The End Times Part 1

To watch the sermon The End Times | To Be Determined Part 1

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All right, as they are headed back to their seats, we're gonna dive in today. First off, I wanna say congratulations to Taylor and Brian over there. Welcome back as husband and wife. For those of you who don't know me, yes, of course. Clap, rejoice, send them Amazon gift cards, doordash, Thai food, whatever.

Now I'm hungry. Oh, man. Anybody wants to start bringing thai food to table fellowship? Like, we can do these things like praise God, from whom all blessings flow. Oh, man.

Now I'm not going to be able to preach. I'm going to be thinking about some pad Thai. I am Chris Franke. I am the senior pastor here. Before we jump in today, I want to lift up some prayer requests.

Brent is down this week that we looked in the green room this morning while we were praying. Apparently, ragweed is really, really bad right now. And so I'm going to go out on a limb. I am not a doctor. I'm not even an honorary doctorate.

And so Brent's down with kind of the sinus gunk, kind of wrestling through that. A lot of people are doing that. And so he's at home resting up this week, so keep him in your prayers. He's got to preach tomorrow up at Northside christian church, and so keep them in your prayers. And anybody else who's got kind of that gunk stuff going on, it's all going around.

It seems like it's never ending. You know, I used to think it was Oklahoma, but we used to have it when we lived in Tennessee as well. And so it just kind of, I guess, is the natural response to allergies. So do all your homeopathic things, take your elderberry, all that kind of fun stuff, and start to build up your immune system before we have our family camp out where the feast of tabernacles coming up. Anybody who's known me for any period of time knows that I do not like to talk about the end times.

I come from ten years of heavy indoctrination of what a certain concept or thought process is on what that looks like in the practical, physical, how that ties to the spiritual, all that kind of stuff. And so it's not a topic that I set out to spend, spent a lot of time on, put a lot of emphasis on. Yeah, it's just not something that I do. However, when we were kind of praying through earlier in the year, we have a Google calendar that we share with all of the deacons and all of the pastors and all that kind of stuff, I'm kind of like hey, don't schedule this on this day, because we're doing this. And we kind of outlined what we felt like the Lord wanted us to do and what that looked like.

And the Holy Spirit was a huge topic for the majority of the years. And then I had two weeks in there where I knew I was going to be preaching, and I just put TBD to be determined. And one of these, one of those days, Cam was like, you know, Cam and Sarah are kind of going through discipleship with April and I over the last two years, and in the midst of going through that discipleship, I was kind of talking about eschatology, the end of the world, this kind of stuff, like where we should focus some of the things it felt like the Lord was doing. And Cam was like, why don't you just do a two part series on the end times called two be determined? And here we are.

So, you know, thank you for clapping. Thank you. Thank you. You haven't heard the sermon yet, so reserve that to the end. And so here we are today to be determined, the end times.

So before we dive into this two part series, honestly, we could probably spend 1314 weeks going into every scripture, every nuance. There is a lot of prophecies throughout the Bible. There's a couple of key things I want to make sure that we hit on the. That Brent and I have been talking on through the last portions of the series, and that is that the Bible is a grouping of writings from different authors, kind of one on one. Right.

But it's important to understand these things, because if I were to say, well, this book right here, John MacArthur, the MacArthur's New Testament commentary, I also have another option, because, you know, we've talked about Paul and the juxtaposition. You know, Brent's been talking about juxtaposition a lot, so we're just going to juxtaposition two literary styles here for a second. This is a Subaru owner's manual. You would find this in your glove box if you bought a Subaru. Now, when you open this and you read through this, there's a diagram.

Shocking how many of you thought that the end times was going to talk about the interior of a Subaru. There's a reason why we're doing that. So it says, number one, power windows on page 233. Okay, so let's think about this for a second. Let's go over to John MacArthur's commentary, and let's open it up.

But none of these views is supported by scripture, and none fits the context of the present passage sounds like they're the same. Right. One says, if I want to know about power windows, I need to go to page two to 33, and it tells me a manual. And the other one is full of opinions on the scripture. Two different literary styles.

Right? Two different purposes for the literary styles. Yes. I realized it was backwards and upside down. That's why I fixed it.

Two different literary styles. If I were to go to the Subaru manual because I want to understand somebody's thoughts on the Bible, do you think I'm going to get very far? Anybody ever read the passage in the book of any of the books of the Bible that says connecting and disconnecting a USB memory portable device? Anybody understand where that is important? No.

Okay. All right. Why do I say that? Why do I say something so simplistic? Because the Bible is written by a bunch of different authors.

Each author has a different literary style. For example, if I were to get my wife a card for our anniversary, and I would say, roses are red, violets are blue, I love you, my wife, and I know you love me, too. That would be more poetic. Now. Really bad poetic.

But I'm not a poet. I'm not Walt Whitman. And so. But it's poetry now, if I were to write in the same card this morning when my love wakes, she shall walk three steps to the right of which she will see a hamper. And the hamper said, you will take four steps to the left, down the hall, and a 90 degree, and you shall open the door to said washer.

No one is poetic. One is going to get me killed. But it is more of an operations manual. It's how to do laundry. The irony of that is when my wife and I moved in together, she had to teach me how to do laundry.

I had never done laundry. Thanks, mom, for protecting me from all the harshness of the world. So I say all of that as we start this series to make sure you understand. You can't go into books of the Bible and immediately say that this is an owner's manual. Some of us have.

