The Promised King

[0:00] and get settled here as they begin building relationships and coming alongside us as we push back darkness in this area. Love you guys a ton. Can't wait to see you.

[0:14] All right, so as we continue to stand, we're just going to take a quick 30, 60 seconds and pray into those things they asked for. Planning a church is crazy hard, and I'm sure anything we pray, not because it's just a box we check, but because we believe that God actually hears the prayers of his children.

[0:35] So let's just take a quick moment of silence here and just offer up prayers on behalf of our friends. Amen.

[0:53] So Father, you hear all of these prayers offered to you on behalf.

[1:23] Of your people, God, we just lift those up to you and join with them and ask that you'll bring your kingdom and your will to every aspect of that. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

[1:35] All right, you can go ahead and have a seat. Welcome again to everybody. My name is Elliot. So glad to have you here today. Before we get rolling, a few quick announcements for you.

[1:46] The first one is coming up this Saturday, September 18th, Art of Marriage. Been hearing that for a couple of weeks. Marriage is good. So we value families.

[1:59] We value marriages here, and it is just incredibly easy between the inertia of life and children and everything that overwhelms you to just let that drift.

[2:10] And taking moments just to find time to be intentional is really important. And so that's true wherever your marriage is at. It's always a good thing.

[2:22] So you can still sign up for that on the Havelock Events page or the One Harbor app. There is child care provided now. So you get a few kid-free moments, which is great. And if you still room left, so last chance, sign up for that.

[2:37] It would be great to have you. The second thing is this week community groups are back, starting back. And so community groups are the venue via which we gather around as small groups throughout the community and really just live out what the gospel is.

[2:54] And so we're launching into that. And as we typically do when we start that, we like to just kind of honor and pray over our leaders. So if our leaders will come up front.

[3:04] Sorry if you didn't know you were going to be up front. But come on up front if you're leading a community group this term. It's a big group. So, you know, particularly in our day and age, like, all of us are desperate for some real intimacy and some real vulnerability but also scared to death to do it.

[3:38] And these are all folks that have stepped up to say, we'll set the venue for that. Like, we'll model that. We'll let you into our house. And we'll just deal with whatever craziness ensues after it, trusting God he'll be there.

[3:50] And so we want to honor them for that and also pray for them. Some of them, this is their first time doing it. And so I'm just going to take a quick moment. If you'll join me in lifting them up, that God will strengthen them.

[4:02] So, Father, we just, we pray for everyone here today. I pray for this entire term. God, I pray you will bring people to these community groups. You'll help people to be courageous, to take the step to get in one.

[4:16] I pray that you will push out the things in our heart that distract us from that. God, I pray you'll strengthen every one of these leaders. You'll give them wisdom. You'll give them bandwidth in their life that they can do this.

[4:31] You'll give them strength. And that you'll just draw us closer to each other. You'll help your people experience the kingdom of God, experience the family of God through these groups.

[4:45] And just use it as a venue in our lives, God, to grow us closer to you each day. We ask that in Jesus' name. Amen. Everybody give them some applause so it's not so awkward when they end.

[4:55] Come on back, man. If you want to get in a community group that's still open, you can sign up again on the church app or talk to one of the welcome people in the back. We'll certainly get you into one of those.

[5:07] So, without further ado, we'll bring up Mr. Jesse Kintzer to continue on in our sermon series. All right. Thank you so much, Elliot. Appreciate that. Hello, everybody.

[5:18] How's everyone doing today? Good? Yeah? All right. I'm not convinced, but okay. Cool. Hey, before we jump into the sermon, what I do want to say is just one more quick thing.

[5:29] We had announced it last week, and it was about church planning and development in the East. And this is something that we're really excited about. We've been sowing into a church planning network that is specifically focused in on Muslim nations where it is hard.

[5:46] It's just hard soil for the gospel to take root and grow. But that's exactly what's happening through these guys and some other really amazing organizations. And they just have these miraculous stories of Jesus, like, coming and visiting people who don't know who he is, but they're seeing visions of Jesus, and they're coming to faith.

[6:05] And then they're joining these little home churches that are existing in these seemingly, from the outside, impossible places where we would think there is no way for the gospel to move forward in there.

[6:15] So anyways, we had the privilege of hearing from them a couple of months ago. And now we're kind of in a place where we have the opportunity to sow into that financially.

[6:27] They have a budget per year of $875,000. That sounds like a lot, but we're talking about, like, 20,000 home churches and, like, you know, tens and tens of thousands of Christians spread across, like, a couple of nations.

[6:43] And so when you take that into account, that's actually not that much. So they have raised, amazingly this year, of that $875,000. They only have a shortfall of $275,000.

[6:56] And we love to just help in any way, shape, or form that we can. So all of the sites today at One Harbor, all the sites are doing the same call to give to them. We just would love to make a dent in that $275,000 and trust that God is going to supply all their needs.

[7:12] But we get to practically just be a part of that. And so there are four ways to give, and that's going to be on the slide behind me. You can cash, take cash. We have envelopes in the back where the giving buckets are by the door there.

