Because They Did Not Repent

To watch the sermon Because They Did Not Repent | Matthew 11: 20-24

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All right, they are going back to their seats. I'm excited to be back with you guys.

Hurrah.

That's a good word. Glory. Glory. All right. I think I got all of our sermons from the last two months in like 30 seconds.

So it's really good to be back with you guys. Ohio was wonderful, but Ohio is not Florida. And so, you know, we did get to will the Bengals into an amazing win against the Ravens. So, you know, there is hope in December. It is a month of cam like stats, if you didn't notice the last two weeks in December.

Anxiety and depression and these things grow with us in that time because of the darkness. There's not as much vitamin D, there's not as much sunlight, all that kind of stuff. And so there is hope in December. Whether you light the Hanukkah menorah or you celebrate Christmas, we can all agree on one thing. The Bengals still have a playoff chance.

You're welcome. Praise God. God is working in our favor, too, even on the college side of things. Looks like Oklahoma is potentially going to get Alabama. That's really bad for Alabama since Oklahoma has already beat them.

I was a little worried about the Notre Dame thing. You know, the Catholics still have their traditions, and so Boomer soon cheats and thieves. I don't know, going up against the Catholics, but we're going to Alabama or Alabama's coming here, and so everything is good. We should be singing Joy to the world, right? You know.

Okay. All right. Couple of housekeeping announcements. Hanukkah parties are coming up for those of you who watch the announcements. But don't let anything that Anna says permeate your brain.

Hanukkah parties are coming up. They are going to be at the Wallaces household, at the Castellanos household, at my wife and my household, and then at. So they're kind of spread out a little bit all over South Oklahoma City, all the way down to Newcastle in that area. And so if you aren't in church center, please get in church center and understand what's happening. Rsvp.

It helps us understand how many people to hive. Especially at our party, there's normally like 100 and something people that RSVP if you've been in my house. I don't have a large house, and so I'm normally like super stressed out right before the party. And thank God that only like 775 to 85 people show up because that is somewhat manageable. But we do need to have some sort of an idea, especially since our congregation is no longer 30 people anymore.

You know, we're not living in, you know, the Fresh Prince of Bel Air house in any of our places. So Hanukkah parties are coming up second on November 15th. I hated to send Brent out to do this, but Brent has always been very kind to do this. Brent gave you guys an update on the House of His Presence fund in the history of this church. In the first Saturday of February, we will mark 11 years as a church.

Pretty crazy to think I know I'm barely old enough to be a pastor of a church for 11 years, thank you very much. But 11 years this church will have been in existence. And we've never owned a place, we've never had a place that was our own. This church has predominantly survived off of meeting in Panera's and then in a church on Saturday morning. And while Pastor Glenn and Sean and Curtis and all the amazing people at Westmore have been absolutely amazing to us the last two years, our time at Westmore in this facility is done in the end of January.

And so while we continue to contact churches and knock on doors of event centers and stuff like that to find our short term meeting place, we started looking at commercial real estate. Any of you who've looked at commercial real estate anywhere, and in Oklahoma City, south Oklahoma City, more, even north Norman, that's just not feasible. We're going to have to start passing the plates a lot more and we're going to have to start locking the doors if we want to start renting our own place on a triple net lease somewhere to the tune of eight to $10,000 a month. We currently spend $3,000 a month on rent in this place. Now, what are the benefits of a commercial lease or a commercial purchase?

It is for the first time in 11 years, we don't have to worry about cars driving the meeting center at Panera. We can actually meet in our own facility. We can have men's meetings, we can have prayer meetings, we can have celebrate recovery meetings. We can have all of these types of things, ladies meetings. We can do cooking days, we can do knitting days.

You know, all the things that I have no passion in, we can do those in that building together. But that costs money like anything else. So the only two options we currently have that are viable is we either look to purchase a property which we have identified one with all of the elders. That seems too good to be true. It's a beautiful property with multiple buildings and you guys saw some of the renders online and stuff like that.

AI can do amazing Things. I didn't even have to hire an architect or anything. We just put it in and said, make this thing look a little bit more normal than 1968. And voila. All of a sudden we had a black church building which looked phenomenal.

