Why Jesus Came To Earth

Today, I'm going to be talking about a sermon outside of the series that I was doing on Corinthians, and it came from a study that blessed me, and I hope that it brings a blessing to you as well. I was preaching at a church a few Sundays ago in Lancaster County, and I was going to preach on the passage in Luke 4 about why Jesus came to earth, and the point that I was trying to make is that typically when we think, you know, okay, what did Jesus say? This is why I came to the earth, and then we think of that, you know, there's some particular passages that come out, and then as I started to, I was going to use Luke 4 then to show that there's some other things that Jesus talks about of why he came to the earth as well. But then I started getting excited, and I started to say, you know, I wonder, is there other passages in the scriptures where Jesus would have said, this is why I've come, this is why I'm here, this is what it's about me? And so I went through and I found 18 things that I saw that blessed me, and so it's outside of my series, but if you will indulge me to look at this, and I hope it blesses you to look at this. It blessed me, and it kind of made me think of these pronouncements from our Lord Jesus Christ of why he came. So let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for the mercy that you have in our life, and we thank you, O God, that you came to earth. Glory be to you. Hallelujah that you've come to earth. Thank you, O God, that you bridged the gap between the father and sinful man. Thank you, O God, that you came as king. Thank you, O Lord, that you have saved us and rescued us, O Lord. And so, Father, we just want to glorify you and look at these things that you've told us. This is why you've come. May we be enriched by this and blessed and glorify you, and mostly, Lord, manifest that we would be doers and follow and be discipled in the reason why you came to this earth. So Lord, we thank you, Father, in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Okay, so when someone says, we think, what did Jesus say, this is why I've come to the earth? What's the first passage that comes to your mind? Are you a king then? Okay, well, that's coming. Yeah, seeking to save that which was lost is what came to my mind, and when I preached it at the other church, that was the first one, and that's one we use a lot, and it's a good one. So I have that for our number one. We'll get to the king one. So to seek and to save that which was lost, and let's look at that. It's found in Luke chapter 19, verse 10, for the Son of Man, he says, have come to seek and to save the loss. I love the idea there of Jesus seeking, of actually, you know, I'm just so blessed that all of the resources and all of the mercy in God that he's given so much abundance to us that we can see that he could have left us in our sin. He could have left us apart from these things, but he sought after us, and I just thank the Lord for that, and he gives here in this analogy, I think it's with this analogy here about the concept of the sheep, and how a good shepherd, and he goes and he finds those that are lost. And so I praise the Lord that Jesus Christ came to seek and to save those which was lost. Kind of going with that, in Luke chapter 5, verse 32, I have my second one, and the second one is that Jesus came to call sinners. He called on those who knew they had a need. And this is an interesting point. I remember a few years ago, I listened to a sermon. Any of y'all listen to Paris Reedhead? All right, yeah, okay, all right. He has this famous sermon, of course, 10 shekels and a shirt. There was another sermon that I was listening to of his that he was talking about his prison ministry or something that he was doing, and he asked the audience, all right, how many of you here have been saved? And like, you know, every hand went up in the church, and he goes, okay, that's great, wow. And they said, all right, let me ask you this. How many of you have ever been lost? And like, you know, half or a quarter of the hands went up. And he said, well, that's funny. Jesus said he came to seek and to save that which was lost. Where did the rest of you come from? And so I think that the point that he was trying to make, and I think it's a good one, is that in American Christianity, a lot of times we just sort of do this inherited Christianity. We just sort of take our parents' thoughts and kind of go with it and morph into Christianity, and the next thing you know, you're a good boy. You stop, you know, doing bad things, and then all those things come together, and finally you call yourself a Christian. And Paris Readhead, in this sermon, was trying to say, no, there needs to be a realization in your life that you have a need, that you are a sinner, that there's problems that needs to be addressed, and you come to him as a beggar. And when you do that, the results are very different. Jesus said in Mark 2.17, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. Again, in John 16.7, nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away, for I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I depart, I will send him to you. And when he has come, he will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment, of sin, because they do not believe in me, of righteousness, because I go to my