[7:26] And you can put cash in an envelope and just mark it for a CPDE. The same thing with a check. You can write a check. You can put CPDE in the memo line of that. For any electronic gifts you want to make, you can text CPDE to that number on the screen, 77977.

[7:44] And if you want to set up a recurring gift, if you want to do something where you're promoting them, supporting them monthly, that is available on their website. Don't worry if you're like, shoot, I didn't bring a pencil.

[7:57] And I'm going to, yeah, see Brittany's over here taking a photo of this. So, yeah, she's pretty slick about that. That was good. That was smart. For the rest of us that weren't as clever and we want to give, don't worry. We are going to email these details out through CCB today.

[8:10] So look out for that email as well. Amen? All right, cool. Well, thank you guys for participating in that. We are continuing in our series, Look to the Rock. And I just want to say hello again.

[8:23] Those of you who don't know me, my name is Jesse Kinzer, one of the pastors here. Those listening online, glad and thank you for listening. And we are continuing in Look to the Rock, which is the rock means Jesus.

[8:35] We are looking to Jesus, not a literal rock. And because what we're saying is, man, when we look at the Bible, it's the Old Testament and it's the New Testament.

[8:46] And some of us may think like, oh, yeah, Jesus is the guy who shows up in the New Testament. He's born, you know, he's born to Mary in a manger and he does great stuff. He dies on the cross. And that's how we know about him.

[8:57] We look at the Gospels and get to know about Jesus. But what we miss is that the whole Bible is actually, it's uncovering who Jesus is. Right? There's so many things in the Old Testament that point to him.

[9:07] And so through going through these stories of the Old Testament, we're discovering more and more who Jesus is and what he's about and what he's like. And the greater purpose is, is that the New Testament is a revelation of Jesus, but the Old Testament is also a revelation of Jesus.

[9:24] And to get the full revelation of Jesus, we need to look in both places. And the more we know of him, the more we see him, the more we are in awe of him, the more we're captivated by him, it's going to change our hearts.

[9:35] We're going to live in worship for him. We're going to leverage our lives for him in all, yeah, in every way, shape and form. And so today what we're going to do is we are now in the book of Chronicles, specifically 2 Chronicles.

[9:47] We're going to be in chapter 17. And it's one of the historical books in the canon of the Old Testament. It's one of the historical books that goes through all the kings of Judah. And this chapter looks at a particular king whose name was Jehoshaphat, right?

[10:03] Rough name. We're going to read some scripture where you're going to realize that wasn't the craziest name out there at the moment. But yeah, his name was Jehoshaphat, which all I've got to say is a good thing he was king because otherwise it would have probably been rough for him in the schoolyard, I'm sure.

[10:17] But kings, if you're thinking about like why were kings important, actually kings played a really significant role in Israel's history. When you look at King David, he was like one of the big heroes of the Israelites, right?

[10:34] And God promised King David that one of his descendants would sit on his throne, on the throne in Israel. And through his reign, there was going to be this elevation of Israel amongst the nations.

[10:47] They were going to be the superpower at some point in time. And that kingdom of God, Israel, the kingdom of God was going to be prosperous and established.

[10:58] And there was going to be peace not only in Israel, but there was this king, this messianic king would bring peace to the whole world. But as the years rolled by and as they went by, many kings came and went in Judah, but none of them proved to be the Messiah.

[11:15] However, what we do see is that the good ones would give us clues to what the true Messiah's reign would end up looking like. And so we're going to dive into one of the good ones. Jehoshaphat here was a good king.

[11:26] So let's read. 2 Chronicles 17, starting in verse 3, it says this. The Lord was with Jehoshaphat because he walked in the earlier ways of his father David.

[11:37] He did not seek the Baals. Now, Baals is just Canaanite gods. There were false gods. We'll get into more of that later. So he didn't seek the Baals, but sought the God of his father and walked in his commandments and not according to the practices of Israel.

[11:52] Therefore, the Lord established the kingdom in his hand and all Judah brought tribute to Jehoshaphat and he had great riches and honor. His heart was courageous in the ways of the Lord.

[12:03] And furthermore, he took the high places in the Asherim out of Judah. In the third year of his reign, he sent his officials, Ben-Hael, Obadiah, Zechariah, Nathenel, and Micaiah to teach in the cities of Judah.

[12:16] And with them, the Levites, Shemaiah, Nethaniah, Zebediah, Asahel, Shemiramoth, Jehonathan, Adonijah, Tobijah, and Tobadonijah.

[12:28] Yeah. It's like, Israel, you had names like Jesse and David. Like, come on. Let's like, why not get back to some of those? And with these Levites, the priests, Elishamah, and Jehoram.

[12:43] And they taught in Judah, having the book of the law of the Lord with them. They went about through all the cities of Judah and taught among the people. And the fear of the Lord fell upon all the kingdoms of the lands that were around Judah.

[12:56] And they made no war against Jehoshaphat. Some of the Philistines brought Jehoshaphat presents and silver for tribute. And the Arabians also brought him 7,700 rams and 7,700 goats.

