “You shall make no covenant
with them or with their gods.” He wanted them driven out because they pose such a threat to the integrity
of His people.
Exodus 34:12, “Watch yourselves that you make no covenant with the inhabitants of the land into which
you’re going, or it will become a snare in your midst. But rather, you’re to tear down their altars and
smash their sacred pillars and cut down their Asherim.” – false worship location – “But rather, you are
to tear them down, for you shall not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a
jealous God – otherwise you might make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land and they would play
the harlot with their gods and sacrifice to their gods, and someone might invite you to eat of his sacrifice,
and you might take some of his daughters for your sons, and his daughters might play the harlot with
their gods and cause your sons also to play the harlot with their gods. You have no business making any
alliance with the enemy.”
Deuteronomy 7, “When the Lord your God brings you into the land,” – now they were on the edge of the
land ready to go in – “the land where you’re entering to possess it, clears away many nations before you,
the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, seven nations greater and
stronger than you, and the Lord is going to take care of them to bring you in, and when the Lord Your
God delivers them before you and you defeat them, then you will utterly destroy them,” – wow, that’s
how dangerous they were – “utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them, show no favor
to them.
Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor
shall you take their daughters for your sons. For they will turn your sons away from following Me to
serve other gods; and then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you and He will quickly destroy
you. But thus you shall do to them: you shall tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, hew down
their Asherim, and burn their graven images with fire. For you are a holy people,” – a separate people –
“holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out
of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
“The Lord did not set His love on you or choose you because you were more in number than other
peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the Lord loved you; and He brought you here
with His mighty hand out of Egypt. Make no alliance. Go to war with them; eliminate them.”
Isaiah picks up the same cry a number of places in his prophecy. God gave them laws that kept them
socially disconnected. They had clothing laws. They had dietary laws. They had calendar laws. They had
all kinds of laws and prescriptions of all phases of life, which made it – those were designed, not for some
spiritual benefit; those were designed to make it very, very difficult for them to interact with other
people.
One of the cries that led to the Holocaust in Europe was the fact that the Jews never amalgamated. They
never mingled with the other populations of people. And Hitler used them as a threat, as if they were
plotting people’s destruction. People didn’t interact with them; and this was part of the legacy of that
original prescription that was intended to help them stay separate from the nations who worshiped idols.
So, don’t be bound together with unbelievers isn’t something new; it was very clear in the past.
What about the present? Look what He says immediately after that in the present tense, speaking to us:
“What partnership have righteousness and lawlessness? What fellowship has light with darkness? What
harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what
agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we’re the temple of the living God.”
In the present tense you have these five comparisons: “What partnership has righteousness with
lawlessness?” Partnership, the word metochē, only appears here; but another form of it appears in Luke
5:7, speaking of Peter’s business of fishing, the partners in his business. Another form of it is used in
Hebrews to speak of our union with Christ. So he’s saying, “You don’t make common union with
righteousness and lawlessness.”
And lawlessness is a characteristic of unbelievers, they are lawless by definition. Matthew’s familiar
passage, rejecting the religious people where our Lord says, “Many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, we did
this and we did that.’ And I’ll say, ‘Depart from Me, I never knew you because of your lawless deeds.’”
There’s no partnership possible between the lawless and the righteous.
First John 3:4-7, is a helpful text to enforce this: “Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness;
and sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no
sin.” Our Lord came to take away sin. Sin is lawlessness. You are righteous; what have you to do with the
lawless? “No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. Little children,
make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous;
the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil’s sinned from the beginning. The Son of God
appeared for the purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.”
V10, “The children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: one who doesn’t practice
righteousness is not of God, nor one who doesn’t love his brother.” Oh? “One who doesn’t love his
brother.” The hatred being spewn out in the race world is not the love of the children of God.
Second, he says, “What fellowship has light with darkness?” Lawlessness talked about behavior, this
talks more about character. “What fellowship has light with darkness?” What koinōnia? Light is truth
and virtue, darkness is lies and sin. Children of light and children of the darkness together in a common
cause that is supposed to have any redemptive value? Impossible. There’s no harmony possible because
of behavior. There’s no harmony possible because of character. Light and dark are mutually exclusive.
Third, he says let’s go from the behavior to the character to the power: “What harmony,” – by the way,
the word “harmony” is sumphōnēsis – what symphony is there between Christ and Belial?” – which is an
Old Testament name used about a dozen times for Satan. Really? That is a very jarring statement.
“What harmony between Christ and Satan?” None. It is unthinkable that Satan would be sought to aid in
the cause of Christ. We have no connection in behavior or character or power or means. What has a
believer in common with an unbeliever? We operate by faith, they operate by sight. We operate by
trusting the power of God, they operate by manipulating people. We operate in the spirit, they operate in
the flesh.
We have nothing in common in behavior, character, power, means, and lastly, identity. That’s a big word
today, isn’t it? You get to invent your own identity. Okay, here’s ours: “What agreement has the temple
of God with idols? For you’re the temple of God.” That’s who we are. Anybody asks you, you can tell
them. I know they can’t see it, but that’s who you are.
“Know you not that you are the temple of the Holy Spirit?” 1 Corinthians 6. John 14:20, Jesus said, “I
am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” You don’t go to a temple because you are the temple of
God, personally, yes, and collectively. “And in Christ there’s neither Jew nor Greek, male or female,
bond or free; we’re all one.”
We have all these radical identities: racial identity, sexual identity, gender identity. Our identity
personally is as the temple of God, and collectively as the temple of God. And the word “temple” here
is naos, and it refers to the Holy of Holies, not just the courtyard. When we say we’re the temple of God,
we are essentially a living ark of the covenant inside the Holy of Holies where God dwells. If a priest went
in there unprepared, he would be killed by God instantaneously.
You don’t allow the kingdom of darkness to join with the temple of God. That sounds like what we read
in 1 Samuel 4, where they took the ark of the covenant and put it in the temple to Dagon. And God says,
“I’m not going to allow that,” and crushed that idol.
Ezekiel has a vision in the eighth chapter – I won’t take time to look at it. But he had a vision in the
eighth chapter, and the vision was God took him into the temple, and he found in the temple all kinds of
idols, everywhere, in the temple of God. And God pronounced to Ichabod, “The glory has departed.”
And there’s a vision there of the glory coming up out of the temple over the door, up into the sky, out
over the hills and disappeared. The glory of God departed when the people of God made alliances with
Satan.
We are God’s temple, and His temple is holy. Don’t be bound together with unbelievers. Don’t be bound
together with those that are lawless. Don’t be bound together with those of the darkness. Don’t be bound
together with the children of Satan. Don’t be bound together with idolators in any common cause that is
supposed to have some spiritual purpose and effect. You cannot advance the kingdom of God that way.
Come out from them and be separate.
Now that takes us to the future. This is very powerful. Just a few minutes to set it before you. “ We’re the
temple of the living God, just as God said,” – verse 16 – ‘I will dwell in them and walk among them; and I
will be their God, and they shall be My people. Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate,’
‘And do not touch what is unclean; and I will welcome you. and I will be a father to you, and you shall be
sons and daughters to Me,’ says the Lord Almighty.”
This is not a call to salvation, no, because he just said we’re the temple, right? We’re the temple of God,
so we’re believers. And he calls us in chapter 7, verse 1, “Beloved.” But He says, “I will, I will, I will, I
will,” four times; and essentially, those are drawn from a mosaic of Old Testament scriptures, “I will, I
will, I will, I will”; and then in chapter 7, verse 1, he call those promises, promises. It’s a mosaic of Old
Testament promises to the people of God.
But there is coming a day – listen – when God will walk with His people, and He will be their God, and
they will be His people, when He will welcome them and be a father to them, and they will be sons and
daughters to Him. What is he talking about? He’s talking about the coming kingdom. Jeremiah 24, “For
I will set My eyes on them for good, and I’ll bring them again to this land; and I will build them up and
plant them. I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am the Lord; and they will be My people, and I will
be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart.” That’s a kingdom promise.
Jeremiah 31:33, “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,”
says the Lord, “I will put My law within them and in their heart I will write it; and I will be their God,
and they shall be My people.” Another promise of the coming salvation of Israel and the kingdom.
Ezekiel 37:26-27, “I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant with
them, And I will set My sanctuary in their midst forever. My dwelling place also will be with them; and I
will be their God, and they will be My people.” This is a promise of the coming kingdom, the millennial
reign of Christ.
In Matthew it’s called the regeneration. In Acts it’s called the times of refreshing and the times of
restitution. Paul calls it the Day of Christ. But it’s the kingdom.
Revelation 19, The Rejoicing in Heaven
1
 After this I heard what seemed to be the mighty voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying,
“Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God,
for his judgments are true and just;
2 

he has judged the great harlot who corrupted the earth with her fornication,
and he has avenged on her the blood of his servants.”
Once more they cried,
3 

“Hallelujah! The smoke from her goes up for ever and ever.”
Revelation 17-18, the destruction of the world, both its religion and its economy.
And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who is seated on
4 

the throne, saying, “Amen. Hallelujah!”

 5 And from the throne came a voice crying,
“Praise our God, all you his servants,
you who fear him, small and great.”
6 
Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like
the sound of mighty thunderpeals, crying,
 “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.
The Rider on the White Horse
11 
Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True,
and in righteousness he judges and makes war.
 12 His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems; and he has a name inscribed which
no one knows but himself.
 13 He is clad in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God.
 14 And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, followed him on white horses.
 15 From his mouth issues a sharp sword with which to smite the nations, and he will rule them with a rod
of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.
 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, King of kings and Lord of lords.
Revelation 20, The Thousand Years
1
 Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key of the bottomless pit and a
great chain.
 2 And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a
thousand years,
 3 and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, that he should deceive the nations no
more, till the thousand years were ended. After that he must be loosed for a little while.
Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom judgment was committed. Also I saw the
4 

souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God, and who had
not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands.
They came to life, and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
 5 The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first
resurrection.
 6 Blessed and holy is he who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power,
but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and they shall reign with him a thousand years.
That’s the fulfillment of the promised kingdom. Isaiah said that the kingdom would be global, Christ
would reign over everything and everyone. Every knee would bow to Yahweh. Every person and nation
would worship and see His glory. There will be perfect justice, fairness, righteousness, truth, peace,
tranquility, no war, economic blessing, abundant reign, longer sunlight, long life, safety, joy.
Daniel says the same thing, but Daniel also adds that Christ will come to be the Lord of that kingdom,
and Zechariah says, “And the Lord will be king over all the earth; in that day the Lord will be the only
one, and His name the only one.”
This may be news to some post-millennialists; but we’re not bringing the kingdom. I heard an evangelical
leader say this last week that we have an urban mandate to redeem the cities. I don’t find that in the
Bible. We have a gospel mandate to warn them of destruction, because that’s what’s coming in
Revelation 18. Our job is not to redeem society, our job is to give the gospel so that one sinner at a time
can come into the kingdom and arrive one day in that kingdom, where there is perfect righteousness and
peace. Again, what’s the point of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, this world is going down; and
evil men grow worse and worse.
Based on God’s words in the past, based upon His distinction between us and the world in the present
and based upon His kingdom promises, V17 then repeats the mandate: “Therefore, come out from their
midst and be separate.” That is taken out of Isaiah 52:11, “Depart, depart, come out, be separate.”
“Do not touch what is unclean; and I’ll welcome you into My kingdom in time. And when that kingdom
comes I’ll be a father to you, and you’ll be sons and daughters to Me.”
1 Chronicles 17,
7 
Now therefore thus shall you say to my servant David, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the
pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel;
 8 and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I
will make for you a name, like the name of the great ones of the earth.
 9 And I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them, that they may dwell in their own
place, and be disturbed no more; and violent men shall waste them no more, as formerly,
 10 from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will subdue all your enemies.
Moreover I declare to you that the Lord will build you a house.
 11 When your days are fulfilled to go to be with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, one
of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom.
 12 He shall build a house for me, and I will establish his throne for ever.
 13 I will be his father, and he shall be my son; I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from
him who was before you,
 14 but I will confirm him in my house and in my kingdom for ever and his throne shall be established for
ever.’”
 15 In accordance with all these words, and in accordance with all this vision, Nathan spoke to David.
Paul extends the promise of God to the Messiah to be his son to all who are in Christ to become sons and
daughters of the King in the kingdom. The promise of God to the king as a son is extended to all of us as
sons and daughters.
2 Corinthians 6, The Temple of the Living God
14 
Do not be mismated with unbelievers. For what partnership have righteousness and iniquity? Or what
fellowship has light with darkness?
 15 What accord has Christ with Be′lial? Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?
 16 What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God
said,
“I will live in them and move among them,
and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord,
17 

and touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you,

and I will be a father to you,
18 

and you shall be my sons and daughters,

says the Lord Almighty.”
We’re headed for the kingdom, aren’t you glad? So, only one response is acceptable:
2 Corinthians 7,
1
Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit,
and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.
Don’t make alliances with the world. Get rid of filthiness, molusmos. That’s only here in the New
Testament; but in other literature we find that it had to do with unholy alliances. Don’t make unholy
alliances.
“Perfecting holiness,” it’s the verb epiteleō, which means it’s eschatological, it’s in the final sense. We’re
headed toward perfect holiness, perfect worship. Live your life in that direction. We need no alliances
with Satan to advance the kingdom. We don’t have a calling to make people more socially acceptable on
their way to eternal hell. Our message is, “Repent, and believe the gospel.”
We need to recover Peter. He was brash, but also teachable, this is his letter; this is what he wants to say
to us, giving us some perspective for the future:
1 Peter 1, A Call to Holy Living
13 
Therefore gird up your minds, be sober, set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the
revelation of Jesus Christ.
 14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance,
 15 but as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct;
 16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
17 
And if you invoke as Father him who judges each one impartially according to his deeds, conduct
yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile.
You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers, not with
18 

perishable things such as silver or gold,

but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.
19 

He was destined before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times for
20 

your sake.
 21 Through him you have confidence in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that
your faith and hope are in God.
22 
Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere love of the brethren, love one
another earnestly from the heart.
 23 You have been born anew, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding
word of God;
 24 for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers, and the flower falls,
25 
but the word of the Lord abides for ever.”
That word is the good news which was preached to you.
That’s a good word, Peter. Get your focus in the right place. 1 Peter 2:9, “You are a chosen race, you’re a
royal priesthood, you’re a holy nation, you’re a people for God’s own possession, so that you may
proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”
That’s what we do. We don’t take up the world’s go nowhere causes. We understand there are issues in
life. They are never going to be resolved until, on a global sense, the King arrives to fix everything, to
reign in righteousness and justice. In the meantime, we can’t do anything in the spiritual sense except
bring the gospel that transforms the sinner.
10 
Once you were no people but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy but now you
have received mercy.
Live as Servants of God
11 
Beloved, I beseech you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war
against your soul.
 12 Maintain good conduct among the Gentiles, so that in case they speak against you as wrongdoers, they
may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
You live a life proclaiming the excellencies of the One who called you out of darkness into His light. You
live a life of excellent behavior, and people will see that life, hear that proclamation; and one day when
God visits, they will be taken with you into glory. That’s why we’re here.

