The Ministry of Jesus
Part 6: The Opposition of Jesus
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
Well, I'm excited today to be with you guys and to wrap up this series that we've been in for the last five weeks, six weeks now, focusing in on the ministry of Jesus, going from the past and what he did and changing and shifting that into how does that apply for us in our today's world. The first week we kicked off, we talked about the parables and a third of everything that we have recorded of what Jesus said is actually a parable. That's pretty impressive. And how Jesus would find these simple stories and yet take deep theological complex concepts and ideas and be able to break them down for us and make them really simple for everybody who was there listening. And then the week after that we had Pastor Phil here and he talked about the calling of Jesus and how that is to follow him and to go. And he shared with us the missional movement of Eastern Germany in the 1700s called the order of the mustard seed and the order and the vow for the order of the mustard seed was to be true to Christ, be kind to people and to share the gospel to the nations. And they are even now today still active around the globe. And then Pastor Lauren shared with us about the healings of Jesus and how they demonstrate his power. They demonstrate his compassion and they show the coming kingdom of God. And when we truly put our faith in Jesus, healing happens. It's either here on earth or on the other side of heaven in eternity. And then Pastor Andre talked about how Jesus fulfilled scripture and focused in on the story of the temple where Jesus showed up and called out some crooks that were trying to take advantage of people worshiping. And Jesus shows us that in that there is no place in the church for commercialization, monopolization or any humans being stopped in any way from being able to worship God. It revealed who Jesus was and his purpose here on the earth to die on the cross for us. And then last week Pastor Andre shared about the signs and wonders or the miracles of Jesus. And that the purpose of Jesus' miracles were to reveal his divine identity. To strengthen our faith and to just demonstrate the kingdom of God in our world today. And he asked a really good question. He's like, "Do miracles still happen today?" Yes, they do. Maracles still happen today. You and I are actually a living, breathing miracle. And that we are to have faith in his power, trust in his compassion and have hope in his resurrection.
Today we're going to wrap up talking about Jesus and the oppression that Jesus faced during his time here on earth. But I want to ask you, have you ever faced opposition when you knew you were doing the right thing? Have you ever fought against that in your life? Well, I'll tell you that Jesus did. Jesus had opposition from friends, from family, from those who should have supported him. And he knows exactly how that feels. Throughout the ministry of Jesus, he faced relentless opposition. From the very start of his ministry to the final breath that he breathed on the cross. It wasn't random. It was direct opposition to who Jesus was. And he shows us how to stand firm in that purpose that God has for each of our lives. Jesus faced opposition from the enemy, his family, his hometown, the religious leaders of that day, the elite of the church. And yet in every instance, he triumphed over it with divine wisdom, authority, purpose. Specifically using scripture as his weapon. Pray with me. Jesus, we thank you for this morning. God, your presence has been felt in this place. So I pray, Lord, as we dive into your ministry and the life that you lived here on earth. God I pray that you would transform our lives. You would speak to our hearts. You'd pull back the layers of our soul. We would learn deeply from you today of how you want us to live our lives. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.
Right at the beginning of Jesus' ministry was when Jesus was 30 years old. So Jesus lived his life up to 30 and then had this incredible moment in the Jordan River. His cousin, John the Baptist, was in the river baptizing people. And Jesus shows up and gets baptized by his cousin. And it's this powerful moment in the Bible, if you were to read it. And where we see the trinity of God and his three personhood revealed. Jesus in the Jordan River. God the Father vocally speaks from heaven. And the Holy Spirit descends down as a dove. This is a powerful, incredible moment in the ministry of Jesus. And immediately after that, he heads out into the desert. And he's starting his ministry focusing in on fasting in the desert, listening to God as he begins this next three years of his journey on earth. And immediately he's tempted by the devil. How fitting is that, right? How many of you have had like these powerful God moments in your life? And I remember a professor in college, he called it thin spaces. Where you felt like the distance between you and heaven or you and God was just so thin. It was just like God was right there in that moment. And then maybe later that day, maybe that next week, soon after, the enemy is just pouncing on you. Right? That's how it works, unfortunately. And that's what the enemy tries to do when we have these spiritual highs, these incredible moments with God that deepen our faith. The enemy doesn't like it. And Jesus isn't immune to that either. It says this in Matthew chapter 4. When Jesus was led by the Spirit to the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, after fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry. I would think so. I would be hungry after four hours and four hours. The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread." Oh, that's tempting. Jesus answered, "It is written," right back at you with some Bible, Satan, "Man shall not live on bread alone, but by every word that comes from the truth of God." Then the devil took him to a holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. "If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down, for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you, and he will not let you lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'" Jesus comes back at him again. "It is also written, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and all their splendor. "All of this I will give you," the devil said, "if you will bow down and worship me." Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan, for it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.'" Then the devil left him and the angels came and attended him.
