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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Norman McNulty

Taking the Kingdom by Force

Well, good evening everyone And it's so good to be back home in Loma Linda.

This is like my second home Every time I come back.

I lived here for about 10 years, so That's a almost as long as any other place that I've lived, so it's nice to be back.

And it's good to be back, especially, I hope this was my family when I lived here, so very nice to be back with you this weekend.

The message for this evening is entitled, Taking the Kingdom by Force.

And I want you to turn to Matthew chapter 11, Matthew chapter 11.

And the setting for this story is that John the Baptist has been thrown into prison.

And John the Baptist is starting to have doubts because here he is languishing away, and in his mind, if Jesus was the true Messiah, Jesus would have gotten him out of prison by now.

He was the Lord's messenger who spoke the truth fearlessly, and all he gets for it is to hang out in this dungeon.

And so he sends his disciples to Jesus to ask a question, are you the 1 that should come or should we look for somebody else?

And so Jesus doesn't immediately answer their question, but he heals the sick throughout the day.

And at the end of the day he says, go back and tell John what you saw today.

After John's disciples leave, Jesus then gives what amounts to a eulogy of John the Baptist.

And as they departed, Jesus began to say unto the multitudes concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness to see?

You don't ordinarily go out into a far away place off the beaten path to hear a preacher.

You're used to coming to a church, to an auditorium, to a facility, to the synagogue in their day, to hear a preacher preach the message of righteousness for the time that you were alive.

But that was not the case with John the Baptist.

John the Baptist was not preaching in the synagogues.

He wasn't an ordained minister with a large flock that were following him at a specific church.

He was a lone ranger, so to speak, out in the wilderness, but there was something about his message that stirred the hearts of many that they went out to hear Him.

And maybe you've had that experience in your walk with God.

Maybe you've gone to church week after week after week, and after a period of time the messages are not stirring your heart.

And then this preacher comes along that nobody's ever heard of before, but word gets around.

If a preacher is preaching in the spirit and power of Elijah, I can assure you that the followers of God are going to become aware of that reality, and they will find that preacher, and they will go to the ends of the earth to hear the preaching that God's people need to hear.

And so when Jesus said, what did you go out in the wilderness to see?

Just the very fact that He said you had to go out in the wilderness to hear this preacher, was a rebuke to the Jewish nation and to the messages that were being given in the synagogues.

They shouldn't have had to go to the wilderness, but that was the state of the Jewish nation at that time.

Now that's another rebuke, a reed or a weed that just blows with the wind.

If the wind blows this way, this is what the preacher says.

But if the wind blows the other way, then the preacher says the opposite thing.

And Jesus is saying, when you went out into the wilderness, were you going out to hear John the Baptist, because he's like a weed that would blow whichever way the wind was blowing, to please your ears and to preach smooth sayings?

Is that why you went to hear John the Baptist?

Obviously John the Baptist was someone who had a spine, who couldn't be blown 1 way or the other.

He was preaching according to what Scripture said, and he wasn't blown about by popular opinion.

You know, friends, we are living in crazy times where before too long, just to be a Bible-believing Christian is going to invoke serious consequences.

And there are too many Christians, and perhaps even Adventists, who have so assimilated into modern culture that we're like reeds or weeds shaken with the wind, so that when the wind blows and the wind blows towards tolerance for everyone, then everybody goes that way, and before you know it, you don't have any Christians left.

And again, this is Jesus giving a eulogy, because he knows that John the Baptist is going to die.

So, obviously John was not a reed shaken with the wind.

The implication is that the Pharisees and the Sadducees were.

Continuing, but what went ye out for to see?

A man clothed in soft raiment, behold they that wear soft clothing are in kings' houses.

And again this is a rebuke to the Pharisees and the Sadducees who walked around pompously with their expensive clothes and people were drawn to their apparel rather than to their lifestyle and to their convictions.

John the Baptist was not a flashy guy, He was a simple guy.