Black church building look phenomenal. And so we need to raise $200,000 to be in that price point. The 600,000 ish, give or take, you know, a little bit of money. We need to raise $200,000. We're going to need at least $100,000 down on a down payment on a commercial loan for a bank to even consider to lease to us.

And then we also are in a situation where we're going to need to do some renovation to that place as well. And so just whatever it is, make it our place. And so if that's not the home, that's fine. We're going to keep knocking on doors. But hff house is where you can go and help make specific donations towards that fund.

And as always, as a church, and we always send out the P and L, we send out all of that kind of stuff so you guys know where all the money's going. So it didn't go to buy this wonderfully beautiful fleece jacket that was on sale for $20 at Target. And then I realized that it's not, not cold enough in here for me to be wearing this today. I'm going to end up with Brent's forehead here in a second.

It's okay. Brent, I love you. It's the. Oh, he's got. You're not going to let me use it, are you?

Awesome. Well, happy Thanksgiving, guys. From my family to yours on Thursday. Wednesday when we got back, we decided there's a new international holiday. You know, our desire is to try to love on everybody in this church as much as humanly possible.

And so we're putting in like birthdays and anniversaries and stuff like that in the calendar. And so I was really good after we home aloned it through the airport on Tuesday to get back. And I was like, not Kevin. I was like, Elias. And we were running through the airport and we got home, I'm like, josh and Erica Minchaka's anniversary is tomorrow and I'm ahead of the game.

So Wednesday morning comes, I text Josh and Erica Minchaka, happy anniversary. Thinking like, I'm getting better, like I'm remembering things now. I mean, Icalendar told me and they're like, thank you, but it's not our anniversary. So on Wednesday December 3rd, from this point on is now to be known as Frank Chakage. Frank Chaka Day for everybody.

So my daughter went out and made little bracelets, so you didn't even know it. But happy Thanksgiving and Happy Frank Chaka Day to all of you from our family. So, all right, you can tell that I sat in silence for two weeks. So open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 11. We're gonna start pick up in verse 20 through 24.

I want to do a little bit of a recap on where Cam was the last two weeks. We have the law, we have the prophets, and we have this transition that we see in Matthew chapter 11. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and the violent have taken it by force. That was verses 12 through 14. There was a 400 year period between the prophets and John the Baptist where there was silence from God.

There was silence from God. And this darkness had permeated the world. It had permeated humanity, creation, everything. There was this absence this fast from the presence of the Lord, which interestingly enough, for those who've been with us for a while, last December, almost exactly at this very period, we did a series called Remission. And part of the teaching was on the passage of the wineskin.

And what did that teaching mean? And we talked about what it means for a wineskin physically and spiritually to be renewed and how that's a picture of us when we come to the presence and the power of Jesus. But before that, before that time, There was this 400 year silence and here comes Jesus and John the Baptist under the spirit of Elijah. And there's this transition that's happening from the Torah and the prophets. And at this time, remember, you cannot put new wine into old wineskins.

Why? Because the Torah and the prophets were never the end game for Yahweh. They were the testimony pointing to the Messiah. This is what we saw all the way through the Sermon on the Mount or the Torah of the Kingdom into the Kingdom of Action series, which took us through Matthew chapter 8 through chapter 10. Jesus Yeshua goes up the mountain.

He sits down, he proclaims his Torah, he comes down the mountain, he immediately goes into action in teaching his disciples what this Torah that he speaks should look like in practice. They missed it so far in Matthew. There's been a couple of key themes here. One, humanity always takes it too far. Normally they take it too far from our own narcissism.

Not everybody is a narcissist, but we all wrestle with Narcissistic traits, all of us in some regard, whether it's the victimhood or you think highly of yourself in a way that's there. We all struggle with that. And that the most Torah observant, literate individuals who culturally understood the Torah and the prophets completely missed Jesus as a whole. It wasn't just the Pharisees. We also saw it with the Essenes and we saw it with the Sadducees until Acts, when it talks about the priest.

After the Resurrection and the Ascension and Pentecost had come, priests had converted. That is most likely the Sadducees, because they didn't believe in the Resurrection and they had converted. Kind of hard to argue when you see Jesus with the holes in his hands and his like, at that point in time, you're not calling Ghostbusters, you're going to repent. So the Torah and the Prophet were guardians. They were a tutor and they were a teacher that were supposed to protect the children until the father came.

