"34 Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, 35 so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation."
Good Morning my beloved, We welcome you to worship in
the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is my honor and great privilege
to come together with you for the study of God's Word. I humbly ask you
to continue to share the ministry website and social media platforms as
you feel led. God
has been tremendously blessing your efforts in reaching the lost and the deceived.
Praise God. May He continue to bless our growth together with the knowledge of His
Word with all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
I've heard many times in my life people talk about their faith, claiming to be a Christian, yet their lives bear no evidence of the fruit of the Spirit. Regardless of their claims, the sad and tragic reality is, their lives are from the True God in Scripture, t They are being led astray by false teachers, who themselves, are far from God.
For centuries, the Jewish people had waited for the arrival of their Messiah, it was the hope and the heart of the Jew and when He finally comes, they rejected Him. Jesus preached, revealing the discrepancies in what the religious experts taught, He confronted their greed, their lack of justice, mercy and faithfulness.
Jesus' last words to the scribes and Pharisees and the nation of Israel is a pronouncement of imminent judgment, pointing out they were the ones who led the nation astray. Jesus came with the double portion blessing on Him, but they have strayed so far from God, they were scheming to kill His Son to protect their pride and reputation. God is a God of justice, sin must be judged. Jesus repeatedly called them to repent, instead of receiving His words, they continued their vengeful attack on Him, now their rejection is final. Righteous Judgment awaits the Jewish religious leaders and the nation of Israel, they brought it on themselves. There is still hope for individuals, if they will turn toward Jesus
There are those who imagine they can earn their way to God, you better
realize, you have absolutely nothing to offer God. The Kingdom of heaven
is not entered into by self righteousness, self-sufficient people who
imagine they can get there on their own. The Kingdom of heaven is
inherited by those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn over their
sin.
In spite of what is being taught in many churches today, there is a limit to what God will allow. There is only so much evil and wickedness He will tolerate,before divine judgment comes. That's what Jesus was speaking about when He said in verse 32, "Fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers." He's talking about filling up a cup of sin, a cup of wrath, a cup of judgment. He's telling them to go ahead, keep doing what you’ve been doing. Fill it up and finish it off, until finally the inevitable judgment comes. To be clear, it isn’t that Jesus desired that evil be done, He's just saying the same thing that He said to Judas, "You already have your evil plan in place, now go ahead and do it." In verse 33, He says, "You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?" Jesus' ministry has had no effect on them, except hardening and drawing out the evil from their hearts all the more.
Today, mankind is filling his cup of wickedness and sin, as if there's no judgement coming. Our government has given society the latitude to do it. A society given the freedom to act unrighteously will do it, unless that society has turned to God. The righteous act as a rebuke to a wicked and perverted society, yet rather than repent, they mock and reject the truth of God and cursing those who confront their sin, sinning all the more. Sin is something people in our society don't like to talk about, in fact, they've kind of rationalized the concept of sin out of existence, sin is the god of our society. It disrupts and devastates every human relationship, just look at our society, it's filled with broken marriages, discord, unrest, hate, crime, violence and murder.
Even the church has turned soft on sin, refusing to talk about sin, confront it, much less condemn it. It has begun selling sin to Christians as if it isn’t as bad as God's Word says it is. As if God's changed His attitude toward sin, but nothing could be further from the truth. God is the One who makes the rules, He is the ultimate ethical standard. All those going beyond the boundaries that God has set, is in violation of the law of God as revealed in the pages of the Word of God. The Bible speaks about sin in very strong terms. God's Word compares sin to a woman's bloody, menstrual cloth.
In Isaiah 64:6, "For all of us have become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment."
