The Sermon on the Mount XVI

Subtitle:  Revealing Areas that are Pitfalls for Hypocrisy III

Matthew 7:1-6.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on April 7, 2024.

We are going to look at the second area that is a pitfall for hypocrisy in our life today.  It is in the area of relationships with other people, particularly difficult people. 

Even when we hold people in higher esteem than things (see the last two sermons in this series), there are certain people that we have trouble loving, or even getting along with them.  This area of how we deal with difficult people in our life can set us up for becoming hypocritical.

Let’s look at our passage.

In our relationship with people (v. 1-6)

Most people in the world are very familiar with the first two words of Matthew 7:1.  They can quote these two words far quicker than John 3:16.  “Judge not!”  Or, a loose paraphrase, “Don’t be judging me!”  Of course, this is not the whole sentence, and the sentence separated from the context can be misleading.

Think about when you were a kid.  If you selectively picked words out of what your parents said, and pretended like that is what they said, would they be happy with that?  Parent:  “Son, under no circumstances are you to go to the party at Bobby’s house.  I know that his parents are gone for the weekend.”  Son thinks to himself.  “hmm.  Dad said “go to the party at Bobby’s house!”  No parent is going to accept that kind of selective hearing.  The son will be in trouble.  This is what many do with the Bible when they take those first two words as a shield for all manner of sins.  “Don’t judge me!”

However, this is not exactly what Jesus is getting at, and the rest of the verses make this abundantly clear.  Jesus gives us a maxim, or pithy saying, that is very general, but it gets you thinking.  Notice that the rest of the verse says, “Judge not…that you be not judged.”    There is a connection here between the first judgment and a second judgment that will come later.  The emphasis is not on a blanket statement of never making a judgment.  Rather, it is an emphasis your judgment being directly connected to a judgment that will come later.   It is better to see this as a strong warning that cannot be separated from the consequence of being judged yourself.  It calls for us to look down the road at how my current judgment of a person could affect my own judgment.

It's purpose is not to create a world where we never make judgments, but rather a world in which we are all very careful in the judgments that we do make.  It is sort of like a sign that says, “Road closed, bridge out ahead.”  Many people who take the time to read that sign will go a different route and save themselves a lot of time.  However, another person may read that sign and drive on by it, not because they ignored the sign, but because they considered it and recognized that their house is on this side of the bridge.  It is okay for them to drive by the sign.  Yet, notice that they will have taken the time to consider the sign and the warning it was giving.

Verse 2 drives home this point of a consequential judgment, which is what Jesus is really getting at.  Essentially, he tells us that we will receive back the kind of judgment and the measure of judgment that we give to others.  Thus, if you are tough in your judgments of others and you do it a lot, then expect a lot of tough judgments coming back your way.

This begs the question.  Just who is this future judge that Jesus has in mind?  We might imagine that he is simply saying that we should be judgmental to others so that they will not be judgmental towards us.  However, our life experience tells us that this is not how it generally works.  No matter how well you do something, there will be people who like it and people who don’t like it.   People’s judgments of you often have nothing to do with how you have judged them or others. 

Jesus is talking about God judging us, whether His temporal judgments during our life, or His eternal judgment at the end of our life.  Be careful how you judge people because you are going to receive from God the same kind of judgment, and in the same measures, that you gave to others.  Can you survive that?

This does not mean that we can cause God to judge that our sin is okay by not judging the sin of others in our life.  However, this ties to his statement, “Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.”  He doesn’t mean from others, but from God.  Of course, cursed are the unmerciful for they shall not receive mercy.

So he is concerned with how we judge and our quickness to do so.  We are not being wise and are not carefully thinking through what God might think about this.

In verses 3 to 5, we see that Jesus does not intend for us never to judge the actions of a person.  He is rather concerned with our hypocritical tendency never to judge ourselves the way we judge others.

I have actually had a co-worker come up to me and ask me to get a wood chip out of their eye.  He was working with a chainsaw, and a chip landed between his eyelid and eyeball.  There was no damage, but the eye was extremely aggravated, and he had been trying to remove it by himself for a while.   It was large enough that I was able to sweep it out with my finger.  I still remember his sigh of relief when I got it out.