My children are now a little bit older. We spend more time leaving the house together. Whether it's on dates or it's on running church errands or counseling sessions or whatever. When I leave the home, when my wife leaves the home, there is still a set of rules and regulations that my children understand. This is the expectation of this house.

And when it says, like, don't open the door, well, that might mean something different. Mason, in your house, like, well, I don't open the door for anybody because all they want is solicit whatever. In my house, it means something different. There is an interpretation and application. And guess what?

Those things change in seasons and cycles. How you approach things today with little kids will look different in the future. This is why we talk about little wins in counseling. April and I, with the people of the church and the little ones you have in raising your children when they're younger should come to larger wins when they're a little bit older. And it's the same thing with humans.

Somebody who is disruptive as an adult was most likely allowed to be disruptive as a child. Somebody who's disrespectful as an adult was most likely allowed to be disrespectful as a child. Not always. There's always exceptions to the rule. They were the guardian, the teacher.

They were to protect the children until the father came. They reveal two kingdoms, two kingdoms that go all the way back to the start of humanity. There was the kingdom of life and the kingdom of death. They exposed the wolves in sheep's Clothing, not my fleece, but in other sheep's clothing. False shepherds, clothed in piety, but they were empty in power and the wrestle of humanity with what is God's holiness.

But faith, remember faith started before Sinai. Faith is talked about even by Paul, referencing Abram Abraham. It was Abraham's faith. Remember that. That heritage we have in Christ, it was the covenant that carried us forward into that heritage.

Through Christ, we're grafted into the family where there's no longer Jew, there's no longer Greek, but we're one new man rooted in the family of heaven, and we transfer to sons and daughters of God.

Even before his birth, John the Baptist had recognized the Messiah. It's one of the coolest stories in scripture. There's a lot of things I'd like to ask God, but it's like, lord, why did you say, and there were so many things that happened that we couldn't even record them all. And then you just left us hanging there. But then you recorded John leapt in the womb.

Was it just so that we could have the argument over abortion or non abortion? Was it just over? I seriously doubt it. But one of the coolest things this time of year between Sukkot, in the end of year, when you have Sukkot, you have Hanukkah, you have all these different things. You have the birth, you have the conception concept.

Doesn't matter what calendar you're on, you have this time. And it was just John the Baptist who leapt in his mother's womb at recognizing who this Mashiach was. At the sound of Mary's greeting, Elizabeth's child leapt within her. Luke 1:41. John's mission was to transition a bridge from the old Covenant into the New covenant.

The old covenant was a shadow of what was to come for the new Covenants substance. A lot of people will say, well, the terminology there is actually a renewed covenant. That's incorrect in the language. It was a new covenant. Just like the covenant with Adam was not a renewed covenant with Abraham, just like the covenant with Abraham was not a renewed covenant of Noah, and so on and so on.

This was a new covenant. And what makes this covenant different than all other covenants is this covenant is one where God, God no longer just says, I will do my part and your part of the covenant. This is now a place where he says, I will actually put my spirit inside of you. And by placing the Holy Spirit inside of you, you can have a new mind and a new heart, so that the things that I gave you on stone can now permeate into the flesh. Temples of bricks and stones give way to temples of flesh and bones.

But without the birth, you cannot have the life. And without the life, you cannot have the death. And without the death, you cannot have the resurrection. And without the resurrection, you cannot have the ascension. Jesus should cause us to rejoice, to smile, to jump, to have fun.

If he isn't, he is not the problem we are.

I saw online that Cam spent two weeks gut punching you. And so today, I'm going to take it easy on you. John didn't come preaching the baptism that was there before. John didn't preach barley offerings. He didn't preach temple sacrifices.

Now, he would engage in those when he was in Jerusalem, but that was not the message. John came under the spirit of Elijah. John came preaching repentance. Ah, there's that word that we can't talk about in Christianity. Repentance.

I've been in multiple different denominations of Christianity through my life. I've been a little bit more progressive in my Christian walk, and I've been very conservative in my Christian walk. I've been on both sides of those. But I will say this. Neither side likes the topic of repentance, and most of them are more worried about what other people are doing than what you're doing.

