This sermon delves into the significance of Jesus' finished work on the cross, highlighting how it marks the end of the old creation order and the beginning of a new creation. It emphasizes the importance of believers actively participating in advancing the kingdom of God on earth, understanding that salvation is just the starting point. The speaker encourages a practical application of faith through actions like street preaching, pro-life activism, and serving others, emphasizing the need for genuine, impactful Christian living.

Thank you. Actually, the thing I'm really probably best known for is I was the original drummer for the Beatles, and I was also an Apollo astronaut. Just had that in mind. No, I'm actually the entertainment, warming everybody up for the real show tonight, which is James White and Pat Nicarado. But I appreciate you guys being here. And what I want to do, having to move things around a little bit because of some sound issues, we're going to watch a brief clip from the new video that Pat and I are producing called Go, Stand, Speak, that will touch on the subject matter for what I want to share with you this evening. As the brother that introduced me mentioned, a lot of you probably know me for the video Amazing Grace History and Theology of Calvinism. I'm proudly Reformed. I believe the Reformed doctrines of faith and soteriology and other distinctions connected with the Reformed faith are, in fact, biblically faithful. But I'm not weird about it. I would encourage anybody that holds to that particular belief system to have a good Wesleyan in their life. And if you're here and you're a follower of Wesleyan soteriology, you believe in prevenient grace, you know what, that's fine with me. I think there's a tendency sometimes in the church to be more Greek than Hebraic. Hebrews were able to handle antinomies and paradox and things and not worry about it as much as Westerners. We tend to want to compartmentalize things and put everything in a nice little neat categories. And I think that can really be a problem. In fact, I really view, in some respects, this video as being a sequel to Amazing Grace because there's an antidote to it. This is what I mean by that. I have seen, in the Reformed world, a tendency to be overly intellectual, to equate knowing about God as being the same as knowing God. I've seen this in my own life. I got saved, radically saved at 26, was street preaching within a matter of days after getting saved because I was told that's what normal Christians did. I wanted to be a normal Christian. I was out there excited about my faith. I did all kinds of crazy things. And then I became, quote, theologically sophisticated. And I started reading the big books. Not that I'm that theologically sophisticated, to be honest with you, but I'm somewhat of a poser. And I began to see in myself and some of the people I hung around with a tendency to talk about God but not do a whole lot about it. You know what I'm saying? And having been immersed and having become something of a darling within the Reformed world, and believe me, I've met a lot of really awesome people. I mean, R.C. Sproul is a man who lives out his faith. His son, Junior, in particular, he street preaches, goes to abortion clinics. He's really living it out. Some of the other guys that are in the video. But I've also met people that really wouldn't lift a finger to put their reputations or their necks on the line to really serve the purposes of the kingdom. And so I view, when Pat approached me about doing Go, Stand, Speak, and through that I've gotten to know Jeff and some of you others, and mostly Jeff, first time we met, but I watch a lot of him on video now, so I feel like I know him. And I'll tell you, this is what I want. This is what this nation needs in this hour. We're at a tipping point, people. We're at a tipping point. I mean, Elena Kagan's our new Supreme Court Justice. And what's happening with Prop 8, I mean, this country's almost certainly gonna sanction homosexual marriage. I'm doing a video on that right now, by the way, called Is Gay Okay? What Every Christian Needs to Know. And that is the canary in the coal mine, I believe. And we literally sanction same-sex marriage as a nation. We have crossed the Rubicon. We have entered into a place this nation has never known. We can already see signs of God's sanctions and judgments all around us. But this is a critical hour in our nation's history. And if we don't see the church rise up, if we don't see some fire in men's bones, I view street preaching at this point as like shock treatment, as like something that God is gonna do and he's gonna anoint and he's gonna raise up and sin. So we'll see this nation start to rock in a time where it's gonna be rocking anyway. So I'm just so thankful for this video. But anyway, the topic I'm gonna chair on is my favorite topic in the world. And that is the kingship, the lordship of Jesus Christ over the nations. This is something that, you cut me and this is what I believe. You know, in fact, I'll say this. You know, Calvinism was not primarily about the five points. His soteriology is as important as those things are. That was not his passion. That was not, in fact, as you probably know, it was the Synod of Dort, the Arminian, the Remonstrants, all this that gave us the five points that codify them. Calvin was about the glory of God, as was Luther, all these guys. The glory of God, his kingship over every area of life, our responsibility to go out into all the world and disciple nations, taking every thought captive and obedience to him. That is what Calvinism is at its heart. And in that