Satan Drives Out Satan

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Sometimes the Lord gives and sometimes the Lord takes away. Sometimes he gets you excited about something and then something gets just ripped out so that you can focus in on him, not what the things are. He didn't do that today though, because today I officially signed on the dotted line to purchase the church property.

Isaac is over there right now taking the first shift as the guardian of the property or not.

So lots to do, lots to do. We're at about 131,000 and change.

Huge. For 40 days. Literally 40 days ago, I think actually 45 days now, we were looking at finding a church to rent from. Purchasing a church was not on the radar at all. And so at some point in time, you know, when things calm down a little bit, we'll sit down and we'll put together all the miracles that God has done to get us here.

Because there are a lot I have to say, Sabbath keeping, messianic style churches. I only know of maybe a handful who own their own property, who can actually meet on a regular basis. And so we are, we are in the group of one of one that I know of that is youthful minded. 70% of our church is under 40. 70% of our church is younger than me.

Let that sink in. Right? And Brent's not here today, so we only have five people over the age of 60 in the church. Pray for him. He's been down with sinuses and gunk all week.

We're a young family church who is hoping to grow into a full family church. And honestly, I believe that this opportunity that the Lord has put in front of us is going to allow for that to happen. It's going to allow for us to have more space. A place in the back where we can put river rock down and we can have a fire pit and the kids can play and the guys can hang out and the wives can hang out. A place where we can not have to worry about whether or not somebody wants to get married on a Wednesday.

And you know, I have to contact the church and say, is your facility open? Yes or no. We have a facility that we can meet in and we can do things. In fact, if anything, I think the hardest thing for me as a pastor is going to be once we get a chance to go over and tour the property. It's going to be slowing people down because it's going to be like, oh, I want to paint this room, I want to do this, I want to do this.

Anybody ever bought their first house and the first thing they want to do is like paint everything. Yeah, we're not going to do that. We're going to be slow, intentional, and smart about it. We're going to have branded colors. And, like, we're not just throwing reds on the wall, that type of stuff.

Cam knows I hate red, like, really, really bad. So we're not just throwing red on the wall. We're gonna just calm down and live in the space and make it our own and let the Lord tell us what it is he wants. Because ultimately, as much as it's a house for us, it's a house for us to come and meet his presence. And so I want to think of it the same way that we all of my, my full Bible loving people in this place, love the temple, love the tabernacle.

When we study that if the presence of the Lord isn't in that house, then it really doesn't matter what color the walls are. If the presence of the Lord is not in that house, then it really doesn't matter whether I like the beverage dispenser or not. If the presence of the Lord is not there, then none of it matters. It's a business decision at that point in time. And I'm okay with making good business decisions.

Anybody who knows me knows I'm very fiscally conservative. How else do you live with seven people and a salary of $46,000 a year? You have to be fiscally conservative. But we're not building a business. We're moving to a house that needs and must hold the presence of the Lord.

That's our first priority. I mean, I have some other ones. I have to find chairs. I have to make sure the keys are there, that there's no this, you know, the roof, that kind of stuff. Facebook Marketplace blowing me up yesterday, literally, there were some church chairs that popped on.

I messaged the dude and I was only five minutes after it was posted and he was like, I'm sorry, they're already sold. And I was like, ah, you can pray for the Lord to take us through the Red Sea and give us some place to sit. So I've never, never been to a church that did lawn chairs. If it continues to be 70 degrees in January, we'll just do church in the parking lot. Like, you know, it doesn't matter.

The Lord's already done amazing things. He hasn't taken us as far to do that. But it is official what we have actually signed on the dotted line. We enter into a 20 day inspection period, and at that point in time, with the help of the elders and a bunch of professionals we will inspect everything we can inspect in the property, make sure that there's not anything major that we already don't know exists. And then if everything is good, our plan is to hold our very first service in there the last Saturday of February.

Pastor Glenn and the eldership of this church. Yes, you can give the Lord a hand.