And John came preach, preaching repentance. Not that I would stand here and worry about making Cam repent or Stephen repent or Matthew repent or Isaac repent, that I would focus inwardly on my heart and my life, my mind, my thought process is what I do. And I would repent. Why? Why should we repent?

Because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Matthew, chapter three.

Mikvahs were common. These ritual washings that would happen, they symbolized a cleansing. But John's baptism was different, and it demanded fruit. You know, a lot of times I like to teach the commandments of Lord as an. As an invitation to be a part of the family.

John demanded fruit with repentance. It wasn't an invitation. He demanded, if you are going to be repentant, there should produce fruit, bear fruit. In the keeping with repentance. John demanded more because what was coming was more.

We're not talking about the prophet Isaiah. We're not talking about the prophet Jesus. Jeremiah, the one who is getting ready to come is not just a prophet. He is God in the flesh. And it's not the same.

Never was there one as good as Yeshua, and there never will be another human on this earth like him. Bear fruit. In keeping with repentance. John's message wasn't about the ceremonial cleansing that the Mikvahs produced. It was about covenantial loyalty.

And they didn't even necessarily know what was coming. They didn't even necessarily know exactly what was happening. It was a public crossing from death into life. And everybody in this room, no matter how young or how old you are, you have an area of your life that produces life, and you have areas of your life that currently produce chaos or death. This is an invitation of God in the flesh to take the areas of your life where there is chaos and there is anger and there's bitterness and there's sin and there's all these things and to repent, to push those into a new era and to have God, through the power of his Holy Spirit, make you better.

Tis the season to get gym memberships and not follow through. If I recall correctly, I believe it's by the 17th day of January that over 90% of people who assign up, whether it's Planet Fitness or wherever these places are, you can tell I don't go there, whatever they are, that they will cease to partake in this resolution they have. This is the difference of this season in our mentality with what God is asking us to engage in right now. People are making the decision that they will do what they can do to get in shape. And God says, all you need to do to get in shape is to repent and to allow me to lead.

And when you allow me to lead, you allow me to be the Lord of your life. I will make sure you get past the 17th of January, not at planet Fitness, but with whatever that mountain is that you are trying to overcome. Just as Israel had crossed the sea into the wilderness to meet with God, John was leading people through the Jordan river to prepare them to meet with God in the flesh. Immanuel at Sinai, the people had refused intimacy and they had sent Moses up the mountain. But now we see that God himself will descend in the power, in the name of Jesus, the word made flesh, to call his people near.

Whereas the people were afraid to go up to meet. So they sent Moses. God now says, I will do what I originally said I was going to do at Sinai. I am going to come down and dwell with you. Yet there's a tragedy that we read about here in Matthew's Gospel of the rejection.

The kingdom had come. Heaven's King was walking amongst them. There was miracles, there was healings, there was deliverance. Confirmed that he was something different. They used the terminologies earlier in Matthew, the Son of man, the Son of God.

All of these things that the prophets, you know, we have to study them because we don't live in that culture. But they understood that this was their family, was a part of the culture. So when Son of Man, Son of God, all these titles are given to him, they absolutely knew what that meant.

Yet many had dismissed him. And it's one thing to reject the messenger who prepares the way. It's another to reject the way that the messenger proclaimed.

Then Jesus began, if you have your Bibles, I know that was a long introduction, you're welcome. I'm passionate about Jesus. I'm passionate about this, so I'm not going to apologize for being passionate about it. And you shouldn't either. Open your Bibles, open your apps to verse 20 through 24, if you haven't already gotten there.

Then Yeshua began to denounce the towns in which most of his miracles and works had been performed because they did not repent.

Woe to you, Chorazin. Woe to you, Bethesda. For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the Day of Judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum will be lifted to the heavens.

No, you will be down in Hades. For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. Ouch. But I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the Day of Judgment than you.

I want to go back to the beginning of this, because where Cam was over the last two weeks, we see that the Bible says that the Torah and the prophets had testified till John, and then John came doing these things. So there's a finite marker in there for us to understand. So then in the beginning of these passages, it says, then Jesus began to denounce the towns in which most of his miracles and works had performed. Why did he denounce them?