Immediately following the baptism of Jesus, the enemy comes at Jesus. Right after, opposition, moment one, boom, hits. And hits him at a weak point. Forty days, forty nights fasting. I don't know if you guys have ever done an extended fast. Forty days. And there's a direct assault from Satan. Satan tempts him with physical needs, with food, with bread. He tempts him with pride. Jump, the angels are going to catch you. And power to have the kingdoms of the world. Jesus didn't flinch. Even being tired and hungry and weak and worn out, he didn't flinch a second. But threw the word of God back at the devil. I love that. It wasn't his words. It was a word of God from the Bible. It's from Deuteronomy. For food, he said, "It is written in Deuteronomy 8:3, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" Deuteronomy 6:16 is also written, "Do not put your Lord to the test." Deuteronomy 6:13, "Away from me, Satan," he says. For it written, "Worship the Lord your God and serve him only." Satan attempts to quote scripture, to throw it at God. And yet, he's twisting it. He's manipulating it. He's making it look and sound good, right? I don't think anybody would have blamed Jesus for doing any of these things. He's Jesus. But he understood what was at stake here. There was something more going on in this moment. And the enemy knowing that he had just had this incredible moment in the Jordan River, beginning his ministry, knowing that for the next however many years, Satan was going to have to attack this guy and attack this guy and attack this guy. If he said, "If I can knock him down right here, I can have victory." But Jesus stood his ground. It was no surprise to Jesus. And I love... Satan tries to use scripture to attack Jesus. And what does Jesus do? Comes with the truth of scripture. It's like using exactly what your enemy is using against you. You just turn around and go on it right back the other way. It's amazing. I love how Jesus does this stuff.
And see, what the thing is that Satan's tactics haven't changed. He does the same thing to us. He does the same thing to me. He gets in my head. He comes at me. And he says, "Oh, yeah. You're a pastor, right? You're supposed to have it all figured out. You're supposed to know all this Jesus stuff. You're not doing it right. Oh, you messed up over there. You messed up over here. How could you call yourself a pastor?" Satan does the same thing over and over again. And he loves to come at us when we're vulnerable, right? He loves to come at us in those moments. But I love how Jesus uses the power of God's word to resist. We have access to that. We have God's word. Jesus didn't come up with some new tactic to come after Satan. Jesus used Scripture from the Old Testament, hundreds of years old, words of God. Jesus uses in that moment against Satan. And unfortunately, this was just the beginning.
Opposition didn't stop with the devil, but it came a little closer to home. It says in Mark 3:21, "When his family, being Jesus' family, heard about this, they went to take charge of him, and they said, 'For he is out of his mind.'" Isn't family supposed to be that one that loves and cares and nurtures you and is the most supportive of you, right? If you don't have a supportive family, Jesus didn't either. It says on in Matthew 13 57, "And they took offense at him, being Jesus. But Jesus said to them, 'A prophet is without honor, except in his own hometown and in his own home.'" Those closest to Jesus, who knew Jesus growing up, little baby Jesus, tiny, tiny toddler Jesus, junior high Jesus, high school Jesus, carpenter Jesus, but then it stopped there. All they could see in this man was a carpenter from Nazareth. They didn't understand the bigger thing that was happening in the life of Jesus and in their world that was right in front of them. His family thought he was crazy. His hometown couldn't see or understand who he was. He was hated. And yet, he didn't stop. It hurt. It had to hurt. Being Jesus growing up with, say, I don't know, Uncle Steve around you, and you become Jesus and Uncle Steve rejects you for who you are. You're like, "I built your dining room, Seth." Don't you see? Jesus faced rejection from those who should have known him the best. See, I think it's one thing to be rejected from people who don't understand you, who have no idea who you are, or what you're doing, or know nothing about you.
For those who don't know, my father is a retired fire captain, and I grew up around the firehouse. And actually, my mother's father, my grandfather, was a firefighter as well. And so growing up, I would get asked the question, "Are you gonna go into family business? Are you going to also be a firefighter?" And I thought for a while, maybe I was. And in junior high, I tried it. I joined the cadet program and did the workouts and got CPR trained and first aid and did drills and do all this stuff. But it just wasn't what, there's just something missing about it. And because at the same time, God had begun to grow inside of me a passion, a heart for the church and for people and for people to know Jesus and to find hope in his gospel. And so I'd try it, and I would be around the firehouse a lot going on calls, being able to shadow and do ride-alongs with my dad. And people would ask me, other, his fellow firefighters would ask me, and I would just politely smile and say, "No." And they didn't understand. But that's okay. They didn't understand what God was doing in me to bring me to where I am today. All they saw was the generational firefighters and that I would just follow in suit. If I was becoming a firefighter, I couldn't have a sweet beard, so it was like a deal breaker. Unless I joined Cal Fire.