This illustration of specks and planks that Jesus gives are actually about sins and faults that we may see in one another.  They are not good (literally or metaphorically), and life is better when they are removed.  Yet, we can be guilty of having great mercy, and seeing the best motivations, in all that we do, and then having no mercy for others (at least for certain others that we don’t like).

You may be correct in your judgment that they have a fault, or a sin, in their eye.  However, you could be overlooking the fact that you have something much worse going on in  your own eye (life).  This does present a comical image of a guy who has a board sticking out of his eye and telling his brother that he has a speck in his eye.  “Hey, let me fix that speck for you!”

Jesus speaks about our motivation.  “Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?”  What is going on in your heart and life that you spend a lot of your time judging the condition of others, but you don’t even take a second to consider bigger issues in your own life?  If we took just one second to consider our own faults and sins, it might make us a different person.

He also touches on the audacity of it.  “Or how can  you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye?”  Yeah, just how are you able to justify such hypocrisy?  Don’t you know that God sees your poor job of acting righteous?

Only a person who has cleared their own eye (or asked another to help them do it) can help another person clear theirs.  First of all, you can’t see clearly to fix someone’s speck when  you have a plank in your own eye.  Even if you genuinely wanted to help, you would only make things worse.  The power of having dealt with your own sin is that it helps you to be far more sensitive and careful towards others, instead of harsh and uncaring.

Jesus is not leading up to saying that we should never judge.  He is actually leading up to saying that we should spend time on fixing ourselves first, and then we will be able to rightly help our brother.  That will end up being a way that pleases God instead of bringing down His judgment upon us.

Verse 6 may look like it is unrelated, if you don’t look closely.  Even when you clear your own eye so that you can help your neighbor, you still need wisdom.  You may have a perfectly clear eye, have helped a thousand people clear their eyes.  You may even be a professional doctor of getting specks out of eyes.  But, the other person may not be interested in you removing their speck.  In fact, they may not agree that they have a speck.  Perhaps, they simply don’t like you and don’t want you poking and prodding in their eye.  We need the wisdom of God that is supplied by the Holy Spirit in our life.

Jesus uses the images of dogs and  swine.  Dogs represented people who had given themselves over to wickedness.  They are people who give no thought to God and His ways.  Instead, they love to do the opposite.  Swine were connected to Gentiles who were separated from God.  These are both pictures of the spiritual state of individuals who surely have many specks and planks in their eye.  Yes, they need them removed.  However, they won’t take kindly to it.  They will end up trampling you if you aren’t careful.  If a person is not ready to be helped, whether that is a lost person hearing the gospel, or a Christian brother who is offended and doesn’t want our help, then we should back off and pray for them.

Notice that he pictures it as throwing holy things to dogs.  The holy thing is helping a brother or sister remove moral specks or even character specks in their life.  Holy places require special caution.  When you are going to meddle in the spiritual life of a person, always remember that this is a place that God is working on them.  You represent a holy God who is wanting to help them become holy.  It is a holy work.  You may want to remove your shoes and tread lightly.  This is God’s work and you can help him only by being sensitive to that.

A follower of Christ should be able to help others because they have been working on themselves, and they are being careful to be led by God.

Let me close by dealing with Jesus referring to some people as dogs and swine.  We can be quick to be offended, but he is not saying that people are born dogs/swine, and will always be such.  Similar to the parable of the soils, the point is not that we are stuck in categories.  Rather, that people may be ready, they may not be ready.  They may be repentant, or they may be given over to sin at the moment.  There is a timing of God that all people who want to help others would do good to heed.  Wait for it.  Pray for it.  In fact, you may not be the one who God uses to help them remove the speck.  However, you have still helped them by being a person who prayed for them, and were careful not to injure them through insensitivity to your own sin and insensitivity to their readiness to receive help.

May God help us to judge carefully and have His heart of love for others.

Pitfalls for Hypocrisy audio

Father, Turn Our Hearts

Luke 1:11-17.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on June 20, 2021, Father’s Day.

We are celebrating Father’s Day.  It is easy in life to let your heart turn towards the things that it wants to turn towards.  It doesn’t help when you have a society that elevates following the heart over doing what is right and pleasing God.