sense, John Wesley was a far better Calvinist than a lot of the Calvinists, the so-called reformed people I meet. So anyway, to introduce our topic, I thought I'd show you just a brief clip from Go, Stand, Speak. I don't know how well you're gonna be able to hear this, but we're gonna give it a shot, then I'll get into it. The first I am, so, as it ought to be said by the Apostolic Congress of Jerusalem, to present the Gospel of the Lord in the same place as the Roman general should have announced the ascension of the new Caesar, to the front, town squares, markets, arenas, and as they say, in your face. Did early Christians, in faithful followers of Christ ever sense the word and voice of the Apostle Paul, not ashamed of the Gospel? Okay, what I wanna talk about is what I believe is the ultimate mystery behind all the mysteries of the Bible, which basically deals with the kingdom of God, the lordship of Christ, his intent and purpose in creating a bride, to redeem the bride, and betroth himself to the bride. This weaves itself into virtually every nook and cranny in the scriptures. Once you start seeing it, once you start smelling it out, it's everywhere, it is everywhere. We're gonna look at that. I wanna begin as kind of a prayer in Ephesians one, where Paul was speaking to the church at Ephesus, which of course was an intellectually sophisticated city. We know in the book of Revelation that the Ephesians were people that understood doctrine well. They were very knowledgeable people for the most part. And yet Paul talked about something that went beyond mere knowledge. Something that you can suss out with your rational minds. He talked about the need for a spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of God, that the God of our father, Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory, would grant unto us something supernaturally that would just work up in our spirits and open up our spiritual eyes so that we would know what? The hope of our calling, the hope of our calling, the surpassing greatness of his power in us who believe in the glorious riches of his inheritance in us. This is not something you can get with your rational mind, people. This is something the Holy Spirit has got to reveal to you. Then he goes on to say, which he worked when he raised Jesus from the dead, raised him up and seated him with him in heavenly places far above all power, principality, and rule, and gave him a name above every other name. And listen, he says, not only in this age, but in the age to come. So where was the emphasis about this present reign of Christ, the power of God over the nations? Most Christians in this country are waiting on it. It's a future event. They're waiting on the rapture. They're waiting on something to happen so that Jesus can come down and defeat the forces of darkness and set up his kingdom. And I'm not gonna get into the specifics of eschatological views of your historical pre-meal find. A lot of great men and women of God are. But folks, we need to dial in on the fact that there's something that's going on right now. And this is what Paul was talking about to the extent where he had to actually remind them that there is a future event happening. But the total emphasis was on this present moment, right now, Revelation 1.5. Jesus is the rulers over the kings of the earth. Amen? And this is connected also with Ephesians 1.10, another mystery. Make ye known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven, and things under the earth. So I wanna talk briefly about this kingdom and look at it from a couple different perspectives that maybe you've never fully considered before. I'm gonna do that by taking us to John chapter 19 verses 28 and 30. If you wanna look in your Bibles, you can just listen to me read from the scriptures. I trust you'll trust me to read them properly. John, by the way, I'm sure everybody knows this, but just briefly review. John was the fourth gospel written. There were three gospels, what are called the synoptic gospels, that were written one after the other, each using the others and all the common oral traditions. And of course, these were all written by eyewitnesses of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, brought to their remembrance certain things, and each had a particular dynamic, a particular lens that they brought to their narrative. But it was John that kicked back and thought about it all. John, who's Jesus' best friend, the man who laid his head on Jesus' chest. And he watched the testimony of Christ's life, digested it, meditated on it, then also watched this nascent church beginning to emerge and all the things that were happening. And John waited and waited and waited until the Holy Spirit said, now write your gospel. And John's gospel stands alone from the other three. It opens up with what? A creation account, a retelling of the creation account. What is John, in the beginning, in the beginning, what is John getting at? He's describing a new creation in his gospel account. By the way, just a little freebie to throw out there, if you ever thought about this, but there are some things that are so important in Scripture that all three of the synoptic gospels touch on them. Two of them are the transfiguration and the other is the Olivet Discourse. All three of the synoptic gospels talk about this moment where Jesus took his four of his disciples and they went up and they saw him transfigure. They saw him become what God intended man to be, glorified. What a mind-blowing moment that was for them. And yet John's gospel doesn't talk about that. Also, the whole destruction of Jerusalem and the sign of the