We've heard those teachings. There's field guides, how to escape, survive, and endure the tribulation and the end of the world. There's literally literal field guides where they will take scripture references, whether they're parables or these things, and they will give you an x, y, z on how to survive tribulation in life. Well, if you have poetry, poetry is not meant to be a literal narrative. So you can't take a poetic book of the Bible like the psalms.

And you can't say, well, when David says this allegory or David uses this parable, that somehow we can make a literal field guide with the words of David. You can't do that. So it's important when we're going through scripture to understand what is the literary style of the author. And in some books of the Bible with the authors, sometimes it changes in various different chapters. It's important to empower you with the understanding that just because Luke is writing something, it doesn't mean that the entire portion of Luke's Gospel is written as a narrative or written as a parable or written as a literal field guide of interpretation.

To walk out those things are important because when you approach the scriptures, you have to understand the literary style and what the intention of the author is so that you can then accurately discern what you are supposed to do. Does that make sense? I mean, we've got some medical professionals in here, like, you don't go to a medical journal, and you're like, oh, this would be really, really good to write something from the medical journal as a poetic love story to my spouse. Like, you'll be in marriage counseling pretty quickly. So figuring out what the literary style of the author in the Bible is important to how we then read it, interpret it, and apply it.

Okay, now that I've gotten the most boring portion of the entire sermon out of the way, I'm going to get some more boring stuff. I'm not. I'm actually going to get to the word of God. So if you will bow your head, pray with me before we get into that. Dear heavenly Father, we thank you for this.

We thank you for the opportunity to study your word. Lord, I believe that your word is a divine revelation. Throughout time that you have been attempting to reveal your nature, your character, yourself, to each and every one of us, so that we could be remade and reborn in the image of you, Lord. As we dive into this series over the next two weeks, I ask, Lord, that you would continue to give divine revelations, that you would continue to open our hearts and our minds to meet with you, that we would understand what it is you would have for us, and that we would be moldable to be made into the image of you, God our king. For it's in the name of Jesus.

Amen and amen. If you have your bibles, your apps, all of those things open up to Matthew, chapter 24. Matthew, chapter 24, starting in verse three, says, as he sat and on the mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, tell us? When will these things be? And what will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age?

And Jesus answered him, now, I'm going to take some liberties here on the translations that are there. Jesus answered them, saying, one, see that no one leads you astray. Two, many will claim to be Jesus the Christ, who will cause you to stray from my teachings, my direction, and my course. Three, don't be afraid of the fear mongers who speculate on wars and the possibilities of wars. Number four.

The rulers of this world will attempt to conquer each other. Number five. People will search for food, and natural disasters will happen. Number six, then they will turn on you and attempt or succeed to harm you or take your life just because you are a Jesus freak. Number seven.

People will turn away from me. They will turn from each other, and their hearts will lack love for their neighbor. Number eight. Remember the first warning I had? Many people will falsely claim to speak for me, but they don't, and those who listen to them will be led astray.

Number nine. People will no longer have a moral or ethical code, and it will turn their hearts to stone. They will love themselves more than they love their neighbors. Number ten. But if you preach the gospel, if you make disciples, you feed the hungry, you clothe the naked and do righteousness till the end of your life.

I will save you. Number eleven. The testimony of me, Jesus, my life, my death, my resurrection, my ascension will be spoken of from Russia to the US, from Ukraine to Mexico and all the cities in between, that there is hope that I will save and then the completion of all things will happen. There have been many, many books, there's been YouTube channels, there's been teachings all along the lines of doom and gloom. What will happen and what is our role in the events that will precede the end of the ages?

The amount of money, the amount of speculation, the amount of events, the amount of tickets that that have been sold, the amount of people who have adjusted their life, gotten rid of their dogs, gotten rid of their houses, got rid of their 401s, have made adjustments based upon a teaching of the word of God is one of the largest influences across all denominational lines of Christianity. There is an innate portion of us as human beings who want to know about our own mortality and what will happen in that time. As people get older, traditionally, and this has been through multiple generations, now there is a heightened and increased element of, I believe the Lord is coming back. Sometimes we talk, especially now in the political cycle we're in. Well, if the democratic candidate gets into office.

Our world is doomed. If the republican candidate gets in, our world is doomed, or vice versa. We tie the political system and we act like this is somehow, like, not new. No, this is very much the first century Judaism. First century Judaism was looking for a conquering king.

They were looking for Yeshua to come as this yielder of the sword. And when they had an option between Barabbas, Yeshua Barabbas and Yeshua Hamashiach, they chose what they thought was the conquering king to overthrow Rome and led Yeshua, the messiah, Jesus the Christ, to the cross. The entirety of the prophetic landscape that has been talked about for many, many years. Could it be wrong? We already know it's wrong because people argue over the rapture theology.

Well, there is no rapture. We're not going to be raptured away or of course we're going to be raptured or where I'm pre tribulation or I'm post tribulation. It's one of the greatest divides we have in Christianity. And we can say, well, it doesn't divide us. It has created denominations.

Because I'm pre tribulation. I'm post tribulation. I'm greater exodus driven. I'm rapture driven. You want to know the secrets to my theology on the end of the world?

I'm pan. It will all pan out however God wants it to, whenever God wants it to. So what do I do? Some would say ecclesiastes, eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Well, yes, but that's incomplete as well.