Pastor Glenn and the eldership of this church are meeting, and they're hoping that they're going to be able to just extend us so that we could just meet here until we meet there. It is a mile up the road. I'm not telling everybody exactly where it is yet, because the people who own the building are still there, and I want to be respectful. And it's already creepy enough when I drive by there 30 times a week. So they're like, who's the dude in the man bun driving a Tesla who keeps stalking us?

It's not even a through road. Yeah, that's me. But I'm super excited. I hope you guys are super excited. But we do need to continue on the giving.

So I know a lot of people have given a lot, and. And don't think that this is some shift in the church to where every week we're going to be passing the bucket and stuff like that. We've existed for almost 11 years without doing that. But the reality is, is now that we have the money for the down payment, now that we've entered into the contract, there is going to be closing costs, there's going to be seating costs, there's going to be costs that come up in the inspections that we're going to have to take care of, and then our budget as a whole will pretty much double. And so we're going to be looking for a renter for one building and all that stuff.

And we'll have a family meeting here in January, now that we have some answers and kind of hand out the finances, all that kind of stuff. So you guys can see that. But we really do need to get closer to that $200,000 mark. At the rate we're going that we've gone so far, that's only two weeks from now, if the Lord continues on that pace. So that's pretty insane.

Like, whoo. That's insane. Where's my Mason? Mason? Where's.

There we go. There we go.

I have to be balanced because I've been super excited this week. But then also there's this huge weight when you're looking at purchasing a property and what this does for a church and a home, for the presence of the Lord. And you're now spiritually responsible. We're responsible for cleaning up somebody else's home when we come in here. But this is going to be the home for the Lord that we're responsible for.

And there's a huge weight that comes with that. And so I'm excited, but. But I'm definitely a glass case of emotion. There's like, this worry and then this, like, overjoyed. And so I'm back and forth.

So you can't even do that anymore. I tried not to do that, but my kids are sitting there, like, six, seven.

All right, we're gonna pick up in Matthew 12, we're gonna get into the word of God, so I don't get made fun of by my children anymore.

That's a good word right there. Matthew 12, 22:30 is where we're going to be today. We titled this message Satan Drives out. Satan seems like an interesting title. Last week, we saw that Jesus was continuing to redirect the Pharisees away from what was merely lawful towards what's truly profitable.

If anybody has kept the full Bible, the feasts, the festivals, the Sabbath, all those things for any period of time, there is way too much talk about what's law and not about what's truly profitable. It is lawful to stone somebody in the Old Testament. Is it profitable if a wife or husband turns to each other and looks at each other? You need to fill out the marriage form. I'm just telling you right now what is profitable versus what is lawful.

The law, who was given by Jesus from the Father, was always meant to produce life. And yet there's many, many people, hundreds, if not thousands of people I've met who love the law, embrace the law, whose life looks like death. It's chaos, disorder, anger, bitterness. That's not life. Yet for centuries, humanity used the Torah to do what was right in their own sight.

And this is what Jesus is finding himself engaged in on a regular basis with the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the keepers of the law. They were the most intelligent, yet they had strayed away from what the heart of the law was intended to be and to do. And Jesus finds himself in a very contentious engagement with them on a regular basis. While the Pharisees had attempted to trap Jesus in unprofitable debates about legal technicalities on is duck clean?

Is chicken clean? All these things, the legal technicalities, Jesus kept pulling the conversation back to the heart of the kingdom. Eat a cheese pizza, Be quiet and go heal the sick. Eat a cheese pizza. Be quiet, raise the dead, stop fighting over legal technicalities and go be a part of the manifestation of the kingdom of Heaven.

The kingdom. That's now. Why? Because Jesus is the only place you can find rest on the Sabbath. I've tried all other ways.

I've tried to cease from everything. Kind of hard to cease your brain when you're waiting on a contract that you've been waiting on for a week. But when you crawl up into the arms of Jesus, you can truly find rest, do good. We saw that last week. What is lawful to do on the Sabbath?

I don't know if it's lawful to stop and help that person with a flat tire. It's more lawful to stop and help them with a flat tire than it was to even think about doing it. Just do it.

