Kingdom & Authority

Introduction

I know songs like that last one are fairly new, but they have sort of a high church element to them that’s fitting to what I want to speak about this morning a little bit about the idea of the kingdom and authority. I want to begin reading in Ephesians chapter one and verse 15 here in just a moment, and then we’ll kind of launch from there to discuss where I want to head with this, not just this morning, but even in some future sermons, where I want to come back to this idea or this concept. Begin reading with me there in Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 15. It says, For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.

That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom of revelation and of knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you. What are the riches of the glorious inheritance in the saints? And what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead, and seated him at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and a power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. Many of you are probably very familiar with the beginning of the book of Ephesians, which talks about the blessings that we have in Christ and God’s plan, the things that happened according to the counsel of his will, and it’s all to the praise of his glory. I mean, then there’s there’s a section that really doesn’t often get too much attention, as I think is typically the case within Scripture, these texts that have to do with the enthronement of Christ. It’s just not something that we really enjoy in our country in Western religion is focusing on the idea of a reigning power, of an authority, of a monarch, one to whom we have to submit fully.

And I think as I want to get into this idea of authority, and in this sermon and future sermons, this is really the place to begin. We need a starting place, I think, to think about authority, to rethink about authority, because it’s been thought about for so long, kind of separated, I think, from the universal context of what’s happening in scripture, right? Just making this argument and that argument. But I think the starting point is understanding authority itself first, understanding where authority, where the source of authority comes from and what that actually means for us, what that should look like. And that is somewhat of a problem for us, as I’ve mentioned before, and will probably continue to do as I work through similar material to this, because of our own heritage.

I don’t have a problem with our heritage, but it’s just what it is. And when you revolt from a king and you start a new nation, you have a little bit of problem with monarchy. You struggle with that idea that there is one person who has absolute control and power, and that you have to submit to them, and for good reason, because of experience, we’ve seen that go horribly wrong. And so, from a human standpoint, and I’ll have some more to say about some of this here in just a moment, we kind of pull back from that. We don’t like that idea. We like much more the idea of freedom of the cross, of being redeemed, and having this freedom in Christ that Paul talks about, which is also a very legitimate topic and subject, and all of this sort of works together if we actually understand what authority really is.

1. Admitting Our Struggle With Authority

And so, to me, the starting point for all of this is really this first concept that we admit our own struggle with the concepts of authority. Now, here’s what I mean by this, and how do I know this is a problem or struggle? I’ll say from observation and from consistent reactions I’ve heard over the years, like this. There’s some of you this morning who are saying, not another authority sermon. All right, you just how can I look at my phone for the next 30 minutes with no one else noticing? You grew up with sermons of all manner and types and various subjects that somehow all came back to illustrations about instrumental music and fellowship halls and orphan homes, and you don’t want to hear another one.

And I get it, that wasn’t really my experience. my dad, who I listened to most of my life growing up, did talk about some of those things, but that’s not what every illustration came back to. But I know that is a legitimate concern that some people had as they grew up. And then there’s others of you this morning who are saying, We need more authority sermons. I’m so glad he’s talking about authority. You know, religion used to be taken so much more seriously, and now everyone just wants to be entertained and express themselves individually. And we used to have a lot more sermons on important stuff like instrumental music and fellowship halls and orphan homes. Right? So you see kind of the dichotomy that exists on the extremes, and that’s what I’m pointing out to you are the extremes.

I think, and what I hope that we can reach here is, and I don’t even mean just this morning, but over time, kind of a happy medium of how to think about ideas of authority and what this looks like, and admit kind of this big word in this first point, admitting our struggle, admitting the need for humility and being willing to challenge my own thinking, my own presuppositions, not coming preloaded with what I already believe to scripture, and thinking I already have the answers and being unwilling to listen to other ideas. That’s the sort of thing that’s going to keep people on either of those extremes, but willing to come with an open heart and an open Bible to look at what scripture actually says. And as we weren’t further through this, I want to do a little more with that idea.

2. Two Directions in Rejecting Corrupt Authority

It’s going to take a future sermon. We can’t do that in fullness this morning. But to give you some comfort, I want to just spin, I’m going to do a little bit of a sociological aside here, if you’ll allow me to do that, just to say it’s not your fault. Okay. We come to these extremes because we are part of a flow of culture. And it’s too in-depth to really go into in a very big way this morning. But I do want to talk about just briefly, sort of a cycle of rule or power that kind of gets us where we are, and sometimes it’s at different places at different times, so it’s not always the same. But we sort of start from this idea of self-rule.