And so today, I want us to look at core biblical facts. And before we can talk about specific prophecies in the bible and what that might look like and what maybe that has looked like over time, I want to first set up and clarify for you what I believe to be a foundational piece of all understanding of scripture, not just what type of literary style it is, but what type of God are we looking at? When we talk about doom and gloom, when we talk about man, the events are going to get really, really bad, and people will get. They will get bug out bags and they will get horse carts, and they will have all this kind of food set away and all these types of things. Well, it's really just for tornado season.

You can live through 45 tornado seasons with the amount of food that you have. And then what do we do when all of a sudden it expires and we throw it all away? And yet I live in Norman, and there's people on the corner every day who are just, they're dying for the three day old McDonald's hamburger that you threw away. So there's some core biblical facts that I think we need to understand about the nature of Yahweh that the Bible spells out. One, God is just.

Two, God keeps his word. Number three, God does righteousness. Number four, God loves. Number five, God is not mentally or emotionally unstable and he is not abusive. God heals.

The majority of the ministry of Yeshua is miracles, signs, wonders and healing. So I didn't grow up in a pentecostal background. I grew up in a presbyterian background and then Baptist, and we didn't like to talk a lot about that. But the reality is, is that the majority of the New Testament is Yeshua, healing people and doing miracles and signs and wonders by the power of God. And last but not least, that God is sovereign and will always be sovereign.

Throughout Zephaniah, the psalms, lamentations, Joshua, Zechariah, Isaiah, and many other portions of this scripture, we see God painted as a father who cares about us when and while we're hurting. This is in contrast to the millions of dollars that have been profited from to teach you that God is some abusive daddy God up there who's saying, in the end of the world, I will come to judge you. So you better find out who's naughty or nice. See, the ironic portion of our american western society is like, well, we. Isn't it Santa Claus who fakely judges who's naughty or nice?

And then we're like, oh, well, you better be nice so God doesn't come down and treat you as if you're naughty, only you're not getting cold. You're going to hell. There's a lot of people over many, many years. I was one of them. I'm 42 years old.

I know you can't believe it. I don't look at day over 22. Praise God. Praise God for my honest child who just told me that I look way older than 42. You keep me young, sweetie.

I am one of them who grew up in the environment, and I did not grow up in the messianic hebrew roots, Torah loving, Hebrew passionate movement. But I am one of them who, they would go to youth group and they would talk to us and they would talk to us about, hey, if you don't get right, if you don't get right with God, you're going to hell. And they would scare me into this place. It's like, well, I don't want to go to hell. Like, I don't want to be in this really nasty place apart from God.

So, yeah, I want to give my life to Christ. Yeah, I want to be born again. I want to be saved. And I had no idea what that meant. I had no idea what that looked like.

There wasn't a whole lot of time. It's like, oh, hey, we got a salvation. Hell. Lost another one. Yes.

And we wonder why, as we sit here in the 21st century, there's so many people who don't have an intimate relationship with God. They don't have a prayer life with God. They're not engaged in these areas of their life. It's because we scared them all to be saved. And then one day, they woke up and they realized, well, what's that gotten me?

My life is still kind of my life. Like, I don't really feel like anything changed. When the transformative power of God and the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you are forever changed. You are forever changed. If not, those moments are still readily available for you.

God cares about us when and while we're hurting, God thinks about us constantly and consistently. God rejoices and finds pleasure in our small steps towards the larger goals and dreams. God is our partner and defender in our battles. God celebrates us in front of those who want our demise or our downfall. God sings to us.

Did you know God was a worship leader, too? Yeah. God sings to us. God greets us daily with a new dose of love. Zephaniah 317 says, for the Lord, your God is living among you.

He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love. He will calm your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.

The worship wars have plagued the american church for years. Talk about, well, I don't really like that song. Or why do we play that song? Or why did we do the chorus seven times? There's TikTok videos mocking worship leaders that said, bridge, bridge, bridge.

What are we going to do the bridge 20 more times? And yet, while we joke, and we're not really joking, because we all have our opinions about how these things should go, we don't remember that God. Zephaniah tells us that God rejoices over us with joyful songs. The book of revelation tells us in the throne room, and this is not some future element. This is something that's happening today.

The elders use repetition. Oh, my goodness gracious. I wonder if they went to the school of Bethel worship. No, they did not. They are in the throne room singing, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty day and evening without ceasing.

So when we talk about repetition is bad in worship, that somehow it's going to alter the frequencies in the minds. And somehow I've got some, like, ooh, looking to my finger and hypnotizing. No, no, no, no. The throne room of God doesn't need eloquent bridges or choruses, because holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, is sufficient enough for them to be able to prostrate. So when we come and we bring these things to ourselves, it's void of the understanding of the heavenly realm.

God rejoices over us and sings over us. It doesn't say, it's got to be a Paul Wilbur song. It doesn't say that he can't sing. Bethel. God is no respecter of Dove awards.

Isaiah 40 916. See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands. All right, we've now set up the theology for the church that tattoos are okay. God's got your name tattooed on his hand. That's not what the Bible says.

It's not a literal interpretation. And this is one example of us where we could take the words of God out of the context. It doesn't have anything to do with tattoos. So, again, throw that in there. You're like, is he serious?

Is he not serious? No. Literally, this is how some people will go to a passage of scripture, and they will make it a literal interpretation. Well, since God's writing my name on his hand, I can get Yeshua on my arm. That's not what he's saying.