Again and again, Jesus publicly testifies that he himself is the engagement of the fulfillment of the Torah and the prophets. All the signs and wonders, the title, Son of Man, Son of David, they all hearken to prophecies. Last week we saw that he was engaged in doing healings on the sabbath. And Isaiah 42 was prophesied and he was fulfilled filling it as he was walking. A king who offered something that no other king before him could.

And there was good kings of Israel. David is listed as a great king of Israel. There were good kings of Israel. But this king, King Jesus, brought something that no other king could bring. Hope for all.

So that we can go and tell. The kingdom of heaven doesn't argue with legality. It demonstrates ultimate authority.

Open your Bibles. Matthew 12:22. Then a demon oppressed man who was blind and mute, was brought to him. And he healed him so that the man spoke and he saw, and all the people were amazed. And they said, can this be the son of David?

But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, it's only Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons. This isn't the first time that we've read in Matthew that Jesus encounters an individual whose testimony had been robbed. When we started the Kingdom in Action series a couple of series ago, coming out of the Sermon on the Mount series, the very first thing we saw were lepers and mutes. And we talked about how their testimony of being restored to heal, being healed by Jesus, was so that they could go to the temple, they could fulfill what was commanded in Moses, so that their testimony could be to the priesthood. Who should have known that the head priest was here?

And yet we never hear a testimony in early in Matthew that the Priesthood ever testified publicly that the man had been healed. They kept the testimony. So this is not the first time that somebody has gone from demonic oppression into full on possession and Jesus comes in to heal them. In the Gospel of Matthew. Demons will always seek to rob people of their voice, their sight, their freedom.

They'll attempt to steal their witness. Demons are not fun.

Even though there's series now that like to say, like, oh, hey, our sole goal is to be demon hunters. And here's a demon, there's a demon everywhere is a demon demon you like? No, no, no, no, no. Demons aren't fun. And you've been given the authority, according to the Bible to have the ability to speak over them.

The authority of Jesus Christ, which means they will run. We don't need some big axe and some big sword and we don't need to call in all of the Hollywood, you know, movie producers and the special effects. And all of a sudden Josh is like hunting a demon and then he's like matrixing out over here. It's when Jesus says go, they flee. That's the same power that lives inside of us.

We like to make this some big deal, like the power of Christ compels you. The power of Christ compels you. It says no. Speak to them to go, and if they won't go, come back with a group and go attack them.

It's amazing how simple when we read the Bible, it is to combat spiritual warfare. And we turn off Netflix and we don't let Netflix be our theology, but we let the word of God be our theology.

Demons want to oppress, they want to possess, they want to torment. Jesus does the opposite. He restores testimonies, he restores freedom and he restores life. And yet Jesus restores the testimony to this man who is demon possessed. And we have two radically different perspectives.

That happened with the people who saw the crowd, responded with wonder, hope, and this messianic expectation that was generational in their life. Could this be the son of David?

That's no small task. That's hearkening back to the prophecies. Is this the anointed One, the Mashiach that we have been waiting for 400 years? God did not speak to Israel and to creation. We have no record of it.

Here comes John the Baptist and all of a sudden they're calling Jesus the Messiah who came after John the Baptist, who came in the spirit of Elijah. They're calling him. Could this be the son of David? The prophecies say that God in the flesh, Yeshua, Jesus is the son of David. He comes from the line, from the lineage, and he is the ultimate king of all Israel.

That's. That's a big compliment for the Israelites. Could this be the son of David? That's a big deal. Okay, well, then the Pharisees are like, well, we got to one up you on the other side.

The Pharisees respond with accusation. They didn't find any joy in the fact that this man was restored. They respond not even as a neutral. Not as. Even as a neutral.

They respond with accusation, claiming that Jesus is powered by the chief of demons. The leaders who were charged with teaching the Torah viewed the healing very differently than those who were sincerely seeking to produce a life of the Torah. One group who saw hope and amazement, and the other saw their influence, power, and control slipping away. It didn't look like what God should look like in my book. So we've got to find some way to do demonize it.

