Yeshua HaMelech

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So I had a revelation when I was in the back listening to worship. And I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but this is the longest I've ever served at one place in ministry. So I have served eight years consecutively at the other ministries that I have helped run or whatever. And so now that we're starting into the ninth year, I have officially broken the cycle. I have made it past eight years and I have started into the ninth year.

And so when I said a couple years ago that we were kind of transitioning the church away from where we had been for many, many years, and I was out of the boat and my eyes were on Jesus, I literally have no experience past eight years in a church. So I'm definitely 100% eyes on Jesus this year and just doing whatever the Lord wants us to do in that place. I won't lie, it is really great to see Brent here this week. I'm tired. I'm tired.

What started as, hey, can I take a sabbatical in the month of December? Since you took a sabbatical in the month of November, turn into a sabbatical for December and all of January. So next elders meeting, I'm just going to say you set the precedent for a two month sabbatical. I'm just saying. It wasn't me just saying.

But I am glad that you are feeling better. I'm glad that you're back with us. I think I can speak for the rest of the congregation that it is good to see your face, even though I've gotten to see your face in between. So we are wrapping up our mission series this week and we will start into our Torah of the Kingdom series next week as Brent starts in for 10 weeks looking at the Sermon on the Mount, the teachings of Jesus, for the Kingdom of Jesus. And so today I'm gonna do a little bit of rec for those who haven't been here.

Throughout the entire time, we talked about doctrine, theology and philosophy. Now, there's many definitions for those, but how do they relate together? At hff, Doctrine is a set of core beliefs I talked about. Everybody needs to have those. You need to have a set of core beliefs.

Not only a set of core beliefs in what you believe the Bible to say are fundamental, but also a set of core beliefs for your family. Because after all, a church is a family made up of a bunch of small families. And so how do two walk together unless they agree? Well, if your doctrine is opposed to each other, sooner or later you're Gonna be opposed to each other. It's just natural.

It's what happens. Because what you believe then works through your theology, your thought process, the way you study and how you implement. So how I believe about something should change how I think about something, which should change how walk. If I want to change how much I pray, I need to change how I think about praying and then I need to do something with it then. Our philosophy is the wisdom, the love of wisdom, the wisdom that we grow in by doing things right and doing things wrong.

You learn wisdom from doing things right and wrong. I Learned after the 17 time hard headed type A don't touch a hot stove. Some people learn that wisdom once, touch it, don't do it again. We learn wisdom from the decisions we make in our life. And then we go back and we adjust the implementation of our beliefs in our walk.

And in theory, we should be doing this as long as we're alive. As long as we're alive, we should be doing this with every breath we have. It's important for us to understand that if one of those is out of kilter, there's a good possibility our relationship with the Lord or our walk with the Lord might be out of kilter. And this is why we have to constantly be readdressing, well, how do we think? What do we do?

What do we learn from those and make adjustments in our life. The modern church is not supposed to create disciples of the church, but the vehicle of discipleship to Jesus is through the church. And so one of the core missions of the church is to make disciples. If you read the Bible, you believe the Bible, you believe in Jesus, you should do something about that. It's not just about having you come and sit here and be like, amen, Pastor Chris, that was really good.

We don't laugh at your jokes because they're not funny. Like, no, it's to make disciples of Jesus. Liken it to Corinthians when Paul says, imitate me as I imitate Jesus. Well, guess what? You will make a disciple away from Jesus if you don't imitate Jesus.

I have no commandment in the Bible to make you apprentices of Moses, Deborah, of all the other wise people that came. We can learn from them. We can find beauty in it. But there is an absolute commandment to imitate Jesus and make disciples and apprentices of Jesus. And there's four main pillars of Jesus's apprenticeship model that he practiced on his time on earth.

Jesus model of discipleship wasn't classroom only. That was a portion of it, it's not just coming here on a Saturday. It's not just going to church on a Sunday. It's doing life together, becoming a family on mission. Some of the best places you can be discipled or discipling others is at Costco.