Because they didn't repent.

He didn't denounce them because they weren't perfect. He didn't denounce them because they weren't performing miracles like he had performed or like he had sent his apostles, his apprentices, out to do. He didn't condemn them because they weren't better at their faith, that their sanctification wasn't higher.

He didn't condemn them for that. He wasn't upset with them for that. He was upset because they did not repent. Jesus wasn't condemning them for ignorance, he was judging their indifference.

And that should hit us all in our heart because every person in this room at some point in time in your life is indifferent to something of God.

It's not that you're ignorant, you're indifferent.

They had witnessed heaven's power, and yet through witnessing the power of heaven, they had remained unchanged and unwilling to acknowledge the power they saw.

Jesus wasn't upset with them because they didn't adjust one way or another of keeping the Torah being Torah observant or Torah pursuant.

He wasn't upset with them because their life hadn't become uber Pentecostal and they were just healing people all over the place. It was because they didn't look inwardly, recognized the sin in their own heart, in their own life, and they didn't repent.

Jesus problem in general, it wasn't just one town was they didn't see the value in repentance.

Not honestly. A lot different from where we're at in the 21st century.

You see, it's hard enough to say I'm sorry.

Husbands and wives, you've never gotten into an argument and in the end of it be like, I'm not saying sorry until you say sorry never happened.

Well, I was justified. Trolling was mean to me, so I could say I heard that.

He was mean to me, so I had it. I could call him a brood of vipers. I could call him a name. We don't want to say we're sorry. And if we're not willing to even say we're sorry, we're not even touching the ice.

We're not even touching the ice of what actual biblical repentance is.

A lot of people are in this room for a couple of reasons. We are a different church. Your pastor has a man bun and that's the least of your problems. We keep the Sabbath day on Saturday not common. Our calendar is the feast and the festivals of Yahweh and commonly known in America as the Jewish calendar, the Hallelujah.

So we flow around that type of calendar. We do some things differently. We have a Hebrew lens by which we kind of walk out our life. We do things differently, but in the end, none of that matters if you don't live a lifestyle of repentance, you can be the most Roman Catholic, the most Greek, the most Anglican, the most whatever, and you cannot be washed by the blood of the lamb. If you don't acknowledge the sin in your life, say that you are sorry with Your lips was only the first start.

I have some children who don't like to say they're sorry when they fight. Parents, parents of young ones, they hit a second toddler phase right around their teenage years to where they fight with each other over everything. You can't touch my flannel. You can't touch my hat. You can't touch this.

And then what's the go to for all parents? It's all under my roof. They can touch it if they want. They're like, fine.

If we're not even going to say we're sorry, you know, I'm sorry for taking your car, Hannah, without asking permission, even though I paid the insurance.

I'm sorry that I ate the last two Hershey Kiss cookies that were set aside for some random person at a homeschool co op. They'll get over it. I'm sorry. We can't even get there. So we can't even acknowledge that there has been an infraction on some of the most.

We're laughing about these things, but they happen way too often. They happen. And we're not even talking about the things that people are living with that are way heavier than that. You know, the things that you scroll at night when you think nobody's looking. The amount of alcohol you pound when he's like, I'm not buzzed.

You're Buzz Lightyear at that point.

And these are just a couple of the sins that are listed in the scripture. What about the idolatry? The idolatry that we have in our life? Everybody makes something an idol. Tis the season to hate Christmas while holding on to all of our other idols.

Football, basketball, movies. And again, not all of those things are bad. Like, don't get me wrong, don't. Like, I'm not asking you to become a nun and go or a monk. That's not what I'm asking you to do.

Repentance is one of the greatest gifts that God can give to humanity. And we have allowed ourselves to fall into demonic cooperation as Christians. That's right, I said it. That somehow repentance is a bad thing.

There's been people in the church who have left our church because they found out that somebody had a sin. And even though they had repented of the sin, they expected me to act anti biblically towards the individual. This person has repented of a sin. This person is in the process of attempting to bear different fruit. And you want me to condemn them as if that never happened?

You want me to scarlet letter them? Why don't you Take a look at the scarlet letters I have. Guess what? They're not who I am anymore. I've been very, very truthful and honest about the two years of my life away from God.