It's not the point of this passage. Zechariah 410, do not despise the small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin. God is happy to see you start the work. You know, a lot of times people will say, well, I'm not finished with what it is, so I can't present it to the community, to the kingdom, to God. I've got to finish it.

Zechariah tells us that God rejoices over the fact that we start. And God does not despise small beginnings. So the fact that you're starting the work and you're starting the process, God rejoices over the fact that you're doing hard things. It doesn't mean that you've even tackled them yet, but the fact that you're attempting to start, that he rejoices over them to see the work begin. Kind of like, my wife will get excited when my son does a routine baseball play.

And I kind of got to catch myself from having a horrible attitude and saying, why are you rejoicing over that? That's his job. His job is to catch a ground ball. Why are you excited for him? And then I go and I read verses like this, and it's like, well, God's excited that he even got on the baseball field.

God doesn't even care if he caught, like, if he even got the ground ball. The fact that he did something and he started something and he's working towards things. God is rejoicing over the fact that he started. And then I have to realize I'm way not like God, and I have a lot of other areas in my life that I need to repent of and be molded in. Joshua 1011 says, as the Amorites retreated down the road from Beth Haron, the Lord destroyed them with a terrible hailstorm from heaven that continued until they reached Asgah.

The hail killed more of the enemy than the Israelites killed with the sword. Many people in America today are worried about who will become the president of the United States in November. They're worried about whether the interest rates will be cut or not cut and what that will do to their pocketbook and their 401k. Many people are worried about, well, what do I do? I have a $1,000 a month budget on groceries, and I can literally only get one grocery cart full of food today when I used to be able to go in and get like, five grocery carts of food.

And they're worried about these things as well. Am I going to have to get a second job, and how am I going to pay my bills and all these other things? They're part of the worry of everyday life. And yet for 1 second, and this is only one scripture verse, think about this for a second. You have an army.

When we read throughout the scriptures, God's army, the Israelites, they've done some pretty amazing things, right? You got a shepherd boy who picks up a stone and takes out a Philistine who was one of the greatest warriors ever. They went toe to toe with, with the egyptian army and the pharaoh who was the most powerful physical being at that point in time. And as they would throw their staffs down, they would throw their staffs down. They match word for word, magic for magic.

They match it all. And then all of a sudden, God says, hey, put the lamb's blood on the doorpost. I'm about to show them who's God. In Joshua, the Israelites are in a battle, and God sends hail to kill more of the army that they're battling with. Than they actually killed with the sword.

So we're worried about inflation, who the president of the United States is going to be, what am I going to do with my car? What am I going to do with this? What am I going to do with that? And we forget that God can literally take one element of the weather, one hail, and he can make it rain down on a specific geographic location to help the Israelites armies.

Wow. Okay, so Jesus isn't like us. God isn't like us. He doesn't have some sort of limitation to his ability or his righteousness or his holiness. We do.

We have limitations to our righteousness and our holiness, to our pocketbooks, to all these things. We have limitations to what our own hands and our own minds can do. Jesus is not like us. And so when you think about the power of God and what God has done throughout humanity to keep his oath of being a loving father, well, how can God be a loving father when he sends the reins and he wipes out the majority of civilization with Noah? Well, that's one way to look at it.

What about the other way? What about the depravity of humanity had become so bad in the cycles of behavior, of murder and killing and words I'm not going to use because kids aren't in kids class today, that God was so merciful that he said, if I don't step in and try to stabilize this, this is going to get out of control. And it already has. So how you look at a situation, how you look at the word of God matters. God is a just, loving father.

Some of us in this room, we have no problem with gambling. Some of us in this room, we gamble on used vehicles. We gamble on going to the casino. We gamble on fantasy football. We gamble on all these things.

We have no problem in taking risks on not sure things. But then when it comes to the only sure thing, legit, God, the only one who's kept his word and his promises throughout time, somehow that's when we're like, I'm not sure if I want to put them. I don't know if I want to bet my money or my time or my prayer or my thoughts on that one. We'll do it on John Bevere's book on the beta satan. We'll do it on some stock market like, hey, did you hear this guy?

Like, if you put your money on here, you're going to have a 30% return. We'll gamble with those. But we don't gamble on the only sure thing, which is, yahweh. Elohim, God in the flesh, who's literally never been wrong. He's never not kept his word.

Look at the irony of that. And somehow when we look at the end times, when we look at the prophecies, when we look at what might happen again, we don't take God at his word as a sure thing. This abusive creation up there is somehow got negativity for me. No, that's not what the Bible says. The Bible says that he sings over you.

He thinks about you. He greets you with new love every morning. He cares about you when you're hurting. He thinks about you constantly. Lamentations 322 23 says, because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, for his compassion never fails.

They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. So because of the Lord's love, we don't get consumed daily. A lot of us are just like, man, I don't really want to get up and go to work today. It's like, that's your concern.

If God decided that he didn't want to be loving anymore, you would be consumed. Now take your pick. Maybe it's by an alligator. Maybe it's by a python. Maybe it's by a hailstorm.

Just take your pick. I don't think God's, like, up there saying, like, hey, he's not up there wanting to pull his love from you. But if God ever changed his mind, which he has not done throughout the entirety of the world, if he ever changed his mind, you could be consumed because he decided, well, I don't love you anymore.

We're worried about, like, am I going to have to pull 3 hours of overtime this week because of the Lord's love and his compassion?

I get new love every day so that I won't die. The Lord is daily working on our behalf for our good.