You can learn a lot when you go shopping with people. You can learn a lot when you go and you run errands with each other. You can learn a lot, learn a lot about them when you go to sports, youth sports games with them.

I have retired as a coach of youth sports and that was for the benefit of everybody that I coached. It was not pretty, but you can learn a lot about yourself and other people in real life. Atmospheres. It's easy to come together for one hour, two hours, three hours once a week and fake it. It's hard when you are in all the other atmospheres.

Jesus model of leadership was not classroom only. It was family on mission. He did life together with people. Jesus did not lead from a place of obligation to his cell phone, to social media, to his boss. He led from a place of prayer and solitude and reflection.

He often would retreat to places to be alone in silence with his Father. Why is this important for all of us? Because he didn't allow the crowd size. He didn't allow the affirmation of other people. He didn't allow those things to dictate how he walked or how he led.

This is countercultural to what we see today in this world. Well, guess what? If it's trending viral on TikTok, we need to do it too. We need to do this, we need to do that. Jesus said, I don't, I don't care if I got a mega church sitting out on the hillside over there.

I'm going over to Compernum to teach to a hundred people. We have to keep our eyes, our minds focused on Jesus, not just what we see in the physical. And one of my favorite things is that Jesus forced nobody into a relationship. He wasn't abusive, he wasn't demeaning, he wasn't. He gave an invitation for you to come and to dwell with him and do life with him.

Over the Last year, in 2023, we spent Tuesday nights in our building blocks classes reshaping the core of this church. For those of you who've made this transition with us the last seven years, we had a church who had no basic doctrine. What do we believe? Just not argue. That was kind of our basic doctrine.

Let's not be divisive about this. Let's not fight over this. That was kind of our doctrine. So we spend the last year really setting up what does this church believe as fundamental, foundational pieces of what the Bible says for us as a fellowship. And so today I want to release that, so to speak, in a very succinct way.

Now, it's not new. I spent an hour. And you're saying what would have been really, really great is if we didn't spend an entire year with you on an hour on every one of the subjects. You could have just published the list and we could have just been done with it and we could have went and got some chicken and beer together. That's okay.

That's okay. I'm learning too. Have grace and mercy for me. What is the basis of the doctrine for this church? Number one, the belief that God exists as three persons, each with the attributes of deity and personality.

God reveals himself in the three persons. And yet one God would be the Hebrew word Akad there, which is the intent of what is referred to as the Trinity. It's absolutely true. The Trinity is not in the Bible, but the concept of the Trinity is. Number two, the belief that Jesus is fully God and fully man.

Number three, the belief that salvation comes by grace, through faith in Jesus and is not obtained by any works. Praise God for that. Because, man, I struggle. I'm constantly needing to ask for forgiveness. And so, thankfully, we have a perfect Savior, a spotless lamb that we get to come before the throne.

Number four, the belief that the Bible is the word of God and the final authority on all matters, Genesis to Revelation. The belief that the Holy Spirit is a person in active presence of God's Spirit within the life of a believer, giving gifts to equip and empower the body of Christ to do the work of the kingdom here on earth. Number six, the belief that Jesus was born of a virgin and conceived as a gift from God the Father. Number seven, the belief that Jesus died on a cross was the atoning work for our sins. Number eight, the belief that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day, conquering evil and releasing his followers from the judgment of their sin.

The belief that Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father in heaven with all authority, majesty and power bestowed to him. Number 10, the belief that Jesus will come again to once and for all conquer and remove evil, resurrect the saints and establish his justice, his rule and his reign. And last, but definitely not least, the belief that Jesus gave authority to the followers of him, the church, to make apprentices that would further the teachings Actions and spirit of Jesus to the entire world. Now, as we go through over the next couple of months in our ninth year, we have to continuously look at how do we implement those, how do we walk those out? Guess what?