end and the return of Christ, all these things, critically important things, John's gospel also doesn't have an Olivet Discourse. You know why that is? Anybody besides James White wanna hazard a guess? John has a transfiguration account. John, who? John has an Olivet Discourse. What is it? The Book of Revelation? I mean, why talk about a prefiguring, just a glimpse into Christ's glory that they saw on the Mount of Transfiguration when Paul saw it, excuse me, John saw it in its absolute, complete manifestation. Do you know that right now, the second person of the Godhead, eternally God, sits at the right hand of the Father as a glorified, transfigured human being? I mean, the implications of that are absolutely, just mind-boggling. And John saw him and fell at his feet as a dead man. And also, the whole Book of Revelation is basically a retelling of the Olivet Discourse and the things that were about to happen. Anyway, I threw that in for free. But in John chapter 19, boy, I love this. Hoo, I love this. The death of Jesus, John, and of course, if you read John's gospel, who's in charge in John's gospel? I mean, one example, Gardening Assembly. It was only John's gospel where they came to arrest him and they, hey, who are you looking for? Jesus. Oh, I'm he. I am that I am. I'm Yahweh. What happened? They all fall down, man. I mean, John has Jesus, he's a heat-seeking missile. The entire gospel account, he's just cruising through, disappearing, reappearing, saying things. He's in total, complete, absolute charge to the point where he can literally just, every one of you guys fall down. Okay, get up, come on, take me away. I got an appointment in Jerusalem. I got a cross I gotta go to. Complete charge. And so on the cross, you know, Jesus is looking around, doing this, doing that, forgiving this, okay, this. And then seeing that all these things were accomplished, all these things were fulfilled, John 19, 28 to 30. After this, knowing that all was now finished, said to fulfill the scripture, I thirst. A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of sour wine on a hyssop branch. What's the significance of the hyssop branch? That's what the priest would use in the Old Testament, right, to sprinkle. So all this is speaking of the priestly sacrifices and all that. And held it to his mouth. And when Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, what, everybody say it together. It is finished, tetelestai, it is finished. And he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. He said, okay, now it's time to die. I'm in charge of that too. Now I'm gonna die, boom. And it was over. Now the word tetelestai, you probably heard some sermons on this. I'll make this brief. But it had a lot of different meanings in Jesus' day. First, a servant would use it when reporting to his master. I have completed the work assigned to me. I've tetelestai, everything he told me to do, I've accomplished. Of course, Jesus did that. He came to serve his father's will, not his own will. It was also used by a priest when examining his sacrifice. Perfect sacrifice, land without spot or wrinkle. Everything's in place, tetelestai, it's perfect. Okay, when an artist completed a picture or a sculpture or a writer or whatever, they might say, perfect, tetelestai, I got it exactly the way it's supposed to be. This is good. And a banker and accountant, in relation to the payment of debts. When somebody had a debt in ancient times and it was paid off, they would write tetelestai on the banknote saying it has been paid in full. You're all smart enough to be able to extrapolate out from that and see how Jesus did all that on the cross. Amen. But what else was finished? What else was finished? It's already been alluded to, but number one, all the Old Testament prophecies concerning the Messiah and his victory over sin and Satan. All of them were fulfilled. All of them were complete. All of them were just brought to a nice, tidy end. And there's lots of verses we can look at in the Bible that Jesus fulfilled through his sacrifice in doing that, completing the Old Testament promises. One of my favorite is what's called the Proto-Evangelion, the Genesis 3.15, where God says, look, I've put enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. By the way, how many people are on the planet right now? Anybody know? Roughly about six billion people. But there's a sense in which the population of the planet Earth right now is how many? Two. Who are the two people on the planet right now, from a federal sense? First Adam and the last Adam, right? We're all born in the first Adam. Everybody here have a body? Raise your hand if you don't have a body. Anybody here without a body? Just a spirit that came in here? Okay, I see one in the back. There's always one person in the back like that. But we all got our bodies from Adam, amen? What else did we get from Adam? A sin nature, totally depraved, selfish, self-seeking, self-referential nature. That's what we inherited from Adam. Then Jesus came as a new Adam, a last Adam, 1 Corinthians 15. And then we're what? Born again into him. Everybody's in one or the other. So then there's that sense in which the population of the world is two. And you see this dichotomy throughout all of scripture. You have the vine of the Earth, you have the vine of Christ. You have the harlot, you have the bride. You have the sheep, you have the goats. You have, you know, there's just tons of them in scripture. Okay, but I love this. God says, okay, I've set the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. And I've set enmity between the two of them. And we see it all around us. And this