But the reality was that Jesus was rejected by people who didn't understand him. But Jesus was also rejected in opposition of those that he cared about. His blood, his family, his people, his cousins, his aunts, his uncles, those around him. They called him crazy. Maybe you're in that place in your Christian walk. Maybe you're the only Christian in your family. Or maybe your family is the only one who are Christian. I experienced this growing up. My aunts, my uncles, my cousins, they don't understand why I do what I do. They don't understand that our family of why we attend church, why we take time from a perfectly good weekend to come inside and sit down and to sing songs and do karaoke together. And then to listen to some dude talk about this old dusty book. They don't understand it. And there's opposition there. So if you face that in your family, don't feel alone in that. Jesus lived that. He walked that journey. And yet, he kept going forward. He understood the purpose, the calling, the reason why he was here on earth.
See, if family opposition stung, the religious leaders turned into their opposition as a campaign. It says in Matthew chapter 22:15, it says, "Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words." They said, "Tell us then, what is your opinion to Jesus here?" Trying to mess with him. Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? The Pharisees did this relentlessly. The scribes, the epitomized leaders or religious greats of the day came after Jesus time and time again, trying to discredit him at every moment that they could. They tried to trip him up with questions to mess with him. They would throw misquoted scripture. That sounds familiar, right? The enemy? Misquoted scripture. They would throw man-made Jewish rules at Jesus. Ain't nothing that God ever commanded it. But what they decided to use to control people, they would throw cultural sayings at Jesus. They would try to make these things sound biblical or scriptural, but they were far from the heart of God. Because they didn't like what Jesus was doing. Jesus was bringing the word of God to the people. The religious leaders wanted to control the people. And Jesus came to stop them along the way to his journey to the cross. Twisting scripture. Trying to get Jesus to say something to reveal that he really wasn't the son of God. To prove that they were smarter than this guy. That they were more religious or they were elite. They were better than just this carpenter from Nazareth. But Jesus always had the absolute perfect answer. I love this. Sometimes he would answer with a question. Not only to answer their question, but to kind of dig a little deeper. Sometimes the question would sting in return. Jesus would have such eloquent words to say that he could just put people in their place and humble them with a simple sentence.
He does this in Matthew 22:21 in response to that question of Caesar. He said to them, "Get back to Caesar's," what is Caesar's? "And give to God what is God's." This is an ultimate mic drop moment from Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Boom. Booyah. NBA Jam. Boom Shakalaka. Alright? In this moment, Jesus corrects their misuse of God's word showing them his authority and his purpose. And over time, there were people in the religious world that saw his truth. Saw the way he handled himself and conducted himself and were drawn to it. Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee himself, began to come to Jesus as knight and fear for his own ridicule from the others. But ultimately, in the end, came forward in public and said, "Jesus is the Son of God." People are drawn to the truth. It says in John 8:32, "Jesus says, 'Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.'" Truth is enticing to people, right? I think deep down inside we all want to know what the truth is, right? Jesus' truth is the truth that will set you free. Jesus turned their traps into testimonies of truth. And in every confrontation, there was a battle with sin that was going on. Whether it was selfishness, whether it was pride, whether it was just pure evil, Jesus never backed down.