4-Bold proclaimers of Gospel truth Feb 14/21

https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/81-104/bold-proclaimers-of-gospel-truth

The world is made up of two kingdoms. There’s the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. Light
and darkness are incompatible, as lawlessness and righteousness, as Satan and Christ, as unbelievers and
believers.
2 Corinthians 6, The Temple of the Living God
14 
Do not be mismated with unbelievers. For what partnership have righteousness and iniquity? Or what
fellowship has light with darkness?
 15 What accord has Christ with Be′lial? Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?
 16 What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God
said,
“I will live in them and move among them,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
Therefore come out from them,
17 

and be separate from them, says the Lord,

and touch nothing unclean;
then I will welcome you,
and I will be a father to you,
18 

and you shall be my sons and daughters,

says the Lord Almighty.”
The kingdom of light is not ever helped or advanced by an alliance in a common cause with the kingdom
of darkness. Christ does not need Satan to accomplish His purposes, and breaching that reality is what
causes all the compromise that infects, and has always infected, the church.
Colossians 1,
13 
He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved
Son,
 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
 1 Peter 2:9,
9
You are a chosen race, you’re a royal priesthood, you’re a holy nation, you’re a people for God’s own
possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His
marvelous light.
Philippians 2,
15
We are lights shining in the darkness.
We are a light in the world, and we don’t let that light be hid, but it shines in dispelling the darkness. If
you go through the gospel of John you find that one of John’s themes all through his gospel is the issue of
light.
Jesus Christ is introduced to us in John 1 as the Light which comes into the world and lights every man.
In John 3, we are told that He is the Light, but men love darkness rather than Light, because their deeds
are evil. John 8, we are again told that He is the Light of the world. Whoever comes after Him, follows
Him, will not walk in darkness, but will have the Light of life. John 12, we are reminded again to respond
to the light while the light is here.
1 John 1, God Is Light
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him is no
5 

darkness at all.
 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the
truth;
 7 but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of
Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all
unrighteousness.
 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
If you’re among those who are being cleansed of all sin, you live in the Light, you walk in the Light.
Now our calling and our duty as the children of light, as Paul calls us, is to make sure that we shine the
light of the gospel into the darkness; that’s our responsibility. We don’t make alliances, common cause
with the darkness, but we shine the light of the gospel into the darkness. Paul gives testimony to Agripa, a
pagan king, he’s rehearsing what happened to him on the Damascus road:
Acts 26, Paul Tells of His Conversion
“Thus I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests.
12 

 13 At midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining round me and
those who journeyed with me.
 14 And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul,
Saul, why do you persecute me? It hurts you to kick against the goads.’
 15 And I said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.
 16 But rise and stand upon your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve
and bear witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you,
 17 delivering you from the people and from the Gentiles—to whom I send you
 18 to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that
they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’
That is crystal clear, we are lights in the world. We have the same calling the apostle Paul had, to shine
the gospel light into the darkness.
Romans 1:14,
14 
I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish:
 15 so I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.
The Power of the Gospel
16 
For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith, to
the Jew first and also to the Greek.
 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “He who through
faith is righteous shall live.”
The Guilt of Mankind
18 
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by
their wickedness suppress the truth.
Paul was not ashamed to boldly shine the light of the gospel into the darkness. 1 Corinthians 9:16, “Woe
is me if I preach not the gospel.”
1 Corinthians 1:23, “We preach Christ crucified.”
1 Corinthians 2:2, “We preach nothing but Christ and Him crucified.”
1 Corinthians 1,  “30 He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom, our
righteousness and sanctification and redemption; 31 therefore, as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast
of the Lord.”
He is the subject of our preaching.
2 Corinthians 1,
For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we preached among you, Silva′nus and Timothy and I, was not
19 

Yes and No; but in him it is always Yes.

 20 For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why we utter the Amen through him, to the
glory of God.
Even by those who were enemies of Paul, the gospel was preached.
Philippians 1,
18 
What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in that I
rejoice.
19 
Yes, and I shall rejoice. For I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ
this will turn out for my deliverance.
So the simple responsibility that all of us bear as the children of light in the kingdom of light is to
proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ into the darkness, and that means to the people who are in the dark.
Romans 10,
 9 
because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him
from the dead, you will be saved.
 10 For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved.
 11 The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.”
 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and bestows his riches
upon all who call upon him.
 13 For, “every one who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.”
The only way to be saved from eternal hell is to confess Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God
raised Him from the dead, which means you accept His atonement on the cross, validated by His
resurrection. Then this invitation:
14 
But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him
of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher?
 15 And how can men preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those
who preach good news!”
 16 But they have not all heeded the gospel; for Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard
from us?”
 17 So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ.
That is what is behind the Great Commission. We are here in the world for that glorious purpose. The
boldness of Paul, he was not ashamed of the gospel put him in a precarious position at the beginning of
his ministry.
Acts 9:20,
And in the synagogues immediately he proclaimed Jesus, saying, “He is the Son of God.
That would be the most hostile place he could possibly go to. A synagogue? He’s been converted, and he
goes immediately into a synagogue to declare that Jesus, this crucified Jew, is, in fact, the Son of God?
The boldness of Paul validates the fact that he was not ashamed. And the rest of his life he faced the
inevitable hostility that comes to one who’s bold.
Acts 26, Paul Tells of His Preaching
“Wherefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision,
19 

 20 but declared first to those at Damascus, then at Jerusalem and throughout all the country of Judea,
and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God and perform deeds worthy of their
repentance.
 21 For this reason the Jews seized me in the temple and tried to kill me.
 22 To this day I have had the help that comes from God, and so I stand here testifying both to small and
great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass:
 23 that the Christ must suffer, and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light
both to the people and to the Gentiles.”
2 Corinthians 4,
7 
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and
not to us.
  8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair;
 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;
 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our
bodies.
 11 For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be
manifested in our mortal flesh.
 12 So death is at work in us, but life in you.
He’s talking about physical death. It was a reality every day. He was so despised by the Jews and the
Gentiles.
2 Corinthians 6,
3 
We put no obstacle in any one’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry,
 4 but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions,
hardships, calamities,
 5 beatings, imprisonments, tumults, labors, watching, hunger;
 6 by purity, knowledge, forbearance, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love,
 7 truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the
left;
 8 in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true;
 9 as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as punished, and yet not killed;
 10 as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet
possessing everything.
That’s a frantic way to live, shuttling back and forth between persecution and blessing.
2 Corinthians 7,
For even when we came into Macedo′nia, our bodies had no rest but we were afflicted at every turn—
5 

fighting without and fear within.

 6 But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus,
 7 and not only by his coming but also by the comfort with which he was comforted in you, as he told us of
your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced still more.

2 Corinthians 11,
But whatever any one dares to boast of—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast of that.
 22 Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I.
 23 Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one, I am talking like a madman, with far greater labors, far
more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death.
 24 Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one.
 25 Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned. Three times I have been shipwrecked; a
night and a day I have been adrift at sea;
  26 on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people,
danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false
brethren;
 27 in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold
and exposure.
 28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for all the churches.
 29 Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?
Though, he bore all the burdens of the sins of the church as well as the physical suffering.
I just want you to understand that one of the most faithful servants of the Lord was one of the most
persecuted person in the New Testament. Boldness and an unashamed willingness to proclaim the gospel
will inevitably lead to this kind of hostility. Now you may not suffer the same things that Paul suffered,
but there is rejection on that level of boldness that he exhibited. It’s hard to stay with it; Paul did.
2 Corinthians 4, Treasure in Clay Jars
1
 Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.
 2 We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with
God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man’s
conscience in the sight of God.
 3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing.
 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing
the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God.
 5 For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for
Jesus’ sake.
 6 For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
Living by Faith
16 
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed
every day.
 17 For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all
comparison,
 18 because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are
seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
This is the remarkable thing about this man. His life was just a constant act of dodging death because
there was so much fierce hostility against the good news of the gospel. Many people today who would
suggest to Paul that he could maybe alter the message a little bit and it wouldn’t always be a jail ministry.
Maybe you don’t have to be so bold. What is it that you’re saying? This is supposed to be good news.
What is it that you’re saying that is causing this level of hostility everywhere you go? So extreme that he
was even stoned to death, and raised again. He says, “We do not lose heart.” He was faithful to the very
end, to the time that he laid his head on a block and an axe head severed it from his body, and he died in
martyrdom. He never lost heart.
What does that mean? What does that verb mean, ekkakeō in Greek? It basically means to act cowardly,
to defect sinfully, to give in to evil, to burn out. Paul has to remind Timothy not to do that, in 2 Timothy:
“Don’t do that, Timothy. Don’t abandon the gift that was given to you, affirmed by the laying on of the
hands of the elders. Timothy, preach the word; you have God watching you.”
How did this apostle maintain such endurance when so many people bail out at some point? Complaints
about burnout, about the ministry’s too difficult. There are fewer people who leave the ministry that way
than there are who stay in the ministry and just avoid anything that’s offensive. They never say anything
that could make anybody mad.
2 Corinthians 3,
Since we have such a hope, we are very bold,
12 

 13 not like Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not see the end of the fading
splendor.
 14 But their minds were hardened; for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil
remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away.
 15 Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their minds;
 16 but when a man turns to the Lord the veil is removed.
 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
 18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness
from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
The answer is the Holy Spirit was consistently sanctifying him and making him more like Christ; there
was no lack of boldness in the preaching of Christ. As the Holy Spirit sanctified him, he became more like
his Savior, he demonstrated the attributes of the Lord Jesus Himself, one of them was preaching the
truth boldly.
People will debate about whether theology is important. I think a lot of people assume that your
Christian life is lived in some sentimental way, that it’s sort of some emotional connection to God. But the
fact of the matter is you can only live the Christian life with any strength, you can only avoid being a
coward who defects when you have a very firm structure of certainties, absolutes, convictions that keep
you strong, because living the Christian life, shining the light into the darkness is difficult and it can be
painful. You’ll be persecuted, starting with your own family and the people around you to whatever
other level you go.
How do we endure? We have to have some inviolable commitments, unchangeable beliefs. You can’t be
adjusted from them; and Paul had those, and he lays them out here. Paul was able to face the hostile
darkness, take whatever they threw back at him, for the following reasons:
1. “He was certain of the superiority and exclusivity of the new covenant.” He was certain of his message
and the urgency of it, that it was the truth, that it was superior to the old covenant, and that it was the
only hope for sinners.
2 Corinthians 4, 1 Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.
Ephesians 3,
“7 Now if the dispensation of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such splendor that the Israelites
could not look at Moses’ face because of its brightness, fading as this was,
 8 will not the dispensation of the Spirit be attended with greater splendor?”
So you had the old covenant ministry with a certain amount of glory. God revealed Himself partially to
Moses on the mountain in Exodus 33. The glory got on Moses’ face, he came down; that is to say the law
of God is represented as having glory because it comes from the Glorious One. But on Moses’ face, it was
a fading glory. Yes, because the law is a ministry of death. The law only condemns you, it only kills you
and sends you to hell because you violate it.
Far more glorious is the ministry of the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 3, “9 For if there was splendor in the
dispensation of condemnation, the dispensation of righteousness must far exceed it in splendor. 10 Indeed,
in this case, what once had splendor has come to have no splendor at all, because of the splendor that
surpasses it.” It says the glory of the new covenant salvation in Christ far surpasses the fading and
condemning, deadly glory of the law.
V11-12, “11 For if what faded away came with splendor, what is permanent must have much more
splendor. 12 Since we have such a hope, we are very bold.” So why is he so bold? Because he understands
the glory of the new covenant gospel. He is certain of its superiority to the old one, which only condemned
and damned.
The world is under sentence of eternal death because we all have violated the law of God. The law then is
a ministry of death and condemnation. The only way to can escape it, is through the new covenant, which
is a ministry of the Holy Spirit that provides righteousness. Hebrews 11, 40 God had foreseeing something
better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect. . The gospel gives spiritual, eternal life,
gives righteousness, it has eternal glory and provides hope. V12, “such a hope,” a hope for eternal glory
that will never fade away.
He understood that clearly, Philippians 3, “As far as the law was concerned,” “I could put confidence in
my flesh.” “I was circumcised the eighth day, I was of the nation of Israel, I was of the tribe of Benjamin,
I was a Hebrew of Hebrews. I was, as to the law, the most zealous possible, I was a Pharisee. As to zeal, I
was a persecutor of the church because I thought they violated the law of God. As to righteousness found
in the law I was blameless, as far as anybody knew. I kept the law perfectly. But whatever things were
gained to me, those I have counted as loss, as dung, for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all
things to be dung in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have
suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish,”
“That I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from
the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God through faith.”
He understood that the only hope of salvation was in the new covenant, that we are saved by grace
through faith, Romans 5, Results of Justification. 5 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we [a] have
peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. He made it the theme of his writtings.
What drives us in ministry to be faithful and not defect, not give up, not become ashamed because we
can’t take the hostility and the rejection? What drives us is the certainty that this is the sinner’s only
hope. This is the sinner’s only escape. They’re all around us going to hell. Do you care enough to shine
the light into their darkness? Do you understand they have no hope without it? Paul understood that, and
it kept him bold until he was martyred.
2. There’s a second characteristic, certainty, a strong conviction in V1. “Ministry is a mercy.”
It says, “Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we received mercy,” He understood that ministry is a
mercy. In other words, he never lost the wonder over the fact that he was doing something he didn’t
deserve to do: he was not worthy to carry this message, not at all. It was always a stunning shock to him.
He never got over it, even late in his ministry, as he writes 1 Timothy.
1 Timothy 1, Gratitude for Mercy
12 
I thank him who has given me strength for this, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful
by appointing me to his service,
  13 though I formerly blasphemed and persecuted and insulted him; but I received mercy because I had
acted ignorantly in unbelief,
 14 and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 
15 
The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
And I am the foremost of sinners;
 16 but I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect
patience for an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. 
“God in His mercy, Christ in His grace, saved me, to show the world that no one is beyond redemption. I
was the worst.” Jesus tells us that when someone is forgiven much, they have much gratitude. “It is the
mercy of the Lord.”
1 Corinthians 7,
25 
Now concerning the unmarried, I have no command of the Lord, but I give my opinion as one who by
the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy.
Philippians 2,
I have thought it necessary to send to you Epaphrodi′tus my brother and fellow worker and fellow
25 