whole thing, the Prop 8 and gay marriage is only gonna really clarify what side of this fence people are on. And I'll tell you folks, ain't too many people on our side on this one. And the problem is that a lot of the people on our side don't really know how to be effectively on God's side. They got all kinds of weird ideas in their head. They use the wrong scriptures. There's a lot of, that's what this video is about, is equip you to be really ready to deal with this particular issue. Is it's a thorny one, it's a big one. But I love it. He says, I've set enmity between the two of them, but what's gonna happen? The seed of the woman is gonna crush your head. Now you're gonna bruise his heel or crush the same word in the Hebrews used. But whatever happened to Jesus' heel, which was horrific. I mean, the way he suffered was unbelievable. That's 10 sermons just going into what he did on the cross and why he wept blood and why he said, father, if there's any way, take this cup from me, because what he went through on the cross, we'll spend all eternity plumbing the depths of it. But whatever happened to him on the cross, guess what? Happened to his heel, happened to Satan's head. How many people have ever had your heel bruised or your head bruised? I mean, is Satan alive and well on planet earth? Somebody please help me out here. Is he alive? Yes. Is he well? He's walking, he's got a deathly head wound. He's staggering around. And the only reason he has any power at all is because we give it to him, half the time. Okay, number two, all the types and typical prophecies under the Old Testament law were finished, abolished, and explained. Jesus became, for example, the bronze serpent on the pole in Numbers 21. Jesus became an Esau, a firstborn red man who had his birthright taken from him and given to Jacob. Israel, the church who grabbed onto his bruised heel. And when we appear before our father, he feels us and feels robes of righteousness. He smells us, he smells Christ, and that's why we're saved. And if you caught that, get the tape, meditate on it. But that's a big one. There's all kinds of unbelievable recapitulations, types and anti-types in the scripture. Here's one that, I'm gonna take a moment here and just speculate. Can I do that first? Is that okay if I speculate about this? I'm not saying this is gospel. This is just speculation. And when we're in heaven, I want you to come up to me and tell me, hey, you were wrong, or hey, you were right, dude, give me five. And we'll find out. But one of my favorite types to the anti-type Christ is of course the story of Abraham and Isaac. We all know that. I mean, it's just staggering. You know, you look at the story and take your son, your firstborn son, your only son who you love, and go out and sacrifice him. Okay, Lord, I'll do it. Put some on, you know, gets a servant, gets some wood, hello. Puts him on a donkey, off they go. And then the Bible says that in the region of Mount Moriah, which is not on Mount Moriah, it's just in the region, which by the way, many years later, a city was built there. You know what that city's name is? Jerusalem, that's right. And Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place. Now, how did that work? I mean, how did Old Testament saints hear from God? I'm sure you've all wondered that. I wonder it. I mean, I have no idea. Probably happened in a thousand different ways. Probably audibly sometimes. You know, their heart, who knows? But here's my theory as to what happened. Abraham lifted up his eyes, and he saw a hill, an outcropping of stone, and in the shadows of that particular time of the day, looked at it and said, that looks like a dead head. Looks like death. And the Holy Spirit said, that's the place to do it, right there. And he put the wood on Isaac's back and had him carry the wood up, you know. You all know the rest of it, connect the dots. Now, let's jump ahead to a guy by the name of David, who was a type of Christ, amen? Jesus was the son of David, all kinds of types. And Goliath, his number one adversary, was a big six, six, six dude, right? Six cubits, six fingers, six toes, there's six, six, six written all over the dude. And David takes five smooth stones, says forget Saul's armor, all kinds of stuff there you can preach sermons on. Takes one stone, kills him. Now, what happens next to Goliath? He cuts off his head. I love that. Cuts off his head, come on now. I love, you know, another type is Abraham going out to fight for his buddy, his nephew Lot. And also the people of Sodom, that's interesting, we don't have time to go there, but he fought for the people of Sodom and then later interceded for them. But anyway, he goes out and the Bible says, after the slaughter of the kings, Jesus appears to him. Not Jesus, but who? Melchizedek, you know, this king of Salem, king of righteousness, king of Salem. Shows up, a Christophany, most scholars believe, it was just an Old Testament. Jesus appears all the time, by the way, I don't know if you know that. He's showing up all the time in the Old Testament. And he appears to him and says, after the slaughter of the kings, he ends up getting blessed by God. Come on now. But anyway, David takes the head, cuts it off, and then goes, presents it to the city of Jerusalem. Now being a good observant Jew, he wouldn't take the head into the city because a dead body would contaminate the holy city. So he would find some place to hold it up, presumably a high hill, and hold the head up and say, hey everybody, look, God gave us victory over our enemies. Goliath of Gath, Goliath of Gath. I wonder, just wonder if that name didn't over time turn into