[13:09] And Jehoshaphat grew steadily greater. He built in Judah fortresses and store cities. And he had large supplies in the cities of Judah. He had soldiers, mighty men of valor in Jerusalem.

[13:21] And this was the muster of them by father's houses. Of Judah, the commander of thousands. Adnah, the commander with 300,000 mighty men of valor. And next to him, Jehonahin, the commander with 280,000.

[13:33] And next to him, Amasiah, the son of Zichri, a volunteer for the service of the Lord with 200,000 mighty men of valor. Of Benjamin, Eliade, a mighty man of valor with 200,000 men armed with bow and shield.

[13:45] And next to him, Jehoshaphat with 180,000 armed for war. So over a million dudes. All the Marines should be pretty impressed with that muster, right? These were in the service of the king besides those from whom the king had placed in the fortified cities throughout all Judah.

[14:04] This is God's word. So I want to ask us this. We read that whole big thing. What really stood out to you? What impressed you about Jehoshaphat's story?

[14:16] Is it the power of his military might? Is it that other kings and other nations were lavishing him with gifts to earn his favor? Is it his expansion and strengthening of Israel's infrastructure?

[14:30] Or is it the peace he brought to the nations during his reign? And I want to bring this up because what we tend to do is we tend to read stories like this. And we get so impressed with the accomplishments of these guys and what was happening, right?

[14:43] We judge the fruitfulness and we say we're impressed by the fruitfulness and we actually miss out on what's most important. And that's what we find in verse 3. The Lord was with Jehoshaphat because he walked in the earlier ways of his father David.

[14:59] He did not seek the Baals but sought the God of his father and walked in his commandments and not according to the practices of Israel. What God counts most worthy in Jehoshaphat is his faithfulness.

[15:13] And why is a king's faithfulness so important? Well, when you look at Israel's history, you start to see why. Because when a good king came in and he was faithful, man, he brought the whole nation with him.

[15:25] They did good things. Conversely, when a bad king would come on the throne and he was unfaithful and he did idol worship, guess what? The whole nation tended to follow with them. And I would say for us today, we are no different.

[15:39] You and I, we need a faithful king to be a faithful people. We often think we can do all the right things on our own. I don't need church. I don't need spiritual leadership. I don't need accountability in my life.

[15:51] I got this on my own. I can do it by myself. But the Bible from front to back says totally different. See, when Israel didn't have a king over them, it's not like all of a sudden they were so much better.

[16:03] No, they were just as bad off, maybe even worse. It said that this is talking about the time of the judges when they had no king. It says this, everyone did what was right in their own eyes, okay, which was code for it was a free-for-all in that day.

[16:18] Like libertine freedom fest. Like if it feels good, do it. I'm free to do what I want and I'm going to do it. It's funny how when we step into man-made liberty, when we try to take liberty for ourselves and live life on our own terms, where we end up.

[16:32] We never end up serving God. We kind of end up just serving ourselves. We kind of just end up doing what we want, right? And the irony is that you could say of Israel, even in the time of the judges when they didn't have a king, or in the times when they did have kings, that they were faithful, right?

[16:48] They were often just faithful to the wrong things. That was the problem. And faithful to the wrong things isn't a good thing. If you faithfully look at porn, it's not going to produce good fruit in your life.

[16:58] Same thing if you faithfully overspend, or overdrink, or overwork, or overeat. And that's what verse 3 calls seeking the Baals. The Baals were these demon gods of the Canaanite lands.

[17:14] There was a bunch of them. And the nations in those lands surrounding Israel, that's who they worshipped. It's funny, because the irony here is Baal means master.

[17:25] That's literally the translation of it. Baal means master. So you could worship these false masters, these false gods in different ways. It was through just animal sacrifices.

[17:37] Some of them you had to sacrifice your own kids, passing them through the fire, which means you burn them up. Or, I'm guessing a dude invented this one.

[17:49] You could go up on a high mountain and have sex with prostitutes at an Asherah pole, right? Imagine that conversation between a husband and wife. Well, honey, if we're going to eat this summer, if we're going to eat this winter, you know what I've got to do.

[18:05] When Israel occupied the land, God said, don't follow the nations. Don't follow what they do. Don't worship like they worship. Don't get sucked into their way of life.

[18:16] But what we see, and if we're honest with ourselves, when we look at ourselves, we have this tendency too. Israel had a wondering heart. And they frequently ran after the Baals.

[18:27] They frequently ran after the false gods that were all around them. And see, there's this intentionality to turning from God, right? God says, follow me this way.

[18:38] There's this intentionality when we turn from God and turn to follow sin. Turn to follow our own way. Turn to follow and worship after the false idols of our day and age. The false Baals that are all around us.

[18:50] And that means we are not innocent in our sin. We are not innocent. We make a choice. And if we're honest with ourselves, we confess that without any outside intervention, we'd never make the right choice.

[19:02] These verses talk about seeking God and walking in his commandments. Right? That's what Jehoshaphat did. And that takes intentionality too. And if you're not taking time to seek God, to seek him, you won't suddenly have this deeper love and devotion for him.