I get to go and take a break and Brent gets to tell you over the next 10 weeks, now, I'll be here, but I won't have to lay that out because I believe Brent is the one who's supposed to lay that out. What does that look like? How do we take our core beliefs and figure out what do I do with my feet? Ah, we study. We study.

We study. We study the perfect human Jesus, the Christ Yeshua Hamashiach, and then we try to model and implement what he did in his life, in our life. And then we trust that the spirit of Jesus, as Paul calls it, will empower us to be able to actually do that. Because last time I checked, I can't do it on my own. None of us can.

We don't even hold the standard or the thought process that you can do it on your own. We have to have the power of God and his holy spirit inside of us. How hard is this to do? Well, I'd like to back up and I'd like, before we get to the mountain, I would like for us to look at the ones that Jesus called, because in this room we have people of all ages, all different backgrounds, all education status. But what about the ones that Jesus called the first time?

What about the ones, the 12 that walked with him? They were young men who had grown up in the system of first century Judaism. We have to remember the historical context of who God called to him. At that time. They knew everything.

They knew what it meant to be a Jew. They knew what it meant to follow a Jewish Messiah. They knew what it was like to be Hebrews in a Hebrew land. They knew what it was like to be slaves. They had heard countless times from their Omaha, from their grandma.

Remember when we live in a culture nowadays where some of the younger generation doesn't find a whole lot of value in the stories that their parents and their grandparents tell them. This first century group of young men who were roughly teenage to young adults is somewhere in that age range. How many of us would say, you know, okay, let's take some teenagers and some young adults and let's start planting a church in Edmond. Let's start planting a church in the south side of Oklahoma City, in the west side of Oklahoma City, the east side, and we're all going to disperse and we're Going to sit under the shepherd dean of a bunch of 16 to, let's just say 25 year olds. How many of you would feel pretty comfortable about that?

I wouldn't. I have a 16 year old and I love her dearly, but I wouldn't feel that comfortable. But the reality is those 16, 17, 18, 20, 25 year olds, they were the ones that Jesus hand picked to do life with and then sent them out with the power of the Holy Spirit to transform the world. And you're here today because of them. So we should be a little bit more cautious of looking down on people because of their youth.

Because if it was good enough for our Savior, we probably should be modeling it ourselves. Hence one of the reasons why when you look around, we're constantly trying to get our teenagers involved. My kids don't really have a choice. They're pastor's kids and so they must run cameras or lights or whatever. But we're constantly trying to get our kids actively engaged inside the congregation.

Because ultimately I'm not here because I want you to think I'm smart. We all know I'm not. But what I am here to do is help raise up another generation who loves Jesus. And that doesn't start when they turn 18, that doesn't start when they turn 21. It starts when they're young, when they're little, when they're K's size.

Right? Taylor, I caught you in the middle of eating that candy too.

That's when it starts at a young age. So that by the time they turn 18, by the time they turn 19, by the time they turn 20. It's not that we're just introducing them to this Jesus person. It's not that we're just saying, oh well, mom and dad like him. But I've got some questions.

They should be filled and powered by the Holy Spirit. At that point in time, they should be actively engaged in life. This is the model Jesus showed us with these first century Jewish teenagers and young adults. He sent them out. He sent them on mission trips.

Now his mission trips looked a little bit different than ours, but he did. And they were laying hands and casting out demons and all kinds of stuff. How many parents, we're a little conservative in our Christianity here. How many parents would be super comfortable if a 16 year old walks up to you, starts praying in tongues for healing on you, and then all of a sudden like you're miraculously healed?

The gospels tell us that it happened on a regular basis. I just want to do Bible things, Bible ways. So I'm trying to learn how to do that. I'm trying to learn how to look at the text, look at the stories, look at the implementations, and allow that to be how I adjust my walk.