Oh, none of us have ever done that. God can't possibly be moving in your life, Becky, because it doesn't look how I want God to move in your life. Which means it's got to be a demon. No, that's me wanting to influence you, to keep power over you, to have control over you. If I'm looking at the Bible and I'm looking at good fruit being produced in your life, it doesn't matter if it looks like I wanted a pear, she's producing an apple.

Hope, joy, restoration. Your testimony matters.

Two equal things cannot conquer each other. That's the irony of what the. What the Pharisees are accusing him of doing is they're saying, you cast out demons by the power of the chief demon.

Things that make you go, really? How's that work? Two equal things cannot conquer each other. Only a stronger force can conquer a weaker force. In verse 25, Jesus does what Jesus does so well.

He starts to dismantle the logic of the emotional response. And he says it says, knowing their thoughts, he said to them, every kingdom divided against itself is laid to waste. We've heard that one a million times, social media. We're going through a fight with our spouse. We're going through a fight with our friends.

We're going through a fight in our church, at our school. It's like every kingdom that's against each other will be laid to waste. Let's get back to context here. And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?

And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? Drop the mic. It is over. Jesus has just won the match. If you are going to say, I cast out demons by the power of a demon, then what are your sons casting out demons by the power of.

Sweet, gentle Jesus. Pow.

He was gentle when he needed to be gentle, and he was bold when he needed to be bold. Jesus steps outside their emotional outrage and he confronts them with a simple logic. If Satan's mission is to steal, kill and destroy, why would he set captives free?

If you're seeing people who are overcoming addictions in their life and they're doing these types of things and you're walking around saying, oh, the power of God's not with them. Why would Satan set them free from addiction? He had them right where he wanted them. Why would Satan stop tormenting somebody who was tormented by voices for years and years and years? Why would he do that?

He would not do that. This is kindergarten 101 of the character and nature of God. If Satan's mission is to steal, kill and destroy, he would not set the captives free. He would not restore sight, he'd continue to take it, and he would not release people into the fullness of life. It's the opposite of what the Bible says he does.

So if you see people being set free, if you see sight and hearing and legs working and things, we've seen some crazy miracles. That's not the power of Satan ever. Satan doesn't do those things. Satan isn't waiting around for Cam to get his eyesight back. He wants to keep him entrapped and ensnared in his kingdom.

And Jesus is here to set him free. One is arguing over legal technicalities. One is bringing divine authority.

Why would Satan undermine his own kingdom or dismantle his own workforce? Anybody who's owned a business in here, it is not profitable for you to go around and cause problems for your employees. If it is for you, if that's what you're doing, you are very wealthy. Go to HFF house because you could just throw money a while. No businessman I know goes around and goes to cause problems for his employees.

No businesswoman that I know goes to cause problems for his workforce. He tries and she tries to work with them. Satan is not going to dismantle his own workforce ever.

Ever.

Satan doesn't heal, he doesn't restore, and he'll never give you life. And to attribute the miracles of Jesus power to Satan is blasphemy. And yet this is where Jesus finds himself in the accusation. And yet Jesus turns their accusation back upon them.

If he casts out demons by demonic power, then their own exorcist must also be operating by demons. And if this is the case, that makes the Pharisees judges against themselves. I don't play chess, but checkmate.

He got all the chutes and all the ladders.

Checkmate. If you're going to make the accusation that he is operating by the power of demons, then they must be operating by the power of demons, which by the legal technicality, they must recuse themselves because they're judges against themselves.

You can't no more Torah than the one who gave the Torah.

Jesus the Christ is the King of Israel. You can't be more Israel than the King of Israel. He's the true vine.

Rather than believe that the Torah and the prophets were being fulfilled before their eyes, it was easier for them to assume that darkness was at work than it was for them to admit the kingdom of heaven had arrived.

Yet it was their heart's desire that the kingdom of heaven would arrive. They were looking for Jesus. They just didn't like the Jesus they got.

And each and every one of us, at some point in time in our life is going to be forced to reconcile that very same thing.

We're going to be wanting Jesus to do something, wanting Jesus to be something. We having an expectation upon Jesus, and he's not going to need to meet our expectations. He supersedes all expectations. And we're either going to be upset about it or we're going to shift our posture towards Him.