Golgotha. The place of the skull. And my bet to you is, when we get to heaven, you come find me and we'll talk about this, is that Jesus was crucified within inches of where Abraham offered up Isaac and where David put the head of Goliath. Because God is that kind of artist. I mean, he is such a composer, such a playwright, such a choreographer, has a right brain artist type. This is my, the number one way, one of the main ways I relate to God is he is the greatest storyteller ever. Lord of the Rings, as great as it is, lame compared to the Bible. Okay, but anyway, that's speculation. We had a little bit of fun with that. I hope you had fun. I had fun sharing that. And somebody's gonna sit here and go, he's a heretic. I'm gonna write this down. Okay, the righteous, number three, the righteous requirements of the law were satisfied and fulfilled. In the interest of time, let me move on. Fourth, all the power of Satan and sin was finished for God's people on the cross. You know, here's something, how do we miss this? How do we miss this? Jesus said, look, if you see me cast out demons by the finger of God, no, the kingdom of God is here. Old Testament, nobody. All the miracles that happened in the Old Testament, nobody ever cast out a demon. David played a harp and soothed and calmed the demons and saw, but there's no record of anybody casting out a demon. But Jesus came casting out demons. Then he went out and said his disciples and saw them cast out demons. He said, if you see this sign, know that the kingdom of God has been here. John, gospel. Now the ruler of this world has been judged. Now he's been cast out. Jesus said, if you bind the strong men, you go out and plunder his house. What is it about the church today that we put all that stuff off in the future, that we don't see what he did on the cross, how he crushed Satan's head? Number five, the righteous wrath God has against sin was satisfied and was extinguished. And a man of God, I know years ago, shared with me an analogy that I've used in street preaching and campus preaching and a number of times, which is the analogy of a fire break. You see a fire coming. It's consuming forests, whatever. One of the ways you stop a fire is you build a break. You burn a controlled fire area and you burn up everything that can be burned. So when the fire gets to that area, it can't go any further anymore. It stops, it dies. That's what the cross is. God poured out his wrath on sin and just burned the whole thing up. And as we go to the cross, there's nothing left to burn. I mean, God's wrath against sin has been satisfied, has been accomplished. Okay, I want to close with two more ways. You ready for this? Where it is finished. Number one, Mark 14, 22. The Passover meal, Mark's record of the Passover meal, Luke's record mirrors this very closely. What was the Passover? It was a liturgy. It was a religious ritual that was part of the Jewish tradition. Everybody knows that. One of the key liturgies or rituals in the Jewish calendar. All kinds of redemptive implications to it. Obviously, coming out of Egypt, Pharaoh, the angel of death, the blood on the lentils, all this stuff. But in Mark's gospel, it recounts some details of the Passover meal. So it says, as they were eating, they took bread and, Jesus took bread and blessed it and broke it and gave it to them and said, take heed, this is my body. And he took a cup, which he had given thanks. The Greek word is eucharisto. And he gave it to them and they all drank of it. And he said to them, this is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many. And then he adds a very kind of unusual statement. By the way, you find something unusual in scripture, you ought to camp out on it. What does that mean? What's up with that? Truly, truly, I say to you, I shall not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the day that I drink it with you new. Anybody know from memory? In my father's kingdom. Everybody say father's kingdom. New in the kingdom of God. And then they went out and sung a hymn and they went out into the night to the Mount of Olives. Now there were four cups that represent the structure of the Passover meal. The first cup is the cup of blessing, the festival day. It's called the Kiddush cup. The second cup of wine. This is what Jesus went through. He was an observant Jew. He went through this standard liturgy that every Jew went through. They all knew it like the back of their hands. The second cup of wine occurs really at the beginning of the Passover liturgy itself and involves the singing of Psalm 113. Then there's a third cup, the cup of blessing, which involves the actual meal, the unleavened bread and so on. So when Jesus took the cup and blessed it and said, this is my blood, this is my bread's my body, he was taking the third cup and doing it as part of the Passover meal. Then they would sing more songs, the Hillel Psalms, Psalm 114, 115, 116, 117, 118. And then having sung those Psalms, you would then immediately proceed to the fourth cup, which is the climax of the Passover meal. And there's stuff I can go into, I just, interest of time, I'm not gonna go into it. Just keep it at the fourth cup. So when Jesus said, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until I drink it with you in my father's kingdom, what was he doing? He was stopping the Passover liturgy. He was interrupting it. And to an observant Jew, what in the world is he doing? We sang the Psalms, now we're supposed to take the fourth cup and say, no, I'm not gonna drink it with you. I'm not gonna drink it with you until I drink it with you in the kingdom of God, you in my father's