[19:18] You just don't wake up all of a sudden and just be like, oh my gosh, I'm so much more in love with God. And I don't know how that happened. And here's the other part of it. Some of them are so harmless and so subtle, they seem so innocent.

[19:38] But they end up occupying so much of our time that they push God to the margins. And it's actually a lot of where we end up putting a lot of our hope, where we get a lot of our identity from.

[19:50] Think about news. Think about politics. Think about social media. Think about social media. Jesus said you can't serve two masters. You can't.

[20:02] Right? You can serve Jesus as Lord or you could serve the false idols of our day, the Baals, the other masters that are all around us. And if you try to serve both, Jesus said, you know what's going to happen?

[20:16] You're going to end up loving one and hating the other. And I think the biggest deception, one of the big deceptions that the culture tries to weave into our minds and our hearts is like, man, you could have it all.

[20:27] You could have it both, right? Hannah Montana Christianity. Get the best of both worlds. Bottom line, there isn't room. And Jesus is telling us this.

[20:38] Bottom line, there is not room in your heart and your affections and your devotions for God plus. Whatever else you can put in there. He has to occupy the highest place in our hearts, guys.

[20:50] He has to occupy our highest affections. He has to be our highest devotion. That's it. And if that's the case, we have to ask ourselves this. What happens? What needs to happen, sorry?

[21:01] What needs to happen to the idols that are in our hearts? Verse 6. Jehoshaphat, his heart was courageous in the ways of the Lord.

[21:12] And furthermore, he took the high places and the ashram out of Judah. What needs to happen to our hearts is our idols need to be ripped out of it. That's what needs to happen to our hearts.

[21:25] And that's painful. And it hurts. And it's hard. Here's a little story. You guys remember last year? Some of you may have been here. If not, this is a fun story. But we did a four-day media fast towards the end of September last year.

[21:39] Sounded easy. Proved to be anything but easy. As I went through it, I was like, oh my goodness. I just want to cheat and listen to a podcast at some point. I just want to get on and look at social media.

[21:53] I would love to jump on and look at some Netflix. I was nervous that if I didn't get some kind of news information, the whole world was falling apart and I didn't know it. Right?

[22:04] And many of you experienced that same thing. And probably, I'm guessing, some of us in this room probably flipped on some of that stuff or turned to it because we just couldn't help ourselves for four days.

[22:17] We couldn't turn those things off. Or it was very hard to turn those things off. And that is evidence of how deeply embedded idols can be in our hearts. Like we can't give them up for even four days.

[22:30] It seems impossible. And left to ourselves, this points out, left to ourselves, we just, we won't be able to deal with the idols in our hearts. We just don't have the strength and the power to be able to do that.

[22:43] And look at this story. Notice that it wasn't Israel who led the charge to tear down those high places in their hearts. To tear down those high places all around them. To tear down the Baals where the false gods were being worshipped.

[22:56] It was their faithful king who did it. It's their faithful king who led the way. And this is what this means. We need a faithful king to tear down our idols. That's what we need.

[23:07] And here's why. It's because you and I are often so blind to what our idols are. Right? Right? We think we do. But like, man, they are lurking under the surface. They are lurking in the soil.

[23:18] They have roots in our hearts that we don't even realize. We keep them locked up in dark rooms of our heart. Like, imagine this. Like, your heart is this, like, big house with all these different rooms and chambers in it.

[23:33] Right? And when you get saved, God comes in and it's like, oh, there's some rooms that he comes in and he cleans up. And it's like, yes, you know, the living room's looking great. And it's orderly. And the kitchen's looking great.

[23:44] And then God, you know, it's like, yeah, God, let's just hang out here until this is good stuff. And God's like, what about down the hall there? There's some, like, dark rooms down there. It's a funny smell coming out from under one of those doors.

[23:55] Why don't we go over there and, like, go? No, no, no, no, no. You don't need to go down there. Let's just, this is good right here where we're at. Let's just stay right here. Let's just, let's not deal with some of those other things.

[24:05] And so we keep God at bay and actually we keep our relationship with Jesus compartmentalized. Here's an example. God, you have a say of what I do at church.

[24:16] I'll show up, pay up, serve up. But when I exit the church doors, I get to call the shots. I get to do what I want to do. So Jesus doesn't have a say in how I spend my time.

[24:28] Jesus doesn't have a say in how I work. Jesus doesn't have a say in how I love my spouse or my children or my neighbors. Jesus doesn't have a say in how I spend my money or what I'm giving my money to.

[24:39] So we have to ask ourselves, if Jesus is not informing those parts of my life, then what is? Well, I'll tell you what is. It's the collective cultural conscience that we grow up in.

[24:54] Here's what I mean by that. We grow up with this idea that our conscience is this pure, undefiled part of us that is always righteous and always just and always calls strikes and balls correctly every single time and is always guiding us in the right way.

[25:11] It's our North Star, right? I mean, Jiminy Cricket said, you know, he told, would he lie to us? Always let your conscience be your guide, right? And so we grow up with this idea that that's how things are.

[25:23] Like, I don't need any outside influence telling me what to do. I got this internal compass, this moral compass, this ethical compass that's saying, like, oh, I know what's right.