It's often easier for us to assume evil motives in other believers, our brothers and sisters, than it is to acknowledge that God's kingdom is actively working in and through them.

Actively working through you and through me and every person who's going to all the other groups that meet on today and tomorrow. But it's easier for us to assume evil motives in our brothers and sisters in Christ than it is for us to lock arms with them and wait for the fruit to be produced.

You know, the same way the Bible says we should judge ourselves, it's how we should treat and judge others. Love, mercy, compassion, and watch for fruit. Just because I have the title of pastor doesn't mean I have some sort of, like, fruit chart. No. There's only one way for us to see if the tree is producing good fruit.

And it is the same for all people.

Miracles aren't controversial, but when you struggle with narcissism, losing control is. And this is what we see with the Pharisees. They were losing their Grip because Jesus is wowing. There's awe and wonder. He's setting people free.

Leprosy is being removed. All these things are happening. And so people are starting to flock to Jesus. And they're not flocking to the Pharisees. And the Pharisees have no answer and they can't control it.

Neither can the Sadducees. And so Jesus wasn't able to be bought by the Republicans or the Democrats.

As Jesus exposed their flawed reasoning, he also establishes foundational kingdom truths. Unity versus division. A kingdom divided against itself will collapse. That's the chaos. Unity brings stability and endurance.

Jesus kingdom versus Satan's kingdom. Satan is the source of this chaos, division and death. And Jesus is the source of life and unity. Satan cannot work with Jesus. There are some people in this world that I have a 0 success rate with their personality.

It's full honesty that says something about them and says something about me. It's a certain personality that over a period of time we are not going to be able to work together. That's not even close to this. Because both of us, when we're in a relationship with the personality, we're both going to be failures. We're both going to make mistakes.

Jesus doesn't make any mistakes. Satan is a complete mistake. Every day repent. The kingdom of God is here. Kingdom of God is here.

I think I'll see if he'll want to be thrown off the Temple Mount for some bread. Holding on to that one last moment of power. This kingdom. Satan and Jesus are not teammates. They're not entering into the portal.

They're not going to sign an nil deal and they're not going to lock arms to lose to Miami.

They are never going to be teammates. They are opposites of each other.

3. There's a cosmic shift. The casting out of demons proves that Jesus isn't just like all the other kings. It's that kingdoms God's kingdom has arrived in power, actively overthrowing evil from that moment to the end. Years ago I did a teaching called Yeshua conquered the grave before the cross.

And it was all about Mark's Mark, chapter one. It was all about the engagement of Jesus in the wilderness with the adversary. After he had been baptized and Yahweh spoke audibly, the Holy Spirit had descended and he'd gone out in the wilderness. When Jesus was in the wilderness, there was two forces that were out there with him. There was Satan, the tempter, who is consistently trying to get him to do things that would put him in an elevated position.

Of authority over his father Yahweh. And then it says that there was the angelic force of Heaven's armies who were encouraging and pushing him forward. Go, go, Yeshua, go, Yeshua, go, go. And in the end, what happened? Satan tried to tempt him with all the things of the flesh and he was unsuccessful.

And Jesus overcame and he cast him away. And then he came back and he started to do his ministry. And then here we are.

The devil knew in the wilderness this guy was different. We have read multiple times throughout Matthew where the devil was testifying of who Jesus was through the power of the demons. The demons would say, what do you want with the Son of God? They knew this was not David. They knew this was not Solomon.

They knew this wasn't Saul or any other man of Israel. This was Mashiach, the Anointed One, the Sent One. There is a cosmic shift. The Father in heaven sent his son off the throne of heaven to come with the power of heaven to the earth. Rejoice.

That's a power that I don't think any of us will know until we get to be there with Him. And even then, I think we'll just be in awe. Awe and reverence of the majesty. Just because something makes you uncomfortable, it cannot be quantified or looks unfamiliar, doesn't make it evil. If that's the case, then everything that just happened to buy a building could be evil.

There is so much that cannot be quantified that doesn't make any sense in the logical, rational mind. Literally so much stuff. But that doesn't make it evil. According to the scripture. Stop robbing Jesus of the testimony of the miracle in your life.