kingdom. Okay, then Jesus goes out, Gethsemane where he touched on that, goes to the cross, heat-seeking missile, gotta do this, gotta do that, gotta, okay. Seeing that all these things were fulfilled, he said, I thirst. And they came and they dipped sponge into sour wine, fruit of the vine. Anybody here getting goosebumps besides me? The fruit of the vine. You guys get goosebumps? Y'all, you tight reform guys. He dips the sponge into the bitter wine. For Jesus, it was a bitter cup. It was a bitter, bitter cup. But nonetheless, it was the fruit of the vine. And then he said, it's finished. What's finished? The Passover meal's finished, which means I will not drink it with you until I drink it with you new in my father's kingdom. Now, this is not putting off, minimizing in any way the future return of Christ, the ultimate consummation of the marriage supper of the Lamb, all that, that is still out there. It is what all of us long for. In fact, it's what we are looking forward to and hastening. This is what gets me about people that give me a hard time about not thinking Tim LaHaye, who I know and is a great man. I mean, Tim LaHaye, I'm not fit to untie the laces of his shoes. Let me just say that. He's an awesome man of God. But I think his eschatology is abysmal. But the accusation is often made that, well, we're putting this, we're not longing for the return of the Lord. I'm going, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? I mean, this is exactly what I'm doing because there's an arc that has to be built. It's like the days of Noah. There's an arc that has to be built and all the elect have to be brought in and there's things that have to do. If you really long for the Lord's appearing, there are nations to disciple. Why is, what is it about today's church? We're the only team on the field that says, coach, can I get out of the game? I'm all out of here. Don't have me on the field anymore. Woo, get me up in the stands. Why? Is it any wonder we're losing? I mean, is it any wonder we're losing this nation? Listen, folks, this is not Satan's fault. This is not Satan's fault. Now, it is in other parts of the world where Satan has not yet been bound by the gospel preaching, where he's still being given. I mean, he's ultimately bound by Jesus, but he's still, because the gospel is not being preached and the kingdom of God has not salted that area, that he still has a measure of authority and you see all kinds of dark, demonic things going on, and it takes a while for the leaven of the gospel to get in and leaven the loaf and start creating Christian civilization. But that's not an excuse in America. We've had men and women that have gone before us that have laid down their lives, pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, and perfectly though, they did it, to create a Christian civilization, and we have ruined it in almost just one generation. And we're gonna have to give an account for it. You know, we will be, do you know that you will be judged as an American? I mean, God's, and I don't get all this. I don't understand how all this works, but the Bible makes it clear. He's gonna judge the nations and we're gonna have to give an account. It's not gonna, obviously, it's not a judgment of condemnation, but we're all gonna appear before the being of Christ. We're all gonna give an account. Like Paul, I'm looking for a better resurrection. I'm trying to sanctify its self-interest. What can I do to be faithful to God? Because as stars differ from stars in glory, so shall our resurrection bodies will be, and some of us will be supernova that give off light and life, and others are gonna be kind of small little dwarf stars. I mean, that's just a ridiculous analogy, I guess, but I'll throw it out there for your consideration. But we're gonna give an account for our stewardship of this nation. We are the church militant. Peter came, Jesus came to Peter, said, let me wash your feet. And Peter said, typical Peter, oh, no, Lord, I must wash your feet. He said, Peter, if I don't wash your feet, you have no part of me. Okay, well, then in that case, wash my whole body. I mean, what's up with that? What's up with that? The feet of the body of Christ is that, which is why it's significant that Jesus' heel was bruised. It's that part of God's incarnational work in the earth that is touching the earth, that is on the earth, and we get dirty. As a church militant, we get dirty. We need to be cleansed. We need to go to the house of the Lord. We need to receive the blessing of communion and be washed by the word and washed by prayer and sing the word and eat the word. We need all these benefits to keep ourselves revved up and clean and moving forward. Once we enter for the church triumphant in heaven, so I could talk about that, by the way. Heaven, you know, it's an important, but it's not the end of the world. You know that. I mean, God is one day gonna unite heaven and earth. That's another dualistic thing, but anyway, I can't go there, slap myself there. So there's, I totally lost my train of thought. I slapped the thought right out of my head. Okay, it's finished. Okay, last thing. How's my time? Oh, I'm gonna be done. Don't you love that? Normally, I get done early. That's incredible, but I'm gonna give more time to James. The other way it's finished. Did you like the Passover thing? Was that good? Did that help you? Did that bless you? Did that rev you up, give you some gas in your tank? I mean, is that gonna drive you down the road for? Okay, good. What's another thing that was finished? John 20, again, main. John 20, verse one. John says, now, on the first day of the new year, Mary