This is better than staying at a ritzy hotel where somebody comes in and changes the bed and puts new towels. Gives you a little Andes mint, man, I love me some Andes mints right after you have some pads high.

But because of the Lord's love and compassion, my past doesn't equal my future. This is better than anything. You know, my kids are always looking like they'll run to get the mail. And like they say, like, hey, for $2.99, you have bottomless fries. If you show up at Freddy's on this day or whatever, like, this is better than that.

And yet they get so excited about something like that. But because God loves us, he's chosen not to consume us each day and give us a new dose of love every single day. Now think about this week in your life, the five, six, seven days of the past. How many of those days have you interacted in a way with others and with the Lord, that you honestly believe you deserved that love from the Lord? How many days when you had the opportunity, did you choose to love somebody, show compassion, to be kind in that moment?

Or how many times did you interact inappropriately?

We love amenities in America right now. There's pumpkin spice lattes for a limited time at Starbucks. We love amenities. We love a hotel that's got a pool. What do you mean we're staying at a hotel that doesn't have a pool?

What are the kids supposed to do? Talk? We love amenities. How many of you think of the kingdom of God through amenities? When you read the scriptures and you look at what God says he gives you as a follower.

We have spent the last however many weeks looking at the amenities and the power of the Holy Spirit.

That when the Holy Spirit comes and inhabits you, you have the ability to love like you've never loved before, to be compassionate like you've never been before, to operate in joy like you've never done before.

Yet we want to know when Oktoberfest is no longer available. That's the joy we find in, in the temporal. We find joy in understanding that we have six months worth of freezer dried food so that we can survive. And yet one hailstorm from the Lord could wipe it all out. Let's not even talk about the locusts.

Our priorities are misplaced. And when we misplace our priorities and we misinterpret what the Bible says about God and his nature, it no wonder it would lead us to an understanding that would not be biblically sound when it comes to present and future events. Duhdeh? It wasn't God. It was us.

Psalm 56 eight. You keep track of all my sorrows. You've collected all my tears in a bottle. You've recorded each one in a book. How many of those times when you're in despair or you've had a really bad day, or you're all over the place, how many times in that, do you remember that verse that God keeps track of your sorrows, that he has collected your tears in a bottle?

How many of you, when you're in those moments thinking about the pressures of this world, you're thinking about the fact that God understands. He cares. He's with you. He understands every single tear. And he's a collected them.

That's powerful.

And then, of course, psalm 23 five, you prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. When we traditionally think of enemies, we think of harm or we think of conflict. We think of somebody who went to church with us who got in a fight. And so now we're frenemies. Yay.

We don't go to the same church anymore. Many of us don't have enemies. Like, let's be real. Like, it's like, well, who could have wanted to steal the thing off your porch that you just got? Who could have wanted some, literally some random person who happened to be watching Fedex drop off that box?

Like, I don't know anybody who wants harm to me. Like, I don't. Okay, so think about that for a second. We are thinking about enemies who might want to harm us. Yet throughout the Old Testament, the prophets in the New Testament, and even to this present day, the Lord uses somebody to be in conflict with us so that he would cause us to repent and to grow.

He did this with the Israelites. He does this in the book of Job. He uses situations to lead us, mold us, and make us. It's not abusive. He's not sitting up there and saying, you know what you deserve today?

You deserve a good old five spankings from the belt. No. And most good fathers and good mothers aren't that way either. They're not sitting around and saying, I just can't wait for them to not take the trash out again today, because if they do, I'm going to bring judgment upon them. No.

The people who think that way have a hardness of heart. They're not acting justly. They're not acting in righteousness.

We can't have project that onto a holy God. We cannot project that onto a holy God and a holy father. And the book of the revelation is commonly taught that those who are sealed by Jesus will come into conflict with the enemies of Jesus. Hollywood has caused us to visualize and internalize this as a constant conflict. We see the same nature show up in the Marvel movies, in DC Comics, which you should never watch because are horrible.

Marvel's way better. But we see those. In all of those, we see this concept of conflict, and it's us versus them. And the only way this will ever end is if we annihilate them. And there are times where that is important, don't get me wrong, but that is not the underbelly of the entire scriptures.

It is not. Sharon, I must annihilate you for me to be righteous. And holy, that's not the case. How will the saints escape? When they do escape, where are they going to go?

How will they survive with no water or food? How will they defend themselves? How will they endure through the wilderness until the end? Yet Psalm 23 says, God prepares a table for us to recline and feast at while the enemies surround us, while they watch us, and they plan for our demise. Men in this room, if your Google cameras go off, if your nest cameras go off, if your ring cameras go off, or your arlo cameras go off, and your family is getting ready to sit down to dinner, and as you're looking at the cameras, you're looking around and you see all of these enemies outside coming with weapons to cause harm, how many of you are going to be like, dinner time?

Come sit down and eat before your food gets cold. Come on, sit down. No. The human element is going to say, we're calling 911, we're getting out the guns, we're calling our neighbors, we're doing whatever it is we do to protect. But the Lord, in Psalm 23, it says that he prepares a table in the presence of our enemies.

He prepares us to sit down and allow him to be our shepherd, our guide. In the Gospel of Luke, you will see eight times where Jesus is seated at a table teaching, modeling, and continuously showing us a banquet and feast. The underbelly of the entire feasts and banquets of the entire gospel of Luke is about banquets of repentance and redemption.