The first century apostles, they weren't idiots, they weren't uneducated. They knew more about their culture, about their Messiah, what they were looking for. Judaism has been looking for Mashiach forever. They. They were looking for Mashiach.

They were looking for Jesus, the Christ, Yeshua Hamashiach. They knew what to look for. They knew what Isaiah said, probably better than us. They knew what Jeremiah said, probably better than us. They knew Ezekiel better than us.

They lived the culture, they lived the land, and they revolutionized the world because they listened, they saw, and they walked with the greatest leader of all time, God in the flesh. They knew Moses, they knew Deborah, they knew Joshua. They knew all the stories better than us. They probably knew nuances. You know, we have our Middle Eastern European paintings of our apostles and, you know, all of the white guys, you know, that were there, which is ironic because they were all Jews and all Hebrews.

And then you have. You have the other pictures, and now you got AI generating all of these things. They probably knew through oral teachings and stories that were passed down. They knew things about Joshua that we don't have recorded. They knew things about Moses that we don't have recorded.

They had all of these things. In the first century, we don't have all of that, but we see throughout the Gospel when Jesus is dining in the banquets, John's. You know, John, remember from all the way back in December. It seems like ancient ago when we started the remission series and we were talking about John the baptizer, when John came in and his disciples were there. You have the Pharisees, the Sadducees, excuse me, the Pharisees, the scribes, and John's apprentices.

And in Matthew, it records that it's John's apprentices that say, hey, master, why aren't your disciples fasting? So obviously they knew not only the Pharisees, the Sadducees, all of these different teachings that were there. They were very educated on the various systems of religion and the teachings that were there. And yet when Jesus burst on the scene, all it took was him to say, come, give them an invitation. They recognized who he was, they recognized the authority he had, and they took a risk.

They left everything to follow him, not knowing exactly where they were going to go.

Sometimes we don't like to take risks. Am I the only one? Okay. Sometimes I don't like to take risks. Sometimes I'm extremely conservative in how I approach those things.

These men were so studied of who the Mashiach was going to be that when they saw. When they saw who he was and heard him speak, they took the risk to step and follow him.

You heard the old adage, risks and rewards tied together.

I've said it multiple times. I understand why we want a checklist. I understand our love affair with the Mosaic covenant. It's beautiful. It helps us understand where the boundaries are.

But the greatest risk was them to step outside of the comfort of those boundaries and say, I'm going to follow you, Anointed One, sent one, Mashiach, Jesus, Yeshua, Yehoshua, I'm going to follow you and I'm. Teach me your ways. What if they would have been wrong?

What if Jesus wouldn't have been the Messiah? They would have been ostracized by their families. They would not have been allowed in Starbucks in Jerusalem. They would have been banished. They would have been using the mobile app and sending a goy in to get their coffee for them.

How did they know that he was the one?

We live in a day and age where we don't have to take quite the same risk. We know history tells us, the Bible tells us. Our church has witnessed miracles. We've seen healings. We've seen things.

Literally makes this old Nazarene Presbyterian boy just was like, what?

We know that Jesus has come. We know that Jesus has walked on this earth. We know that Jesus has gone to the cross for every one of us and every person driving by this morning to stop at Sonic. We know that against all odds, he went into the tomb and came out in three days. We know that he showed himself to hundreds, if not thousands.

We know that they watched him ascend into the heavens, and they did probably what I would be doing. Hey. Okay, Jesus, you can come down now. Hey. All right, man.

I know you went into a tomb and you disappeared for a couple of days, but are you coming back? Like, when are you coming? Like, okay, think of this for a second. They knew the testimony. Luke writes about it with the golden calf.

What did they do when Moses was up on the mountain with the Lord in Exodus, he was gone for 40 days and for 40 nights. And they immediately said, this dude has abandoned us. Let us create God so we can follow them. So these are the descendants of those people, still in a culture that's very similar. And they're sitting there going, wait a second.