soldier, and your messenger and minister to my need,

 26 for he has been longing for you all, and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill.
 27 Indeed he was ill, near to death. But God had mercy on him, and not only on him but on me also, lest I
should have sorrow upon sorrow.
 28 I am the more eager to send him, therefore, that you may rejoice at seeing him again, and that I may be less
anxious.
 29 So receive him in the Lord with all joy; and honor such men,
 30 for he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete your service to me.
So Paul says, God is merciful, even allowing me to minister, to preach this glorious gospel, and God is merciful to
surround me with the people that I need. None of us deserve it. No one deserves such a privilege.
2 Corinthians 5,
20 
So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of
Christ, be reconciled to God.
 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness
of God.
Such ministry always is a mercy.
2 Corinthians 3,
4 
Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God.
 5 Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our sufficiency is from God,
 6 who has qualified us to be ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code but in the Spirit; for the
written code kills, but the Spirit gives life.
We’re not adequate. We don’t deserve this, and we aren’t capable. But the Lord chose us and empowers
us by His Holy Spirit.
There was a sense in which Paul understood that even his own unworthiness was not a hindrance to what
the Lord could do through his faithful life. I don’t think he ever got over that. I think always through his
life as a person who was bent on imprisoning Christians at one time, that he was the worst antichrist
activist on the planet; and the Lord gave him the ministry of the gospel and the new covenant, and he was
so aware of how wretched he was. What an antichrist life he lived, that he always saw ministry as a
mercy, and it sustained him out of sheer gratitude.
3. “He was certain about the need for a pure heart.” “We’ve renounced the things hidden because of
shame.”
All kinds of false accusations were thrown against Paul. We know that there were people who said he
falsified the number of converts that he had. There were people who said he had a hidden life of sin.
Terrible things were said about Paul. He was brutally slandered even by other preachers. Philippians 1.
They were trying to wound him while he was already feeling the wounds of his imprisonment. He had
lived a life essentially as a Pharisee in which he had developed a very high skill in hiding sin. That’s what
Pharisees are; they’re coverup artists, they’re hypocrites.
Jesus said they are whitewashed tombs; on the outside they look clean, and on the inside they’re
wretched with dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. They were the most zealous of all the Jews, the
most acquainted with the law, the most fastidious about supposedly observing it. They were experts at a
hidden life of shame, because false religion doesn’t restrain the flesh, false religion does not overcome sin.
So when you have somebody who appears very religious and you don’t see the evil in their life, you are
looking at what false religion has to produce, and that is the best of all spiritual hypocrites. It seems to me
the more external decor, the less internal reality.
What does shame mean here? Anything disgraceful, dishonorable, that produces shame. Paul says, “I’ve
renounced secret shame.” We wish sometimes that we knew when we hear people speak or preach or we
know some Christian who’s seemingly representing the Lord Jesus Christ but something seems wrong
there, we wish we knew what really was going on inside that individual. Sometimes we find out, or we
don’t. But we have a right to expect of those who minister the gospel that there is no secret life of shame;
and when there is, it is devastating.
2 Corinthians 7,
1
Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit,
and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.
You’ve got to be dealing with your heart.
Matthew 15, Things That Defile
10 
And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand:
 11 not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.” 
Paul knew that if he was going to be faithful to the end and he was going to endure, he knew that if he
was going to be faithful to shine the light into the darkness there had to be some things that anchored him
down, some certainties. He was certain regarding the superiority and exclusivity of the new covenant. He
was certain that ministry was a mercy and he needed to have a pure heart.
4. “He was certain of the duty to preach accurately the word of God.” 2 Corinthians 4:2, “We have
renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s
word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man’s conscience
in the sight of God.”
This opens up pandora’s box, nothing is more disappointing than someone misinterpreting Scripture and
speaking as if it’s the truth when it’s not.
 2 Timothy 2,
15 
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed,
rightly handling the word of truth.
You’ve got to get it right and all Scripture is profitable, he says to Timothy; and then you preach it.
First, you have to interpret it correctly, then you have to understand that every single thing it says is
profitable, and then you preach it. Conviction of handling the word of God accurately, and he uses the
word “craftiness”: “not walking in craftiness, panourgia. Literally if you take the word apart, it’s the
word for “all” and the word for “energy”: all work. What does all work mean? That there are people
who will do anything to accomplish their ends. They’ll be shrewd with the Scripture. They’ll be
unscrupulous with the Scripture. They’ll twist and pervert it. They’ll deceive people with it. A synonym
for this word is kakourgia, which is an evildoer or a criminal. I don’t think there’s much difference
between a criminal and someone who twists the Scripture; that is a crime against God.
The New Testament uses panourgia, craftiness, always in a negative sense. It is being willing to do
anything to gain your end, anything with the Scripture; and he describes what he means: “adulterating
the word of God,” using it in an illegitimate way. Adultery is a sin. It’s a violation of a covenant. It’s
having sexual relations outside your marriage covenant. We have a covenant with the word of God to
teach it faithfully; if we do not, we have violated that covenant. Adulterating, dolountes – only here in the
New Testament. It’s a snare. It’s a trap. It’s a fishhook. It’s something deceptive to hook people using the
word of God as a way to deceive them.

1 Thessalonians 2,
For our appeal does not spring from error or uncleanness, nor is it made with guile;
3 

 4 but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please
men, but to please God who tests our hearts.
 5 For we never used either words of flattery, as you know, or a cloak for greed, as God is witness; 
We don’t use the Scripture, we teach it faithfully and accurately.
2 Corinthians 4,
2
“We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with
God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man’s
conscience in the sight of God.”
The duty of every preacher, the duty of every witness is to proclaim the truth, to manifest the truth.
Accuracy of interpretation demands a clear, careful exposition of Scripture.
I hear preachers telling me what the Bible means, telling me what the Bible says: “The Bible says, the
Bible says, the Bible says.” That’s not helpful. Show me how it says it, don’t tell me what the Bible says.
You hear preachers all the time on television, “The Bible says, the Bible says.” Well then let it speak.
You’re not an intermediary for it; take me into it and show me that it’s speaking, and show me what it’s
saying. That’s why the only legitimate kind of preaching is expository preaching, because only that kind
of preaching lets God’s voice be heard and not my interpretation of God’s voice. Don’t tell me what the
Bible says, let the Bible speak for itself.
V2, is a most unexpected promise. A faithful, accurate, clear exposition of God’s word will do exactly
what we would want it to do. It will commend ourselves, meaning the message that we have brought to
every man’s conscience in the sight of God. This is one of the greatest promises in the Bible. This is the
best possible truth for all Christians to hear. If you proclaim the truth, it will commend itself to the heart
of the hearer. No craftiness is necessary. No deceptiveness, no alteration, no adulteration; just declare the
truth, the truth of sin, condemnation, forgiveness and justification through Christ, and you have this
promise that it will commend us to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.
Now you only have one ally in the heart of an unconverted person, and that is the law of God written in
the heart and the conscience. Romans 2, “The law of God is written in the heart,” and there’s a
conscience, a mechanism God has put in every human being, much like pain in the physical side, that is
activated when that law is violated. Every sinner feels guilt, fear and anxiety when their sin is confronted.
Amazingly, this is one evangelistic strategy that promises to achieve the goal. What would be the highest
possible effect of my witnessing?” By proclaiming the gospel, commend yourself to the hearer and in the
sight of God. We know how we would commend ourselves in the sight of God: by being faithful to the
truth. But that’s also how you commend yourself to the sinner.
If you could get any effect out of your witnessing, what would it be? That the sinner would understand
the truth of what you’re saying, that you would establish credibility with the sinner and with God. All the
clever strategies, all the nonsense, tactics, to try to make sinners respond without offending them don’t do
any good. The only way you can commend the truth to a sinner initially is to hit them at the only ally you
have in their heart, and that’s the law of God and a guilty conscience. If you avoid that, you have not
commended yourself to the sinner. The sinner is only affirming the truth of what you said when they feel
the reality of sin and guilt. So all the clever strategies to avoid that are distortions and deceptions and
craftiness and adulteration.
That makes the sinner angry, of course! That’s the point. But it also, under the power of the Holy Spirit,
makes the sinner repent. All these people coming up with all these endless strategies about how to
circumvent the hostility of the sinner to the indictment of sin, death and judgment, all going around in
circles to try to make the sinner embrace Christ out of some whimsical, almost romantic emotional
response bypass the only thing that is in a sinner that can say this person is telling me the truth. Every
sinner knows the wretchedness of his own heart, everyone. The only way you’ll ever commend yourself to
a sinner is to hit him right between the law and the conscience. You say, “People will hate the truth.” Of
course. But that’s where you have to start.
Romans 1:32, After all the lists of immorality, homosexuality, reprobate mind, all the sins, Paul says,
“They know the ordinance of God.” Wow. That’s an affirmation that sinners know the ordinance of God.
He’s talking to Romans; these are Gentile pagans, not Jews who had an Old Testament. They know the
ordinance of God, and they also know those who practice such things are worthy of death. Wow, where
does that come from? Why do sinners when they are confronted with their sin get angry? Because you’ve
raised fear. The law of God condemns them, and they know they’re worthy of death.
“But they not only do those things, they give hearty approval to those who practice them.” And as we’ve
seen in America, they make laws to turn that into some kind of acceptable behavior. Sinners know
they’re sinners, they know they’re worthy of death. And if you’re going to proclaim the gospel to them,
that’s the only ally you have in the human heart. Proclaim the truth of sin, righteousness and judgment,
and then of grace, forgiveness and salvation. Proclaim the gospel in truth accurately, call sinners to
escape sin, to escape hell by trusting in Christ.
John 7:7, “The world hates Me,” “Why, because I do miracles? No. Because I fed them one day and
didn’t feed them the next day? No.” “The world hates Me because I testify of it that its deeds are evil.”
Did you hear that? “The world hates Me because I testify of it that its deeds are evil.”
Get past this, will you? That’s necessary, and it engenders hate. But you have to activate hostility because
that’s a reaction to the recognition of sin. You only commend yourself to a sinner when the sinner knows
you’re telling the truth because his heart is telling him the same thing; his heart’s not going to tell him
anything about grace or truth, but it’s going to tell him about his sin. So expect hostility, expect to have
experiences like Paul. If the sinner is in the group of lusts and wickedness and likes your message, you
didn’t give the right message. If the sinner feels no pain and no rejection, you failed, you missed the
target.
Rejection, hostility, resistance, even persecution is the natural result to an accusing conscience. But it’s
also the path to repentance under the power of the Spirit. One theologian said it this way: “Paul knew
that the truth had such a self-evidencing power that even where it was rejected and hated, it commended
itself to the conscience as true; and those who are sincere and declare simply the truth as God has
revealed it commend themselves as truth-tellers when they speak to the consciences of men.”
People aren’t going to get saved unless you talk about sin; and that’s why Paul says, “I’m not ashamed of
the gospel,” because if you’re not willing to take the assaults, you’re going to fail, you’re going to lose
heart. So certainties drove Paul, they kept him faithful: certainty of the superiority of the new covenant,
ministry is a mercy of pure heart, certainty about being accurate with the word of God and expecting
hostility.
5. “He is certain that salvation is the sovereign work of God.”
2 Corinthians 4,
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing.
3 

 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing
the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God.
He is certain about this, it is veiled to the “the perishing,” “the blinded by Satan.” We do not have the
power to overcome the sinner’s resistance. There’s no amount of cleverness, manipulation, there’s no
amount of oratory that can cause repentance and salvation. We can’t fight this battle with human
weapons. Why is this true? First, “They are the perishing.” The perishing, are those devoted to
destruction. That’s a category of people. Paul refers to that in 1 Corinthians 1, 2 Corinthians 2. They’re
the perishing. They’re a category of people who can’t respond. They have no mechanism. “They don’t
understand the things of God, they’re foolishness to them.”
Second, “They’re blinded by Satan.” So you have this category of people who are “the perishing,” 1
Corinthians 1:18-19, from those who are being saved. And then, “The god of this world has blinded their
minds so the might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”
The god of this world, the god of this age may be a better way to say it, is Satan. Satan has blinded them.
Satan has deceived them. They cannot see the light.
John 8,
You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from
44 

the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he
speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
That’s the level of resistance that we have to attack. “What do we do in a situation like that?” We preach
Christ, because we know this: “God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has
shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” The same
God who spoke in Genesis 1:3 and spoke light into existence is the same God who has to speak spiritual
light into the heart of a perishing, satanically-blinded sinner. So this is Paul’s certainty that salvation is a
sovereign work of God.
For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’
5 

sake.
We just preach Christ. We’re not looking for gimmicks to overcome consumer resistance. The only way
that you can commend yourself to a sinner is to hit his conscience and activate the law of God that strikes
his conscience and makes him feel guilt; and that guilt validates the truth of what you’re saying about his
sinfulness. And then you come to the saving good news of the gospel; but even at that, you have absolutely
no ability to save the sinner. The sinner is too profoundly locked down by being in the category of a
perishing person, one already devoted to destruction, and blinded by Satan. Salvation is a creative
miracle, just like light in Genesis.
“We do not preach ourselves.” Don’t preach your ideas, don’t preach your insights, preach Christ as
revealed in Scripture. “We preach Christ Jesus as Lord.” We’re just slaves, doulos. Spiritual results
don’t come from us, no; we preach Christ. That’s sufficient. That’s our calling. We preach Christ as the
only hope for the sinner to escape judgment and hell.
John 7,
18 
He who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but he who seeks the glory of him who sent
him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.
When you hear a preacher who’s the hero of all his own stories, he’s seeking his own glory. Listen for the
preacher who gives all the glory to Christ. We preach Christ as Lord.
We preach Christ, who is the Eternal Son, one in nature with the Eternal Father and the Eternal Spirit –
the triune God.
Who is the Creator and life-giver, as well as the sustainer of the universe and all who live in it.
Who is the virgin-born Son of God and Son of Man – fully divine and fully human.
Who is the One whose life on earth perfectly pleased God and whose righteousness is given to all who by
grace through faith become one with Him.
Who is the only acceptable sacrifice for sin that pleases God and whose death under divine judgment
paid in full the penalty for the sins of His people, providing for them forgiveness and eternal life.
Who is alive, having been raised from the dead by the Father validating His work of atonement and
providing resurrection for the sanctification and glorification of the elect to bring them safely into His
heavenly presence.
Who is at the Father’s throne interceding for all believers.
Who is God’s chosen Prophet, Priest and King, proclaiming truth, mediating for His church and reigning
over His kingdom forever.
Who will return suddenly from heaven to rapture His church, unleash judgment on the wicked, bring
promised salvation to the Jews and the nations and establish His millennial reign on earth.
Who will, after that earthly reign, destroy the universe, finally judge all sinners and send them to hell,
then create the New Heavens and the New Earth where He will dwell forever with His saints in glory, love
and joy.
This is the Christ we preach.
 5-Gospel glory in pots of clay Feb 21/21
https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/81-105/gospel-glory-in-pots-of-clay

2 Corinthians 4, Treasure in Clay Jars

1
 Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.
 2 We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with
God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man’s
conscience in the sight of God.
 3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing.
 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing
the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God.
 5 For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for
Jesus’ sake.
 6 For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and
7 

not to us.
 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair;
 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;
 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our
bodies.
 11 For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be
manifested in our mortal flesh.
Living by Faith
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed
16 

every day.
There are two kingdoms in the world. There are two rulers in the world. There’s the kingdom of light,
ruled by Christ, who rules by the power of His Spirit through His church by indwelling believers; and
there is the kingdom of darkness ruled by Satan, who, by his demons and human agents and by the
influence that he has on the human heart, rules the world that is passing away.  
Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” The kingdom of this world is evil and headed for hell.
However, Jesus said, “My kingdom is present in this world.” It is the kingdom of righteousness, and the
folks who are in that kingdom are headed for heaven. That’s the simple way to look at the world around
you. The kingdom of darkness, manifest by sin; kingdom of light, manifest by righteousness.
The kingdom of darkness ruled by Satan, and all who are outside of Christ are in the kingdom of
darkness, and they follow their father the devil, who is a liar and a murderer. Kingdom of righteousness
manifests in the church, the true church; the King is Christ, and He indwells every true believer. Why
did the Lord leave us in the world? It’s an obvious answer. All of us who are in the kingdom of light are
commissioned to shine the light of the gospel into the darkness so that the Lord can redeem His elect
people.
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing.
3 