Magdalene, on the first day of the new year, on the Jewish system of the new year, what day of the week? A day, B day, first day of the week. And that's, by the way, that's why, in a nutshell, the church worships on the first day of the week, and why we see it came in on Easter. Okay, and by the way, when Mary went in on the first day of the week, what did she see there? She saw two angels. Cool, and one was at the foot of the stone where they laid Jesus, and the other one was at the head. And what would that make you think of? Yeah, that's right, the mercy seat. Two angels, mercy seat. Ooh, God's an artist. He's just an artist. All this stuff just clicks and fits, and it's just so unbelievable. And then later, John 19, on the evening of that day, the first day. First, everybody say the first day of the week. Thank you for humoring me. The door's being locked, we're scared. The disciples, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, peace be with you. And this is, I mean, what was the next thing he did? He breathed on them. He said, receive the Holy Spirit. What does that make you think of? What else does God breathe on, the breath of life? You know, some Greeks came to see Jesus. I mean, you know, yet thinking like a Jew raised under Pharisaical Judaism, Temple Judaism, you know, their expectation of the Messiah was political ruler gonna come down, kick butt, take names, we're gonna be in charge, this is great. We think Jesus is the one. We think Jesus is the one. Then up and down, up and down, he gets in trouble, and they're, is this working? Is this gonna work or not? Finally, he hits his groove, and man, things are starting to happen. And some Greeks show up and say, we wanna see this guy. I mean, that's like analogous to Steven Spielberg who's outside, wants to do a movie on your life, 60 Minutes, and they're going, this is finally happening, man, this is. Jesus, and they say, hey, there's some Greeks down here. And he goes, well, unless a corn of wheat falls on the ground and dies, it just abides alone. If it dies, it brings forth much fruit. Oh, okay, thank you, Lord, for that little agronomy lesson. I guess we needed that. Hello. Um, that's, okay, some Greeks out there. What was Jesus saying? Look, I'm not gonna go out and see him. There's all kinds of people who need to see me, but I got a job, I got a cross to go to, I gotta die, but I'm gonna raise up people, I'm gonna send up Saul of Tarsus, I'm gonna knock him off his horse and redeem him, and I'm gonna send him to the Greeks and other people along with him. I got a plan for the Greeks. It's to reproduce myself in this new race or a people called the Redeemed. So Jesus in the upper room breathes on his disciples, and they become new creation people. Okay, so on the first day of the week, Sunday. Now, let's back up to, um, oh, I didn't finish my notes. What do I do now? Oh, I'll do it from memory. In John 18, which was the account of, is it John 18 or John 19 is the account of the Pilate? John 18. Jesus appears before Pilate as the consummation of this, of the Adamic race, the perfect Adam, the perfect Adam, the one who did not, by the way, backing up Adam, you know, was, well, I won't go there. Okay, so Jesus shows up, and Pilate says, behold the man, or literally, behold man, behold man. So Jesus stood before Pilate as the consummation of the first creation, as the perfect Adam who was obligated to fulfill the law because Adam aided the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The one thing that, amazing grace, we'll get into this in a little bit, the one thing that Adam got that was like God as a result of his rebellion was moral knowledge because the Bible says they become like us in the good and evil. Problem is Adam wasn't ready to process that aspect of God's nature. He wasn't mature yet. He needed to live and function in the garden and eat from the tree of life and walk with Jesus in the cool of the day and learn and grow and learn and grow until he would, I believe he would have reached a point where God says, okay, now I'm gonna unveil this next aspect of my character to you in preparation for my end game, which is to have you rule and reign over a new creation. So now you can eat the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but he jumped the gun, ate of it, and now he was obligated to fulfill perfectly moral righteousness by perfect obedience, which of course he was miserable in doing. And everybody has been miserable in doing it, but Jesus did it perfectly, fulfilled the law perfectly. So now he stood before Pilate, representative of human government, humanistic government. He stands before this judge and the judge goes, the man, the cold man, and then Jesus goes, and on the sixth day of the week, six being the number of men, on the sixth day of the week, Jesus, and by the way, there's lots of sixes on the sixth day of the week. It was the sixth hour of the day when the day became dark and everything else. Jesus dies on the seventh day of the week, the Sabbath. He rests in a tomb, is dead, but then on the new day, the first day of the week, Jesus comes out alive, victorious. So when he was saying it is finished on the cross, one of the things I believe he was also saying is the whole old creation order is done. A new Adam is here. A new Adam is gonna come out of the grave here momentarily, and a new creation is gonna come rushing into this world like a freight train from heaven, carrying enormous deposits of grace and victory and wonder and splendor and all manner of things we eyes, not seeing, ears, not heard, nor listening to the heart of man. And we have tasted of this heavenly