The last time a guy Ascended up into the mountain space, into the heavenlies. Like people died. Wasn't great for us. Wasn't great. But what did they do?

They listened. Wait. Sit and wait in this place. And Jesus did exactly what he said he was gonna do. Shocker.

Cause he had already done it, like, a hundred times over. And with a mighty rushing wind stole your line. Mighty rushing wind. The Holy Spirit fell. The Ruach Hakodesh fell on them on Pentecost, Shavuot.

And they revolutionized the world.

Not by their power, not by their spirit, but by the power of God and the spirit of God living in them. We know that there's documents, there's scrolls, there's tombs. There's all these things that prove it. We don't have to take a big leap of faith, because not only does the Bible prove it, but a lot of history proves it.

So why do we struggle putting Jesus back up on the throne where there is literally nobody else who can sit there with him? Why do we struggle when we look at these to say, well, I got to figure out how to put Jesus in Moses. I got to figure out how to put Jesus in David. I got to figure out how to put Jesus in Abraham. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

We need to put Jesus back on the throne where he is supposed to be. And let Moses testify to Jesus. Let Abraham testify to Jesus. This is why when we started this transformation of a church, we went through the gospel of Jesus is on the throne. Nothing we say changes that.

Might make us look a little ignorant, but it doesn't change it. I can sit here and I can tell you, oh, Jesus isn't on the throne. No, he is. And I have no say so in it. Why?

Because at absolute best, I get to prostrate myself before him and worship him. I don't get to tell him who he is, what he gets to do. I just get to worship him.

And I'm okay with that. I don't need to be a king. I don't need to be important. I don't need anything other than the ability to sit and be with him. Why?

Because there were some teenagers who got to do it, and they changed the world. My time's kind of ticking away. You know, we were playing some 90s music today. I love some good Michael W. Smith in the 90s.

You don't have to be picture per pic. Picture. I can't talk. You don't have to be picture perfect.

My time. I'm in my 40s, guys. I know you can't tell. Thank you. Praise God.

Praise God. I'm in my 40s. These guys were in their teens to their early 20s. I've had twice as much time on this earth than they did when they got to meet with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords face to face.

I better get to it. Why? Because we have a mandate.

We need to audit our lives. We need to audit our hearts. We need to ask, is Jesus on the throne of everything in our life? Because if the answer is no, we gotta get moving, people. Get ready.

Jesus is coming soon. We're going home. I see you smiling, Misael. You know the reference Luke in Chapter 11 of his Epistle records the fact that the disciples of John knew there was something different. They ask him, they say, teacher, teach us to pray like you.

I mean, come on. The Jews know how to pray three times a day. Sometimes we struggle to take one time a day. Like when we wake up three times a day, at minimum, they stop and they pray. They will wail and there's different types of prayer.

But they said, teacher, Jesus, Yeshua, teach us how to pray. I promise you that the first century Jews were better prayers than I have been over the last 20 years of my life. Once again, I'm trying to catch up.

They knew there was a difference.

So how do we approach Moses, David, Deborah, Phoebe, all of the people in the Bible, Solomon, how do we approach them? How am I loving God? With my knowledge, with my walk and the fruit that I am bearing? Am I at all questions we should be asking ourselves on a regular basis? How am I loving my neighbor with my knowledge, my walk, and the fruit that I'm bearing, or am I at all?

In the end, you have to go through the lens of the two that Jesus set up for us to evaluate our hearts and our minds.

The Pharisees of that day were focused very much like the orthodox of today. Loving God was more important than anything. Yet through their attempts to love God, they often caused harm to others. Whether it was intentional or not, I don't get to be the judge of that. But this is what we see in the first century Gospel accounts.

They put a burden and a yoke upon the people that God himself never put upon them. And then they sat back and said, mark, really great to see you today. You should probably try better. In the words of the in ears here, don't suck, be better. Hmm, that's how you think that?