Now, that’s not necessarily where we are in the moment, although there are elements of that here. But when you have self rule, that seems so great. You know, you run your own life and everything is the way you want it, except that then other people do the same and they do whatever they want. And so at some point, we sort of want to limit chaos and instability. And so that’s when we form, you know, communities or governments or whatever you want to call them, where we have some sort of safety or protection that goes beyond just the self. And in that process, there is kind of a giving up of some freedom for the sake of safety and peace. And so often that starts out so well, starts out so nicely.

However, because humans are flawed and human authority is flawed, which is where some of the struggle that we have sometimes with authority comes from. All of it comes from that, I would say, this eventually becomes in many places kind of an oppressive authoritarianism where you have people who rule corruptly for their own good, not for the good of the group. And so some maybe blindly follow that without question, thinking that these flawed humans have their best interests, even though they don’t. But others begin to see that’s not the case, and so they reject this. They stand up against it, which moves to the next phase, which is revolution, and then push again for liberty, which unfortunately, because we are all flawed humans, then results in counter-oppression of the ones who are revolutionaries.

Right? And this is just sort of the cycle that takes place in humanity, right? And you don’t have to memorize that, no test, it doesn’t matter, but we’re just kind of working through the way flawed humans work. Right? And sometimes some of these cycles or parts of these cycles can exist for a long period of time. It can be lengthy periods of peace and safety. We relatively have a lot of peace and safety in our world. I mean, we live in a very safe environment in our homes in America. We are not worried about raiders, people coming through and coming into our homes and taking all of our goods, those sorts of things happen because there are bad people out there, but not like in ancient societies where you’re worried that someone’s gonna come in and invade your small town and city and take everything.

We don’t live with that kind of fear day to day. We have alarm systems and things like that for you know the thief that might show up one time. But that’s kind of the limit of where this falls in our culture. So relatively, we live in a kind of peaceful time. It doesn’t mean there’s not corruption. There always is when you have humans in the mix. And so what this does is kind of gives us this flawed concept of what authority looks like. And at various points and at various levels, people stand up and they reject that or even rebel against it. Now there’s two directions you can go when it comes to rejecting corrupt authority. Now we’re still on the sociological level here. We’re not in scripture.

So I’ll just point that out, talking about how humanity works, right? Kind of on a high level. But there’s two really from a broad spectrum that we see in the world. One of those is that you turn to God. Right? And actually, we have realities of this in our world that has happened, particularly in Europe, Northern Europe and Southern Europe, reacted in very different ways after the Middle Ages. You have a period of time, you’ve heard of these terms, the Renaissance, right? On one hand, and then you have the reformation on the other. The reformation is an effort, however flawed it might have been, because we’re humans, to react to oppressive authoritarianism, Middle Ages, established church, Catholicism, all of these sorts of things with a turn back to God.

You remember Martin Luther and Calvin and others who did things like reject the authority that was oppressing people, even from religious standpoint, and saying, no, we’re not doing that. And what was their motto? Sola scriptura. We’re returning only to scripture. They’re turning back to the message of God and to the ways of God. And again, however flawed their theology or interpretations might have been, the results of this rejection of authority with the foundation of the divine being, of God Himself of Yahweh turned out much better than the results of the foundation of things like the Renaissance and ultimately the Enlightenment, which comes from figures like Michelangelo and others who, even in their artwork express humanity kind of busting out of the world and fixing things themselves, right?

We can come to a perfect humanity, and this is where things like, and I’m not gonna get real political this morning, but it’s just the reality. This is where things like socialism and communism come from. They’re not a divine base. They don’t come from a foundation in God, they come from a foundation of thinking that man can fix man, that man is the solution to man’s problems, and every example we have of that of a turn either to humanism, secularism, is something that ended very poorly. Whether it’s Russia with Lenin or whether it’s something like Nazi Germany, any of these examples where man is going to fix man and they’re going to progress and they’re going to learn and they’re being become better, they’re going to become something, and they don’t need something divine in the mix, which is ultimately where most of this comes from, it all ends very poorly.

Some of the students that I was working with in challenge, it’s like a sophomore junior-ish type of thing, homeschooling, we don’t know what grade we’re in. This is just how it works. they read a Tale of Two Cities. Have you read a Tale of Two Cities? Anybody out there? You know, this is what happens if you’ve read this book when you reject oppressive authority without God at your foundation. People start losing their heads everywhere. And the people who are revolting against oppressive authority become the oppressive authority. Right? And this is certainly what took place in the French Revolution, which is a time period in which, in rejecting oppressive authority, the foundation was not God. It’s man and what man wants. It’s humanism. Right? And so at a foundational level, as a people, as humans, I want us to see these two different responses to rejecting corruption, or at the highest level, oppressive authoritarianism.