gift, haven't we, Hebrew says, through the new birth. We've tasted of the power of the age to come. Jesus said, all power, all authority has been given to me, therefore go into all the world and disciple nations. We all know the Lord's Prayer. Now I'm telling stuff that everybody here knows like the back of their hand, hopefully. The Lord's Prayer, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. You know, I'll close with this thought. When you're out street preaching or witnessing one-on-one or riding a track or doing a YouTube video to get on what I think is the greatest Roman road in the world right now, which is the internet. I mean, I don't know if you guys are doing stuff on the internet, but we're limited by time, money, and various things, but one of my goals is to become very active on the Roman road of the internet. There's just unbelievable stuff that can be done there. But whatever you're doing to advance the kingdom of God, God is as interested in you as you're doing that as he is in the people that you are reaching. Do you believe that? That salvation is not the end game. Salvation is the beginning of this whole thing. It's the beginning. And God is using life and evil and wrestling with our enemies and all these things that are around us as a means to teach us, to equip us, and prepare us to one day rule and reign in eternity, to one day judge angels, to one day do the things we can't even get our minds around at this point. So as you sit there, and as you, it is the enzyme that makes all this stuff happen. It's gotta be by faith. That step out of the boat, it's gotta get up, and then you gotta say, Father, I believe, help my unbelief, I'm going for it, I am going for it. And then you begin to appropriate by faith, by meditating on the scriptures, but also by applying them, applying them, getting out preachers. I love this person. Every guy, that professional vocational minister needs to be compromised because that's how you stay honest. That's how you stay real. Again, from my own testimony, I went through a trial three and a half years ago, a betrayal, and I lost most of my money, and my life came crumbling down around me, and I got into an incredibly introspective, selfish pity party that almost killed me. Almost killed me. I mean, I'm not exaggerating, that's not hyperbole. Almost killed me. And in the midst of all that, a still small voice came and said, you know, why don't you get your eyes off yourself and on others? And I was invited to speak at a pro-life conference. I've been very involved in pro-life work. I was a leader in Operation Rescue. I've spent, you know, whatever. I've got my brownie points and all the things that make me put a pro-life back to this. And I was asked to speak, and I got up, and I just was so convicted because I had moved to Nashville several years before. I didn't even know how many abortion clinics were in Nashville. I'd never been to one. That was unheard of for me. I was the guy that landed in the city and organized Christians and went out and stuff. And I was in Pensacola, I knew Paul Hill. I got burned bad, and all pro-life activity in Pensacola got shut down because two abortion doctors were demonically assassinated by Christians, and you know, supposed Christians. I don't know, I'm not judging their hearts, but you know, it was just a mess. So I had some reasons to be a little bit gun-shy. End of the day, I didn't have a reason. I got up in front of a group of people and said, I know you all think I'm some kind of hero or whatever. I'm not, I'm a hypocrite. I'll tell you what, I'm changing today. I'm gonna go back to Nashville before, I'm gonna find out where they are, I'm gonna be there, and that was three years ago, and I'm there a lot ever since. And I found that by doing that, all my theology, all my videos, all the stuff that I'm, that, you know, that means nothing unless I'm out putting it in practice. I believe that if pastors would do that, their sermons, as Spurgeon said on Sunday, would be 10 times fiery, and we'd start to see revival. Father, Jesus, we thank you that it is finished, finished in ways that will spend eternity plumbing the depths of. It's finished. You are our hero, you're our elder brother, our Lord, our husband, you're our everything. And we proclaim that you are Lord over heaven and the earth, and that you sit at the right hand of the Father as a glorified man, and you extend your scepter over Zion, and you tell us, rule in the midst of your enemies, and don't give me any excuses. Everything pertaining to life and godliness is freely given to you. You can say to this mountain, be removed and cast into the sea. If you can say it with faith and don't doubt, it'll happen, that the mountains of abortion, the mountains of sexual confusion, pornography, unbiblical divorce, the mountains of the sex trade, the mountains of the oppression of the poor, all these things can come down, that justice can come to heaven and come on earth as it is in heaven, because that's what you told us to pray and work towards. And whether our lot is simply to be martyred and let our bodies be part of the barricade that people following behind us crawl over as they take back the nation, whether America's footnote in history is this is what happens to a nation who forgets their God, and that other nations down the road say, well, let's not do what they did, that's fine. In the end, we know you can be glorified. But Father, we're here to say, send us, use us, anoint us, empower us, keep us from presumptuous sin, keep us humble, keep us broken for this world, keep us broken for the lost. It's sinless, Lord, in Jesus' name, amen.