That's what you think the commandment means? That? Hmm? Okay. No, this is what the Pharisees did The religious leadership of the day.

Did we see that somewhat today in some of the Orthodox in Israel as well. They put a burden upon other people that they themselves will not hold onto or walk out. Yeshua bursts on the scene, and the first thing he does is say, it's easy. My burden is light.

The burdens of this world are hard. This is why, to fulfill the law of Christ, we are commanded to bear one another's burdens. Because Jesus came and beared the burden for us. We need each other now more than ever. That's my rabbi.

That's my king. The one who didn't come and say, matthew, I am holier than you, and you will never live up, but you can sure as heck try. No. He came and said, I love you. You are enough.

Come to me and I will help you. You will always be with me, and I will always be with you. Let's go together. My grace is sufficient for you, not my condemnation and my judgment. That's our king.

That's my rabbi.

Matthew 22:34, 40. But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees and the Sadducees were not necessarily friends. But the Pharisees all of a sudden are going to start sticking up for the Sadducees for a second. So, okay, this is equivalent to when the Republicans and Democrats actually work together. You should take note.

Something real big is happening. Yeah, that's kind of. That's kind of. Kind of, kind of a little context that's happening there. The Sadducees, they had gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked a question to test him, teacher, which is the great commandment in the law.

And he said to them, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. On the second, it is like. Is like it. You shall love the Lord, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two commandments depend all of the law and the demands of the prophets. I love Luke. It's been no secret. He has a literary style that's got this chiastic structure that I just. I get him like, I get him like, Luke and I probably would have been boys.

He would have been hanging on the patio with me, or I'd have been hanging on his patio. Like, I get him. He has a very interesting nuance in his story of this interaction. Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said to them, what is written in the law and how do you read it?

Funny, today we got all kinds of laws. I mean, right now there's all kinds of people talking about all kinds of people breaking laws. Is that legal? Are we allowed to do that? And one set of commentary is saying, yes, this is what we were supposed to do all along.

And the other side is saying, no, no.

How do you interpret it? Luke writes, how do you read it? What does that mean to you?

In 18 years of walking in a full Bible, a biblically historic way, I often think most of our disagreements, most of our hangups could be solved by just saying, how do you interpret that statement? How do you interpret that commandment and seek to understand first before we immediately say that's what you think that means. Oh, okay, so you think I'm stupid. Okay. There's better ways we can ask those questions.

This isn't new, guys. This isn't like all of a sudden in the 21st century as we start to understand Greek and Hebrew and we're trying to go back to the context that this is brand new. Luke records it. They're having a semantics argument. There's two lawyers going toe to toe about that's what you think the law says.

That's never happened before.

They're trying to hang them up. Funny, the guy who is the lawgiver is trying to be hung up by the ones who are multiple generations down of trying to figure out how to keep the law. Like, you're not going to get Jesus hung up on this one. Like, I'm sorry to say it, this dude was before the foundations of the earth. I think he knows what he's talking about.

At the very least, these passages let us know that there was an implied Disagreement on interpretation.

21st century American Christians, it's okay to disagree with each other and still remain friends. I know that's a shocker. It is absolutely okay to disagree with each other and still walk together. Because ultimately, in the end, if you're pursuing Jesus and the implementation of Jesus commands and blessings in your life, let Jesus sort it out and be long suffering enough to get to a place where you can afford him the opportunity to do that. Sorry, Jesus, I got an appointment at 12:45, and if you don't show up by 12:30, I'm moving on with my own interpretation.

That doesn't work, guys.

It doesn't work in the end. Worship team, you can come back. God invited his people over and over and over and over again. I haven't had a chance to go through the videos or through the articles, but the Bible Project is doing a series, and I think they've been doing a series for multiple weeks on mountains. And from some of the people who have listened to them or watched them, they said that they're really, really good.