Father and you see me no more, of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. Jesus is saying here that the Holy Spirit that he gives to the church should produce within us the sense of, I need to be cleansed, I'm a sinner. And he convicts, the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. And so I think this is a serious thought. If we think of our Christianity as just sort of morphing from one thing to the other, from the other to the other, until finally we're calling ourselves Christians, I think we need to take a look at this and how seriously we're taking the cure that we need a Savior. We need a Savior. Number three, he came for judgment. Kind of goes with the other Holy Spirit passage there, but Jesus came for judgment. In John 9 39, he said this, Jesus said, for judgment, I came into this world that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind. Now, this is one of the passages that I think are one of the scariest and oftentimes very confusing passages. And some of the principles that Jesus says oftentimes, those who have, I'll give more. Those who don't, I'll take away what you even have. And so what he's saying is, I'm come from earth, I'm coming to pour grace upon you. I'm coming to pour life on you. And you don't use that. You don't walk with that. You don't want that. I'm going to take what even little you have and give it to someone who's going to use that. And you see this happen with churches. You see this happen with families. You see this happen with people. If we don't continue to walk in this, he takes this. And it's interesting, again, going with that same thing about the sinner, it comes out of a sense of need. It comes out of a sense of saying, wow, I really do need God to help me in this. Because if you don't, if you don't care, then you say, oh, I see, I'm okay, I'm good. He actually says he brings a blindness in. I think one of the scariest passages in the entire Bible is 2 Thessalonians 2.5. Turn to that. 2.5 to 12. It kind of goes with this. If you say you see, you don't care, you got it, you're good, then he's going to get blindness. This passage goes with that. It's a terrible passage in the true sense of the word terrible. 2 Thessalonians 2.5. I just tremble when I read this. To this day, I tremble. Do you not remember that when I was still with you, I told you these things? This is Paul speaking to the church there in Thessalonians. And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. Talking about the Antichrist, Satan. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. He's warning him that Satan is going to deceive you. Verse 8. And then the lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will consume with the breath of his mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming. Verse 9. The coming of a lawless one is according to the working of Satan. With all powers, signs, and lying wonders. And with all unrighteous deception among those who perish because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. So he's saying that in time, Satan is going to come in and deceive us with unrighteousness, with wickedness, with things. And that there's going to be the most part of people on this earth, they don't care. But it's worse than that. He goes on. Listen to this next verse. Everyone listen. Verse 11. And for that reason that people don't care, God will send them a strong delusion that they should believe the lie. That they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth and had pleasure in unrighteousness. To me, that is the scariest verse in the Bible. Because what it says is that after you begin to just have this life of sin and unrighteousness and enjoying that, that finally you wake up and God says, you know what? I've given you the Holy Spirit. I've sent the Holy Spirit and convicted you of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. And you just rejected it. Now I'm going to say, go on. I will give you a spirit and you'll believe a lie. And you wake up one morning and you just don't care. You just don't care. I would say this is one of the scariest places to be. You know, I did 20 years of anesthesia. And when people are under anesthesia, you can cut off legs, you can do all kinds of things and they don't feel that. When you are numb to this stuff, it's the worst. And so I think that this passage that Jesus came to wake us up, to show us these things, and that if we ignore these things, he'll actually says that he'll give us this. I don't understand this except to just tremble over it. And that when I get apathetic, I get even more scared. Because then I'm like, wow, is this me? Am I just getting apathetic? And when you get older, you tend to get cynical and apathetic. And I'm telling you, this is something I think is a reason Jesus came to give us. But here's a beautiful part. If you're sick today, if you know that there's a need in your life that you realize, if I was to show a screen here and on this screen, God is showing to this entire room your sins. Now, as you look at the screen right this very minute, you see on that screen, as clear as a television screen, what those are. And it's maybe even almost embarrassing to you. He's come to show, to reveal that. And if God has revealed that in your spirit, and today he's saying, I'll give you salvation. I'll save you from this. I'm here