Don’t get me wrong.  Sometimes, God puts things in our hearts, but the follower of Jesus will wrestle with those things, seeking to be intellectually honest before God.  They desire more to follow him than to follow their own heart.

Today, we will look at a man who was grieved by the fact that he and his wife couldn’t have any children, and through his interaction with an angel, we are reminded of God the Father’s heart for us.

Let’s look at our passage.

The Father’s impact

In this passage, we are not told whether Zacharias was praying for a child that day in the temple.  He was a priest who had been picked by lot to offer the incense in the Holy Place before the veil, and the Presence of God.  We are told that he and his wife were “well advanced in years.”  This probably means that his years of praying for a child had long since ceased, and his hopes for such had long since died.

God the Father chose a particular day, when it looked like there was no hope, and in fact he wasn’t even looking to see if there was hope anymore.  It was at that moment that He sent an angel to give Zacharias the good news.  God had a present for him, a large measure of grace; he was going to have a son!  As exciting as this news was to Zacharias, notice that this grace is not all about him and his wife.  It is also about the nation of Israel and its need to turn back to God.  We must always remember that the grace of God in our life is a present from a loving Father, but it is also intended to bless more than just me.  It is our natural tendency to be short-sided in regard to the grace of God in our life.

This is probably the first time that Zacharias has seen an angel.  Though we are not given a description in Luke, the angel explains that he is Gabriel who stands in the presence of God.  This angel called Gabriel also interacted with Daniel in Daniel chapters 8 and 9.  There he is described as looking like a man (no wings).   So, it is most likely not what Gabriel looks like that startles Zacharias, but the fact that no one is supposed to be in the Holy Place at that time, but him.

There are things that can make men afraid.  Zacharias is a righteous man who has been serving God “blamelessly.”  It would be easy to say that a righteous man shouldn’t fear anything, even that we shouldn’t fear God; He is on our side!  However, God still does things, or allows things, in our life that we can’t control, and that we weren’t expecting.  Fear is a natural response in these times.

Many fathers try to look like they aren’t afraid, but if we don’t keep our heart and eyes turned towards God, we can become entangled in a web of fears.  You can spend your life trying to become greater than your fears, or you can turn to the One who is greater than all that you fear.  In fact, when we are not living right before God, we often fear things that we shouldn’t.  Proverbs 28:1 says, “The wicked flee when no man pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.”  We can become trapped by a mixture of real things and figments of our warped imagination.

The real problem in life is not that we fear, but that we are truly bad at fearing the right things.  There are many fathers today who are not afraid to abandon their children, or they are not afraid to help a girl abort their baby.  They aren’t afraid to abuse the woman that they are with.  Really, they don’t fear God who has warned those who do such things of the consequences of the things they are doing.  We are not afraid to play God in our labs, businesses, and government buildings.  We are not afraid of throwing off the time-proven wisdom of the past for the seduction of a future that we think we can control.  Yes, the real problem is that we aren’t afraid of running off the cliff with all the other lemmings.

In the end, God is not a danger to those who serve Him in love.  I should add a caveat to this.  It all comes down to the definition of “danger.”  Jesus served the Father faithfully in love, but he died on a cross.  Yet, God is showing us through the resurrection of Jesus that any danger He purposefully brings before us, or even allows to come before us, has a way through it that brings us to the good things that He intends for us on the other side.

In truth, He is a danger to our flesh, but He is Eternal Life, Peace, and Joy to our soul, and to our future.  He really does love you, and will bless you if you will turn to Him in faithful love.  Like Zacharias, we must be those ones who are rare in a land of men who have turned away from God.  We must pass that reality on to the next generation, both with our natural children and with the spiritual children that God brings into our lives.

The Father’s desire

As the angel describes God’s purpose for the child that Zacharias will have, we see the desire of our heavenly Father’s heart, and the things that were keeping Israel in bondage.

The term “children of Israel” is used in this context as a reference to generation, and not as a reference to age.  It is not talking about everyone under the age of 12, but of the current generation who had been birthed by the generation before.  It pictures each generation as Israel giving birth to the next generation of Israel.  The nation of Israel, both young and old, were the children of Israel, just as we today are the children of the United States of America. 