But people didn't care about his clothing because of the message that he preached.

Now, don't take that the wrong way and say, oh, I guess I can just dress as sloppy as I want to and I can do whatever I want and still follow the Lord.

No, the Lord expects us to be clean and neat.

Then he gets into it even further, verse 9, But what went ye out for to see?

Yes, I say unto you, and more than a prophet.

So, John the Baptist receives the divine stamp of approval from Jesus.

Yes, you went out to see a prophet, but he was more than a prophet.

Now, if Jesus, who is God, is saying that John the Baptist is more than a prophet, that is all the divine authority that you need to know just how important of a messenger John the Baptist is.

And Jesus goes on to say, For this is he of whom it is written, Behold I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.

This is Jesus pointing out the fact that John the Baptist is the messenger that was spoken of in Isaiah 40, 3, the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight a path in the desert, a highway for our God.

And Amaleki 4, 5, 6 where it says, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

He shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, so the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

So when Jesus says, this is my messenger, those who knew scripture knew what Jesus was referring to.

This was the Elijah that was to come before Jesus came as the Messiah to do his work.

And if you look at all of the prophets and their work that they were given to do up until that time in Earth's history.

The privilege that John the Baptist had to be the prophet and the messenger to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah was the most important work of any prophet that had come to that time.

There have been many other great prophets, but John the Baptist had the most important work, according to Jesus, because he was the prophet that prepared the way for the coming of the Messiah.

Notice in verse 11 Jesus says, Verse 11, "...verily I say unto you, among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist." What an endorsement!

Of anyone who had ever been born, till that time, John the Baptist was the greatest.

Notwithstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." Now, Jesus simply means that those who had the opportunity to sit at the feet of Jesus and hear the teachings of Jesus had a privilege that John the Baptist himself didn't have.

John never got to sit at the feet of Jesus and hear the teachings of Jesus himself.

But Jesus says, "...among them that are born of women There hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist." Now, again, to summarize what Jesus is saying, He's like, what did you go out to see in the wilderness?

You knew that you were hearing a message that was special because you don't hear preaching like that, do you?

This was a message that stirred your hearts.

He wasn't like a reed shaken with the wind.

He wasn't attracting you because of his flashy apparel.

He was attracting you because he was the Lord's messenger that was raised up by God to give a message to prepare His people for the coming of the Messiah?

And what greater work could you witness than to witness the prophet that God raises up to give a message to prepare the people for the coming of the Messiah?

And what kind of a message did John the Baptist give?

Was he patting people on the back and saying, it's okay, just keep doing what you're doing and as long as you keep doing what you're doing, you'll be ready to enter into the greatness of the kingdom that the Messiah is going to prepare for us so that we will overtake the Romans.

Is that what John the Baptist was preaching?

That's what the popular message of the day was, but that's not what John the Baptist was giving.

He was calling people out for the sins in their lives, and they came under conviction.

They were convicted that the sinful lives that they were living were wrong and many of them repented and turned around and started living according to the righteousness by faith that Scripture teaches us of.

A message that would prepare the people for the coming of the Messiah was not a message that was teaching them that worldly greatness will lead them to overtaking the Romans.

That was not the message that John the Baptist gave.

The message that he gave them to prepare them for the coming of the Messiah was a message that brought conviction for sin in their lives and of their need for repentance and from turning away from sin.

Now, do you think that it might just be possible that before Jesus comes back the second time, He might raise up a message of similar quality, but probably of even greater power, because preparing people for the second coming of Jesus is going to take even more work than preparing them for the first coming?

Do you think that the Lord is going to raise up messengers to preach smooth sayings and pat people on the back and just tell them, love Jesus but do whatever you want and it doesn't matter.

Do you think that's going to be the message that the Lord uses to prepare people for the coming of Jesus before Jesus comes back the second time?

That's not what the Bible says, at least the Bible that I read.

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Taking the Kingdom by Force

Transcript

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Recorded

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