We can go one way where we think that man and man’s wisdom knows best, or we can go the other where we turn back to scripture and we turn back to God. What this really kind of comes into the church as, because church is part of the religious world is really part of culture. It’s not something separate, right? And so the things that we struggle with as a culture, as a people, we don’t somehow become immune to that as people who are within religion, within even the church. But we’re influenced by the things around us. And so somehow this filters into God’s people at various levels in various ways, kind of in these two extremes lack of respect, or the rejection of authority, which is sometimes actually the result of spotting corruption.

Seeing poor arguments and scripture being used in wrong ways, and unfortunately going to extreme, kind of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Right? Like I just can’t trust anything that any of these people said, right? Because I spot a bad argument, or that verse was used incorrectly, and so what can be trusted and to its most extreme point, it’s a rejection of God Himself, turning to that humanistic way of life, which is man can solve this in man’s way, which is always an abysmal failure. It never works. But it happens sometimes, even with those within the church. The other side of this is a sectarian mindset. You know, idolizing tradition, defending party at all cost. Any thinking outside the accepted ideas is considered lacking respect and rejecting authority.

Questions can even be dangerous to the sectarian party defending type. You start questioning long-held beliefs, and you are a threat. You’re dangerous. Right? And so we sort of have these two, again, extremes that come that are dangers that can come from sort of this flow of culture where we go because we’re rejecting oppressive authority. Here’s the thing questions that differ from typical belief can be really good questions. And they may be a result of a desire for truth at the same time. Some may come from a rebellious heart, looking for self-justification. So you have you have both sides. And we’re not real good at reading hearts. And so what we really have to do is just try to deal with the issue, deal with the questions, and the way we do that, as we’re going to find as we work through some of this material, is we return to scripture to do that.

It’s not based on my feelings or your feelings or past experience or what my preacher used to say or what my parents used to say or what the elders said or what a group of preachers think or anything like that. None of that makes any difference. The only thing that actually matters is what’s in here and what these words say. And we’ll talk some more about interpreting that at a later time, but that’s also an important aspect in this. But the measure is not what a bunch of other people think or what a bunch of churches think or what a bunch of preachers think. That’s not the measure. The measure, as we’re kind of working toward, is what Christ says. And so we need to be fair and honest and loving and also straightforward with each other in our discussions.

3. Christ: A Righteous, Absolute Monarch

Be open to hear what is said and open with our Bibles, looking for answers and what is here. Right? That is my initial appeal this morning as we think about the ideas of authority. But what I want us to understand, kind of in light of everything I just explained about authority and structure and cycles that take place within humanity because humanity is flawed, is that the picture we have in Scripture and the language we have in Scripture all points to one person who has absolute power and authority. Now that makes us nervous. Right? I mean, if we had somebody in our society, and I mean, what is the what do we say about presidents that we don’t, right? Like he wants to be a dictator.

I don’t care which side you’re talking about, right? If you don’t like Biden, you think he wants to be king and you think he wants to be a dictator. If you didn’t like Trump, you thought he wanted to be king, and you thought he wanted to be a dictator. These are the sorts of things we say and we worry about because that scares us. And rightfully so, because from a human standpoint, from fallible humans, absolute power corrupts absolutely. We know that’s one of the fundamental truths of what happens with authority and how it corrupts people. And so when you have a flawed human that gets not even absolute power, but just a significant amount of control, really bad things happen. And we’ve seen that time and time again.

But the language of scripture centered around kingdom is meant to help us grasp what Christ’s rule is actually like. As bad as it can be with evil tyrants, those who have absolute power and nobody can stand in their way, that’s how good it will be with Christ as absolute authority. Right? To the extent that we see the evils and corruption of a person or a group of people who seem like they have no obstacles to what they want to do. It is also the other extreme with Christ and his mission and his plan and the fulfillment of the things that he wants to accomplish as absolute ruler over the world. And the language of scripture is really pointing us this direction repeatedly. And in their world, they certainly would have understood this.