to seek and save and to cleanse you from all this. But if you say, I don't care, I'm good. He's saying that he could actually, will give, not could, will give blindness. Don't just think grace will always be there when God is convicting us. All right, number four. Jesus came that the world might be saved. Perhaps one of the most popular passages, you see them all on football games and everything else. It's one of the most popular American passages is John 3, 16. And for good reason, it's amazing and wonderful passage. But the whole fruit of it is even more powerful. The rest of it, John 3, 16, I'll read it to you. We could all read it at the New King if you want to. For God so loved the world, everybody, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but the world through him might be saved. That verse 17 is so important. Sometimes people get sort of cynical with that. Why would God do that? I mean, oh yeah, we've got like an angry God up in heaven that's going to do all these wicked things to people and all that. But he's letting us know that the condemnation is already on the earth and he wants to rescue us. He goes on and he says, and it kind of goes with the same thought of seeing and understanding. He says in verse 18, He who believes in me is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already. In other words, it's not Jesus that's condemning you. Your own sins, your own life has condemned you because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God. Now listen. And this is the condemnation. This is your damnation. This is the condemnation of what will judge you. This is the thing he's letting us know. That the light came into the world and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. In other words, they love their sins. They love the wickedness. They love the things that they were turning them away from God. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light that his deeds may be clearly seen, that he has been done, have been done in God. Again, let me look at, show you the screen. It's a blessing that Jesus would show you your sins. That he's saying that if you love your sins, I don't want that to be exposed because if I give that up, if I give that up, it helps me when I'm depressed. It's helped me when I'm down. I need that when I'm weak. I need that sin. And he's saying if you love that sin, and he says you hate the light. He's giving us that, but you know what? You don't have to hate that light today. He's coming to the world to save you. He's coming to the world that you don't have to be condemned. And that if you come to the light, he'll heal you from this. And he'll bring you salvation. He said that to us, that God so loved the world. This is why he came, that he gave his only begotten son. That anyone who believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Praise be to God. Number five. Jesus came to divide. To divide. It's an interesting passage. Fascinating passage. Matthew 10, 28 and 29. Do not think... This is 10, 34. Matthew 10, 34 says, Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. He's letting us know why he didn't come. I didn't come just to be this peacemaker. He's not a Gandhi. He's not someone who just came to bring peace or something. Do not think that I've come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. In another passage, he put it this way. In Mark 10, 29. And I love this one, because he spells it out. He says, So Jesus answered and said, As surely I say to you, there is no one, and listen to the list, that has left houses, or brothers, or sisters, or fathers, or mothers, or wife, or children, or land, for my sake and the gospels, who shall not receive, listen to this, a hundredfold, now and this time, houses, and brothers, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecution. You get this with persecution. In the end of age to come, eternal life. But many who are first shall be last, and the last shall be first. Interesting. Did anybody notice, anybody ever take a notice before, what didn't make the new list? Wives and, there's two things. There's two things shot. Listen to it again. Houses, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, wife, children, and land, for my sake and the gospels, who shall not receive a hundredfold, houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and land. No fathers and no wives. I find that fascinating. Because many times, and we've seen this, and I think of Jesus' strong teachings on marriage. His strong teaching against divorce and remarriage, and the permanence of marriage. His strong teaching about not calling anybody father. That there's times that this is going to happen, that you're not supposed to have other fathers, but the Father in heaven. And that you don't get to leave your wife, and get another. I tell you, when we're working with the refugees in Greece, I've had several, either personally or with the ministry that's working there, who say, well, I mean, I've got a wife in Iran, but she's a Muslim, and I am assuming you wouldn't want me to keep her, right? I mean, I'm going to find me a godly wife now, and get my right to get my life together. I say, no. Yes, God may call us to leave houses and brothers and lands, but he's not going to give us a hundredfold wives. I think it's purposeful. I think it's purposeful. It's Matthew 10.29. It's