I was not holy. The only thing that was holy was my genes, and they weren't very holy.

That's not who I am. Why? Because my Savior came into this world and offered the ability to be repentant. And when I am repentant, Yeshua will wash us white as snow. And then what happens?

He invites us into a different life.

They didn't even want to acknowledge their error. It's harder today. Why is it harder today? These people saw him just as clearly as I can see you men sitting right there. They saw Jesus just as clearly as I can see you today.

They saw people who had never been able to walk, get up, pick up a mat and go. They saw people who were broken out with leprous skin, who were completely healed. They saw people who were dead. They saw dead people who came to life.

We don't always see that. And when we see. When we do see that, because we've seen some of that in our church, we're not seeing the physical manifestation of Yeshua in front of us the same way I can see Jacob and Tim. We're seeing the power of the presence of the Ruach Huah Hakodesh in our midst. But I'm not seeing Jesus sitting in the second row the same way I can see Brent sitting in the third.

These people could and they didn't repent. So how much harder and how much more of an emphasis do we need to be intentional about this free gift that God has given us so that we can be made right and whole? Philip's a close personal friend of mine. I don't have any expectations in my life that Philip and I are not going to have an issue with each other. At some point in time, I expect it to happen with human beings.

And then we say we're sorry and we move on. Shocker.

We can fix things. But remember that narcissism, that pride, that arrogance, that ego, the thing that comes before the fall when you can't say you're sorry for the things you're doing to transgress God. You will not say you're sorry for the things you're transgressing against your neighbor. And at that point in time, when you are found, when you are exposed because the light came to the greatest darkness of 400 years, it will come. It will expose you.

The scripture says at that Point in time, you will do what most people do. Peace out.

Oh, did you hear about that Pastor Chris guy? Did you hear about him? Did you hear about what he does? Did you hear? And you'll immediately try to get out in front of the broken relationship so that, what, you can cooperate with Satan?

Oh, no, no, no, no. I'm just playing the marketing game. You know, pr like, no, no. You've gone from oppression to demonic cooperation, and you are cooperating with Satan.

If that doesn't cause us to step back for a second.

They didn't acknowledge their error. And therefore, because they didn't acknowledge their error, they did nothing about that error, which kept them subject to violence. They were subject to the knowledge of good and evil the same way that Adam and Eve were because they chose not to repent. You cannot eat of the tree of life without repentance.

So all the fruit you keep eating is still the knowledge of good and evil. How's that working out for all of humanity? Not so good.

Saying sorry is an incomplete repentance. You have to actually put down the fruit of the one tree and pick up the fruit through a choice of the other tree. You actually have to make a choice to do something different.

There are times in the scripture where God does miraculous healings. There's miraculous moments where he changes the heart and the mind almost instantaneously. It does exist. But the majority of the interactions of God's healing power and delivering power is something that comes when you choose to get in the car with him. Brent said a long time ago, I think maybe even last year, around this season, too, he said, can we please stop praying for the Lord to knock him down, drag him in, and bring him into the kingdom.

He's not going to violate their free will. I agree with that. God is not some abusive daddy who is sitting up there and it's like, you know what, Cam? That friend from work who doesn't like me, who wants nothing to do with me, you just keep praying that I will just violate his free will and I will beat him up, and when he's unconscious, I'll drag him into the kingdom.

Everybody in this room knows this. You know that it is an invitation to walk with God through the confession of sin, but you actually have to walk with him.

If you are an alcoholic, you don't get to just take Jesus to the bar with you.

Jesus keeps you from going to the bar. If you're scrolling websites you shouldn't look at. You don't take Jesus to the website with you. You let Jesus Take you from the website.

He's the one with the power. We are not. It seems so simple. Yet as a pastor, I can tell you this simple choice cripples the majority of the Christians I meet.

It cripples them.

Do not fall into cooperation with the adversary. Before you were born, you had a gift. That gift was placed inside of you by God. Ephesians tells us there will come a point in time in your life where you will make the choice to either walk in that gift for that king or not. You might walk in the gift for yourself, you might walk in your gift for something else.

You might choose to just hide it under a bushel. No going to let it shine.