[25:34] I can figure out and do what's right on my own. But here's the thing. Your conscience is malleable. It is formed and shaped by the culture you grow up in. And unwittingly, what we do is we adopt those cultural values that we grow up in to determine what is right and what is wrong.

[25:54] And this is why idolatry is so deceiving and hard to find in our hearts. Because oftentimes the things that we do, the things that God says that's not good, is the very things our society has stamped with approval and said, no, that's okay.

[26:10] Here's one. Here's a big idol of the heart that we follow. It's this maxim that we have today in our social consciousness. You should do what makes you happy. Sounds like, actually, it sounds so interesting.

[26:23] Why not? That sounds like a really good thing. You should do what makes you happy. What's wrong with being happy? Right? Or here's another one. Live your truth. We are taught to believe that our emotions are reality.

[26:40] And our feelings are our North Star. But this cultural dogma leads us to worship at the many high places, the false bales that society has constructed. And Christians, we don't get to look outside and, yeah, that's all out there.

[26:56] No, no, no. We do this too. We're not immune. And actually, I would argue that the longer you follow Jesus, the more likely you can be to fall into this trap. And I say this humbly because I deal with this myself in my own heart.

[27:12] I see this creep up a lot. See, when we first begin that journey of faith with Jesus, it's accompanied with this excitement and this passion and all this newness of being awakened to who he is, his amazing love.

[27:25] And something that's so, like, above and beyond, so, like, beautiful that we can't describe it and wonderful that it just, it really just captivates us. But things don't stay that way.

[27:38] And you can't really help it. And here's the thing. If you're a Christian, if you've been a Christian for a long time, you'll know this. You're going to go through seasons where life, like the Israelites, you feel, you just get bored of the manna from heaven.

[27:52] The same old, same old. Got to go to church again. Seems really boring. Seems really monotonous. Seems really unfun. It just happens. And there's another reality to this.

[28:05] It's these different stages of life that we walk through. So when we're first born and, you know, in our beginning years, up into our early 20s, we live our whole life being poured into. People are pouring into us.

[28:17] They're helping us and they're guiding us and they're propping us up and supporting us. And then we hit our 20s and then we start to get some independence and then we start to be able to take care of ourselves.

[28:28] And then we move a little bit further on into life. And, you know, now we're picking a career. And, you know, some of us, we get married and then we have kids. We start making these choices and we start making these commitments and we start taking on these responsibilities.

[28:42] And it's cool, you know, early on. Because you have a lot of energy for it. And then suddenly you wake up one day like I did in my 30s and you're just like, dang, man, I'm tired. I don't want to do this anymore.

[28:54] Right? Some of you may have already been there. And we live most of our lives in that stage of life where God is teaching us to give our lives away. That's what that season is about.

[29:06] See, the first season is about learning how to leverage our lives and the second one is how to give our lives away. But here's the thing. It gets tiring. And you get to places where you just, man, you just don't want to do it.

[29:19] It's not fun anymore. You start to feel despair or tired. And, man, things feel a little gray. And throughout church history, they've called it different things. But I think one of the most common is this dark night of the soul.

[29:31] I think that's a great way to describe it. Right? And let me explain it this way because you'll probably connect with that. So when I got COVID, not yesterday, when I got COVID back in February, all right, I knew I did because I lost taste.

[29:47] And I lost taste for a while. And coffee no longer tasted like coffee. And even after COVID, coffee didn't taste like coffee. Everything was bland. Like food just was like, eh.

[30:00] Just nothing was fun. It was like, man, I lost the joy in eating. I lost the fun in eating. I lost the ability to sense the flavor of those things. And that's what the dark night of the soul is like. It's like going through life and all the things that you used to enjoy are just kind of bland all of a sudden.

[30:16] It just feels a little gray. Right? And that's what it's like. It sounds real gloomy. Right? It sounds like, man, this guy's like really bringing the mood in the room down.

[30:26] Just trying to help us out here. Okay? It's a gloomy place. It is not a fun place to be. And it's not just like relegated to like lukewarm Christians. Like, man, if you were a better Christian, God wouldn't let you go through this.

[30:38] No, no. This thing is like no respecter of persons. When you look through the Bible, when you look through church history, you actually see this is a common trait. People went through seasons of life where they experienced dark nights of the soul.

[30:53] I've been through this, man, for two years back in 2015 and 2016. I still go through seasons of this from time to time. You really can't help it. And you really can't get out of it if you're wise.

[31:05] But like King David, man, you read some of his psalms, and you'll be like, oh, I know what he was going through right there. That is not a happy dude. He is not doing well right now, right? But he's honest about it.

[31:16] He owns up about it. And here's why I'm bringing this up. Our culture, what it tells us is that we are, if we are feeling something similar or akin to this dark night of the soul, then something is wrong and you need to change it.

[31:33] Either something is wrong with you or something is wrong with your environment. And so we need to fix it. So think of this. Like, man, I get married and all of a sudden it's like, man, I'm not just passionate about my wife Haley anymore.