The problem with any nation is that our hearts get turned away from God the Father.  No matter how good our beginning may have been, all nations run into peril as more and more of their people turn their hearts away from God.  The Father’s desire was that the hearts of that generation be turned back towards Him.

We must not see God as a Father who is hurt and mad that His children don’t love Him.  Instead, we must see the reality of what happens to children who turn away from loving parents, and cast off their godly instruction.  Such children turn towards foolish things, and the path of folly always brings ruin to a person and to a nation.  God’s heart breaks over the folly that is taking over, not just our land, but all of the nations on this earth.  With a Father’s heart, He cries out, “Why will you die?  Choose Life, and turn back to Me!”

He also desires to turn the hearts of the fathers towards their children.  When our hearts are turned towards God, He teaches us to have our hearts turned towards each other in the right way.  There is a plague of fatherless children across our land.  Too many fathers have rejected the heavenly Father and His desire to turn their heart towards their wives and children.  This is not just a problem for fathers.  Mothers and children have the same problems too.

However, men, we must be bold as lions and care for the people that God has put in our lives.  Regardless of how they respond, we must love them and seek God’s best for them, by showing them what a righteous man looks like, and how he lives.  This world successfully seduces our hearts away from what really matters because it first seduced our heart away from God.  This is how Satan plunders us from the goodness and inheritance of God.

Ultimately, the Father desires to turn the disobedient towards the wisdom of the righteous.  Israel had become disobedient children.  They were fathers who were disobedient to the heaven Father, and children who were disobedient to earthly fathers.  They refused to hear the words of wisdom spoken through the righteous men of the past, and written down in the Bible.  In short, to turn is to repent.  There is a lot of turning going on in this world.  People turn from one thing to the next seeking their own happiness.  However, it is not good enough to repent of one fleshly pursuit to go after another.  The only repentance that will actually do you any good, and even do good for the people around you, is the repentance that turns all the way around back towards God.  Finally, when we are truly oriented towards Him, He is able to turn us back around to the people and things in our life in wisdom and righteousness, in a way that gives life, and not death.  May God help us to cast aside disobedience, hear the heart of a loving Father, and turn into the path of life!

The Rewards of Faith

Mark 7:24-30.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, November 17, 2019.

We have been following Jesus throughout the Gospel of Mark as he traveled the different regions of Israel.  Today, we find Jesus leaving Israel and going into a Gentile country.  It is not explicitly stated why he does so, but it seems to be hinted at within the passage.  It appears Jesus is trying to get away for a brief period where he can have some alone time with his disciples.  Yet, as can often be the case, it was not to be.

In this story we find a woman who is desperate and, when she hears that a man is in her area who might be able to do something about it, she is not willing to give up easily.  Let’s look at the story.

A Gentile woman seeks deliverance

As I mentioned earlier, verse 24 tells us that Jesus “wanted no one to know” that he was in a house in the region of Tyre and Sidon.  This is a substantial distance from the Galilee area in what we would call Lebanon today, but was referred to as Phoenicia during ancient times.

A woman who has a daughter who is harassed by an unclean spirit, or demon, hears about Jesus through the inevitable grapevine that all regions have.  It is important to note that the impact of the ministry of Jesus had reached even areas beyond Israel.

We are told that this woman was a Syro-Phoenician by birth.  Yet, she is also called a Greek because it is a reference to cultural practices.  Most regions of the Middle East had been Hellenized or “Greek-ized” due to the dominance that began with Alexander the Great.  She is genetically a Syro-Phoenician and culturally a Greek.  This is important to the story.

The woman comes to the house and persistently keeps asking Jesus to cast the demon out of her daughter.  In Mark Jesus responds first to the woman.  However, in the parallel account of this story in Matthew 15:21-28 [the audio is incorrect in stating it as Matthew 13], Jesus interacts with the disciples first.   In Matthew’s account Jesus appears to ignore the woman until the disciples urge Jesus to send her away.  They are getting annoyed with her continual crying out to them.  We should pause and think about that for a moment.  They do not have a heart of compassion for this woman and it appears that Jesus doesn’t either.  However, we know from too many other places that Jesus is not being a male chauvinist, or that he is being racist.  He has a particular reason, but the disciples are simply annoyed.  It is easy as the disciples of Christ to be annoyed with desperate people.  This is not a sign of great spirituality, but rather lack of maturity in Christ.  We should beware a heart that is easily annoyed with the desperate circumstances of the lost.  It can get in the way of ministry that God wants to accomplish.