And stop giving the testimony or the power of or the potential influence to Satan. He had enough pride. He doesn't need your accolades. It's Jesus. The whole Bible testifies of Jesus, his authority, his power.

Evil produces broken homes and marriages. It produces fatherless children who become wounded adults. Bitterness, pride, envy, self loathing, a selfishness.

I'm only going to do what makes me find joy. I'm only going to do what makes me happy. I'm only going to do what I get to have. And yet the kingdom of God and the kingdom of joy is that I can produce that and give that abundantly to other people.

As I was writing this week, I've testified many times over. The Lord puts me in these situations all the time. So I had to call the elders a lot this week. Probably. Sure.

Some of them have now disabled their notifications. That's you Know, back and forth in negotiations and all the things. And they all run businesses and households and stuff like that too. And so I was talking to one of the elders, and we had to make a decision, and I was like, hey, look, here's this, this, this, this, this towards the end of the conversation. And they were like, are you excited?

All I'm hearing is business. Are you not in the slightest bit excited?

And as soon as I hung up that phone, I spent the next two days allowing myself to rejoice in what God was doing versus acting like somehow I could screw that up.

The sovereignty of the Lord is sovereign. Even when I'm a putz, am I allowed to say that word? My grandmother used to say that. I'm not really sure what that means. I feel like it means, like, I'm not really good at something.

Is that okay, Mabel? Is that an okay word, or am I over the line? I'm okay. Okay. All right.

Whew. That's not in my notes. And I stepped out on the. I stepped out on the water. I wasn't sure if my eyes were on Jesus, though.

So evil says, you don't need Jesus. You don't need the spirit. That's what the evil says. You don't need him. Your kingdom is better.

That's what evil says. Every kingdom has an expiration date, except for the kingdom of heaven. Every kingdom will bow and expire when Jesus comes back and establishes his reign on this earth. I don't care who you are. You could have been the best ever.

You could literally have been whoever. Think of all the greatest conquerors in the world that have happened. You will bow the knee to Jesus Christ when Jesus Christ comes back. Case closed. There will only be one kingdom, and there will only be one king, and it will be him.

He is the king of kings, the Lord of lords. I'm sorry, I'm preaching, but I love Jesus. He's the authority. He's the king. And when we find ourselves in a situation where the king is doing things that no other people had the power to do, and we're testifying that that's not the king.

That's the power of somebody else that gets my blood boiling.

I grew up in the suburbs, but all of a sudden, I got a little south side Chris in me.

Bran had Southside. I can be south side. Right? I can throw bows for the kingdom of Jesus. No, that's not actually in scripture.

So that's that Netflix influence. If your faith never threatens darkness, you may not be serving the kingdom of light. If you're more passionate about being right than you are about setting people free, you're missing the mission. When believers become your primary enemy, you've already lost the plot of the story. I'll say that again.

When believers become your primary enemy. Jesus was one of them. He was a Jew. He was a rabbi, he was a teacher. He was one of them.

When believers become your primary enemy, you've already lost the plot.

Friendly fire.

There are people out there who are enslaved, who've joined the mission of the adversary, who need to know about the life altering power of Jesus Christ. Sometimes we get so caught up that we're over here fighting each other about all the silliest things.

The war was never against brothers and sisters. It was always against darkness. And Matthew keeps telling us that over and over and over again. That is the kingdom mission. That is the kingdom at hand.

So if you are more passionate about being right than setting people free, you're not on his mission.

Verse 28. But if it is by the spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. How can one enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man? Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. Jesus offers a final devastating question to them.

What if.

What if I cast out demons by the spirit of God?

What if. You're assuming that I've come as a prince in power of darkness, but what if I am operating on the ruach hakodesh, the power of God? Then that would mean that the kingdom of God has come near to you. The thing you've been waiting for, the thing you've been looking for. The things that our ancestors prophesied about, the things that they cried out to in Egypt while they were building bricks and working their tail off, they cried out for you.

You are here. If I cast out demons by the power of the spirit of God, then I am here.