[31:50] Just, man, the joy is gone and the marriage, the romance is gone. So I have, what do I do? Well, maybe it's Haley's the problem. So I could ditch her and get a new spouse.

[32:01] I'm not enjoying spending time with my kids anymore. Man, they're just like, oh, they're taking so much energy and so much time they're a burden. So what do I do? Oh, I just withdraw.

[32:13] Maybe I put more time into my work or my hobbies. Or I put my nose into a book. I just pulled away emotionally. These things happen. Maybe you've been reading the Bible and praying and, man, it used to be so exciting.

[32:31] You used to get a ton out of it. But now lately it's just seemed, huh, well, I did that. Right? And so what we do is if, like, man, those things aren't accompanied with all this feeling and emotion of happiness and joy and passion, we just think we should just give it up.

[32:50] If I'm not enjoying my time reading the Bible or praying, just stop. If I'm not enjoying going to church or serving at church, just stop. Because why do any of those things if I'm not really wanting to and if I'm not really enjoying it anymore?

[33:06] And I think, you know, what we, like, layer that over with is this, like, excuse of, man, I just don't want to be inauthentic. I don't want to be fake.

[33:16] You know, when you get to heaven, God is going to say something over you as a Christian. He's going to be well done, good, and faithful servant. Not well done, good, and authentic.

[33:27] Man, you were authentic every single time. Thank goodness you kept it real, Jesse. He says, well done, good, and faithful servant.

[33:41] I think what's happening, Satan twists this good desire for authenticity. Authenticity is a good thing to have. It's a good thing to want. He twists this good desire for authenticity to create this false idea of what devotion and love to God looks like.

[33:55] Jesus said, it's not very impressive to love people who love you, but try loving your enemies. You start doing that.

[34:06] That's when you start pushing into God's kind of love. That's when you start pushing into the love that Jesus showed us. And that means you love when you don't feel like it, or when you aren't benefiting from it emotionally or otherwise.

[34:20] And this is the true sign of maturity in Jesus. And that's why God brings us through those dark nights of the soul. That's why God brings us through seasons, long seasons, where we are learning to give our lives away.

[34:38] In those moments where God seems distant and silent, and what he's doing, he is stripping away an obedience and a love that is dependent on your mood and your feelings.

[34:50] He is teaching us to love even when it feels like we are giving more than we're getting. But if we don't do that, if we run away from it, if we don't have a theology to say like, actually, this is something God purposely brings us through and says like, no, no, no, God just only wants me to be happy all the time.

[35:09] He cares about my happiness. That's it. We'll end up living for emotional happiness and authenticity, and we'll end up drifting again and again to worshiping today's Baals.

[35:24] And thankfully, though, we have a king who gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit that guides us away from that. He guides us into all truth. Israel needed a king to take the initiative to tear down the idols in the land, and so do you and I.

[35:40] We need a king who comes in, who takes initiative to point out the idols and take them down in our hearts. And I want to say he's doing that.

[35:51] Hopefully, he's doing that even right now. I want to say some of you, man, God's grace means that he is convicting you of some of the stuff. He's highlighting some of the stuff in your hearts, and that's okay.

[36:03] Maybe your heart has grown cold. Maybe you haven't stayed devoted, or you haven't been devoted at all. You pulled away. You went your own way. But I want to say to you right now, the thing is, Jesus is a faithful king.

[36:17] He is here right now leading you, calling you back to himself, leading you to a heavenly father who always has his hands open for his sons and his daughters.

[36:28] He's always there to welcome you and love you and care for you no matter what. And I want to say, man, take hold of that grace. Repent and receive the goodness of the father over you.

[36:39] And I know, like, for some of us, that's going to be hard because, like, shame wants to, like, not admit that we've done anything wrong, that we've got it all. And just let the Holy Spirit just push past that.

[36:51] Let him bring you past that. Because when you come to the father, that shame is always going to be there unless you come to the father and he's going to roll it away. He's going to deal with it the best way.

[37:01] Okay. So we've got to move on really fast. Man, 12.07 already, goodness me. As much as we need Jesus to tear out what is bad, we also need him to put in what is good.

[37:12] A good king does that. A good king knows how to do that. And that is what Jehoshaphat did. And I'm going to summarize this for the sake of time, but we see later on in verses 7 to 9 what he does.

[37:24] He sends out this army of dudes with crazy names. And what does he do? He sends them out to teach the people the law, to teach them modern-day translation. In our context today, teach them the gospel.

[37:36] Teach them the truth of God's purposes in redemption. And that's what God's faithful king does. He doesn't just say what not to do. He teaches us what to do. And you and I, we need a faithful king to teach us how to worship and obey.

[37:49] That's what Jehoshaphat did. He sent all those dudes out to teach the people the book of the law and how to obey. Here's the thing. Jesus loves obedience. He loves you. He loves obedience. He's a king who rules over a kingdom.

[38:02] He's a king and his commands, he gives commands and he expects them to be followed. He taught, seek first God's kingdom. Love one another as I loved you is what he said.