Redemption is positive, right? It means you're being redeemed to something. When you go and you redeem a ticket, you're redeeming a ticket for something at a Chuck e. Cheese. When people used to go there back in the seventies and the eighties, when you would get those tickets, those tickets would be redeemed for something.

At the end. The redemption brought some sort of reward. The book of Hebrews in chapter eleven tells us, from Moses to the people, in the end of the age, we all get our reward the same way. We're all redeemed the same way. Luke 14 tells us a parable of this great banquet, a wedding feast.

And there was just many who were too busy to come. And so the servants were sent to get anyone, literally anyone who was outside, the homeless, the travelers, literally anybody who would come. And yet when those did come, there was still plenty of room at this wedding feast. There was plenty of seats for people to come. God isn't like us.

He doesn't get distracted off the mission just because somebody else does. He doesn't let the failures of humanity rob his peace or his righteousness. Sooner or later, we're going to run up against a choice. Every one of us is going to run up against that choice. In life.

I want us to understand this. In life, we all have a past.

In our past, there's a variety of things. Sorry, I write small. So abuse, hurt, anger, joy, not all of it has to be bad. Most of us have a balance in there. In our past, there are these things, and we continue to go on.

For some of us, we go like this, and we continue to spiral, and we continue to end up in the same place in our past. This is no different than the model of the Bible telling us about humanity. So in the past, let's take away those adjectives. There was a garden, and in this garden, there was God.

And there was Adam and Eve. This is all copyrighted, by the way. I know this is artistic beauty, so don't try to sell this on the Internet. In the garden was God and Adam and Eve. God's plan, as they moved forward in life, was for them to be co heirs with him, to obey him, to listen to him, to walk in the cool of the day with him, and to thrive with him.

But what happened? God was taken out of the picture when the humans decided to listen to the adversary. And I understand the adversary doesn't have Easter bunny ears or little horns, but we're just going to differentiate the adversary from God here. So when they decided to listen to the adversary and to partake, they damaged their relationship with Goddesse. And we have a marker that changes the past to the future.

So no longer did the original past into the future have co heirs with Christ meeting in the cool of the day, walking hand in hand with God. Things changed because of the decisions that were made. And when that changed, we move forward.

The depravity of humans not obeying and listening to God would continue throughout all times. Unless something comes and changes.

If something doesn't change historically, just like if when we were talking about abuse, hurt, joy, all these things, if you don't make a difference, if there's not a marker in your life, those things absolutely have to do with your future, because your past never changes, which means your present is influenced by your past, which means it influences your future. This is the story of humanity. If the past decisions of humanity to interengage with Hassatan, the satan, and to fall from the grace by which God had interjected into their life, into the garden, if there's not a change here, then this depravity of this relationship continues on into the present and the future. And in the scriptures, we see this over and over and over again.

Yet God sends messengers. And they say, there's going to be this king who's going to come. There's going to be this mashiach who's going to come. There's going to be this anointed one. There's going to be salvation.

And they foretell of this. And they cycle, the prophets, they cycle, whether it's Rome, or it's Egypt, or it's Babylon or it's Persia, they cycle. They cycle and they cycle and they cycle. And then all of a sudden, in comes Yeshua. Jesus.

A revolutionary work. Hey, I've come to set you free. Hey, I've come to be your salvation. Hey, I am Emmanuel. If you see me, you see the father.

And we see the gospels and the stories where he walks through and he fulfills everything that was said he would be and everything they said he would do. That moment, the past no longer will project the present, which will no longer influence the future.

When we look at end times, when we look at the scriptures, when we look at the nature of God, when we look at what is our role, when we look at how do we overcome this life, we have a model in what it is we're supposed to do. Every person in this room, every person who's ever lived, has a path. If you're alive today, you have a present, and then we all have some element of a future. It doesn't matter what has happened in your past. If you don't have the Jesus moments in your life to come in and change, you will not have a different future.

So why do I say your past doesn't equal your future? Because every person has been given the same choice to look at God through the lens of the scripture, through the power of the Holy Spirit to say, it doesn't matter what happened here, because when Jesus steps in, it changes everything. And that is important for us to understand when we look at the end of the world. Sorry, some of the elders told me I'm not supposed to stand up. And I'm not standing up.

I'm leaning on the chair. Your past does not equal your future. When Jesus steps into your life, but Jesus isn't going to take over your life. He's not going to walk through the front door and beat you down like stone cold Steve Austin. You have to open the door, you have to seek, you have to knock, you have to invite him in, and then you have to allow him to do something in your life.

So in your past, when you're sitting here with abuse, with anger, with sin, with lust, with greed, with gluttony, when you have been somebody who you didn't do anything wrong, there was nothing you did, you couldn't have done anything different to change these things in your life. As long as these things continue into your present, just like if you cooperate with the adversary, they will be your future.

But you can't live your life in the 21st century as if Jesus didn't already come and change this. Jesus already came. He came in the past. In that moment, it changed that present. We have it in the word of God.

And because he changed the present, it alters the future.

This is a biblical, fundamental core value. You have to understand when you're looking at the future in the end times and the prophetic things that happen, and you're looking through them through the lens of the Old Testament God, and you're not looking at them through the lens of Jesus Christ, who was since the beginning of the foundations of the world, you are going to end up with a different future than what God says he has for you.

In the Gospel of Matthew, we see him use allegory as a literary style. Matthew describes the wedding garment. It's a lifestyle we put on as followers of Jesus. Now, this isn't a literal wedding garment. It's an allegory.