I mean, they understood what a Roman emperor was able to do, and sort of the limits or the lack of limits, really, that they had. They did all sorts of crazy things and nobody stopped them because that’s what happens when you have this kind of power. Nobody wants to stand up and say, Yeah, you can’t marry your horse. Like, you know, you lose your head when you start talking to kings that way. Right? And this happens all through scripture, even with really good kings. Remember King David? I mean, one of the best kings in Scripture. And yet, poor Uriah, who did nothing wrong. I mean, Uriah is a loyal servant all through the whole story. He comes, he won’t even go to his wife. I mean, this is David’s whole scheme, right?

And Uriah is so loyal to David, he sleeps on the steps of the palace. And in doing nothing wrong because David has absolute power and David could do whatever David wants because he’s king, Uriah’s murdered. Right. This is the power that a king has. Nobody can stand in their way. Ahab, right? I mean, he just takes Naboth’s vineyard and kills him. Right? I mean, these are the negative sides of this that we see. Nebuchadnezzar tries to throw these three young Jewish boys into a fiery furnace because they won’t bow down to him. The king of Persia gets rid of his wife because she doesn’t please him. Now he’s going to find another wife. Right? And this whole story in the book of Esther is about kind of this weak man who has absolute power.

It’s kind of humorous, and there’s an irony here. He’s sort of controlled by the people around him. At the same time, nobody can tell him what to do. He can do whatever he wants. And so finally, when he discovers Haman for what he really is, string him up, hang him. Alright? There’s nobody standing in his way. He’s king. He can do whatever he wants. But Christ is a just and righteous, absolute monarch. He has our best interests in mind at all times. And along with that, kind of going back to some previous thoughts from the first point, he doesn’t actually need our help. That’s hard for us. We’re all about the voice of the people and democracy and all these sorts of ideas in our world.

But Christ does not need our help.

Christ doesn’t need that. The problem is I’m flawed, and you are flawed, and so our sense of justice and what we think is wise and the knowledge that we think people should have, again, it’s flawed. Christ is not. He is a righteous and just, absolute monarch who has our best interests in mind, and he doesn’t need our help to figure any of this out. And God has emphasized this repeatedly through numerous places, both in Old Testament and in New. You remember the story of Job, or Job is sort of questioning God about what’s happening, and God then reminds him, where were you when I did all this? He didn’t need Job’s help. God understood how to rule the world in righteousness and justice without Job offering his opinions about how that should go.

And so God and his son, who’s reigning at his right hand, they don’t really need Brent’s opinion. They don’t need your opinion. They understand the world that they created from nothing. They understand the things that they want and what’s best for me and what’s best for you. And what’s interesting about all of this, though, is that sometimes we give this kind of devotion and loyalty to other people. Right? Isn’t this what God criticized the Israelites for so often in the Old Testament? You know, in fact, in Jeremiah, in the prophecy of Jeremiah, he talks about the Rechabites. You know, you will devote yourself to your father. He said not to drink wine and to be nomads. And for generations you followed this guy. Look at how these people, they’ll follow this man, they’ll follow this earthly father, and yet I am your father, and you won’t listen to me, he tells them.

It’s interesting. That the one who knows best and the one who rules with justice, who cares about us immensely, is the one who people often reject and won’t listen to. Let’s look at some scripture to see some of this. I want you to look at Isaiah. In Isaiah the ninth chapter, Isaiah 9 and 11, and really various others throughout Isaiah’s prophecy. He talks about this one who’s going to come. Right? And there’s a there’s a context surrounding all of this that will kind of put this in a in a better setting. He’s using children as signs and all of that. But he says in verse 6 for to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and of peace, there will be no end. And on the throne of David and over his kingdom, and to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness. From this time forth and forevermore, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. Now, some of this sounds a lot like the kind of propaganda that you’ll hear with some governmental structures. You know, if you listen to us and you do it this way, we’re gonna have all kinds of prosperity and everybody’s gonna be doing well and all this. No. That’s not gonna be the way it is. That happens with Jesus Christ. That happens with the one who comes, who is a righteous, absolute power. Even though we are hesitant toward this idea of monarchy, a righteous monarchy is really the best way to have a group or a community, one who is as a person looking out for the best interest of everyone.

And that’s what God is promising, even in the Old Testament, of how this is all going to work. Again, in chapter 11, it says, There shall come forth a root, a shoot from the stump of Jesse, a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. Now, here’s where I was talking about earlier. He doesn’t need our help. He doesn’t need our sense of justice and our wisdom and all that. Listen, and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, and his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord, and he shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth, and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.

Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins. I can assure you this that we are not the answer. That no human rule and authority is going to help him with what he’s going to do. It’s sort of like, you know, the saying we often have about the government, you know, they get us into this mess. How are they going to get us out? Right? That’s like humanity. Right? Humanity in our sin and the things we’ve got ourselves into this mess. What makes us think that by our own human wisdom and knowledge and insights and counsel that somehow we’re going to fix all this. No, there’s one who will. It is Jesus Christ as a righteous, absolute power. And I want you to catch the end of that reading.

Because as one who is just, there’s two sides of that. There’s two elements of how this works. And the psalmist covers it well when it says, Be wise and submit to God’s King in Psalm 2. He’s going to execute judgment with the rod of his mouth, and he will smash the wicked like a potter’s vessel. You don’t mess with Jesus. What he says, you better do. And that’s what the psalmist is trying to point out to us in Psalm chapter 2. But he laughs at those who try to work against him. All these humanistic things that exist in our world. That’s exactly the kind of thing that’s being discussed here. And here’s talking about the nations raging and the people’s plotting in vain. This is Psalm 2 in verse 1.

The kings of the earth, because they’re kind of in a monarchy sort of society. But these kings of the earth are plotting against the Lord and his anointed. But he just laughs at them. If you have control and someone who has no ability to stop your control thinks they’re going to stop it, what’s your reaction? It’s laughable.

And there’s nobody who’s going to stand against them. Today he said to me, You are my son. Today I have begotten you. I’ll make the nations your inheritance, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. Now, therefore, O kings, be wise, be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. So there’s two sides of this.

They’ll be protected, they’ll be delivered, they will be saved. But those who stand against his power and his might, which you read about in Ephesians chapter 1 a few moments ago, those who oppose his glory, and try to stand against him as head, not just of the church, but really head of creation. Things are going to go very poorly for people who do that.

4. The Importance of a Heart of Submission

So then, as we move forward from this, I think what we need to understand is the importance of having a heart of submission. And I think where I really want us to focus as we move forward with this idea, and I do want to come back to this a number of times throughout the year, the idea of authority and what this is going to look like and how we use scripture to figure this out. I want us to come back to this thought from Ephesians chapter 5, a little bit later in the text that we started with. Where it says, beginning in verse 8, walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true. Right?

Fruit’s pretty important. You know, if you have a garden, you’ve planted something, you go out and things aren’t right, you know you didn’t do something properly. The fruit tells you a lot. I’m not very good at it, so sometimes I have to learn. I realize I probably didn’t use the right soil, or I gave it too much water, or not enough water, or not enough sunlight, or too much sunlight. Right? The fruit tells us something is not right when it doesn’t look the way it’s supposed to. And so the fruit of what’s happening in our world tells us something’s not right. It’s not that hard to see.

We realize things are not right there. The answer isn’t what God gives us. And so he says, walk as children of light and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. That’s the goal. Try to discern what’s pleasing to the Lord. Or later, he says, understand what the will of the Lord is. To the extent that we do that, not just as a church, but I would say, to the extent that we do that as humanity, we actually limit the damage of corrupting power. That’s a hard goal. But just imagine if everyone in the world had this mission. Right? If somehow we could convince everyone to try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord, and that was their goal, that was their mission. How often will we be dealing with corrupting power and authority?

How often will we be dealing with greed and with selfishness? With people who were only looking out for themselves and they don’t care about others. Even within the children of Israel, this is a problem. We’ve got texts like Deuteronomy, or excuse me, Ezekiel 34 and parts of Jeremiah where it talks about these fattened sheep, the rulers, the leaders, pushing aside all the others because they’re really just looking out for their own self interest. Oh, we see that all the time. But what if, as an individual, as a church, which is mostly what we control, but even as a society, we are trying to discern what’s pleasing to the Lord. What would that look like in the end? Well, how do we do that? Well, we don’t try to discern what’s pleasing to the Lord by deciding to follow a group of people and what they say and what they think.

He’s given us a way, he revealed his word to us. Christ sent ambassadors for his kingdom, inspired writers. This is the message that they gave us. This is what we have. And so, in our effort to understand the will of the Lord, to discern what’s pleasing to him, he’s given us a lot. Now we have to understand how to use it and how to think through it. These are the king’s edicts. This is the story he wants us to read. This is the message he wants us to see. And here’s the thing whether or not someone else agrees with it, or some other church agrees with it, or some other preacher agrees with it, or whatever. I don’t care. It doesn’t make any difference at all.