 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing
the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God.
Let us focus ourselves on that incredible statement: “The light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is
the likeness of God.” The light is just that; that defines the light that we shine into the darkness. It is the
light of the gospel, the good news of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.
6 
For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
That’s why we’re here, and that’s why He says:
For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’
5 

sake.
2 Corinthians 1,
19 
For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we preached among you, Silva′nus and Timothy and I, was not
Yes and No; but in him it is always Yes.
 20 For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why we utter the Amen through him, to the
glory of God.
 21 But it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has commissioned us;
 22 he has put his seal upon us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
What is Paul saying? He is saying all the promises of God are bound up in Christ; He is the yes to the
promises of God. So for us to shine the light means the light of the gospel, the good news of the glory of
Christ who is the image of God. 
Acts 4, “12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among
men by which we must be saved.”
Romans 10, “17 So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ.”
Unlike the preachers that Jeremiah addressed, who preached the deceptions of their own mind, who
speak a vision from their own imagination, “we do not preach ourselves;” we preach Christ.
When we preach Christ, we call sinners to repent.
Psalm 51, Prayer for Cleansing and Pardon
1
Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy steadfast love;
    according to thy abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
2 
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
    and cleanse me from my sin!
3 
For I know my transgressions,
    and my sin is ever before me.
4 
Against thee, thee only, have I sinned,
    and done that which is evil in thy sight,
so that thou art justified in thy sentence
    and blameless in thy judgment.
5 
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
    and in sin did my mother conceive me.
It is necessary if they are to receive the good news that they hear the bad news. They don’t want that.
They love the darkness rather than the light. They cherish their sins. They flaunt their sins, to one degree
or another.
John 7:7, “You hate Me because I tell you your deeds are evil.” That is what generates the hostility and
the hate, because first of all, the dominating human sin is pride. People want to defend their goodness,
their nobility. When we unmask the wretchedness of their hearts, they’re angry. In the flesh they’re
angry, apart from the convicting work of the Holy Spirit, they will remain angry.
In the face of opposition, then, the question is, in the face of hostility and in the face of persecution, how
do we remain bold in proclaiming Christ? Which means confronting sin. Well Paul answers that in this
text, V1, “We do not lose heart.” V16, again: “Therefore we do not lose heart.”
He brackets the revelation here with this idea that he doesn’t lose heart. He doesn’t defect, he doesn’t
give up, he doesn’t give in. He doesn’t demonstrate cowardly flight. He doesn’t give in to evil. At the end
of his life, 2 Timothy 4:7-8, “I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith, I have finished the course.
Henceforth, there’s laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord shall give to me; but not to
me only, but to all who have loved His appearing.”
All of us would want to come to the end of life and say, “I fought the good fight, I kept the faith, I finished
the course.” How do you do that? Realizing that the confrontation of sinners is going to result in hostility.
1 John 3:13, “ Do not wonder, brethren, that the world hates you.” They hated Him to the point of
execution on a cross in spite of all the good that had never been seen in the history of humanity and never
will be seen again until Jesus comes. They killed Him anyway because He confronted their evil.
That’s a reality that cannot be avoided. If we avoid the confrontation with sin, we are defecting. Now it’s
to be done with love and graciousness, mercy. The very kindness of God is extended in salvation to the
sinner, and we have to bring that message in that same fashion.
Now what kept Paul locked down on his spiritual responsibility no matter how much persecution he
received? His life was a life in which he saw people come to faith in Christ, and at the same time, hostility
ramped up to the point that almost everywhere he went, the threat of jail and death followed Him, V12,
“So death works in us, so that life can work in you.” “I live every day on the brink of execution at the
hands of people who hate the gospel, so that I can get the gospel to you so that you can believe.”
How do you have that kind of bravery? How do you have that kind of courage? It comes from
convictions. It comes from down inside, related to the things that you believe that are non-negotiable. As
follows:
1. A conviction, a certainty in Paul’s mind, about the superiority of the New Covenant.
V1, “Since we have this ministry.” What ministry is he talking about? He describes del Old Covenant as:
2 Corinthians 3,
7 
Now if the dispensation of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such splendor that the Israelites
could not look at Moses’ face because of its brightness, fading as this was,
 8 will not the dispensation of the Spirit be attended with greater splendor?
 9 For if there was splendor in the dispensation of condemnation, the dispensation of righteousness must
far exceed it in splendor.
 10 Indeed, in this case, what once had splendor has come to have no splendor at all, because of the
splendor that surpasses it.
 11 For if what faded away came with splendor, what is permanent must have much more splendor.
Paul says that the New Covenant in Christ has far more glory than the Old Covenant law. He had no
hesitation regarding the truth of the gospel. That’s where everything starts. That’s why we make such an
issue out of you understanding the gospel. You must understand it, you must believe it. You must
understand its superiority and its absolute uniqueness and excellence. He knew as a former Pharisee who
had lived in extreme bondage to the Old Covenant, he knew what it was to live under the law. When he
came to Christ, or when Christ came to him, he found that the righteousness of God, a free gift to him by
faith, far surpassed the bondage of his effort at self-righteousness.
People who have been delivered from the worst are more likely to be eager to talk about the best. We
grew up in a Christian family where we were delivered from our sins, but not in the way that someone is
delivered who has lived virtually a lifetime in lies, error and bondage. People who have been saved from
the most, as Jesus said, are the most thankful, and likely to talk the most about the glories of the New
Covenant. For the rest of us, we have to gain that conviction not from our own experience, but from what
we know about the truth. Paul had certainty about the superiority of the New Covenant. From personal
experience, he was passionate about making sure sinners heard the good news.
2. He was certain that ministry was a mercy. V1, 1 Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God,
…
He never lost sight of the fact that this was an overwhelming mercy to allow him to preach this message.
It is not something earned by our education, our erudition or we earn because you have a gift for
speaking. Any of us who has ever been given the privilege of proclaiming the gospel knows it is a mercy.
We preach a far better message than we can live. But we also understand that if God couldn’t use flawed
people, He couldn’t use anybody because we’re all flawed.
1 Timothy 1, Gratitude for Mercy
12 
I thank him who has given me strength for this, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful
by appointing me to his service,
  13 though I formerly blasphemed and persecuted and insulted him; but I received mercy because I had
acted ignorantly in unbelief,
 14 and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
 15 The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
And I am the foremost of sinners;
 16 but I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect
patience for an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.
 17 To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
3. He was certain of the need for a pure heart. 2 Corinthians 4:2, “We have renounced disgraceful,
underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open
statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.”
There’s no secret life. There’s no hidden life. There’s nothing to be discovered. “Some men’s sins follow
after them,” Paul says. Paul had no fear of a postmortem episode where the truth would come out,
because he had no hidden life of shame. He said his conscience was clear, and he was winning the
spiritual battle on the inside. If I want to be useful to the Lord, I need to be a clean vessel.
4. He was certain of the duty to accurately preach the Word. 2 Corinthians 4:2, “We have renounced
disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by
the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of
God.”

5. Paul was certain that salvation is the sovereign work of God. 2 Corinthians 4,
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing.
3 

 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing
the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God.
So we have a pure life, so we’re faithful in handling the Word of God, proclaiming the truth,
commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. Why don’t we get the results we
want?” Paul immediately says that “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are
perishing.”
1 Corinthians 1,
18 
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the
power of God.
1 Corinthians 2,
 14
The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is
not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
It’s incomprehensible, because the people in the category of the perishing, those who are on their way to
hell, are by definition dead in trespasses and sins; they have no mechanism to respond to the truth.
Further, not only are they perishing, but “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the
unbelieving.” The very category of perishing is a consistency or a state of double blindness. A satanic
kind, so people can’t see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. So this is
the resistance we have. They resist us because they’re offended. They resist us because they’re bound in
death. They resist us because they’re satanically blinded. Romans 11:8, “God gave them a spirit of
stupor, eyes to see not and ears to hear not.” They can’t see. The light of the gospel of the glory of Christ,
who is the image of God, they can’t comprehend. They are stone blind.
Christ has glory as the image of God, He shares the glory of the Father. Hebrews 1, He’s the exact
representation and the image of the Father. In Him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily. He is
the fullness of God’s revelation. John 1:14, “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw
His glory,” and it was the “glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” So He
has glory in His incarnation as God. He has glory as the image of God.
There’s a second kind of glory. He has the glory of the gospel. Yes, He has glory as the image of God;
that’s His intrinsic glory. That belongs to Him eternally, that’s why in John 17:5 He said to the Father,
“Restore to Me the glory I had with You before the world began.” That glory He eternally possessed, the
divine glory of the eternal Son of God. He always possessed that intrinsic glory as God.
The gospel allows the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ to be demonstrated in a new way. The most
wonderful way to understand that is in Ephesians 1:6, you’ll see a phrase: “to the praise of the glory of
His grace.” That is really the new revelation of His glory. He is glorious as the image of God, but there is
a new manifestation of that glory, the glory of His grace. By His death and by His resurrection He
triumphed to provide regeneration for His people. He defeated Satan, conquered death, satisfied divine
justice, propitiated God’s wrath; redeemed, reconciled, rescued His people from judgment and hell; and
so perfectly fulfilled that assignment that God gave Him a name above every name, the name Lord, at
which every knee should bow.
When we go to heaven, no doubt we will celebrate the glory of Christ as a person.
Revelation 4,
8 
And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all round and within, and day
and night they never cease to sing,
“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”
9 
And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne,
who lives for ever and ever,
 10 the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives for
ever and ever; they cast their crowns before the throne, singing,
“Worthy art thou, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power,
11 

for thou didst create all things, and by thy will they existed and were created.”
Revelation 5,
8 
And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before
the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints;
 9 and they sang a new song, saying,
“Worthy art thou to take the scroll and to open its seals,
for thou wast slain and by thy blood didst ransom men for God
from every tribe and tongue and people and nation,
10 
and hast made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
and they shall reign on earth.”
11 
Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many
angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands,
 12 saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom
and might and honor and glory and blessing!”
 13 And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all therein,
saying, “To him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might for
ever and ever!”
 14 And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” and the elders fell down and worshiped.
Forever we will be worshiping Christ as the sacrificed Lamb. That is the glory of His grace. Yes, we will
worship Him as the Creator. But the celebration crescendos past creation to the glory of His grace. This
is the high point of His glory. Do you understand that? When we get to heaven, He will be the slain Lamb
with the scars. Salvation grace will be the primary theme of heaven. As glorious as He is, as brightly as
He shines, as wondrous as His eternal light of perfection, and as blessed as the glory of His grace appears
in the gospel, the perishing and the blind cannot see it. Do they have any hope? This is where we turn to
V6.
How can the dead sinner, the blind sinner, believe? For God said, looking back to Genesis 1:3, “Let there
be light.” “Light shall shine out of darkness.” That’s creative. God spoke light into existence in creation.
2 Corinthians 4,
6 
For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
How do you come to a correct understanding of the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Christ? Because God does a creative miracle. God shines in our hearts. “Light shall shine out of
darkness.” Salvation is the light of Christ shining in the darkened heart. It’s a creative act;
2 Corinthians 5:17,
From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once regarded
16 

Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer.

17 
Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has
come.
Paul gives all credit to God: God willed to speak life to us.
Ephesians 1, Spiritual Blessings in Christ
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every
3 

spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,

 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless
before him.
 5 He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,
 6 to the praise of his glorious grace which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches
of his grace
 8 which he lavished upon us.
 9 For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose
which he set forth in Christ
 10 as a plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
 John 3,
Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of
3 

God.”
 4 Nicode′mus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his
mother’s womb and be born?”
 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter
the kingdom of God.
 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born anew.’
 8 The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or
whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit.”
Regeneration is a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. The sinner’s role is to repent and believe. Can an
unaided sinner repent? No, that’s why Paul says God has to grant repentance. Can an unaided sinner
believe? No, that’s why you’re saved by grace, that not of yourselves; even the faith is a gift of God. God
gives you the gift of repentance and faith because He wills to give you life.
There’s only one way that people will ever be redeemed and taken out of their death and darkness, and
that is by a sovereign creative miracle of God, which produces in them repentance and faith at the
hearing of the gospel. What do we do? We preach not ourselves, we preach Jesus Christ as Lord. God
does the rest.
We’re just slaves. V5, “We are doulos” “5 For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord,
with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.” We’re nothing more than that. We’re slaves who have
been given the responsibility to deliver the truth; God does the saving.
6. Paul was certain about his own insignificance. The contrast is just extreme.
6 
For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
7 
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and
not to us.
This is pure, heavenly, holy glory. He is fully aware of the unparalleled glory of God shining in the face of
Christ and in the gospel. He’s also fully aware of this: that he has no glory; that he is a frail, weak,
common clay pot. That’s what it means. This is the stark reality that you have to embrace. You have to
be certain of this: Christ is everything, and you are nothing. You’re not the reason anyone is redeemed. It
is a priceless treasure in a cheap clay pot.
Paul acknowledges he’s nothing. He’s not defending himself as some great evangelist or great preacher,
teacher. He’s saying, “I’m just a clay pot. I have this treasure, this new covenant gospel of glory, en
ostrakinos,” a clay pot, cheap, common, breakable, replaceable, valueless, and ugly. It’s a clay pot. You
use them to put a plant in; you fill them with dirt. But in ancient times clay pots were used to bury
valuables. Put your valuables in a clay pot, dig a hole, and put it there. They were also used to remove the
household waste.
They were the garbage. They were the receptacles of the sewage of the house. Very graphic language.
2 Timothy 2:20,
20 
In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and earthenware, and
some for noble use, some for ignoble.
 21 If any one purifies himself from what is ignoble, then he will be a vessel for noble use, consecrated and
useful to the master of the house, ready for any good work.
This vessel has no intrinsic value. They accused Paul of being weak, his speech is contemptable, his
personality is unimpressive, and he agreed; he’s a clay pot.
1 Corinthians 4,
9 
For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death; because we
have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men.
 10 We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are
held in honor, but we in disrepute.
11 
To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are ill-clad and buffeted and homeless,
 12 and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure;
 13 when slandered, we try to conciliate; we have become, and are now, as the refuse of the world, the
offscouring of all things.
Paul is saying, “That’s how we are considered; and in reality, we admit we are clay pots.”
1 Peter 5,
5 
Likewise you that are younger be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility
toward one another, for “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt you.
6 

The point of this is that the power of the glorious gospel is not the product of human genius or technique.
It’s not the container, it’s the glory of the truth. We’re just weak, common, plain, fragile, breakable,
dishonorable garbage buckets. The power doesn’t depend on us. It depends completely on God.
2 Corinthians 4,
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and
7 

not to us. 