It's the same language that Paul uses in Galatians 327 and Colossians 312, where Paul says, as God, chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. That's not like going to Etsy and buying a shirt that says compassion. I just clothed myself with compassion. Yeah, you didn't know? That's not what it means.

Again, it's not an instruction manual. It's an allegory. We are to adopt the lifestyle that reflects the king we serve. Matthew isn't talking about some literal wedding garment. He didn't give us the instructions to literally walk out the door today and go to the bridal shop or to men's warehouse and get a new suit.

And somehow we're like rest of the kill. And somehow we've clothed ourselves in our righteousness.

He's using a metaphor to tell us that we need to prioritize our faith and reflect that to those around us. This metaphor and parable is also a reminder of God's calling, that it is broad, it is persistent, and it is generous for all people. God isn't looking for a secret society or a small call.

He wants a wedding feast with as many guests as possible to celebrate with him. Dare you say God wants a megachurch? No, God only wants 30 people in a remnant that is using scripture out of line. God wants everybody to have the opportunity to be saved. Now, it doesn't mean that everybody will.

We have the choice. Remember, you have to make a choice that your past doesn't dictate your future. And without Christ, your past will dictate your future, because you will spiral in your trauma drama, and your trauma cycles over and over and over again, just like the Israelites did. You would think that when God comes down in the book of Exodus, they're brand new to this. And he says, get back in your tents.

You're in time out. I told you not to go out and get manna on the Sabbath. Like the garden. Literally, there was two instructions in the garden. Tend it, protect it, maintain it.

Yeah, before the Sabbath day. Tend your family, protect it, maintain it. A lot of people love the Sabbath day. We're all Sabbath lovers here. Protect your family first.

Maintain your family first. Provide for your family first. That's the first one that was given, and then the other one is, don't eat of this tree. We screwed up those two, then we got 613, then there's over a thousand in the New Testament.

If we couldn't keep two, do you think that God was like, ah, let's just give him another try. Let's up the ante? No. He knew that just like the covenant with Abraham, just like the covenant with Moses, covenant with Noah, he was going to have to do it. He was going to have to walk through the pieces.

The foreshadowing of God and the ability of God to save and protect is literally throughout Genesis to revelation. And somehow we're over here worried about, is he going to come back and judge me? Am I going to escape, survive and endure? Am I one of the literal 144,000? Did I get the t shirt?

I'm going to wrap up with this. I want to set the context of this. There was a pharisee named Nicodemus who knew Jesus was God. He was one of the few pharisees who understood who Jesus Yeshua was. He was a very wise man.

He was a very smart man, knew the law. Nicodemus had questions. How can an old man be born twice? How can you be born again if you were already born? Pretty logical questions, especially if you don't understand the parables or the metaphors that are there.

Nicodemus, like most of us was wrestling with what Jesus called earthly things. All the eschatology, this president is this king, the Antichrist is bitcoin the mark of the beast or the currency? Like all these things that we talk about and you hear out there in the rabbit holes of youtubes and conspiracy theories that are out there, those are all earthly things we're wrestling with. So this isn't new. Nicodemus, Washington doing the same thing.

How does the teachings of Jesus permeate this earth and interact in the physical and spiritual world around us? Jesus says if we struggle with earthly things, we don't believe him. So how could we ever understand the heavenly things?

As a pastor for almost 17 years in our corner of Christianity, there's so much emphasis what will happen, how it will happen, why it will happen, that we are completely neglecting the earthly things that the Bible has explicitly told us to do.

Once again, we're not betting on the sure thing. We're going to bet on the speculation. We're going to bet on the 50 to one odds. 50 to one odds this guy's the Antichrist. 50 to one odds that America is in the end of.

50 to one odds. And yet God has literally been the only sure thing throughout all humanity in all time. And we're still betting on earthly things, not heavenly things. Definition of insanity. Do the same thing over and over again.

Keep expecting a different result.

Your past doesn't equal your future when you break this cycle. When Jesus came, he broke the cycle. A lot of people in this church will say, why do you put so much emphasis? You know, it seems like you're all about mental health and you're about people. Jesus broke the curse in the cycle.

I'm supposed to be like Jesus and I'm supposed to teach you and encourage you to get closer to Jesus. So wouldn't I want to help you break your cycles? That's what Christ did and I know my limitations, but he doesn't have any. So the closer I can get you to him and the more I can encourage you to talk to him, the better off you're going to be.

Jesus goes on to speak of God's love in one of the most famous Bible verses. For this is how God loved the world, that he gave his own, his one and only son, so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. Anybody in here ever heard that one before? John 316. It's on the signs at every football game.

You just cussed out the opposing opponents, but you got John 316. I may not love you. But God does.

We wouldn't be so flippant about John 316 if we continue to read on into the passage that come after that.

God sent his son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him. There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged. Wait, wait, wait, wait a second. So we're worried about what might happen in some futuristic time and some future futuristic day?

Did I escape, survive, and endure so that I, you know, maybe God won't judge me, but it says in the gospel that if you don't believe in him, he's already judging you.

There's already a judgment. From the moment Christ comes, it starts this apocalyptic end of days. Now we don't know exactly when it's going to be. We can spend a speculate all we would want, but the moment that the cycle is broken, it's a whole new normal, a whole new expectation.

They've been judged for not believing in God's one and only son. And the judgment is based on this fact that God's light came into the world. He came into the world. But people loved the darkness more than the light, and their actions were evil. All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for the fear their sins will be exposed.