See, when we look at the responses of Jesus, we see divine wisdom. We see God's authority. And we see God's purpose. Against Satan, he quoted the book of Deuteronomy to affirm his dependence in God and on God's words. Against the family in his hometown, a rejection. He accepted as a part of his prophetic call. Against the religious leaders of the day, he interpreted scripture rightly, truthfully, and rejected and exposed their hypocrisy. And every single time that Jesus did this, whether it was with opposition or confrontation, each encounter was straightforward. It wasn't desired or wanted. I don't think Jesus would wake up every day and go, "Okay, which Pharisee am I taking out today?" Like, that's not Jesus. That wasn't his heart. But Jesus also wouldn't back down. Jesus wouldn't shy away. I don't know about you in this room, I don't like confrontation. It's one of the things that I despise most in this world. But sometimes God asks us to confront people in the name of Jesus. And when we look at his example of how he conducted himself, it was amazing that every single time through his mission and his purpose, that he revealed to the world who he was and continued to point people towards the Heavenly Father. It was never about Jesus. It was always about God. And ultimately it was about him humbling himself, getting himself freely on the cross for our salvation and redemption, which we will celebrate here in just a few short weeks. But along the way, there were people who wanted to get in the way of that mission. There were people who didn't like what Jesus stood for. The enemy did not want Jesus to be successful. And yet at the exact same time, Jesus spoke with truth in defending himself. And at the same time he advanced God's kingdom. This is incredible. It's this combination to teach with love and to set people straight, all wrapped up in truth. It's like the perfect one-two punch. I think of a boxer who doesn't just sit there and just defend himself and just get into the corner and take it. But I think of an elite boxer who is able to defend and turn it into an offense. Christ had this amazing way to size up to the opponent. Because Jesus wasn't always compassionate or soft, and Jesus wasn't always aggressive and over the top. Jesus had this way to meet people where they were, whether it was the woman caught in adultery that he just had compassion on her. When he could have thrown scripture in her face, he knew what she needed. And yet at the same time, like Pastor Andre talked about a few short weeks ago, Jesus rose up to the occasion of the temple and went after those who were trying to manipulate worship for their own advancement, for their own profit, for their own selfish gain. Jesus would not back down. He was not pushover. He was not timid. But at the same time, he wasn't over the top, aggressive in your face. His response was always perfect, warranted, and appropriate.
So what can we learn from Jesus, from then for our world today? I think we can take a look at ourselves and ask us the question of, when we face opposition, how will we respond? When we face temptation or misunderstanding or outright hostility, how will we react? I think our response should be threefold. Our response should be what Jesus did and to arm ourselves with scripture. Are we memorizing scripture? Are we in his word daily? Are we seeking God with his wisdom and everything that he's given to us? Do we search for his truth in the Bible? The second thing, we need to trust God's wisdom and his authority. We need to take steps of faith to when we get in these moments, that maybe we just need to keep our mouth shut because God's the one who needs to do the talking, not us. That's hard to do. That's really hard to do. And I think the third thing in this is we need to shine God's light. We need to let these moments in which we trust in God, in our opposition, to begin to think about how can God be glorified through this moment? I think a practical step for us this week would begin to memorize scripture even from what I talked about today. Whether that's Matthew 4, "That man shall not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God." You can memorize that this week, no problem. Write it on a post-it, put it in front of you, stick it in your car, stick it on a mirror, put it by your bed. Change the screen wallpaper on your phone so every time you go to your phone, you're looking at God's Word. Put it in front of you every single moment. Or maybe Deuteronomy 6:13, "Worship the Lord your God and serve him only." Or maybe it's Matthew 22:37, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind." Put those words on our hearts. There have been times when I felt attacked and oppressed by the enemy. And thankfully growing up, my mother helped me to memorize scripture. And so I can draw back on those moments to remember those words to use against the enemy. And the enemy goes away, guys. The opposition isn't forever. The enemy can't stand against the Word of God.
See, Jesus faced all of this and he won. He's with us in our battles. We talked about battles this morning in worship. We talked about breaking chains. We talked about the power of God. Don't pick these songs flippantly. You've already sung it this morning. You've already proclaimed truth against the enemy if you were singing with us this morning. If not, the words of God have washed over you and have anointed you. Even if you're not singing, the Word of God is still penetrating your heart. And Jesus said, "Of that which will not turn void." I love what it says here in Hebrews. It says, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weakness, but we do have one who has been tempted in every single way, just as we are, yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." From the wilderness to his hometown to the streets, Jesus faced the enemy, family rejection, and religious leaders. Yet, every single time he triumphed over them with divine wisdom, authority, purpose, all rooted in Scripture. The opposition couldn't stop Jesus, but it was revealed in him. How about we have a week of letting Christ be revealed in us against all of our opposition? Amen? Amen.
Pray with me, Jesus, we thank you for your truth. Jesus, we thank you for your gift of just you living your life here on earth, going against all sort of opposition, and coming up victorious in the end. Jesus, we thank you for your example, and we thank you for the truth that you are with us in all of our battles. That you are fighting for us, you are carrying us, you are sustaining us. And no matter what tactic or trap or trick or whatever the enemy has to try to come at us, from whatever angle through whoever that is, God, we know that you are with us and we will come out on the other side victorious. And so, Jesus, I pray over us this week as we go, as the enemy attacks, God, that we will not fall for his tricks. That we will stay focused and rooted in your scripture to let your truth cover us and protect us this week. And to guide us, Jesus, in the way of your salvation and in your grace and your mercy, ultimately standing strong to shine the light of the glory of Jesus in our lives to saturate our communities around us. Jesus, we thank you, we praise you, we love you this day. Amen.