The weaker the pot, the more powerful the gospel. Paul was faithful to the end because he didn’t
overestimate himself, so that he thought himself to deserve better than he got. He knew his ministry was a
mercy, he was concerned about the purity of his heart, he was concerned about the accuracy of his
teaching and preaching, he knew the results depended on God, and he knew he was just a clay pot. Those
are the convictions that sustained him to the end, where he could say, “I have fought the good fight, kept
the faith, finished the course.”
Let me just sum it up in a simple statement: Your ability to be faithful in proclaiming the gospel all
through your life is built on your convictions about the gospel.
Do you believe it is the unparalleled truth?
Have you lost sight of the amazing privilege of proclaiming it, that mercy of all mercies, letting you be a
spokesperson for God?
Have you guarded your purity?
Can you proclaim the Word accurately?
 Are you humble enough to recognize that all results come from God, and that all He asks you to do is
deliver the truth and He’ll take care of the rest?
And if you get discouraged, is it just because you think maybe you’re more significant than you are?

6-The benefits of suffering for Christ Feb 28/21

https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/81-106/the-benefits-of-suffering-for-christ

We come now to the study of the Word of God, and we have been looking at 2 Corinthians 4. I invite you
to turn in your Bible to that chapter, with apologies to those of you who haven’t been here the last few
weeks. We’ve been slowly working our way through this chapter because we have been talking about the
fact that as Christian believers, we are citizens of the heavenly kingdom, and our responsibility is to shine
the light into the darkness. The light is in us because Christ is in us. The light is also in the Word of God
because therein is the light of the gospel revealed. Verse 5 of this chapter says, “We do not preach
ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.” This is the heart of the
point and purpose of the church in the world, to preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord.
Now we have been discussing the fact that to preach Christ is to provide light in the darkness. Just to
remind you of that, let me begin in verse 1. Follow along. “Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we
have received mercy, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced the things hidden because of shame,
not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth commending
ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to
those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so
that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do
not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For God, who
said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
“We have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God
and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing;
persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the
dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are
constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in
our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you.
“But having the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, ‘I believed, therefore I spoke,’ we also
believe, therefore we also speak, knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus
and will present us with you. For all things are for your sakes, so that the grace which is spreading to
more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God.
“Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being
renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far
beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not
seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
To pull up and above that text and get an elevated vantage point of what Paul is saying, he is saying this:
“We have been given the ministry of the new covenant, the preaching of the gospel, the glory of the
gospel. We preach Christ, we don’t preach ourselves. We understand in doing this that we are
insignificant. We are clay pots, earthen vessels. We have no power; only God has power. We can
communicate the message; we have no power to change the sinner. In fact, we have to face the reality that
dominates all evangelism, and that is, if it is faithful it will generate hostility, rejection, hatred, and
persecution.” And so, having risen to the heights of speaking of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is
the image of God, speaking of the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ,
immediately he says in V8, “We’re afflicted,” V9, “we’re persecuted”—and then in three verses in a row
he talks about the fact that he lives every single day with the reality of death. And what we’ve been
learning is that the gospel offends sinners—necessarily, necessarily. Jesus said in John 7, “They hate Me
because I tell them their deeds are evil.” Even Jesus Christ, the righteous one, the holy one, could not
overcome the sinner’s anger when confronted with his own sin.
The darkness is deep and seductive; we’ve been learning that. The darkness is becoming bold in our
generation, isn’t it? The darkness is protecting itself by making laws that punish the people of the Light.
We have criminalized righteousness and made wretchedness legal. The devastating deception of the
wicked has legalized murder and sexual perversion and the destruction of the family and the devastation
of children. The pollutions in this population are widespread. We have the duty to shine the light into
this. But mark it: Whatever tolerances the culture had in past generations, it doesn’t have now. Hostility
is going to be the response. And because hostility is the response—naturally, inevitably, because if they
hated Jesus, they’ll hate you, as He said—many have adjusted the message to remove the offense. And we
hear people speaking of the gospel as if it’s some kind of social reform, some kind of a racial
reconciliation.
We also hear that some present the gospel as if it is a means of discovering your own purpose or
discovering your own fulfillment or discovering your own success—or anything else about yourself.
Commonly, the starting point for evangelism is about you. “God loves you so much that He wants to give
you everything you desire.” These kinds of non-gospel promises are so familiar that they pass
uncritically. People don’t realize how utterly alien they are to the true gospel. They make the message of
God about the sinner; the sinner takes center stage, and the sinner is the one that makes the demands
and lays down the desires, and God is the one who delivers them to the omnipotent sinner. These are
devastating, appalling misrepresentations of the message of salvation.
Just for a moment, you’re in chapter 4. Go to chapter 5; I’ll give you an illustration of this. Starting in
verse 18, talking about the ministry of reconciliation, the gospel that makes one a new creation, “All these
things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of
reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their
trespasses against them, and He’s committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are
ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of
Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might
become the righteousness of God in Him.”
Now I read that, and I just want you to take a look at those verses without necessarily honing in on
anything, and see how many times you see the word “God,” and then see how many times you see the
word “Christ.” “God” appears four times in those verses; “Christ,” four times; “God” four more times
by pronouns, and “Christ” two more times by pronouns—which is to say that the ministry of
reconciliation, the gospel, is about God and it’s about Christ. It’s not about you. It is God centered.
Now if we’re honest about the gospel of God and the gospel of Christ, what do we say? How do we
present it? If we are to shine the light, if we are the clay pots that are valueless and useless and
replaceable, but we possess the glorious gospel of Christ, how do we communicate that? What do we say?
Let me just give you some simple things that you need to remember:
If you’re honest about the gospel, it’ll go something like this: Be honest about sin and the cost of
repentance. Okay? That’s where you start. Be honest about sin and the cost of repentance. There is a
cost. The cost is so high, but sinners left to themselves will not pay it—because they have to deny
themselves. But that’s where the gospel starts. Be honest about sin and the cost of repentance.
Secondly, be urgent and tell people they need to repent now. Today.
Thirdly, give them the truth about Christ, His person, and His work. Support that with Scripture.
Everything you’ve said about sin and repentance and Christ, His person and work, support with
Scripture.
And when you have made the need for repentance clear and the cost of repentance clear and the work of
Christ and His person clear and shown them in Scripture, tell them with joy that if they repent and
believe the gospel, they will be saved and given eternal life. That’s the process. Tell them with joy, and
then inform them of sanctification and the critical importance of life in the church.
That’s how you shine the light into the darkness. That’s no guarantee they’re going to respond; in fact,
most won’t, right? But as God said to Isaiah, “There’s a remnant.” God has His people; and when you
give that truth of the gospel to one whom God has chosen from before the foundation of the world, the
Spirit of God may at that point give them light and life. That’s how we shine the light of the gospel into
the darkness.
I said a couple of weeks ago something that people have taken issue with. I said I couldn’t fight for
religious freedom because that would be fighting for Satan to be successful, because every single religion
in the world except the truth of Christianity is a lie from hell. You say, “Well, isn’t religious freedom
important for Christianity?” No, it’s meaningless. Doesn’t matter what laws governments make or don’t
make, they have no affect on the kingdom of God. Jesus said, “I will build My kingdom, and the gates of
hell will not prevail against it.” We don’t need the government to expedite the gospel. And you will notice
that when religious freedom, sort of categorically, is eliminated, the only religion that’ll be punished is
the truth.
So here we are, living in the darkness—not on the edge of the darkness, but literally in the darkness,
shining as lights. And Paul says in tackling this task, it can be daunting; and that’s why he begins in verse
1 by saying, “We do not lose heart.” And then he brackets it at the end, or near the end, in verse 16,
again, “We do not lose heart.” That means we aren’t cowards, we don’t quit, we don’t give in.
How is it that you can do this with boldness and courage, and endure? Well, we’ve been through a
number of things; I won’t go back through them. But we find ourselves down to verse 8. The bottom line
is this: In order to be faithful, you have to have strong convictions. You have to believe in the superiority
of the New Covenant; we learned that. You have to understand that you need a pure heart, that you have
to handle the Word of God accurately. You have to understand that salvation is a work of God. Only God
who said, “Let there be light,” and brought about light in creation in Genesis 1:3, can say, “Let there be
light,” in a heart. You also have to understand your insignificance: You’re a slave, you’re a clay pot,
you’re powerless.
So here we are with this superior New Covenant truth, the only saving truth. We have been given the
mercy, the high privilege of proclaiming it, even though we’re unworthy. We must do so from a pure
heart, handling the Word of God accurately, trusting in the Lord for the results, realizing our own
insignificance. And when we do all of that and do it all to the best of our Holy Spirit-driven abilities, what
will happen? Do you think they’ll all believe? No.
V8, “We’re afflicted in every way.” If you think this is the path to popularity, you’re wrong. Paul was
certain of another thing. This is the seventh certainty that we’ve looked at: He was certain of the benefit
of suffering. You’re going to have hostility. You’re going to have rejection. You’re going to suffer.
We’ve already learned from our Christian experience in going through the New Testament that we
should count it all joy when we fall into various trials, right, James 1, because they have a perfecting
work. We’ve already heard from Peter, 1 Peter 5:10, that after you’ve suffered a while, the Lord “make
you perfect,” complete, whole. So we know that just in general, suffering and trials in life benefit us; they
perfect us, they make us stronger. They even validate our faith. When your faith survives a horrible
disappoint, that’s evidence that it’s a real faith. And the longer you live and the more times you’ve gone
through trials and your faith comes out triumphant, the more assurance you enjoy.
So Paul says, let’s look at verse 8, “I’m certain of one thing: I’m certain of suffering, and I’m certain of
its benefit. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed.” Afflicted, thlibō, pressure coming on us, but
not crushed. “Perplexed”—you could translate that “at our wits’ end, despondent, not really seeing a way
out of the suffering.” But even at that, “not despairing,” not to the point of final despair. What he is
saying is it’s hard, it’s very hard, but there’s no heartache that can cause us to defect. We don’t lose
heart.
Verse 9 he says, “We’re persecuted,” diōkō. That verb would be used for hunting an animal with the
purpose of killing it. We are hunted, hunted down for the purpose of being killed, just like Jesus was.
“But not forsaken,” not abandoned, not deserted. “We’re struck down,” kataballō – that’s a body slam,
slamming something to the ground; to throw down with force, used in wrestling, boxing. “But not
destroyed.” We don’t perish. This is one battered apostle, right? But it never broke him. Listen, triumph
is not freedom from pain. Triumph is not escaping adversity. It is surviving it.
Go over a few chapters to chapter 12, 2 Corinthians 12, and I will have you look at verses 7 to 10. Paul
opens his heart. He’s been talking all through this letter about his suffering. Go back to chapter 6; the
opening ten verses lists all the things he suffered. Then in chapter 11, the most complete list of external,
and then even internal suffering starts in verse 23 and runs all the way down to verse 29, all the things
that he suffered. And there were critics of him who would say, “Well, pretty evident that God is not
pleased with you because of all the suffering.” That would have been the extant version of Job’s friends’
counsel. You’re suffering, you’re sinful.
But notice what the Lord says in chapter 12, verse 7. This is personal testimony from Paul, inspired by
God, “Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting
myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from
exalting myself! Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He said to
me”—repeatedly—“‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly,
therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with
difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” That is so counterintuitive to the
culture of today in even the evangelical church. “I don’t become powerful until I’m weak, until I’m
persecuted, until I’m distressed, until I’m insulted.” He puts himself on the altar of sacrifice. And he says
suffering is beneficial.
First of all, it humbles us: “To keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a
messenger of Satan to torment me”—he says it again—“to keep me from exalting myself!” That
messenger of Satan, I believe, was the leader of the false prophets who were tearing up the church at
Corinth. A messenger of Satan, an angelos of Satan. A satanic angelos, an angel, is a demon. God used
suffering to humble him because of the many revelations he had.
God also used suffering to draw him to the Lord, verse 8, “Concerning this I implored the Lord three
times that it might leave me.” It drove him into deep prayer; that’s what suffering does.
Also, suffering allowed God to display His grace, verse 9, “He has said to me” over and over again, “‘My
grace is sufficient for you. My grace is sufficient for you.’” It allows for God to put His grace on display.
And finally, suffering not only humbles us, draws us to the Lord, allows Him to display grace, but
perfects His power in us. You’re only as powerful as you are weak in your own strength.
What is wrong with people who want to truncate the gospel? What is wrong with people who want to
alter the gospel? They’re too invested with their own power. It’s when you know you are impotent and
utterly powerless, clay pot, that all the power resides in the truth of the gospel. Preachers, I see them on
television with massive crowds of people. They are impotent. They are weak. They have no effect on
anyone in any eternal sense. They draw crowds, people laugh, clap—full of sound and fury, signifying,
spiritually, absolutely nothing. And as long as you think you have the power, you are powerless. When
you have been broken and recognize your own impotence, you’re useful. Paul understood that. He
understood that.
And so, back to chapter 4, and picking it up at verse 10. He says, “Always carrying about in the body the
dying of Jesus.” You know, the reality was that they really were not so much offended with Paul. It
wasn’t something about his style they didn’t like, it wasn’t that his words were, on their surface,
offensive. It was Jesus that was the offense. And I want you to understand that no matter how winsome,
no matter how kind you may be, no matter how loving you are, when you preach Christ and the gospel,
it’s an offense. To the degree, “always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus”—what is he saying?
He is saying, “I live continuously in the reality that this could cost me my life.”
Paul was stalked. Everywhere he went, he was hunted like an animal. They wanted to kill him. But he did
what he did so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. In other words, both in his
character and his preaching, Christ was on display. I love that. Christ in Paul was made visible by his
courage—get that. Christ in Paul was made visible by his courage, by his enduring sacrifice. By risking
death for the gospel, he showed that he loved Christ, and he also showed that Christ was alive in him.
Parallel statement in verse 11: “For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’
sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.” Literally, he’s saying Christ is
on display when you are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice—even facing death, for preaching the
gospel. I mean, it’s actually an amazing truth. It’s what Paul described as entering into the fellowship of
the Lord’s suffering.
First Corinthians 4:9, he says, “God has exhibited us apostles last of all, as men condemned to death.”
We know the story of the apostles, right? They were executed, exiled, and they had the best news the
world had ever heard. It was all for Jesus’ sake. It was a life of persecution because he was faithful to
proclaim Christ and to let Christ live through him.
It’s not just your message. Listen, it’s not just your message that is a rebuke to the world, it’s your life.
It’s your life. It’s Christ in you that comes through in your love for the truth, for the church, for
righteousness. So the glory of God shining in the face of Christ shines through the clay pot, the believer,
as that believer proclaims the gospel of Christ; and the higher the price and the greater the cost, the more
Christ is put on display. That is to say, the weaker you become and the less confidence you have in your
own strength, the more powerful you become. The world doesn’t like it.
Nobody’s tried to take my life, that I know of. One time, one person did, on an Easter Sunday morning in
the office. But they’re doing everything they can on the Internet to take away my reputation, to silence
me because they have convinced people that I am, like so many others, just another spiritual fraud. You
sort of leave your life out there; it’s the way it is.
Again, for the third verse in a row, verse 12, Paul says, “Death works in us, but life in you.” We have to
be exposed. I mean, we’ve got to be out there proclaiming the truth, right? You can’t say, “Well, I’m
afraid that it might cost me my reputation if I’m bold about the gospel. And those who hate the gospel
are going to try to destroy me, and there are a lot of ways they could do it without killing me, especially in
this Internet era.” But you don’t really have a choice. The glory of God is shining in the face of Jesus
Christ, and Christ lives in you, and shines through you as He puts Himself on display in the evident
virtues of your life. And those virtues sum up this way: Love—love toward God, love toward Christ, love
toward truth, love toward Scripture, love toward the church, love toward the lost. Humility, brokenness
over your own sin, sense of unworthiness. And thirdly, obedience. You put Christ on display, and then
you proclaim His gospel. And this is unacceptable in the world.
Paul says in Colossians 1:24, “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake”—not only for the Lord’s sake,
but your sake—“and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up
what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.” What an amazing statement. Paul is saying this: “Christ isn’t
here. They can’t do anymore damage to Him; they can’t inflict anymore wounds on Him, so they inflict
them on me in His place.” What a privilege, right? He took the wounds for us; can we take the wounds
for Him? That’s how it’s going to be if you’re faithful. It’s going to be “death working in us,” verse 12,
“but life in you.” What an amazing promise.
Paul endures faithfully, then, shining the light of the gospel into the darkness even if it costs him
suffering, and it does; even if it costs him death, and it did. The suffering was the way to refine him, the
way to break his self-confidence, the way to humble him, draw him to the Lord, and perfect divine power
in him. So he was certain of the benefits of that suffering.
The next certainty that steeled Paul for endurance is that he was certain of the need for integrity. He was
certain of the need for integrity. Do I have to say how desperately we need integrity? What is integrity?
It’s acting consistently with what you say you believe, right? You’re not duplicitous. You’re not a
hypocrite.
But look at this how it is laid out in verses 13 to 15: “But having the same spirit of faith”—Paul operates
by faith—“according to what is written, ‘I believed, therefore I spoke,’ we also believe, therefore we also
speak.’” That is so simple. People ask me through the years, “Do you worry about people’s reaction to
what you say?” My standard answer has been no. Why would I worry about what people think? There’s
only one person I’m concerned about, and that’s God. I’ve never had the thought, sitting in my study
preparing, “Oh, I don’t want to say that, that’s going to make somebody mad.”
People have said to me, “You know”—written me notes—“I brought my Catholic friend, and you
offended him. I’ll never come back. I brought my Mormon friend, and you offended him. I brought my
wife, and you offended her.” And I’m saying, “You want to paralyze me? Then tell me you’re having
3,000 people sitting in front of me, and my job is to not offend any of them.” No, I am here to offend all of
you! And in so doing, I have offended my own heart.
No, don’t come to Grace Church if you don’t want to be offended. We are nice people and loving people.
In fact, I was introduced at the National Religious Broadcasters by a well-known charismatic pastor that
I’d gotten to know on a personal level, and he introduced me this way: “This is my friend John
MacArthur, who is much nicer in person than he is in his sermons.” It’s not that I’m trying to be unkind,
it’s that I must be truthful. That is integrity; I can’t say I believe something but I don’t have the courage
to say it.
Verse 13, “I believed, therefore I spoke.” That’s integrity. This is the spirit of faith. You say you believe?
This is how faith operates. It operates according to what is written. And Paul borrows a statement from
Psalm 116, verse 10: “I believed, therefore I spoke.”
Psalm 116 is an incredible psalm. The psalmist lays out his severe difficulty; has so much difficulty: verse
3, verse 6, verse 8. And then he launches into prayer in verse 4. And without any change in the
circumstances, in verses 5 to 9, he just rehearses how he trusts God. And so, then in verse 10 he says,
“I’m speaking words of trust because that’s what I believe.” And the psalm ends from verse 12 to 19 with
praise. He just launches into praise—and the circumstances haven’t changed. But he speaks of his trust
in God. “What I believe compels me to be confident.”
Well, the apostle Paul sees that as an analogy to his own situation. The psalmist believed in the mercy, the
care, the power, and the salvation of the Lord—and he spoke about it, and he praised God for it. And
Paul borrows his words and says, “I have the same kind of faith in God as that Old Testament psalmist; a
confident conviction that I cannot be silent, because this is what I believe, and this is what I speak.” By
the way, Jonah 2 borrowed, I think, from this very psalm when he was praising God inside the great fish.
So Paul said what he believed to be true, said what God revealed to him. He believed, so he spoke. You
can reverse that. What you hear people speak is what they believe. And if they don’t speak the truth, they
don’t believe the truth. They might want to tell you they believe the truth, but it’s not a conviction. What
you’re afraid to say, you don’t believe. Or you don’t believe you can say it and be protected by God. So
you don’t trust God. If you don’t speak the truth, if you put some other message in, then either you don’t
believe that truth; or if you do believe that truth in some superficial way, you don’t believe the God of
truth can protect you when you say it.
Look, I’m not unaware of what’s been going on at Grace Church. They’ve been trying to shut us down
week after week after week after week behind the scenes; you don’t know all about that. And we just
keep speaking the truth and speaking the truth and entrusting the results to God, right? True belief in
the Word of God, and true belief in the God of the Word are the foundations for courage. You just speak
the truth.
And Paul has two reasons to speak the truth. Number one, I love this, verse 14, “Knowing that He who
raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and will present us with you.” He was willing to preach
the truth even if it cost him his life—why? Because what would happen? He’d be raised from the dead.
He believed in the resurrection, “knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus”—who is that? That’s God
the Father, Acts 2:24, “But God raised Him up again.” Or 1 Corinthians 6:14, “Now God has not only
raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power.”
Why are we worried about what can happen to us—persecution, hostility, and even death—when that’s
just the fast track to the resurrection? We wait, don’t we, for the redemption of the body. Can we say
with Paul, “To live is Christ, to die is”—what? “gain.” Would it not appeal to you, 1 John 3:2, to be like
Him when you see Him as He is? Haven’t you had enough of yourself? There’s no fear when death is
gain. He’ll raise up Jesus and “present us with you”—we’ll all be together in the resurrection. “We’ll”—
the verb there means to come and stand in the presence of someone. And that someone is Christ.
So the first reason he’s willing to suffer and die is because he knows the resurrection is a reality and,
secondly, is salvation. Look at verse 15: “For all things are for your sakes, so that the grace which is
spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God.” The
indomitable courage of Paul, the integrity of his life: He believed it, and he spoke it, and even if the price
was death, that was not a problem because resurrection was awaiting him. And secondly, because in
preaching the truth, the grace of salvation was spreading to more and more people who were being added
to the heavenly hallelujah chorus that would forever give glory to God.
The goal of gospel ministry is never comfort, never wealth and popularity, it’s always the salvation of
those lost and alienated from God. And as we proclaim the truth, we count our lives as nothing, except
that we would be used for the gathering of God’s people, through believing the message preached in the
power of the Holy Spirit. He says saving grace is spreading to more and more people so that the ultimate
goal can take place, which is the glory of God. Ephesians chapter 1, the whole redemptive plan of God
summed up in that opening chapter, “for the praise of His glory,” “for the praise of His glory,” “for the
praise of His glory.” Paul has God’s glory in mind; he’s incidental. He’s overwhelmed at such a mercy, to
be used in such a way to bring glory to God.
So the believer who is faithful as a witness to the gospel, shining the light of Christ into the darkness, fills
his soul with the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ; and selflessly reflects that glory in
what he says and how he lives, so that more glory can be ascribed to God as people see his life and hear
his gospel, and be saved. And he does all of that confident that if they kill him, it’s the fastest path to
heaven.
Finally, one more certainty anchored Paul to faithfulness, one more reason he didn’t lose heart. He was
certain that eternal glory far outweighed earthly suffering. Look at verse 16 to the end: “Therefore we do
not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For
momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison,
while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which
are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
He makes three points. We don’t lose heart because, number one, spiritual strength is more important
than physical weakness. We are decaying—the outer man. And we all know that, right? Life is a terminal
disease. Every day you live, you’re closer to death. It was escalated for Paul because of the brutal way he
was treated. He died at about 60; he probably would have lived longer if he hadn’t been so mistreated
and abused. But it really wasn’t the issue. “The outer man is decaying, yet the inner man is being
renewed day by day.” I can tell you from this vantage point—you know, I’m at the end, I’m giving you
the view from the hearse, as it goes down the road. And I will tell you this: The inner man, by the grace of
God, has never been stronger in me. And that is because I have a history of seeing the power of God, the
grace of God, the mercy of God, the sustaining of God. The older that you get, the more history of God’s
working in your life you have.
I can praise God for all the things He did through Old Testament history. I can praise God for all the
things He did through New Testament history. I can praise God for all the things He did through
redemptive history, church history, up to now. But I also, on this end of life, can praise God for how
providence has unfolded in my life purely as a matter of mercy and grace. Utterly undeserved. And
worship for me is just rehearsing providence. If you want to know how to worship, worship is rehearsing
providence. It’s going back and saying, “God, this is who You are; this is what You’ve done.” And you
can start at the beginning of divine revelation, go all the way through the Scripture, all the way through
church history, and then you can start going through your own life. You’ve seen the hand of God.
It’s a continual renewal. Every day of my life another providence unfolds in my eyes that could only be
accomplished by God. Sometimes joyous, wonderful providences; sometimes painful, agonizing
providences—but providences nonetheless. Yes, life is a terminal disease, we’re all dying. Paul died
probably before his time, had he not suffered so much. But all that was happening on
the inside was far more important to him.
I can honestly say—somebody told me, a doctor told me recently I won’t die of cancer, and I said, “Why
do you say that?” He said, “Because you haven’t had it yet; you’re too old to get it.” Now you know
you’re old when you’re too old to get cancer. Well, I said, “Thanks, Doc. Now if I can just dodge trucks in
the freeway I might survive.”
That’s never been the goal, right? The goal is to be renewed on the inside. So Paul understood that
spiritual strength was far more important than physical weakness. Secondly, that future glory was far
more important than present humiliation. Verse 17, “For momentary, light affliction is producing for us
an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.” “Momentary, light affliction”—that’s how he
viewed his sufferings. You might say he was underestimating them; he would say, “Not at all. Not at all.”
“Momentary, light afflictions.” He makes contrasts: inner over the outer in verse 16, momentary over the
eternal in this one, light over heavy. The word “light” afflictions, “light” is elaphros, it means weightless,
inconsequential. These afflictions are inconsequential. But there is an eternal weight of glory. And even
the word “glory” is related to the Hebrew word “weight.” What matters to Paul is eternal glory. And it
has a weight far beyond all comparison; it exceeds all limits. He says in 1 Corinthians 2, “Eye hasn’t seen,
nor ear heard, nor has it entered the heart of man the things that God has prepared for them that love
Him,” right?
Thirdly, he says invisible realities are far more important than visible realities. Verse 18, “We look not at
the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are
temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” “While we look”—his focus of his whole life. His
vision was fixed not on things which are seen, not on temporal things, not on the visible world.
I heard the testimony of someone—it was sent to me, a well-known evangelical leader who has been
advocating critical race theory and all of those things—and he declared to the world in this latest
interview that he was no longer an evangelical, and he didn’t want that label. Then he went on for about
an hour to talk about what mattered to him, which was all the racial issues. And at the end of it all it was
weightless, it was meaningless. I said to somebody it was like reading the phone book—didn’t matter, had
no eternal consequences whatsoever. That’s not the side you want to pick. All the objects, all the
philosophies, all the social issues are temporal. It’s like, as I’ve told you before, rearranging the deck
chairs on the Titanic. What’s the point of that?
But Paul constantly kept his focus on things that are not seen, and they are eternal. It’s really an echo of
Moses that the writer of Hebrews picks up in Hebrews 11:27. Moses, it says, endured because he had his
eyes on Him who is—what? Invisible. Set you affections on things above and not on things in the earth,
right?
So with those kinds of convictions, Paul was faithful to the end. And in his last epistle he gives a
testimony. He says, 2 Timothy chapter 4, in verse 6, “I’m already being poured out as a drink offering,
and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course”—I love
this—“I have kept”—what?—“the faith.” That’s how you want to end up, isn’t it? So, “in the future is
laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that
day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.” To you as well. His vision was
always heavenward, like we heard Honoria play, “Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart.”
I confess to you these are challenging times in many ways, but I don’t recall in my entire ministry a more
exciting time to be proclaiming truth. Or a more black and white time, when evil is flaunting itself, when
the truth is terrifying to the ungodly. But it also is the only hope of salvation, right? So “let your light
shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify our Father who is in heaven.” And be
lights, as Paul said, Philippians, shining in the darkness, with the light of the gospel of Christ. And be
faithful to the end. And you will be if you have these same certainties that gave Paul undying courage.
 7-The Church Has No Fellowship with the World Mar 3/21
https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/GTY179
https://youtu.be/rXuigBJmuO0