Paul says in Romans 6:23, "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Let us pray
Heavenly Father,
Father, we are so thankful for Your Word. Lord, grant us a sensitive heart, that we may deal with the sinfulness of our own lives and break our hearts for what breaks Yours. Help us to not just hear what Your Word teaches, but that we would put it in perspective, applying what we learn from Your Word today, that it would be transforming. Lord, we pray that there’s no one receiving this message whose lives would remain unchanged. If anyone among us has not yet confessed their, turned from it and received Christ as both Lord and Savior, we humbly ask that today might be that day, they would come to Him and receive the blessed salvation He offers. We pray these things for Your glory and for Christ's sakeIn Jesus' name
Amen
Today's Message: Truly I say to you, all these things will come
Jesus longed for Israel to have that relationship with Him, to hear the voice of God, and to obey Him. However, being controlled by pride and self-righteous led to their failure listen and their disobedience. In fact, they were more willing to obey the Romans than they were God. They were living in their own little world, perfectly content in doing their own thing, their own way, they refused to listen to Jesus. They had no time for Jesus, except to dog His steps, attempting to trap Him in His words. How calloused they had become to the needs of the people.
Jesus is speaking to each one of us today, longing for us to have an even closer relationship with Him, to protect us in His loving arms. Oh, if we would just humble ourselves. In many ways, we are no better than the Jewish religious leaders, thinking we are better than we are in the eyes of God, because we have more education rejecting God's messengers who confront our sin, our pride and self-righteous attitudes, believing that our translation of God's Word is better than someone else's. Or for different reasons. When you get right down to it, there's nobody any better than anybody else in God's eyes. We're all imperfect down here, and none of us obey the truth as we should.
Open your Bibles to the twenty-third chapter of the gospel of Matthew. Matthew 23:34-36. I invite you to follow along with me, as I read these verses to you. There are a lot of verses in this portion of Scripture. So let's get started with the Spirit's leading and see how far we get. Let's open our hearts and minds, and hear what the Spirit of God has to say to each of us today.
"Therefore,
behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of
them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in
your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, so that upon you may fall the guilt of
all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel
to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered
between the temple and the altar. Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation."
Matthew 23 is a difficult chapter to preach, it begins with a warning, is followed by a curse, and it ends with damnation. This is one of the very saddest chapters in Scripture. This is the climax of Jesus last public sermon. Let's look at verse 34, "Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city."
I have been asked, "Why is He sending more them prophets and wise men and scribes? Is He giving them another chance?" Not exactly! Notice He begins with "Therefore, behold," He uses the preposition "diá," from which we get the English word diameter, meaning across to the other side. "I am sending," emphatic in the Greek "apostéllō," intensified focus on the one sending. "I" am sending them as the consequence of your actions, because you have rejected the Son of God.
He's saying "because you’ve have made your final decision, to reject the truth of God, but I am not through with you yet, I am going to send you these prophets and wise men and scribes, you’re not going to believe them, you will reject them, "some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city," I know what you’re going to do, those of you who are guilty will become even more guilty. You will bear the full weight of your sin, which deserves a severer judgment!"
Oh, it's possible there would be some who would believe, there were 3,000 on the day of Pentecost, when Peter preached. But as a nation, they would rather kill them, crucify them and persecute them and scourge them than receive them. Let's not forget, God is not all love and grace and kindness and mercy, He is the God of judgment, vengeance and wrath, the purpose of preaching is for judgment. God will be glorified either way. The more you hear, the more you reject it, the more you’re responsible for. When the Gospel is preached, it depends on your response to it as to whether it's a message unto salvation or a message unto judgement. If you respond to it, in belief and repentance and faith, it becomes a message of grace. If you choose to reject it and you've compounded your guilt, imminent judgement awaits. There must be repentance, turning away from sin, belief isn't enough. In Luke 13, Jesus said "I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish."
That's why we must not alter the message. James 3:1, "Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment."
The Lord says in Revelation 22, "Let the one who does
wrong, still do wrong; and the one who is filthy, still be filthy; and
let the one who is righteous, still practice righteousness; and the one
who is holy, still keep himself holy." In other words, as it is at the end so it’ll be forever. I know there are some of you receiving this message, will choose to accumulate your guilt, filling up of the cup of wrath, bringing more severe judgement upon yourselves. When God sends you preachers and teachers, revealing the Truth, I
beseech you, don't ignore it just because it's not what you want to hear. God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
But this generation is steadily in the process of filling up the cup of God’s wrath, judgment will be cumulative. The more we accumulate, the more guilty we become. The greatest indicator of the rejection of God’s truth.