a fascinating list, and we're not supposed to have other fathers. Matthew 10.29. Excuse me, sorry, Mark 10.29. Mark 10.29. Mark 10.29. So this point is, is that we have to be passionately following God. Now, I've said to you all before, there's different types of people and different types of leaders, and there's the more Apostle Paul type, and there's more of the Barnabas type. I've said that I feel like I'm more of a Barnabas type. I try to make bridges. I try to join people together, and then I know that I need my brothers who are more prophetic, more the Apostle Paul type, and I see the church working that and these types of things. I would say that the risk that come with people with my type of personality is to not be serious with that enough. I look at it in Barnabas. If it wasn't for Barnabas, I don't think we'd have the Gospel of Mark. We wouldn't have that passage. However, he also, if you remember Paul rebuked Barnabas when he was with Peter, when he was led away with Peter's thought of not eating with the Gentiles, and there was this tendency for that. If you don't stand for something, you'll what? You'll fall for anything. It's a common axiom, and it's a good one. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. I have one that I like to use that I've said before, and I've thought of people that I like to be around, and even though they may bug me sometimes, never trust a man who doesn't try to convert you. I would rather be around someone who I may differ theologically, but they're strong, and they're convicted, and they know what they stand for than just this wishy-washy believe anything that we have in our world. Now, a verse that I have in my office, actually one of my verses that I live by, is in Mark 9, where it talks about have salt within yourself and peace with one another. But this, and that's, I believe, the beautiful balance, to draw lines, the way I interpret it, to be salty, to stand for something, and then at the end of the day, to have peace with one another. But if we don't stand for something, we'll fall for anything. And young men, young people here, listen, I'm telling you, you're coming into an age, it's even more so than I had in the 80s, where tolerance is the religion of America. And just the very fact that we would stand and draw lines in something, it seems unorthodox to the American gospel. In my background, my father was very much into, he was very much of a patriot, and a Texan, and one of the things that I can remember very strongly is being taken to the Alamo. And as he took us to the Alamo, we would hear these stories, and I'll never forget one of the biggest stories, and he took us there to the Alamo, and there's a spot, a plaque, when you go to the Alamo, and there's a spot where, and he pointed there and said, see that, son? And kind of jokingly, but with a seriousness enough that I knew that it meant something to him, that is where Davy Crockett died. And to my dad, that was something really important. And the thing that they go on to tell the story of Texas, and this is in the vanity of Texas politics or whatever, but they knew that they were going to die. It was obvious. You're not going to win this. You're not getting out of the Alamo alive. And Travis, the commander there, realized that there was a time that they realized. So the story of the Alamo is that they called everyone together, and Commander Travis spoke to them. He said, listen, we're all going to die. Every one of us are going to die. Now all we need to do is decide the manner of our death. I see three options. We turn ourselves in and suffer the firing squad. We run and get picked off as we try and run. Or we stay here and fight and die as heroes, something like that. And so he took his sword and drew a line in the sand and said, okay, who's with me? I will stand here and fight. And then the story is a man with a stretcher was brought over and the different ones, and finally almost everyone came over to the side and decided, we're going to die here fighting for the cause of Texas. So, in many ways, it's the same with us. We're all going to die. But we can stand for something much more enduring than Texas. We can stand for the kingdom of God. And that kind of an attitude, though, needs to be in our mind. Jesus said, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. And I imagine that sword in the sand that Jesus is asking us to choose, to decide, to be on his side, to come with him in this walk. He said that, and I love that. Number six. Jesus came to serve and to give his life. Jesus came into this world to serve. In Mark 10, 45, he says, for even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. I constantly struggle over this. I wish I could say that I'm over it. But just this constant feel that I should have something in common. I have some entitlement. Don't I deserve something because of whatever I did this or did that or the other? And this sense of entitlement is like a constant thing that has to be put to death. That Jesus said, I didn't even myself come to be served, but to serve. And I have found in my life over and over again that when I start to get messed up, when I start to get depressed or whatever, that the act of serving, the act of ministering to others and stopping thinking that I've got something coming and that it's not right or I'm not getting my