What matters is that we’re discerning what is revealed to us in the pages of Scripture, and we are seeking to honor and glorify our King with a heart that is submissive to him. Jesus told the disciples, all authority. Notice that, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And he says, I’m with you to the end of the age. These commands, what he gave his disciples and their mission, it is in existence until Christ returns. That will never change. And what he tells them is, you are a messengers.

You are my ambassadors. You go for my kingdom. And as part of my kingdom, I want you to go out and find others to follow my kingdom, to fall under my authority and to be subservient to my will. Go and make disciples. Then he tells them how to do that. That’s not even what we’re really focused on this morning. We’re just talking about the authority of Jesus Christ. He has all authority. And he tells them, you go find others who understand my authority and who I’m at who I am. I have all authority and teach them that and teach them to continue to observe all that I command. All of it. I don’t know, if kingship’s so hard for us to grasp. I guess, and forgive me, ladies, for using this example ahead of time, but it’s just, it works.

None of us have ever served a king. Okay, so we don’t really understand that. But think about a bride preparing for her wedding. You know, and the things that she wants. And it’s her day. She gets to have what she wants. What if you just like that doesn’t seem that important? You know, I know she wanted some red roses over here, but let’s just go get some carnations. It’s not that big of a deal. How does that go for you? I mean, you see my point? It’s like when we have expressed what we want and we have control over that moment, that’s what we expect. And details matter. And so I want us to understand as king, one who has all authority, details matter. And the things that he’s told us and what he’s revealed to us, he wants us to look into that.

And he wants us to come to an understanding, to learn about him and to learn about his will, to learn about his mission, and to submit to him as the one who knows what’s best. And so we have this problem that we have to attack. The problem of some who just think authority is not really a big deal. You know, it’s the spirit of our age, right? Authority’s bad. We just need to express ourselves and be myself and you know, you be you and all this kind of garbage that makes no sense. And then we have the other side of this, which is kind of the codifying of human tradition as if it’s God’s law and demanding that others follow it, which is the very sin Jesus condemned repeatedly with the Pharisees.

And to have any chance at all in our endeavor to discern what is pleasing, we have to be willing to admit that it’s not about my personal self-expression or the comfort of long-held traditions that turn determine what pleased God. Neither of those actually really matter. It’s that we come to an understanding of Scripture. Let me just say about this second one, and it’s not because it’s a bigger deal or more prevalent, but I do want to talk about kind of this codifying of human tradition before we end. You know, sometimes the things I hear is like, well, so many people believe it. If you if you disagree with that, think about all the people you’re disagreeing with. You do realize like every tradition and heritage makes that same argument.

You know, like if you’re a Methodist, or you’re a Catholic, or you’re a Baptist, or wherever you come from, you know, and you start to question and say, well, I don’t know, I’m not sure that’s well, you know, think about all the people that came before you who don’t think that. Are you really that wise to think that you can disagree with the hundreds of people who are part of the Methodist tradition that have said that this is what the truth is? You realize every single group does the same thing. So before we go down that road, we better think about our logic. And realize that’s not where the answer is. The answer’s here. And we face both of these as a people to various degrees as we are influenced the flow of culture.

Conclusion

But God calls us to be different, to be unique, to be his people who are attached to him as head. That’s where we will experience the growth that comes from God, Colossians tells us. And that’s my appeal to you this morning. Now, when Jesus says he has all authority in heaven and earth and go and make disciples of all nations, he tells them how to do that. He says, You go and you baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It’s pretty clear. We can do that even today. If you realize this morning that you need to give your life to Jesus Christ as King, as ultimate authority and power, that you haven’t done that. Jesus’ message to his disciples is very clear in Matthew 28.

He wants them to go out and make disciples, and this is a participable phrase, right? It’s explaining the manner in which you do this. Go making disciples, baptizing them. This is how you do it. And there’s certainly all kinds of symbolism here and figures that we could go into. But the simple truth is, Jesus says, go make thy disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Why would we do that? It’s it’s a death, it’s a resurrection. This is something they’re very familiar with in their world, the idea of cleansing or even washings or baptisms, that you’re giving yourself to this new movement, whatever it is. This is the movement, I would say. This is the new covenant, this is the ruler in Yahweh and His Son, the Messiah, who has come to save the world.

So it’s a little bit bigger than all the other things that do this sort of stuff. But he’s saying, this is what you do. You give your life to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And then you listen to them. You observe their commands to the end of the age. We would love to help you start that path this morning. Can we help you once you come and give your life to Jesus Christ as Lord and Jesus?