Verse 35, "So that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar."
Even today, many people do terrible things to God's people, that's the way wicked, evil people will always respond towards the people of God. That's the way it's been since the beginning, that's why Cain, being of the devil, took it into his hands to murder his brother, Abel. From A to Z, the first martyr of the Old Testament, blood of Abel to the last martyr of the Old Testament, blood of Zechariah, the son of Barachiah. Evil men cannot stand a righteous man. Jesus is saying, throughout history men have continually killed the messengers of God. It's interesting that between the temple and the altar was a common place for them to murder God's people. We didn’t know this until Jesus said it.
In the New Testament, it was in the temple when they decided they wanted to kill Jesus because He spoke the truth of God. And in Acts 21, they tried to killed Paul there. Judgment that Christ pronounced on the temple fell on them in 70 A.D., when the Roman soldiers went into the temple location and lifted their own
banners in the very holy place and sacrificed to their false Gods. Luke 21 calls it "the days of vengeance." By the way, it is still being measured out against
them today and so it will be until the day comes when they see the Messiah
for who He really is.
In the book of Revelation, we see the saints who died for their faith, these are the saints of God who died because the people of the devil would not tolerate them, and there is a cry for justice. The Bible is clear, there comes a day where the holiness, the righteousness of God mandates
that there will be punishment and wrath poured out upon evildoers. Paul writes in Romans 2:5-6, "But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to each person according to his deeds."
We do not hear a lot about that being preached in the church today, it's all about Jesus loves you. The problem with that is, we must help people understand why they should be saved and what they're being saved from, and their need for salvation, before they will ever be able to appreciate what Christ has done for them. God is a God of love, and I'll be the first to say the love of God is amazing, but that’s not the end of the story! He is also a God of wrath, and His fierce wrath will be poured out upon those who do not stand in a right relationship with Jesus Christ. The Bible speaks about that coming day of judgment, it's a frightening thought.
That brings us to verse 36, "Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation."
I've often been asked, "All what things is He talking about?" All the guilt for righteous blood from slaying of the righteous people of God. In 66 A.D., a bloody battle broke out in Galilee. Titus came down to the city of Jerusalem with an army in excess of 80,000 men, the Jewish people were rebellious, and started laughing at them, mocking them. And they started slaughtering the Jews in the north Galilee. The Jewish historian, Josephus, was there and wrote down the full record of it. It was absolutely horrible, the Romans eventually sealed off the city and starvation and famine began to set in. The Jews were killing each other. According to Josephus, they threw 100,000 bodies out over the wall just to get rid of the stench. So Caesar ordered that the whole city of Jerusalem be burned to the ground. All that was left was a small part of the Western Wall.
In Closing..
When we see natural disasters happening around us, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, when we see death, when we see pestilences, disease, and famine, it is a reminder that all is not well between God and man. When Adam and Eve sinned against God, God cursed Adam and Eve, God cursed the serpent, and He cursed the earth!
People are already beginning to sense danger is coming, many have started making preparations. Other people are saying, "We're not worried, everything is under control." That is until Covid, and basic needs like bottled water, soap and toilet paper were sold out. The reality is, the situation is much more serious than that, we've got to change the way we live! God's Word repeatedly warns us of the danger that is to come. And nobody is listening, even the though signs are all around us. No one knows just how close it is, but I can assure you, it's coming! And, it will be worse than anything the world has ever seen.
In Matthew 24:22, Jesus says,
"Unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short."
In John 5:39-40, He says "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life."
That's why God still sends His righteous messengers to preach the Gospel today. God wants you to know His grace, and mercy, and compassion, and tenderheartedness. So that some may repent and believe, and they might be saved. But He wants you to know He is filled with wrath, and power, and justice, and judgment for those who reject His Son and the salvation He brings. God subjects Himself to enduring with much patience, but God is not mocked, one day, His patience will run out and all Hell will break loose. Only those who are in Christ will be spared by His grace. I pray that you will be among us.
May it be so..
And now may the Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen
Copyright © 2019-2023 All Rights Reserved
the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen
Copyright © 2019-2023 All Rights Reserved