just desserts, that if I get this attitude, this mind that was also in Christ Jesus is also in me, that Jesus told us that He came to serve. And that sense of service is something that we should have. That passage was Mark 10, 45, for even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. Mark 10, 45. Give your life for your brothers. Give your life for the church. Stop thinking someone owes you something. I listen to some of these, particularly now in my administration job as president, I've done a lot through these years is trying to start listening to many business books and different things. And one of the speakers that I've enjoyed with that is Simon Sinek. I don't know if many of you, I can't recommend him for everything, but he has some great things on there. One of the things he likes to talk about is the millennials. Sorry, guys. He says, I have yet to give a speech where somebody doesn't ask me the millennial question. He said that's one of the things he talks about. And he said that as he's noticing more and more in this generation, I think maybe he's right on the edge of that millennial generation, younger than I am. He said, I often find the millennial traits or they have lower self-esteem, highly self-absorbed, narcissistic, means thinking of yourself, entitled, social media addictions, imbalanced relationships, job hopping, ouch, and lack of patience. Ouch. And he says that. So let's get straight to the point. He says there's a reason they're accused of being entitled, narcissistic, lazy, unfocused, and self-interested. They're not happy because they're missing this piece of service. And that when you see that the life isn't about you, it changes things. It changes everything. I told you this story before, but in this context, when I was in high school, there was this corny movie out called RoboCop. And don't go see it. And RoboCop was one of the first of these movies. You have a robot cop and he's walking around. And in the musical in high school, one of the young men there was an actor. He won the leading role in the high school musical that he was doing, so he was gonna go on and be a drama guy while the rest of us got real jobs, you know. And he then went and he ended up getting a role in RoboCop. And it was amazing. I mean, like, if you talked to him, he's like, you've got to go see RoboCop. It's like, he was almost saying, it's about me. I mean, you know, I've got this part and it's great. And don't watch it, but in the movie, there's literally probably at most three seconds, two seconds at most, where the robot comes through a door and bounces into my friend from high school and he looks at him and he walks on. And, you know, to this guy, the RoboCop's about him. And I think this is kind of the way it is with, it's so easy for us to think it's really about us. I think also of the donkey that was carrying Jesus into Jerusalem and they were seeing Hosanna and all these wreaths were coming and all the, you know, and all these, I mean, palm branches and all these things. And that donkey could have went, hey, thanks, you know. It's about him. It's about him. And this idea of serving is so amazing. And it's so much part of it that we remember that Jesus came in that way. Kind of in the same line there. Number seven, he came not to do his own will. I'm going to use an old German pietist and Anabaptist word. It's the word Glossenheit. It's a loaded word. So it means to be surrendered, to not be about your own self, to not to do your own will. The passage is John 6, 38-40. John 6, 38-40. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that has been given to me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life. And I will raise him up on the last day. Life deals us different things, right? And it's so easy to go, why did that happen and not that happen? My Bible reading this morning was on the whole Joseph story and how he talks to his brothers when he's there in Goshen and he's saying, God had bigger plans. We don't do our own will, but we're submitted to this. And this is a sort of Goloshenite spirit. I would dare say it's also within a local brotherhood. By allowing ourselves to submit to one another and having this spirit that was in Christ Jesus, as Colossians puts it, this idea is very Jesus-like. I'll never forget when I was trying to get a definition of the word Goloshenite from a local German. And I was on a tour in Germany and I noticed that our hotel, the lady there who was checking us in spoke very good English. So I went to her and I said, hey, could I ask you to translate a word for me? She said, sure. I said, could you translate the word Goloshenite? So she kind of grinned and she said, okay. It means surrendered, you know, and she started to say all these kind of words that we know that talk about Goloshenite. And then I said, is that like a common word that you would use in the German language today? And she started laughing. Oh, no, it's not. And I said, well, why not? She goes, because Germans are not Goloshenite. And so I thought, oh, that's hilarious. And I think maybe that's also so common in us of if all we're always doing is seeking our own will, we're missing an element of Jesus of why he came. All right. Next, the next two have to deal with spiritual warfare and about how God saves us from these things. And verse and number eight is Jesus came