But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.

So the prophetic books of the Bible are more than just prophecies. The end times are more than just end times. In the revelation to John, one of the most significant words used was to come.

When we're reading through that revelation to John and we're questioning, you know, the altar and these people who were on it, and the bride is the New Jerusalem. How many of you have seen the overwhelming amount of times that there is the word, the english word, come? In the revelation to John, there is an invitation. The angel says, come. The angel says, come.

Says, come up here. Come. Come. There is an invitation. Next week, as we dive into the text and evaluate the approach on what happens in the future, I want us to think this week, as we laid out, using different portions of scripture, the nature of God is not some abusive father, not some abusive God who is looking to bring down condemnation, guilt, and shame upon you, but as a loving father who came to save you from the depravity of the divine nature versus the fleshly nature.

You know, that thing that we wrestle with every single day that Paul says we must die to he came to save us from having to wrestle with that every single day. He came to save us from the depravity of the human heart that goes all the way back to the garden. He came to break the cycle. He came to change the trajectory of the future so that you could have the opportunity to say, my past doesn't equal my future. That God, that loving father that so many people have taught us, is just some judgmental person who's looking at the end of the age to bring down some fire and brimstone.

Yet Matthew, who the entire gospel talks about the greater exodus, not just some camping trip you're going to go on that started at Sukkot, the exodus of sin and death that not one, one of us could overcome, that Jesus blood and the resurrection that gave us that exodus, the pending destruction that we so long to see of our enemies, might actually be an invitation for our enemies to become family.

How we look at prophecy in the end of times is important.

How many of us have thought, as we read the prophecies, that they're actually a love story that foreshadows that there's hope, when the world around us is nothing but chaos and lacking in hope, it's a solution in a sea of problems and a consistent promise when all we hear are in harmonious ways, words of doom, gloom and destruction, an encouragement that there's a way out and a world full of propaganda that wants to keep you enslaved, and a narrative that tells us that eternal life, one of the most jewish concepts of the Bible, starts in your present, not in the future. What you do today is absolutely a portion of the eternal life in the future.

I'm not going to glorify escapism next week. I'm not going to glorify survivalism, and I'm definitely not going to glorify self preservation.

Because the Bible tells us time and time again, those who want to save their life lose it. Those who are willing to lay down their lives, their nature, and to focus their hearts, their minds and their lives on the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Christ being Christ. To those around you, that's the calling. Followers of Jesus. I don't fear any man.

I don't fear the adversary. I fear that when I get face to face with God, and I'm not talking about a futuristic event. I'm talking about on Mondays when I sit on my patio and I read and I talk to God. I'm talking about on Tuesdays when I sit and I talk to God. I'm talking about the ever present relationship I have with the Lord.

I'm more fearful than when I have that conversation with God on a regular basis, that he doesn't pick up the phone. He's like, I don't know who you are. I think you got the wrong number. Why are you calling me? Oh, I haven't talked to you in three years.

Who dis?

It's time to allow the word of God to speak is the word of God. And for us to understand that there is a tangible thing we must do as sons and daughters of the most high. And that is to follow the model of Christ, to change the trajectory of other people's future by helping them break the cycle of all of the things that have been done or they have done in their past. There is only one way maker. There is only one person who can overcome those.

There is only one person who heals. There is only one person who sets free. There is only one person who is righteous. There is only one person who is holy. There is only one person who is worthy.

There is only one person who can help you do that, and that is Jesus Christ. Yeshua Hamashiach and so, as we work worship today, as we praise God, as we thank God that he allowed us to be here, to stand here, to be alive. Some of us are already in this place. Some of us have already come to a place where our past is no longer dictating our present. Because we allow Jesus and the Holy Spirit to step in.

Some of us are already there. Some of us are right here. Some of us are still wearing that badge of anger or harm. In the end, there's a solution to every single problem we will experience. It's super simple.

It's just Jesus. You can say, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. Okay, that's fine. After Jesus comes in and changes your life, because otherwise, sooner or later, you're going to go back to the same filth you're in. It's time for us as a body of people to continue to make better decisions.

I heard from the kids class last week as they were asking for prayer requests. There was a couple people who said, I just, I'm praying that. That this person would make better decisions. That person is a pastor in the making. Because almost all my prayers are, Lord, can I please make better decisions?

Or Lord, can the people who just called me ten minutes ago, can they please make better decisions? Decisions. And in the end, it's just Jesus.

Jesus is worthy of every tribe and tongue. Jesus is worthy of all praise. And adoration. The harvest is ready. Many are called, but very few actually pick up the phone.

So I want to ask you today, as we respond, when are you going to make the decision to allow Jesus to use you to not only break the cycle of your past and your present, but to also help break the past and set a new trajectory for the present and the future and other people's lives? Because a lifeguard doesn't just dive into the water and drowndehenkhe with the people. A lifeguard gets stable and they bring the person to them, or they send a stability device out to them. So are you going to stable yourself with Jesus?

And once you do, are you going to go after somebody else? It's funny when you do that. Nobody really cares who the Antichrist is. It's funny when you do that. Nobody's really worried about what the one world currency is.

It's funny when you do that, life becomes a little bit more simplistic. You don't have to watch CNN or Fox News anymore because you just don't care. You can spend all your time watching Shohei oh, Tani do amazing things, or football or whatever else you do. Stand with me. Let's worship today.