Good morning, everybody. Wonderful to be together and to talk about the state of the church. Obviously
a lot could be said, and I know you who are in ministry are always analyzing that—not only your own
church but the larger church, in trying to make the church conform more to the Word of God and to the
will of the head of the church, the Lord Christ. To be assigned the task of talking about the state of the
church opens up all kinds of possibilities. So I had to narrow everything down, and I’ve narrowed it
down to a particular portion of Scripture that we’ll get to in a moment. 
Over the last number of weeks, and even months, I’ve been preaching from this pulpit on the invisible
kingdom, trying to distinguish for our congregation and those around the world who are listening, the
difference between the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness; and obviously, they’re
diametrically opposed to each other. We’ve tried to help many new people who’ve been coming to our
church to understand the foundational realities of what the kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom of God,
and the kingdom of light is all about, And it comes down to, I think, two defining statements. One in John
18, where Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants
would fight so that I would not be delivered over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not from here.”
So it is a kingdom that exists parallel to the kingdom of this world, to the kingdom of darkness—but it
doesn’t mingle.
And the other thing that our Lord said is in the seventeenth chapter of Luke, where He said, “The
kingdom of God is in your midst.” And that is to say that the kingdom is here because the King is here;
and wherever the King reigns, the kingdom exists. And that means it comes down to individual believers’
hearts, as well as the collective believers in the church. So we are, as it were, a kingdom here in the world
—not of the world, alien to the world, existing in a parallel universe, imperceptible to the world.
The apostle Paul said, “It is not manifest what we are because there has not been the glorious
manifestation of the children of God.” The world looks at us, and they don’t understand that we are
eternally the people of God—that we have been redeemed, that we are indwelt by the King, and that we
belong to the eternal kingdom. They can’t distinguish that. In the natural sense, that’s not possible. What
is possible is for them to hate everything about us, everything about the kingdom of light.
So I’ve been trying over the last weeks to help our people separate themselves from the world
foundationally, in terms of their identity. Because what is, in my mind, the single greatest error in the
church is its partnership with the world. This is nothing new, and it takes different forms in every period
of history. So I want to talk about the need for the church to understand that it cannot partner with the
world in any real sense. We’ll talk about that from a number of passages.
So let’s begin by looking at Matthew 16, Matthew 16. We’ll pick up the very familiar story of Peter’s
confession in verse 13. “Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He was asking His
disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist; and
others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say
that I am?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus said to him,
‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father
who is in heaven.’” That is the highest moment of Peter’s life. Every one of us could wish to have the
Lord say to us, “What you have spoken is directly from heaven.”
“Blessed are you, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.”
That is the high point of Peter. Such a high point, the Lord says, “You are Peter, and upon this rock I’ll
build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. I’ll give you the keys of the kingdom of
heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth
shall have been loosed in heaven.”
I mean, these are stunning, stunning identifications given to Peter. He is part of the foundation of the
church. He is given the keys to the kingdom. That is to say, he can tell people how to enter the kingdom
and what will cause them to be shut out of the kingdom. He is given that kind of delegated authority from
God. This is Peter’s high point; he is speaking from God, and that is God’s own testimony.
In an immediate contradiction to that, you come to verse 21: “From that time Jesus began to show His
disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and
scribes, and be killed, and be raised on the third day. Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him,
saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.’ But He turned and said to Peter, ‘Get
behind Me, Satan!’”—in the space of six inches, he goes from speaking for God to representing Satan
—“‘You’re a stumbling block to Me; for you’re not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.’”
This is the ultimate low point in Peter’s life; from the high point to the low point in two adjacent
passages.
“Get behind Me, Satan!” Mark that Jesus said that to an apostle—the leading apostle, the apostle who
would be an eyewitness to the Resurrection, the apostle who would preach the first sermon in the
founding of the church on the day of Pentecost, the apostle who would be the preacher through the first
half of the book of Acts. “Get behind Me, Satan!” That’s strong language; and the Lord uses the
verb hupagō, “be gone.” It’s a fierce rebuke. And it appears another place in Matthew: in the fourth
chapter and the tenth verse, when Satan came to tempt Jesus, and Jesus said the same thing to the devil.
Jesus said to Peter exactly what He said to Satan. And that’s why He follows it up by saying, “You are
not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.” The most fierce rebuke: “You have taken up the
devil’s agenda.”
The temptation was the same. What was Satan’s temptation? To give to the Lord the kingdoms of the
world without the cross, right? The crown without the cross, the kingdom without the cross. “Bow down
to me, and I’ll give You all those things.” The devil is still saying that, and he’s saying it to evangelicals.
You can avoid the offense, you can avoid the hostility, you can avoid the persecution, you can adjust the
message, and you can have the kingdom without the cross. You can have the crown without the cross.
This is the most devastating rebuke that ever came out of the lips of the Lord toward a disciple: “You
have taken up Satan’s cause.” You are in partnership with the devil when you think there’s going to be a
crown without a cross, when you think you’re going to accomplish the purpose of advancing the name of
Christ through the gospel without suffering.
Everything that could be identified under the term pragmatism is designed to eliminate the suffering. And
our Lord says, “You’re a stumbling block to Me.” Peter means “stone.” “Upon this rock I’ll build My
church.” Peter goes from a stone, to a rock, to a stumbling stone.
If you want to get in the way of the purposes of God, take up the devil’s cause to advance the kingdom
without the conflict, to advance the kingdom without the suffering, to advance the kingdom without the
cross. “You are not setting your mind on God’s interests but man’s.” The worst rebuke, of course, for
this loving disciple who just wants to help Jesus. Right? Just wants to help Jesus, help Him avoid
suffering. And the devil’s way is always that—to try to get Christians to think that the kingdom of light
can advance without suffering by making certain concessions and compromises with the dark kingdom.
Peter’s sin has been repeated incessantly throughout all of church history, and it’s being done today.
Christians have been trying to help Jesus build His kingdom by striking deals with the devil. Every effort
to advance the kingdom by means of any worldly scheme is doing the devil’s work.
Jesus said, “They hate Me because I tell them their deeds are evil,” John 7:7. In John 15:18–23, He says,
“If they hated Me, they’ll hate you.” This goes with the territory. But there’s always this propensity
among weak leaders to try to eliminate the hostility. Good intentions, and maybe even love for Christ,
prompting efforts to advance the kingdom by political lobbying, pragmatism, social change, shallow
gospel, entertainment, emotional manipulation, acceptance of sin. All of that is to cross over into the
darkness and do the devil’s work.
Our Lord’s way is to stay on the side of the kingdom of light; and there is a hard line between the
kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light. In 2 Corinthians chapter 10 there’s a definitive passage
that I’ll have you look at for a moment. Second Corinthians chapter 10—and you’re familiar with it—
verses 3 through 5, where the apostle Paul says though we are human, in verse 3, we don’t use human
weapons. We can’t make spiritual war with human weapons, human strategies. The weapons of our
warfare are not human, “not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are
destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God.”
Rather than make an alliance with things raised up against the knowledge of God, we smash them, we
crush them, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to
punish all disobedience. This simplifies the life in the kingdom, which is total, complete obedience to
Christ. And anything raised up against the knowledge of God, against obedience to Christ, we bring the
truth to bear on that as if we were crushing fortresses—ideological fortresses called speculations and
lofty things raised up against the knowledge of God. Our job is not to make alliances with the world and
think in so doing we can advance the kingdom, as if Satan were coming alongside Christ to aid Him in the
building of His church.
All that is in the world is passing away, right?—1 John. “Love not the world, neither the things that are
in the world.” It’s all got a very short shelf life. James 4:4, “Friendship with the world is”—what?
—“enmity with God.”
The kingdom of light needs no help from the devil’s kingdom. We don’t need a lobby group in
Washington lobbying with some kind of bizarre notion that somehow, politicians can help us advance the
name of Jesus Christ. It’s irrelevant what the laws in any country are, this one or any other country; they
have nothing to do with the kingdom of light. Doesn’t matter what laws are made or not made, what laws
benefit the kingdom at least in a temporal sense, and what laws make it more difficult to be a Christian.
They have zero effect on the building of the church. Jesus said, “I’ll build My church, and the gates of
Hades will not prevail against it. All that the Father gives to Me will come to Me; I’ll lose none of them,
but raise them at the last day.” Christ will triumph. “We,” says Paul in 2 Corinthians 2, “we always
triumph in Christ Jesus”—right?
It has no partnership with the world. We don’t need to seek the world’s attention. We don’t need to buy
into the world’s interests, as if somehow doing that opens a way for people to be saved, when the only
thing that we need to do to bring the elect to salvation is to preach the gospel. Our Lord’s way is to stay
on the side of the light. Evangelicalism has become like Peter, offering a better way than bold,
uncompromising, compassionate, loving, proclamation of the gospel that offends the sinner—that offends
the sinner, and seeks to break the sinner’s comfort and contentment by bringing him into stark
realization of the eternal judgment of God.
But evangelicals have become like Peter; they’re looking for alliances with Satan that they think
somehow can aid the kingdom. I told our congregation a few weeks ago that I could never really concern
myself with religious freedom. I wouldn’t fight for religious freedom because I won’t fight for idolatry.
Why would I fight for the devil to have as many false religions as possible, and all of them available to
everyone? Well, people would say, “That’s a terrible thing to say. What about Christianity?” Christianity
advances whether there’s religious freedom or not. And there’ll always be religious freedom for all the
lies. Every false religion is going to be free because it’s linked to the kingdom of darkness that operates in
the world. And Christians—whatever the label of religious freedom might be in its broadest sense—
Christians are always the target, even with religious freedom, of the hostility of sinners.
The apostles turned the world upside down with no help from it, no social action, no alliances. The evil
kingdom of darkness hates what God loves and loves everything God hates, and the kingdom of darkness
is never a friend to the light. Evil rulers have exchanged the truth of God for a lie—for lies—and they
function under the ultimate liar: Satan himself, who is a liar and the father of lies. There is absolutely no
reason for us to make any alliance with him—and I’ll spell that out a little more as we go. All godless
rulers are previews of Antichrist; read Revelation 13:1–9. All godless rulers are previews of Antichrist.
So we have two kingdoms: one, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of truth, the kingdom of Christ; the
other, the kingdom of Satan, the kingdom of lies, the kingdom of Antichrist. So what is the church’s
mandate in the world? There are a number of passages we could look at. Let me draw you to Ephesians
chapter 5 because it spells it out, Ephesians 5, and we can pick it up in verse 5.
“For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an
idolator, has an inheritance into the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty
words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do
not be partakers with them; for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as
children of Light (for the fruit of the Light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth).” Verse
7, “Do not be partakers with them.” You have no alliance with the kingdom of darkness—that would be
just, or righteous. “Don’t be deceived,” verse 6, “with empty words.” Don’t be in any alliance with the
kingdom of darkness.
In Colossians chapter 2 verse 6: “Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him,
having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were
instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy
and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the
world, rather than according to Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in
Him you have been made complete.”
Chapter 3, familiar words: “If you’ve been raised with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where
Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are
on the earth.” And even down in verse 12: “You have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a
heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, forgiving
each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.
Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in
your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ richly
dwell within you, in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to the Lord. Whatever you do in word or deed,
do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.” That is the sum of
your life: is related to God and to Christ. Everything, everything in your life is related to the One who
reigns in the kingdom of light.
Now we could talk about those passages, but it’s another one that I really want you to look at with me: 2
Corinthians 6. And a very familiar passage, but I think overlooked, to the detriment of the church,
certainly in this period of time. Second Corinthians 6:14. I’ve a lot to say, and I’ll try to squeeze it in in
whatever amount time we have here.
The opening statement of verse 14 doesn’t need a lot of explanation: “Do not be bound together with
unbelievers.” Is that hard to get, hard to grasp? “Do not be bound together with unbelievers.” It’s an
unqualified statement: “Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have
righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ
with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of
God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, ‘I will dwell in them and walk
among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Therefore, come out from their midst
and be separate,’ says the Lord. ‘And do not touch what is unclean; and I will welcome you. And I will be
a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me,’ says the Lord Almighty.” Then verse 1 of
chapter 7, “Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh
and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” And the defilement is the defilement of those alliances.
Two opposing kingdoms: one, marked by righteousness, light, Christ, believers, and God; the other
marked by lawlessness, darkness, Belial, unbelievers, and idols. There is no possibility of bringing these
two kingdoms together in any partnership, any fellowship, any harmony, any mutual benefit. One is old,
the other is new. One is earthly, the other is heavenly. One is deadly, the other is enlivening. One is
material, the other is spiritual. One is full of lies, the other is truthful.
So the command, then, in verse 14: “Do not be bound together with unbelievers.” That doesn’t mean you
should divorce an unbeliever. Paul addresses that, doesn’t he? First Corinthians 7. It doesn’t mean
isolation because Paul himself says, “I’m all things to all men, that I might by all means win some.” And
Jesus says in John 17 in His high-priestly prayer, “I do not ask, Father, that You remove them from the
world, but that You keep them from the evil one.” So we’re not talking about isolation, we’re talking
about being bound together.
Now look at that, because it’s really very important. It means unequally yoked; and that’s, I think, the
Authorized translation, and it’s a good one because this comment, this command really, “Do not be
bound together with unbelievers,” is a prohibition based on Deuteronomy 22:10. And Deuteronomy
22:10 says, “You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together.” You can’t plow a straight furrow
with two different beasts with two different natures, two different gaits, two different dispositions, that
are designed two different ways.
You can’t connect in a common cause, that’s the idea. This is not new. Jeremiah 2, “Go and proclaim in
the ears of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord, “I remember concerning you the devotion of your
youth” (To Jewish people) “I remember the love of your betrothals, your following after Me in the
wilderness, through a land not sown. Israel was holy to the Lord, the first of His harvest. All who ate of it
became guilty; evil came upon them,” declares the Lord.’”
“Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel. Thus says the
Lord, ‘What injustice did your fathers find in Me, that they went far from Me . . . ?’” There was a time
when you were like a bride, and you were enjoying intimacy and the blessing of our relationship, and you
were protected by Me. What happened? What happened? Why did you go far from Me “and walk after
emptiness and become empty? They didn’t say, ‘Where is the Lord who brought us up out of the land of
Egypt, who led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, and of drought and deep
darkness, through a land that no one crossed, and where no man dwelt?’ I brought you into the fruitful
land to eat its fruit and good things. But you came and defiled My land, and My inheritance you made an
abomination. The priests didn’t say, ‘Where is the Lord?’ And those who handle the law didn’t know
Me; the rulers also transgressed against Me”—and here’s the specific indictment —“the prophets
prophesied by Baal and walked after things that did not profit.” Deviation from their relationship with
the true God.
“‘Therefore I will contend with you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and with your sons I will contend.’” End of the
chapter: “My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to
hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” Why do God’s people do that? Why
did they defect to the world? This is nothing new; this was the story of Israel as well as the sad history of
the church.
And Satan always seeks to disrupt the work of God, and does that by joining the church to the kingdom
of darkness. It’s in the parables of Matthew 13 where Jesus says the devil will come and sow tares among
the wheat—or by seducing. Either the devil sows unbelievers in the church or seduces the church to make
alliances with the world.
The current dominating interest of the defective church is in the realm of racism, feminism, and
homosexuality; and this has created massive chaos in evangelicalism. The kingdom of light joining the
racist, bitter, vengeful, graceless philosophy of CRT, intersectionality, systemic racism, feminism
spawned out of the Enlightenment 300 years ago by God-hating, Christ-rejecting, anti-family, anti-
Christian atheists who were driven by bizarre sexual passions. All you have to do is read Philip Johnson’s
book The Intellectuals to know that those philosophers were some of the most deviant people who ever
rose to intellectual power.
But all the issues that they generated on the social level have now become the interest of the church. The
church is endeavoring to partner with the world in its effort to fix things that aren’t right on the planet.
And we all know there are plenty of things wrong. That’s not new. Genesis 6, when the Lord looked at
the earth, all He saw was “evil continually,” right? And “only evil continually.”
So if you’re going to fix the planet, you’ve got a pretty big job. If you’re going to make all the social ills
right, if you’re going to fix every abuse, that is a very challenging problem—particularly if you don’t do
anything to change the people, because you will find that sinful people will sin. If you put a barrier up in
one category to prevent a sin, they’ll just deviate into another category where sin finds life.
So what is the church doing in joining common cause with the world, common cause with its distortions
of truth and reality, with its God-hating, Christ-rejecting attitudes? Paul’s passage here is very, very
powerful, so let’s dig in a little bit. I want you to look at it from the three views that are the most obvious:
past, present, and future. He’s making reference to the past, if only in an oblique sense, when we open
with V14: “Do not be bound together with unbelievers.” I draw that from Deuteronomy 22:10; let’s look
at the past.
What was God’s attitude toward alliances between His people and the world in the past? Old Testament
is filled with prohibition. Let’s look at some of them, to get a full picture. There are a lot of places to go,
Exodus 23:31, “I will fix your boundary from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the
wilderness to the River Euphrates; for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, you will
drive them out before you. You shall make no covenant with them or with their gods. They shall not live
in your land, because they will make you sin against Me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a
snare to you.”
Now we have laid out there the reality that God says to Israel, “You need to remove them from the land
because you can’t survive their presence.” That’s how powerful and seductive the ungodly world is, even
to the people of God. You need to conquer them. You need to destroy them. You need to chase them out
because you can’t survive if they’re still there. That’s how powerful and seductive the world is.
Exodus 34:12, “Watch yourselves that you make no covenant with the inhabitants of the land into which
you’re going, or it’ll become a snare in your midst. But rather, you are to tear down their altars, smash
their sacred pillars, cut down their Asherim—for you shall not worship any other god, for the Lord,
whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God—otherwise you might make a covenant with the inhabitants of
the land, they will play the harlot with their gods and sacrifice to their gods, and someone might invite
you to eat of his sacrifice, and you might take some of his daughters for your sons, and his daughters
might play the harlot with their gods and cause your sons also to play the harlot with their gods. You
shall make for yourselves no molten gods.” In other words, this is so powerful and seductive that the very
presence of these idolators will lure you and suck you in.
In Deuteronomy 7, as they stood on the brink of entering into the land of promise, there’s a reiteration of
these warnings: “When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess it, and
clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites,
Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you, and when the Lord your God delivers them
before you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with
them and show no favor to them.” This is extreme action on the part of God to protect His people from
the powerful seductive influences of the kingdom of darkness.
“Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor
shall you take their daughters for your sons. For they will turn your sons away from following Me to
serve other gods; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you and He will quickly destroy you.
And thus you shall do to them: you shall tear down their altars, and smash their sacred pillars, hew down
their Asherim, and burn their graven images with fire. For you are a holy people to the Lord your God;
the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on
the face of the earth.
“The Lord did not set His love on you or choose you because you were more in number than other
peoples, for you were the fewest of all people” (then this amazing statement) “but because the Lord loved
you.” Because the Lord loves you; He desires to protect you, and that means He’s going to destroy all
those around you who could seduce you into the darkness. That’s His will for you: that you be that
protected. Obviously we know they didn’t do that. They didn’t isolate, they didn’t destroy those people,
they didn’t get them out of the land. And, of course, they became idolaters.
Isaiah 30:1, “‘Woe to the rebellious children,’ declares the Lord, ‘who execute a plan, but not Mine’”—
that sounds like Matthew, doesn’t it? “Your interest is in, not God’s, but man’s agenda”—“who execute a
plan, but not Mine, and make an alliance, but not of My Spirit, in order to add sin to sin; who proceed
down to Egypt without consulting Me, to take refuge in the safety of Pharaoh”—this is getting political
protection for the people of God—“seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt!” How bizarre is that?
“Therefore the safety of Pharaoh will be your shame and the shelter in the shadow of Egypt, your
humiliation. For their princes are at Zoan and their ambassadors arrive at Hanes. Everyone will be
ashamed because of a people who cannot profit them, who are not for help or profit, but for shame and
for reproach.” All you’re going to get out of alliances with Egypt is shame and reproach, and you’re
going to make clear to the world who’s watching that you do not trust your God.
Isaiah 31, “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and rely on horses, and trust in chariots because
they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong, and they do not look to the Holy One of
Israel, nor seek the Lord! Yet He also is wise and will bring disaster and does not retract His words, but
will arise against the house of evildoers and against the help of the workers of iniquity. Now the
Egyptians are men and not God, and their horses are flesh and not spirit; so the Lord will stretch out His
hand, and he who helps will stumble and he who is helped will fall, and all of them will come to an end
together.” You get nothing from an alliance with the world, or from trusting in worldly leaders,
politicians.
So that’s the past view implied by V14. Let’s go back to 2 Corinthians: “Do not be bound together,”
unequally yoked, “with unbelievers.” That reminds us of those Old Testament prohibitions. And you
know that God did so many things to isolate Israel: They had dietary laws; they had clothing
requirements; they had calendar requirements. All of those things were an effort to keep them protected
from the darkness, which eventually, sadly, engulfed them.
Now let’s move into the present tense, okay? So Paul is now speaking to us, to the church: “What
partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what
harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what
agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God.” Present tense, five
comparisons. It’s almost like you want to say, “OK, I get it.”
Before you get to number five, five comparisons speak to the issue of life in the church: “What
partnership has righteousness with lawlessness?” “Partnership” is metochē. It’s used only here in the
New Testament, but it’s related to a word that is used in Luke 5 to speak of Peter’s business partners in
fishing, and it’s used in Hebrews 3 to speak of our union with Christ. So this is a partnership that is a
genuine partnership in a common effort. It’s not as if you’re sitting next to somebody watching
something; it’s partnership in a common effort. Righteousness can have no partnership with
lawlessness. Matthew 7:23, “You will never ever enter into My kingdom because you are lawless, you are
lawless.”
1 John 3, definitive distinction between the people of the darkness and the light: “Everyone who practices
sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared in order to take away
sins; and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows
Him. Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous,
just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil. No one who is born of God practices sin,
because the seed abides in him, and he cannot sin, because he’s born of God. By this the children of God
and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who doesn’t practice righteousness is not of God, nor
the one who doesn’t love his brother.” Mutually exclusive.
So the first statement is, “What alliance, what common cause can righteousness have with lawlessness?”
Secondly, “What fellowship has light with darkness?” The first one has to do with character. Character
is manifest by righteousness or lawlessness. This one goes a little deeper and has to do with nature.
“What fellowship”—koinōnia—“has light with darkness?” These things are by definition opposites.
“Light” is a metaphor for truth and virtue; “darkness” is a metaphor for lies and iniquity.
Children of light and children of darkness together in some kind of cause? Not possible. Not possible with
the view of advancing the kingdom. You can be in a business together, you can be on a team together, you
can work together, but you can’t engage in a common alliance with the view of advancing the kingdom.
So, first of all, he’s referring to behavior (righteousness and lawlessness). And then he goes back to
character (light and darkness). And then he speaks of power. What is the difference between the two
power sources? What harmony? And that is actually the word sumphōnēsis, from which we get
symphony.
“What harmony has Christ with Belial?” Now you’re talking about power. What alliance does the power
of Christ need to make with the power of the devil? Belial is an ancient name for Satan. It means
worthless. It’s used about twelve times in the Old Testament. It’s unthinkable that you would link up
Satan with Christ. Unthinkable that you would somehow think, as a believer preaching the gospel, “You
need to make an alliance with atheistic, godless, Christless, vengeful, hate-filled, racist ideology.” Those
two go together? That’s impossible. You don’t advance the kingdom of God by any alliance with any
common cause in the world, even those that may have some elements of validity. The only way the world
is ever going to change is when the hearts of people change, right? The Lord wants us to view cooperation
with the world in this way: It’s joining Christ to Satan.
Or, he says, “What has a believer in common with an unbeliever?” So we go from the behavior
(righteousness and lawlessness), to the character (light and darkness), to the power (Christ and Belial), to
the means. The world operates by sight; we operate by faith. What does a believer have in common with
an unbeliever? They operate purely on the temporal level; we operate on the spiritual level. For
Christians who live by faith in the Lord, our trust is in Him, our faith is in Him, and that’s why we don’t
swap the fountain of living waters for broken pots. It offers us nothing. We function in the supernatural
by the power of God, the power of Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit. All that the world can do is
function on a natural level. We trust in God; they trust in themselves. We trust in the Spirit; they trust in
the flesh. They trust in political power, military power, ideological force, financial power; we trust in
God.
Last, opposite identities. That’s a big word, “identity.” V16, “What agreement has the temple of God,
with idols?” When Ezekiel had a vision of the Temple, and he saw scribblings of idols in the Temple, and
then he saw false gods in the Temple. 1 Samuel 4-6, Philistines had captured the Ark of the Covenant, put
it in the house of Dagon; God will not be alongside an idol. The idol was knocked over the next morning
and its head was cut off and it was dismembered.
We have no agreement. “We are the temple of the living God.” We are the temple of the living God.
What an amazing statement: “temple of the living God.” What does the temple of the living God have to
do with idols? What agreement? That means union. “Temple” here is naos—means the Holy of Holies.
We are the temple, right? Spirit of God dwells in us. John 14:20, Jesus said those amazing words: “I’m in
the Father, and you in Me, and I in you.”
“Identity” is a buzzword, isn’t it, today? Everybody wants to talk about racial identity, sexual identity,
gender identity. Well we have an identity too, and that is we are the temple of the living God. It is true; I
am not what I appear. I appear as a man, but that is my material identity. My true, unseen, actual
identity is that I am the temple of the living God. Christ is in me; Christ lives in me. And I cannot join
Christ to an idol. Paul even talks about not joining Christ to a harlot, doesn’t he?
So “don’t be bound together with unbelievers.” Don’t be bound together as the righteous with the
lawless. Don’t be bound together as the light with the darkness. Don’t be bound together as those who are
Christ’s with Satan. Don’t be bound together with idolators when you “are the temple of the living God.”
You cannot do any of those things and advance the kingdom.
There’s one more climactic truth, and it’s in the last section here. And it’s the future. And this has been
overlooked a lot I think, so this might be a fresh insight for you. V16, where “God said, ‘I will dwell in
them and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Therefore, come out
from their midst and be separate,’ says the Lord, ‘and do not touch what is unclean; and I will welcome
you. And I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me,’ says the Lord Almighty.
Therefore, having these promises.” These are promises: “I will,” four times. These are promises.
You notice there that these are quotes from the Old Testament, right? And they are a mosaic of Old
Testament promises to the people of God—listen carefully—related to the kingdom. Did you get that?
Related to the kingdom. Christ’s millennial kingdom. They’re drawn out of kingdom passages, like
Jeremiah 24, “I will set My eyes on them for good, I will bring them again to this land; I will build them
up, I will plant them. I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am the Lord; and they will be My people,
and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart.” That’s what this is referring
to.
When he talks about dwelling and walking, he’s not talking to nonbelievers and calling them to salvation;
he already talks about us as believers and part of Christ and the light and righteousness. He’s speaking to
believers and saying that the promise of God is of a future kingdom. Jeremiah 31:33, “‘This is the
covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ says the Lord, ‘I will put My law
within their hearts I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” Familiar words
from Ezekiel 37, “I’ll make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant with
them. . . . I will set My sanctuary in their midst forever.
My dwelling place also will be with them; and I will be their God, and they will be My people.” In other
words, what he is saying here is all of these kingdom promises mean the purposes of God are on track to
be culminated in the reign of Jesus Christ on earth. In other words it will be set right, but not by any
efforts that we make in alliance with the world. It will be set right when the King of kings comes.
“So having these promises, cleanse yourselves from these unholy alliances.” It’s the promise of the
kingdom, the millennial reign of Christ called the regeneration, called the times of refreshing, the time of
restitution, the Day of Christ. It’s Revelation 19, where it’s laid out with a thousand-year reign of Christ,
establishes in Revelation 20 His kingdom, new heavens, new earth ultimately.
In other words, there is a day coming when things will be made right. The promise of the King coming to
judge, as in Psalm 2, coming to reign, culminating the New Testament. Isaiah gives us elements of that
kingdom. Global, worldwide worship of God as King. Every knee will bow to Yahweh. All nations will see
His glory. Perfect justice and fairness, righteousness and truth. Peace between man and man, and man
and animals. Economic blessing, abundant rain, long life. No wars; safety, joy. All of that is the kingdom,
where God will come and dwell with His people, and walk among them and be their God, and they will be
His people. “The Lord will,” Zechariah 14:9, “the Lord will be king over all the earth; in that day the
Lord will be the only one, and His name the only one.” The only ruler.
So I hear a lot about an urban mandate. Have you heard people talk about that? We have an urban
mandate to reclaim the cities. I’ll give you the urban mandate in the words of Jesus very specifically in
Matthew 11, “Then He began to denounce the cities in which most of His miracles were done, because
they didn’t repent. ‘Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had occurred in
Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
Nevertheless I say to you, it’ll be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you.
And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will descend to Hades; for if the
miracles had occurred in Sodom which occurred in you, it would have remained to this day. Nevertheless
I say to you that it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for you.’”
While the contemporary world hasn’t seen the miracles, they have had the revelation of God written and
have rejected it. There is an urban mandate to pronounce judgment on all cities that reject the Lord
Jesus Christ, to warn them as they should they be warned.
 Revelation 18, The Fall of Babylon
1
 After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority; and the earth was
made bright with his splendor.
 2 And he called out with a mighty voice, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!
It has become a dwelling place of demons, a haunt of every foul spirit,
a haunt of every foul and hateful bird;
3 
for all nations have drunk the wine of her impure passion,
and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her,
and the merchants of the earth have grown rich with the wealth of her wantonness.”
4 
Then I heard another voice from heaven saying,
“Come out of her, my people,
lest you take part in her sins,
lest you share in her plagues;
for her sins are heaped high as heaven,
5 