Holy smokes.

What in the world can you imagine? You know, we're people who are waiting for the. For the second coming of Mashiach, of Christ to come. What can you imagine if he actually. If you're actually alive and you see him at that point in time, you're gonna kind of be like dropping off your deer carts, and you're gonna be like, dad, this is what they're faced with right now.

This is. The cosmic element of what's happening here is that if he's actually casting out the demons by the Spirit of God, then that means that God here, and everything we've hoped for, and everything we've waited for, and everything Moses wrote about, and everything the prophets talked about, everything we have been waiting for is here.

Jesus explains the mission plainly. He enters Satan's house, He binds up the strongman, he plunders that house.

And the goods are not money. He's not plundering his cash, his gold bars.

The greatest possession of all currency. Are you people? That is the greatest possession. The goods. The currency for God's kingdom and for Satan's kingdom is people.

Satan wants to still kill and destroy as many people as possible. And Jesus wants to restore people back to a garden like relationship with him. Every person humanly possible to do so. They both have the same missions with different goals. In the end, how many of you can we get in our kingdom?

Jesus is declaring an open war worship team. You can come back. Heaven didn't send a warning shot. They sent a king.

The warning shots were over this time. Yahweh said, I'm sending the king, I'm sending the warrior. And the warrior conquered. Not by bringing the sword. He conquered because he laid down the sword.

If your theology explains away the power of Jesus Christ, it may be protecting your control, not God's truth. And the kingdom comes in power, not complacency. Jesus closes with an uncompromising line. Whoever is not with me is against me. There is no middle ground.

There's no purgatory there. You're either with him or you're not. You either gather with Jesus or you scatter. You either unify the body or you push people into the wilderness. You're either on mission with Jesus or you're working against the mission of Jesus.

There's no middle ground. You're either with me or you're not.

Jesus doesn't say, when I get with you. Hey, Jesus, I'm getting ready to roll out. I'm gonna go demon hunting tomorrow, Tuesday, you ready to go? He says, no, you get on mission with me. I'm not trying to get on mission with you.

Hey Jesus, you want to start a Bible study? Waiting on mission with Jesus, not Jesus on mission with us. We're the ones who have to turn our heart. We're the ones who have to repent. We're the ones who have to adjust our lifestyle.

Jesus has always been perfect and he's always been on mission. We just have to pivot.

And Jesus was speaking to the most religious holy men of that day. They were the guardians and the keepers of the Law, in essence, repent, align with my kingdom, or step aside.

Because the kingdom of God is never going to be stopped. Satan's been trying for thousands of years and he has not been successful. The same Jesus who will leave the 99 to find the 1 is also the King who will remove the one endangering the 99. You're either gathering people to Jesus or you're scattering them from Him. There is no third option.

The same war that we're reading about here exists in every one of our daily lives.

The moment we confess Jesus is our king, we're drafted into the armies of the King. We're to warfare with Him. The battle begins first in our own hearts and minds. When you scroll your screens, when you watch Netflix, whatever you do, it starts in your own heart and mind. That's where the battle starts, then moves into your homes and your marriages.

It then moves into your children and then into our communities. This church. Church is a family made up of a lot of small families. It's a big one, too. If.

If the battle isn't beginning in your hearts and your minds, moving into your marriage, moving into your children, then it's not going to move into the community. And then we're all just here playing games. Jesus wasn't playing games. He was here to heal people and usher in the kingdom of heaven. We live in a day and age where we know that this is true, that he is resurrected, that he is the King and He is the Lord.

And the invitation is now more than ever. We're getting ready to to in 45 days, 50, 46 days. I never did math. That's why I became a preacher. We're getting ready to move into our own facility.

That church building has an obligation to every household, to every person in the senior center across the way. It has an obligation to be a beacon of light when there isn't light in the city. It's to preach Jesus to be a house for Jesus, to pray, to feed, to go out. It has to be on mission with the kingdom. Otherwise we are playing house.

Satan doesn't drive out Satan, and darkness does not drive out darkness. But Jesus did, does and will.