[38:12] And look what he does when he sends out the apostles on the Great Commission. On the Great Commission, he says, man, baptize them, but also teach them to observe all that I commanded you. In verse 20.

[38:23] And the reason we want people to read their Bibles and to pray to God on a regular basis isn't because we want to like force them into, to control their lives and force them into submission to rest.

[38:34] No, it's because we want them to know who Jesus is. That's where he reveals himself. We want them to know his commands because that's where there are. They are in there. And we go to church too to learn about Jesus and learn about his commands.

[38:46] And you can't do that outside of community because Jesus' commands have to be lived out. Right? They're to be walked out in every part of our life.

[38:57] And as we do that, what we end up doing is we incarnate the person of Jesus in this world. Remember, Jesus said, they will know you are my disciples by your love for one another.

[39:08] When you think about the early church and what they were doing and following Jesus, the term Christian actually came outside the church. And it means little Christ. And people were looking at the early church and looking at the people and what they were doing and how they were loving each other and the message that they were spreading throughout.

[39:25] And what they were seeing is they were saying, oh, I see who their master is. Because these guys and the way they act and the way they behave and the way they love one another, I'm seeing Jesus.

[39:35] I'm seeing little Jesuses running around. And so that's what they called them. They called them little Jesuses, little Christs, Christian. We are called to live a life according to the way of the cross.

[39:50] It's not sacrificial. I mean, it is sacrificial. It is sacrificial. It's not selfish. And the more Christ is formed in us, the more that we give our lives away.

[40:01] We pray less like this way, God, give me the desire of my heart. We pray more, man, God, move me to the desires of your heart. And this isn't a popular side of discipleship, right?

[40:13] We tend to like the benefits of salvation that we have in Jesus, not so much the cost. But there is a cost. Now, following Jesus can sound heavy on the suffering and light on the blessings.

[40:26] But, man, the way of faithfulness, and I want to say this, guys, the way of faithfulness is the crucified Jesus. It's the way of the crucified Jesus. Through giving our lives away, we realize that Jesus gives us much more back because the faithful king leads us into greater faithfulness.

[40:44] And when he does that, we do see the blessings. In verse 10 of 2 Chronicles 17, it said the fear of the Lord fell upon the kingdoms, right? There was no war in Jehoshaphat's time.

[40:55] And it talks about the Philistines. They brought silver. Awesome gift. And then the Arabians, they brought 7,700 rams, 7,700 goats. Sure, whatever. Jehoshaphat, he grew steadily greater.

[41:09] His kingdom grew steadily greater. He added fortresses to Judah. He had put store cities in there. He had these large supplies in the cities of Judah. So good things began to take shape as Jehoshaphat led Judah back to God.

[41:23] And when we follow King Jesus, the same thing happens. The faithful king builds a flourishing kingdom. That is what he was doing. What we see in Jehoshaphat's day, man, the surrounding kingdoms are hit with God's fear, right?

[41:35] They weren't in awe of Jehoshaphat. They were awed. They were awed by God's power. And God brought about peace. There were no wars. There was no conflict or persecution. And during that time of peace, Jehoshaphat took to building up his kingdom, right?

[41:51] Put in infrastructures to care for the poor better. The wealth of the nations was flowing in. Silver, gold, livestock, all that good stuff. He built fortresses for people to run for refuge in case of future wars.

[42:03] Cool stuff happening. You see the same thing in the book of Acts, right? When King Jesus is up in heaven ruling over his church, like there are breakouts of persecution in the book of Acts.

[42:15] Yeah, but then those stopped as the fear of God fell on those outside the church, which paved the way for them to preach and teach more openly. And during those times, what they did is they added cool pieces of infrastructure, too, like deacons and food serving programs so that poor widows could eat.

[42:32] Acts 9.31, it says this. You look at all the ways Jehoshaphat built up his kingdom.

[42:48] It brought comfort to the people, right? There was storehouses for food distribution, this mighty army. Everyone felt safe. And what is happening is that God is on the side of Jehoshaphat because he was a faithful king.

[43:02] So God established his kingdom and it flourished. But here's the other part of that. Jehoshaphat died. His kingdom didn't last forever. And after he died, other kings came and went.

[43:15] And they became more and more unfaithful. It's not like there was great successive kings that just, you know, there was always moving up in this righteous direction. They got worse and worse and worse. And Israel got worse and worse and worse.

[43:27] And so we have this thing. Israel's left wondering, man, when will this Messiah king come? When will the faithful king take his throne? And ultimately, that is fulfilled in Jesus.

[43:41] Jesus, the son of David, of the tribe of Judah. He is the promised king. He was perfectly faithful to God in every way. God was not only with them.

[43:53] He is God who was with us. And his kingdom has flourished from the beginning. It is always multiplying and increasing. And you know how he does that? He doesn't do that through military conquest.

[44:05] He does that through the weak things. Of preaching the gospel. Of sacrifice. Of costly love. Of faithfulness. And one day, Jesus will come and bring his kingdom down from heaven to cover the whole earth.

[44:23] There's going to be no more wars, no more hunger, no more death, no more dark nights of the soul. And we live in that future hope now. Yet we are waiting and anticipating the fulfillment of that.