Jesus Responds

So, in Matthew Jesus first responds to his own disciples with this. “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  This statement is quite clear and demonstrates a difference between Jesus and his disciples.  They are simply annoyed, but he is trying to remain focused on the purpose that God had sent him.  He had not come to walk throughout the Gentile lands and heal their sick and cast out their demons.  This does not mean that God doesn’t care about Gentiles.  Later, Jesus would send his disciples to the ends of the earth.  Yet, at this moment, his job was to first minister to Israel.

Thus, the particular reason for why Jesus didn’t respond to her then no longer exists now.  Israel heard the Gospel and saw the great works of the Messiah.  A remnant of Israel believed and entered into the New Covenant, but the rest of Israel did not.  Paul refers to this as opening the door to the Gentiles to receive the good news of the Gospel.  In fact, we can mistake the whole purpose behind why God created Israel in the first place.  It was not because He wanted some kind of “most favored nation” to treat as a teacher’s pet over the rest of the world.  Rather, it was to be a launch pad for taking back all the Gentile lands and making them one with God’s people again.

After this reply to the disciples, we are told that the woman bowed down before Jesus and said, “Lord, help me!”  She is completely identified with the ailment of her daughter.  The demon that terrorizes her daughter terrorizes her.  Instead of casting her daughter out, she has chosen to remain in that harrowing situation and begs for Jesus to cast out the demon.  It is at this point that Jesus gives an analogy to the woman to help her understand why he has not helped her.

The analogy is this.  “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.”  The children in this analogy represent Israel.  Whereas, the little dogs represent the Gentiles in general, and specifically this woman.  To our 21^st century ears this might sound like a grotesquely insensitive statement.  However, we must be careful of being offended on behalf of other people.  Don’t jump on the band wagon of those who tell you that you must be offended at certain things.  This woman doesn’t even bat an eyelash at what Jesus says.  She not only isn’t offended, but she turns the analogy into her favor.  In fact, we might speculate that Jesus is actually setting her up to see what kind of faith she actually has. 

The Scriptures continually portray Israel as being near to God or close to God, whereas the Gentiles are far away.  His analogy does the same thing, but in a different way.  Many people treat their household pets a lot like children.  However, in those societies, it was understood that humans come before family pets, no matter how loved they were.  Does it seem insensitive?  It depends.  Is Jesus trying to put her down or trying to see if she wants to be lifted up?  If all Gentiles are like the little dogs around the table of God then how much more powerful is the image of a family pet being lifted up to the status of a child of God?  We can’t play it both ways.  Either Jesus is trying to be incredibly mean to her, or he is trying to help her see her true condition.  She is like the family pet wanting to sit at the table.

It is then that the woman demonstrates her true faith.  She is not full of herself, demanding that Jesus give her justice.  Rather, she accepts his picture that she is as far away from God as a pet is from its master.  She stands in no place to demand help.  The wisdom of accepting this characterization is that it opens the door to truth.  Even the little dogs underneath the table are able to eat the crumbs that fall from it.  Technically the dog isn’t eating with the family, but if something happens to fall on the floor [or even intentionally from time to time] few would fault the dog for eating it.

She does not demand that Jesus break his duty to God and resolve for his purpose.  She only asks for a crumb that might fall from the table of what God was giving to Israel.

Jesus then remarks that her faith is very great indeed.  He then tells her that she can go home; the demon has left her daughter.  Her humility and strength of mind obtains for her the freedom of her daughter.

Today, there are no such restrictions on the Gospel.  Christ has told his disciples to take the gospel to the ends of the earth.  However, is it not important for us who were far away from God to recognize that we have been brought near in a way that is as incredible as a family pet actually becoming a real, live child of God?  Like some kind of strange Pinocchio twist, we are not receiving what is our due, but rather we are receiving what is highly unlikely.  We all come to Christ as beggars, lacking even a right to his table.  Yet, God has had compassion upon us all and bids us come.   Jesus came to his own and his own did not receive him, but as many as did receive him (even if they were Gentiles, little dogs, etc.) to them He gave the right to become the children of God, to those who believe in His name. (John 1:11-12).