And it's in every battlefield of your life if you will allow and remember his warning. If you're not gathering with him, then you're scattering against Him. And there's only one kingdom that lasts. There's only one kingdom that saves. There's only one kingdom who has authority to bring that to this world.

Everything in the entirety of scripture testifies of Jesus Christ.

The Holy Spirit testifies of Jesus Christ.

We should not be so arrogant to think that somehow we won't struggle with the same thing that we see people wrestling with in Matthew. We love the Torah, we love the prophets, we love the gospel.

And yet the greatest of that day in the first century struggled mightily to know who Jesus was. And not only did they struggle mightily to know who Jesus was, they actually had the chutzpah.

There's one from the past had the chutzpah to say it was the devil. Hasatan, Don't rob Jesus of the testimony of the things he's doing in your life. And do not give Satan credit for thinking he has the testimony of your life. He might be trying to oppress you. You don't fall into cooperation.

He might be trying to speak into your ear. You're never going to be loved, it's never going to get fixed, it's never get done. The problem is, is the only way that that's true is if you stick with him. Because he's never going to love you, he's never going to free you, he's never going to cast out darkness, he's never going to give you voice, he's never going to give you testimony. The only time that that's true, that Satan is actually true is if you stay in relationship with Satan, you get rid of Satan and you bring in the power source of Jesus Christ in your life and, and all that goes away.

Because Jesus is the way, the truth, the life. And no one comes to the Father except through Him.

Everybody in some area of our life has an area where we've been hiding the testimony. Where we feel like we cannot speak, where we feel like we cannot rejoice. Everybody has one.

Jesus didn't stop healing, moving and working when he ascended to the right hand of the Father. He's now at the right hand of the Father with all majesty and all authority. So he just decided he was no longer going to do these things. It was just a, just a three year thing.

When we turn our hearts and turn our minds and focus ourselves back on him in all areas of our life, you will see who he is like never before. And I don't care how intimate you've been with him in your life, you might have been, you might have grown up in church, so did I. You might have worked in ministry, so did I. You might have gone to revival, so did I. But every time I can sit with him and I can see him, he reveals another part of his heart and his Character and his nature.

And it allows me to set something, something else down in my life, and he sets me free in those areas. And that is what I want for each and every one of you, because that's what the King wants for each and every one of you. If you will stand with me. I know I'm passionate today. I promise.

I only had one cup of coffee. This is just passion. It's not caffeine. It's passion.

We're going to sing one of my favorite songs. And I didn't request it. It was already on the list. When my wife and I went with our children on our sabbatical to the beach last year, I heard this song for the first time. And I listened to this song.

I don't even know how many times, hundreds of times. It was playing over and over and over and over again. I had to keep going back until I realized that I'm technologically challenged and put it on repeat 1. Like I could do that on a Walkman. And I listened to it over and over and over and over and over and over again.

When you crown Jesus the king of your life and you lay down all other areas that you think you're the king or you're the queen, there's a cosmic shift that happens in your life. And so as we sing this song, I'm asking you, don't just sing the song to sing the song. Maybe it's the first time you've ever heard of it. And that's. That's okay.

I'm asking you to not only look at the lyrics, but to close your eyes. Can't look at the lyrics and close your eyes. So if you don't know the lyrics, keep your eyes open. Open your heart. They're already like, oh, pastor's looking for a lot of miracles here today.

He wants us to. And that's when the tongues fell and things got all kinds of crazy. So I want you to focus in on the lyrics and the nature of who Christ is through what these lyrics say.

Not just to sing a song, not just to regurgitate something, but to make a public proclamation unified together, that Jesus is king, Jesus is Lord, and there's no one like the him in all of the earth. When humanity starts to turn our hearts back, lock our arms with our brothers and sisters versus shooting at our brothers and sisters, and we start to praise Jesus more, I promise you, nobody will be questioning whether it's the devil healed somebody, whether it's Jesus Christ. There will be revival that will break out. And I'm not talking about some emotional feel good. I'm talking about impacted lives.

Generations change the heritage of Christ in you and your children and your children's children. And I believe in it. So if you will join us in a time of adoration extolling our King because there is none like him.