But you will make a choice to use it or not.

And everything in the scripture tells you God will be right with you, empowering you, leading you and guiding you through his spirit, through his putting a new mind, his putting a new heart. We like to trust heart surgeons when we have to go in for bypass surgeries and things like that. Jesus has a 100% success ratio on brain surgery and heart surgeries. And we're still worried about like, I don't know if he can heal me.

He won't fail. He won't.

You can't separate Jesus from repentance. You cannot separate repentance from Jesus if you will not pivot into the monumental cosmic shift that is happening here in the Gospel of Matthew, the shift of the kingdom of heaven coming to the kingdom of earth. You will not be able to shift into that kingdom without repentance.

But is your heart ready for the true repentance? Repentance isn't ritual, it's relational. It's not about washing the dirt off your face or off your skin. It's about washing the death that inhabit your soul. It's when your motto and your method become one.

You see, the Pharisees motto and the method weren't aligned with the ones of heaven. Jesus invitation is that your talk will match your walk and your motto will match your method. A lot of us have a motto or a lot of us have a method. But they must align.

Hebrews reminds us that Jesus is once and for all. The sacrifice that passes us from death into life through repentance is the reorientation of our heart. Turning from sin of self to the need of a savior. It's no longer about finding loopholes in the law. It's about living filled with the spirit, Allowing the spirit to fill the loopholes that you've created in the law with the heart of what the Law was always supposed to do Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Romans 12:2 Woe to those who see miracles and do not repent. Woe to those who minimize salvation's free gift for their own works based salvation. Woe to those who transgress Jesus while claiming that they're his. Woe to those who wear priestly garments but spit on his wounds. Woe to those who profess faith but they practice a lifestyle of hell.

It will be more bearable and Sodom than for those who reject him after seeing his glory. Every person in this room today cannot plead ignorance. You have heard, you can be indifferent. I would not recommend that Once you see the power of God through the judgment of greater to you who will reject him. Once you know the requirement of repentance, the judgment is greater for those who who remain unrepentant.

Repentance is an altered state of thought and it raises the standard of our actions to meet the expectation of the kingdom in action. As a guy who grew up and helped run almost every large Messianic Hebrew roots ministry, I understand why there's such an argument about the Torah and the works. I get it. Because it is a lot easier to fall under the standard of Moses than it is to come up to the standard of Yeshua talking about what Moses originally was intentionally supposed to be. It's a lot easier for me to understand that I did not walk in here today with the intention of pulling out a weapon and harming you.

But when people called me on my sabbatical, I did want to harm some of them in my mind. So if I claim that I'm under the law of Moses, not under the law of the law Giver, which includes the heart of the Torah. Well, I didn't. I didn't do anything wrong. I just had a thought.

I didn't act on the thought. Yeshua, in the Torah of the Kingdom series, the Sermon on the Mount says, the moment you even think about it. Brent, he was so mad at me when I talked about the forehead thing that he pulled out the fan. I was like, the moment we think about it. I'm sorry Brent, that I talked about your forehead.

Please forgive me.

Repentance is an altered state of thought. It raises the standard of our actions.

It raises them to meet the expectations of the king of the Kingdom of Heaven. And repentance is not true repentance unless it produces fruit. I did a teaching in January judging Observance, where we looked at what the Bible says about producing fruit.

It is one of the first commandments and repeated commandments over and over and over again. Be fruitful and multiply and guys that only in one regard has to do with marriage and every other way it says, hey, why don't you be a nice person? Bear fruit in keeping with your repentance. Hey, why don't you bear fruit in joy? Why don't you bear fruit in peace or patience or kindness?

It's a season right now where everybody's upset. They're all mad about what other Christians are doing in their celebration. Where's the joy?

I find joy at all points in time by not allowing people to steal my sunshine time.

I don't have to do what they do, but I also don't have to be angry at the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart where, yay, I got the wonderful love of my Bless every deemed my way down to the depths of my heart. Yes, you guys, just watch tongues.

Repentance comes with fruit.

Fruit looks different from your former way of acting and thinking. Repentance without changed fruit is a confession without bearing the responsibility. It isn't the repentance of the kingdom of heaven. Responsibility in our life comes with expectations, the expectation that you will alter your thoughts in your life to match the thoughts in the life of Christ. It's a different kingdom than the kingdom of man.