and God has remembered her iniquities.

Render to her as she herself has rendered,
6 

and repay her double for her deeds;

mix a double draught for her in the cup she mixed.
As she glorified herself and played the wanton,
7 

so give her a like measure of torment and mourning.

Since in her heart she says, ‘A queen I sit,
I am no widow, mourning I shall never see,’
so shall her plagues come in a single day,
8 

pestilence and mourning and famine,

and she shall be burned with fire;
for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.”
That’s the urban mandate: Tell the cities what is coming in divine judgment when the whole global
economy is crushed into hell.
Because of what God told His people in the past about separation from the world, because of what He
says to us as the church about separation from the world, and because of the future plan of God in which
God will do the separating and He will establish the kingdom of righteousness and justice and peace and
joy, the command to us there in V17, “‘Come out from their midst and be separate, and do not touch
what is unclean.’” That is drawn right out of Isaiah 52:11.
This is a call to separation. And the day will come when the Lord will welcome us into His presence as
sons and daughters who will reign with Him in His eternal kingdom. So we “cleanse ourselves,” chapter
7:1, “from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” What
does holiness mean? It means separation, doesn’t it?
So we separate. “Perfecting,” epiteleō. That is an eschatological term anticipating the perfection to come
in the kingdom, anticipating that all the rights will be established by God, who is perfectly righteous.
He’s speaking to the church; it’s in the plural: “Let us cleanse ourselves from all  molusmos,” all the
unholy alliances. We need no alliances with Satan to advance the kingdom; all that does is corrupt the
kingdom.
Our calling is clear: Shine the light into the darkness, don’t mingle with the darkness. Mark 1:15, Tell
people, “Repent and believe in the gospel.” Our calling.
Well, we left Peter in sort of an embarrassing way, so let’s see if we can’t recover him. First Peter 1:13,
“Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to
be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Look forward to His coming in His kingdom. “As
obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like
the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, ‘You
shall be holy, for I am holy.’” Good, Peter, you got it. Separate. Separate.
Do it because, as you address the Father, you are addressing the one who redeemed you, not “with
perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with
the precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ; who was foreknown
before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for your sake, who through Him
are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so your faith and hope are in
God.” Greatest of all prices was paid for you. You are a unique, separate, holy people.
1 Peter 2:9, summing it up, borrowing from the Old Testament: “But you are a chosen race, a royal
priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of
Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. You once were not a people, but now
you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
“Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers, abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul.
Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as
evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of
visitation.” What’s the day of visitation? The day that Christ comes face to face with the people who are
sitting at His tribunal. You want to so live your life that there will be people influenced and come to faith
in the gospel, and they will with you glorify God in the day of His judgment visitation.
Peter got the message. The message is, “Separate from the world.” When you link up with the world,
everything gets completely confused. And some final words from Peter in the end of his last letter: “You
therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard; be on your guard so that you’re not
carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness.” That’s what we
have to be careful to avoid: falling from our own resolve, our own conviction, our own steadfastness as
those who live in and proclaim the light. “Grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.” Peter signs off by saying,
“Just focus on Christ. Just focus on Christ.”
I think there are situations now where people are like Peter. One day they’re saying something comes
right from heaven, and the next they’re saying something that comes right from hell. The chaos and the
confusion of all that is ripping and shredding and tearing the evangelical church to bits, because those
who should be tied, tethered, locked down by the gospel and the gospel alone have taken up social causes
—and they are doing nothing but rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It's all going down. What’s
the point? The only way that we can make a difference in the world is by preaching the gospel—right? So
that hearts are transformed.