[44:36] When our faithful king comes and brings it in its fullness. In his forever kingdom. As the band comes up, I want us to consider some ways to respond. If you're here and you're not a Christian, I want to say this to you.

[44:52] All it takes is faith in Jesus, who is the faithful king. He is the promised king. He came and he died on the cross for you.

[45:02] Before he took his seat on his throne in heaven, he took his place on a wooden cross. Before he was crowned with glory and victory, he was crowned with thorns of mockery.

[45:15] Before he was robed in splendor, he was stripped and whipped to a bloody pulp. He was the king crucified for you. He was the king crucified for your sin.

[45:27] So that you could be saved. And brought into his kingdom. And I want to say to you, if this is gripping your heart right now. This person of Jesus, this king Jesus. If this story of who he is, if it's gripping your heart right now.

[45:41] I want to say that's not me being clever. That's Jesus at work. That's God the Holy Spirit doing something in your heart. And respond to that. Which is simply this. Surrender to it. Surrender to that truth.

[45:51] The Bible just says repent and believe. You repent of your sins and you believe and confess that Jesus is your Lord and Savior. Savior. That's what you do. For those of us in the room who are Christians, I want to ask us this.

[46:11] Where are you not allowing Jesus to reign in your life? What are the idols that the Holy Spirit's been pointing out this morning? And our response is the same.

[46:22] Simply repent and turn back to Jesus. Jesus is always calling us to surrender more to him. What is he calling you and I to surrender to today?

[46:35] And what I want to do is we're going to take communion in a moment before we do that. The Bible says to examine our hearts. And I want to take this time to respond to those questions. As Christians, respond to those questions.

[46:47] So quietly what we're going to do is we're going to close our eyes and we're going to reflect on that. Okay? We're going to quiet our hearts. Let the Holy Spirit speak to it and respond silently. Repent where you need to repent.

[46:58] Repent. So let's take a moment to pray. Amen. Amen.

[47:29] Heavenly Father, all that you have begun, Jesus, all that you are doing in our hearts, Holy Spirit, all that you are working in us, I pray that you would continue to do.

[48:03] Amen. We're going to take communion. And I just want to say communion is what Christians, those who believe in Jesus, do. We believe that as we do this, we are remembering Christ and his body and his blood shed for us.

[48:16] If you're not a Christian, I would just want to say you don't need to do this at all. And we hold this moment pretty sacred. And it really means something to us.

[48:26] And so, yeah, I just ask you to please, please honor that. But you can still, if you have questions and reflecting on some things, just take this time to just do that quietly as we continue in communion.

[48:39] And this is a way that we confess to the church and to those around us that we are committing ourselves to following our faithful king.

[48:51] Communion is kind of a recommitting service in some ways. It's a recommitting moment. We're saying, man, I'm doing this because I still believe that Jesus is my savior.

[49:03] But I'm also doing this because I am confessing that Jesus is my Lord and I'm following him. We've examined our hearts. We've let him come in. We've done the work of surrender. And now we're stepping in and we're remembering and we're saying, man, thank you, Lord.

[49:17] And the night that Jesus was betrayed, he instituted this little moment with his disciples. And he took some bread and he broke it and he gave it to his disciples and he said, this is my body, the king of heaven, his body broken for you and for me.

[49:36] Let's take this in remembrance of our king. That same night, after he broke the bread, they ate of the bread.

[49:48] He took a cup and he gave it to them and he said, this is the blood of my covenant shed for you, the redemption of your sins. His blood seals us in a new relationship, a special relationship with him.

[50:03] And so we get to take this reminding that we had this king who allowed himself to be nailed to a wooden cross for our sake, for our sin.

[50:14] Let's drink with thankfulness. Would you stand with me? We're now going to worship this amazing king that we love and serve.

[50:33] We're now going to worship this amazing king.

[51:03] Your love never ends. Sovereign In all that you do Refuge My hope is in you Mighty Your enemies fall Jesus You reign over So you are So you are So you'll always be Seek us I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I who you are who you will always be who you are who you are who you will always be

[52:51] Jesus Jesus yesterday, today forever you're the same everlasting ever failing yesterday, today forever you're the same yesterday, today forever you're the same who you are who you are who you'll always be who you are who you are who you'll always be alright thanks for coming out this morning before you go just a couple of quick things if it's your first time with us

[54:01] I would love to meet you and I'm going to be right in front of the stage here come and say hi if it's your second time with us we have some we have a gift for you in the back over where you want to raise your hand there Justin, yes yeah, he's like man-awaiting the gift bag there so come and say hi to Justin in the back there he's got a welcome shirt on you'll see him on the way out the door on the left and if you need prayer for anything we're going to have some people over here to pray with you guys, we have seven days and this is a cool week because actually we get to go and start meeting community groups which is really exciting so trust that goes well and you have a ton of fun doing that but we have seven days between now and next Sunday to go make disciples and push back darkness all for the sake of the gospel thank you for coming be blessed I think I want you to make bail Thank you.

[55:22] Thank you.

[55:52] Thank you.