And it comes with a different power, with a greater power. And with the greater power comes a greater responsibility. Jesus invited us into helping to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth. All my kids in the house, all of you. Even though you don't always say it together.

Sometimes we got this echo effect going on like an old vineyard song. On earth as it is in heaven. On earth as it is in heaven. This is the invitation Jesus has invited you into. On earth as it is in heaven, there isn't sin in the throne room.

There isn't sin on the throne of God. It must be eradicated from the kingdom of earth, manifesting the kingdom of heaven. Worship him. You can come back.

Our guardian is now Christ himself. We are justified by his lordship, not our lineage. There's neither Jew nor Greek. Through repentance we receive the Ruach Hakodesh, the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who transforms our hearts, our souls and our minds.

And it passes us. There's that Passover language again. Passes us from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil into the tree of Life. The fruit on the tree of the tree of Life is not the same as the fruit on the tree of the knowledge of good and Evil. It replaces the fruit that was ate first by Adam with the fruit of the second Adam.

One knows things. One is things. Think about that for a second. One piece of fruit from this tree will help you know things. And Jesus comes in and says, I am the way, the truth, the life.

If you eat, you will be hungry no more. If you drink, you'll be thirsty no more. The fruit is different from the two trees.

One knows things. One is things.

Jesus is all things. John 14:6 says, no one comes to the Father except through the son. Matthew 16:18 says, no one can stand against the gates of Hell without the Son. You want to overcome the thing that's causing you to need repentance. You cannot overcome the gates of Hell without the Son.

You cannot overcome those areas of your life without Jesus Christ.

So I don't care if it's January 1st, I don't care if it's December 31st, 25th, January 6th, March 17th. No one comes to the Father without the Son. So the Son should be ever present in everything that we do, because it is the Son who helps us overcome the gates of hell. And the gates of hell are constantly warring against us. And guess what?

A lot of times we're actually warring with the gates of hell, because that's just where we're kind of at. How do you overcome the blood of the Lamb, the word of your testimony that the Son is with you?

The law of Christ showed us how man had perverted the law of Moses. They had taken the Torah, and they used it as a weapon against their brothers and sisters. They used it as a way to glorify themselves rather than to glorify God. All the Torah is to teach us how to love God and to love our neighbor. And yet where they had come out is they had come out where they used their neighbor to love themselves.

And God was not really a part of it. God was the coat of paint they put on it.

They had misinterpreted it. They had misapplied it to their life. And the fruit that they bore had shown that.

I don't care how you were born. I don't care how you were raised. I don't care about anything other than what you do today with the knowledge you have that the tree of life is right in front of you.

Through taking the fruit of the tree of life and choosing the fruit of Jesus in your life, there can be confession and repentance and cleansing your life before will not be your life after.

Jesus said, I came to bring you life in life, abundantly so why did you guys sign up for an annual membership? Some of you signed up for an annual membership for life barely life, abundantly light. Some features not applied.

I came to bring you life and life abundantly.

Our Jewish king Jesusl was upset with the Hebrews because they had saw they chose not to repent.

As we sing this song, as we respond, I want to ask you to actually go into your brain, actually go into your heart and ask the Lord, is there areas of your life you need to repent?

Be honest with you. I think the answer is probably yes for all of us being kind now. But I'm pretty sure the answer is yes for all of us. Why? Because it tells us that we have to die daily to ourself, which implies that every day our, our flesh, our carnality is wrestling against the life that Yeshua wants to bring to us.

And so as we sing all hail King Jesus, Ask Jesus to be the king. In that area of your life, maybe it's your anger, maybe it's your bitterness. Maybe it's some unresolved issues from your childhood. Maybe it's some unresolved issues it is with. With a spouse or a former spouse.

Maybe it's some unresolved issues with. With somebody who you went to church with or you sat under. Whatever it is, I want you to experience the power and the presence of God.

And when we look at the Gospel of Matthew and we continue to study through was such a cosmic shift to what they had experienced before, we should understand how our world is today that it's an even more cosmic shift for us. When we come to Jesus, if you will, you stand and let's respond.