Mountains are a place where people would ascend upward and the Lord would descend and would meet with them. Kind of like the heavens and the earth meet together in the prophecies. There is many, many times. Mount Nebo, Mount Arat, Mount Blessings, the Beatitudes. Mount of the Beatitudes.

There's multiple mountains throughout the Bible. There's multiple times where God would take people up. The binding of Isaac, Noah, and the covenant on the Ark, where they would sit and God would invite them up. The last two months, we have looked at the necessity for the remission of sins. Someone to step in and change what we could not change.

All of December, we looked from the conception of Jesus to the birth of Jesus into the early parts of Jesus life. Then we transitioned into January into the mission. What does Jesus call us to do and how did Jesus go? Go in some of the principles and precepts to do that and accomplish that.

And next week we will come to a mountain mount of Beatitudes. This time it won't be Moses, it won't be Noah, won't be Abraham. It won't be any mere man who comes to that mountain. It won't be God with one man, or God with two men, or God with three men. God in the flesh.

Emmanuel will invite any who is there to come and sit on that mountain with him. He will invite them to a place that very few people had gone before. Very few Israelites went face to face with the Lord, or surely they would die. The Lord had wanted to come down the mountain and meet with the Israelites when they came out of slavery and captivity. They were scared, and so he didn't.

So that they surely wouldn't die. But this time, not only did he come down the mountain, he was born in a stone trough. The low of the lows exposed. Ironically, the king wanted to kill the Hebrew babies again. Where have we seen that?

Hmm?

He was a student, he was a son, he was a friend. I'm guessing, even though it's not recorded, he probably, maybe did some pranks from time to time. He was fully human. His jokes were good, unlike mine.

And when he went back up that mountain, he didn't go alone. He invited all who around him to come with him. Who's your rabbi?

Who's your teacher?

One of the definitions of the law or the Torah could be teachings. We see the teachings in the garden. We see the teachings to Noah. We see the teachings to Abraham. We see the teachings to Moses.

How much better? How much greater? Oops, sorry. I can't use better because only the Book of Hebrews says better. How much better are the words of Jesus for your soul?

So this week, I want you to know I'm gonna rest up. I'm gonna. I'm gonna bask in not having sermon prep. And I'm gonna make sure through prayer, through worship, through adoration, that my heart is ready to go back up that mountain, to sit down at the feet of King Jesus and allow his words to permeate my heart again. Yes, I understand.

Some of us have listened to it hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times over. I get that.

But as long as I have breath, I'm going to go back to the mountain, I'm going to sit at his feet, and I'm going to give him the opportunity to continue to teach me and continue to mold me and continue to change me until I die.

Because the only hope I have is in the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, who says, I will go to prepare a place for you. I like to cook. I like to beat up walls, and I like to put them back together. I like renovation. I like building fences.

I like doing all these things. But there's not a single way I could prepare a place in the heavenly realm by myself. There's no amount of HGTV I can watch. For me to be able to design that and flip my own mansion, there's only one who can prepare a place for us.

So you have a question? This week, every one of us is at a different spot in our journey with the Lord. Every one of us has got different callings and different gifts.

Jesus knew that because everybody who was in that place had different callings and different gifts. They had different family names, they had different lineage that came from different places. But when he went up that mountain and he sat down and he said, you've heard it said now let me tell you what this means. They were invited into a revolutionary invitation. You want to know what freedom looks like?

You want to know what freedom feels like? It's not doing whatever you want. It's not making the Scriptures say whatever you want. It's sitting down and listening to what the king has to say and allow the king's spirit to change your heart and change your mind.

So next week, are you willing to come with an open heart and an open mind? To allow Jesus to meet you in this place and to revolutionize the walk you have with him. Just like he did that first time that you cried out to him to be your savior, to be your salvation, to be your king.

Are you willing to go up the mountain and sit at the feet of Jesus and let him teach us his ways? Because in the end, all the kings that God raised up had a purpose.

But all those kings will sing, all hail King Jesus. Stand and respond with me.