to give abundant life over the power of darkness. So from John 10, 10, the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. And then also one in Matthew 12, 28. But if I cast out demons by the spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come. He says, if I cast out demons by the spirit of God, you know, now the kingdom of God has come. Or how can one enter into a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man and then he will plunder his house? I tell you, if there's something we've got to get out of our minds, if we're going to understand Jesus is to reprogram our mind out of this idea of secularism. I was reading a book once by the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. And it's a really bizarre book. It talks about St. Ignatius of how he went through different things to bring penance into his life. If you don't, if you're not broken, you do this and then the other and the other and finally you get to the end and you start beating yourself. Strange book. But the introduction to the book said something. It said before we just get too carried away of dismissing St. Ignatius of Loyola, he argued that understand the mindset of the medieval mind. That there was no doubt in their mind that there was heaven, hell, angels, demons, and that they didn't have to work up in their mind to believe that. It was a given fact as much as we believe that clouds move by this or the other and sun comes up another or whatever, is that that was the program that their mind was running on. That's the program. And so when we read the New Testament, we've got to understand Jesus was running on a program like that. And that our secular mindset has come to take so much from us in this way. But Jesus said that he came to give us life away from that darkness. The darkness is real. The movies we watch, the attitudes that we were around. I mean, I'm not one to, I'm not one, you know me, I'm not one at all to think there's a demon under every bush or every thing or whatever. I'm not like that at all. I probably should be a lot more. But this is something that he's told us we will have power over. It goes with the other one. Jesus came number nine. Jesus came. So believers may not remain in darkness. This is number nine. John 12 46. I have come. All these are the I have come passages. I have come into the world as light so that he who believes in me may not remain in darkness. James 4 7, you know, says therefore submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Promise from God, draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners and purify your hearts. You double minded lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of Lord and he will lift you up. One of my favorite scenes in the Bible is in that Chronicles passage where Balak was trying to get Balaam to curse Israel. Now this isn't this is the rare time in the wilderness in that section in that section where the Israelites had had sinned and they were complaining. And finally, if they were to look at the serpent and have faith that it meant they were suddenly healed if they just looked at the serpent. And then Jesus, of course, uses that analogy from that moment. They start this march and they're like unstoppable. Walking in faith, purified by that faith and now walking in obedience, following that faith, you see them. And it's right there that Balak is getting nervous and going, could you please get them to curse those Israelites? And it's amazing to see him try. And he says in there, he says, first of all, he looks at him and sees God sees no iniquity in them. I love that. That that genuine repentance and genuine faith and walking in obedience, that now that's the place we want to be. Amen. That when they were trying to curse him, Balak was trying to curse him and getting Balaam to curse him. He said, God sees no iniquity in them. And he says, no enchantment shall be able to harm them. When we're walking in that way that Balaam couldn't curse him because no enchantment can harm them. I think of, you know, when we're over and again, of all the demons and all the curses and all the things when we're walking in that state, Jesus has promised us that we have protection over those curses. We have protection over the plays of Satan. And praise God for that. Number 10. All right. He came to be a king. Here you go. I love this passage. It means a lot to me. Jesus came to be a king. Jesus tells Pilate, you know, he's asking him, what have you done? Why are they calling you the king of the Jews? And so in John 18, 37, then Pilate said to him, so you are a king. So are you a king? And I can feel the ground shake Jesus's answer. And Jesus answered, although I think Jesus probably said it quietly, but still the ground shook in my mind. You say that I am a king. For this purpose, I was born. And for this purpose, I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. For this purpose, I was born. The whole idea of, of Jesus being king, he's saying, so it's an important part of one of the reasons why he came. He came to be king. Praise God for that. Number 11. He came to send fire on the earth. In Luke 12, 51. Actually Luke, I think 12, I hope I got it right. Luke 12, 49 is the passage. Is that right? Luke 12, 49. I came to send fire on the earth and how I wish it was already kindled. A few years ago, I ran across an amazing missionary sermon by a Dutch, a Dutch Mennonite from the 1850s who went, their first mission went straight to Java to preach to the Muslims people there. He'd spent a generation, his son came there, followed in his footsteps, did a generation. His son came and gave a sermon based upon this passage. The way he interpreted it is, Jesus said, I come to bring fire on the earth and how I wish it was already kindled. That this thing that I'm giving, the kingdom of God, the spreading of this, the giving of this, how I wish you guys were already running with this. That it should be springing from place to place, that the kingdom should be spreading and that it's not yet. And how I wish that it was. Powerful, powerful thought. Number 12, Jesus came to fulfill the law. Jesus came to fulfill the law. Matthew 5, 17. Do not think that I've come to abolish the law of the prophet. I did not come to abolish, but he came to fulfill them. We talk about being Christocentric, a Christ-following view of the Scriptures and that's the way we look at the word of God. And I think it's very important. All of the Bible points to Jesus Christ. He's the fulfillment of the prophets. He's the fulfillment of the prophecies. He's the fulfillment of the feast and the things. And he puts all of that into life. When we look into the New Testament, everything points back to him and Jesus is the fulfillment of that law. And we get to see a purpose. We get to see a way that I think is just powerful. Jesus came to fulfill the law. And I'm blessed with that. I'm very blessed with that. When we look at the Sermon on the Mount, in many ways, it's the going to the law and taking it at a deeper level. And there's something in that that causes us to have not just eternal life, but life. He ends the Sermon on the Mount with a passage, enter in by the narrow gate. Because broad is the way that what? And how many people find that? But narrow is the way. That leads to life. Years ago, I read a book by E. Stanley Jones. And he was talking, writing in the late 1940s, early 1950s. He said, you know, the children of the day, the youth of the day, he said, they're talking so much about expressing themselves. I want to express myself. I want to have something to say. I want to do something. He says, but they're not willing to ever have the straight, the constraint, the narrow way. And so Jesus says here, it's not just an eternal life passage, which I think it is. But he says, if we enter the narrow gate, we'll have life. You'll have something to express. We see this in a practical way. Olympians have an expression. Symphony players have an expression to give. But if we just are nothing and you've got no discipline in your life, or there's nothing, you've got no life to express. So he's a fulfillment of the law. And he shows us this way. And I believe Jesus is the answer for humanity. All right. And finally, 13 through 18, I find in Luke chapter four. Turn there. Jesus came to proclaim good news to the poor, the brokenhearted, the spiritual captives, and the oppressed. Luke four. I say this a lot. It's got to be at least one of my top scenes that if I could go and watch how it was playing out in the Bible, I'd love to see this scene. Luke four, 16. So he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. And he was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, begins to say, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me, this is why he's come, to preach the gospel to the poor. The responsibility that we have in our American life and everything, the trying to have an answer for the injustice and the poverty of this age, that this is part of the message of Jesus Christ. If you start looking at how are you saved, if we did another study and say, what saved me? What does the scripture say saves me? And of course, faith and calling out to God, baptism, the communion seems to be things, but also right up in all those big things, helping the poor. And having that heart of compassion and preaching and helping the poor, as we just heard the sermon before mine, is part of why he came. He has a heart. And he says that the rich and the well don't really think they need a savior. Kind of goes with that spiritual blindness. I don't need that, I'm good, thanks. Why is there so much faith among the poor? Because they're crying out to God, they have no other answer. And he wants us to bring the answers of Jesus Christ. The next one is 14, verse 14. He sent me to heal the brokenhearted. Actually, this was the very passage that led me to this very verse. I can tend to be a moody guy, I am. I'm a little moody, I'm a little bit of a softy, I'm a little bit of a moody guy, and I cry a little too easy, maybe, and I relate to this passage. And that he came to heal the brokenhearted. I want you to get a hold of that today. Psalm 34, 18 says, the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34, 18. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Matthew 11, 28. Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, I will give you rest. Totally a thought that has been a pearl, if you would, for me, came from reading something from Count Zinzendorf of the Moravians. Zinzendorf, if you think I'm moody, Zinzendorf was really moody. And there was a passage in there that he took comfort in. It was the Isaiah 53 passage, that Jesus bore our sins. We know, of course, we talk a lot about that he bore our sins, but he also bore what? Our sorrows. And the meditation that he had, and boy, this has helped me so much. He said that when I'm, I'm paraphrasing, it's been a long time since I've read the exact quote, but when he felt that pain, y'all, is it just me? Sometimes it's like, ouch, I'm hurting. I'm really, really hurting and I'm going through a hard time and I can hardly cope. I can hardly breathe. And that he says here that he bears our sorrows. Every one of them. And that in that pain, there is a fellowship of the suffering. A fellowship. I don't know, have you ever been through this? And this is a little weird, so forgive me. After you've been through a hard time in your life, that God was just so close that when you got out of that, that it almost seems not as close. And I think there's something in that, that he bears not only our sins, but our sorrows on the cross. That he came for the broken hearted. That the Lord is close to the broken hearted and saves those that are crushed in spirit. And that you know that when you get that, if you get that, I do, if you get that, ouch, Jesus is feeling that ouch. That pain. I think it's beautiful. I think it's really beautiful. Really beautiful. Surely, Isaiah 53 verse 4, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. Revelation 21 says, it promises us, verse 4, he will wipe away every tear from their eye. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. For the old order of things has passed away. Praise God. And then two more, number 15, three more, number 15, to proclaim liberty to the captives. Again, in that same Luke 4 passage, he talks about freeing us from the darkness. Freeing us from sin. Freeing us from the captivity. Do you feel stuck today? Do you feel that there's something in your life that's just making you not able to respond? He says, I'm here to free you from that. There's a beautiful passage. It was the Pilgrim's Progress Redone. And there was a scene in there that in the house of the interpreter, when the man was in there, he was in this cage. This soul cage. I can't remember all this. And as the interpreter went in there, he looked at how pathetic the man was in the cage. And he said, why don't somebody let him out? He said, oh, he could get out. He could get out of the cage. Well, then why won't he? He won't believe. He doesn't believe. He said, well, why doesn't somebody tell him? He says, because sin has blinded his eyes. And because of that, he's not able to believe that he can be rescued. You know, there's some fascinating stories that during the Emancipation Proclamation, when Abraham Lincoln had given the proclamation that the slaves were free, that many of the slave owners did not want them to know that. But people, there's stories of like, you'd come to an inn, and the slaves would be working there in the inn, and somebody would come up and say, did you hear what Abraham Lincoln did? You're free. You don't have to have this kind of abuse. You can go. You're free. And Jesus is saying the same kind of thing to our sin, to our captivity, to anything that holds us back. We are free. And we can go. And praise God, we can have that. 16, he has come to recover the sight to the blind. In 2 Corinthians 3, 14, I have just one more after this. In 2 Corinthians 14, it says that in the Old Covenant, the law of Moses, that they're blinded. But in verse 16, he says, nevertheless, when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. That's a promise. You'll have sight to the blind, spiritual blind, if you turn to the Lord. Turn to the Lord. You'll have sight to the blind. Liberty of the oppressed. And then finally, number 18, he says, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. This is a loaded passage. It's one of my favorites in the passage. It says that you remember in the law that there was a requirement that after, what, 50 years, that everything was to return back to the original tribe. And that they were supposed to have the freeing of this. And it was supposed to have this wonderful way to live. And this is the age of Jubilee. And as we see this is the way it was poured out on Pentecost and poured out on the church. Okay, this is the way I look at it. I get excited about that being the way of life in the church. And that the proclamation of the Jubilee community is this way of life of what the kingdom of God should be like. And the way we share, the way we live our life, the way we're of one father, the way we're a family, that we call each other brother and sister because we're now of one tribe. This one tribe of the Father in Heaven. And the kind of Jubilee community that we see, I see proclaimed there in this. And then that's it. And he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes I love that scene. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, today this scripture is fulfilled and you're hearing. These are the reasons, some of them at least, that I found of why Jesus said he came. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you Lord for revealing to us these truths and just showing us you. And God, I pray that you would manifest this type of life within us and that we could truly walk like you walk and be conformed unto your image on this earth. Lord, we thank you for these teachings. We ask you in Jesus name. Amen.