There is always a reward for those who will simply trust God’s goodness and persist in their faith.  She knew that she sought a good thing.  It is not God’s will that humans be tormented by demons.  He did not create us for that.  May we all learn the lesson that faith must be more than short-lived.  It must also persist and be continually knocking, seeking, asking.  Yes, God sometimes tells us, “No,” to some of the things we ask.  However, in a case like this, we should never give up because we know that at the end of the day He is good and loves us.

Rewards of Faith audio

Your Personal End Times- The Millennium Part I

Various Passages.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on October 7, 2018.

Last week we established from Revelation 20 that Christ will rule with the resurrected saints over the earth for 1,000 years.  However, that passage gave us practically no description of what the millennium would look like.  This is most likely because the rest of the Bible is full of descriptions of what the millennium will entail.  Today we are going to go back into the Old Testament and fill in some of the picture of what we will experience as resurrected saints during this 1,000 year reign of Jesus Christ upon this earth.

Of course, the real question is this.  Where do you start?  It is like swimming in the ocean.  There is no way we can do justice to the multitude of passages that speak of the coming kingdom of God.  So let me briefly summarize a few passages in this light.  We could go back to Genesis 3 and see God’s promise to Eve that one of her seed would crush the serpent’s head.  The idea is that the one who deceived them and tricked them out of paradise would eventually get his from a particular human.  We could also look at Genesis 11 and 15, where God makes a covenant with Abraham.  Basically God tells Abraham that all the nations of the earth will be blessed by what God does through Abraham’s offspring.  There is also 2 Samuel 7 where God makes a covenant with David, promising that one of his offspring would sit on the throne of David forever.  There is also Psalm 2 where God states that He has anointed a king who is to rule over the whole earth.  Also, it is stated that the world will rebel against this choice and challenges people to put their trust in God’s king.  Thus we see that God has a vested interest in helping mankind against Satan, our spiritual enemy.  He has promised to bless the whole world by anointing a particular individual to be a righteous king over all the earth and crush the serpents head.  This will be a king and a kingdom that lasts forever.

However, today we are going to start in the book of Isaiah, while keeping in mind this backdrop of promises that God has made to mankind.  Here we will see that the Millennial rule of Christ is the promised hope that has been given to the saints of every century and will be established at His Second Coming.

The reign of the Messiah- Jesus

Let’s start in Isaiah 2:1-4.  Though the Old Testament does not explicitly state the name of the Messiah, we now know that it is Jesus.  Of course Jesus is an anglicized transliteration of a Latin/Greek transliteration of a name that is either Hebrew or Aramaic in form.  It would be something like Yeshua or Yoshua, but let’s not get sidetracked.  All these prophecies are pointing towards Him.  He is the one whom God has anointed King of all kings, Lord of all lords. 

In our passage Isaiah describes this coming kingdom and states that it will be a global kingdom.  The language is very clear with phrases like: “established on top of the mountains,” “exalted above the hills,” and “all nations shall flow to it.”  Mountains and hills were often used as symbolic descriptions of kingdoms and empires.  Powerful kingdoms were like mountains towering over the surrounding area, dominating it on every level.  Later in Daniel 2, God gives Nebuchadnezzar a dream in which all the kingdoms of the world are crushed and smashed to pieces by a kingdom that is sent from God.  This kingdom is described as a stone that is cut by God (without human hands) and grows to become a mountain that fills the whole earth.

Now, we are going to see throughout this study that a person can give everything in these passages a spiritual meaning and say that it is already fulfilled or still being fulfilled.  Thus a person can say that Isaiah 2 and Daniel 2 are just talking about a spiritual kingdom, which is the Church today.  Clearly the Church has spread to fill the whole earth, hasn’t it?  I would say that there is a clear spiritual fulfillment of these passages, but that does not mean they will not be physically true as well.  The same God who made humans composite beings of spirit and body, also works among us both spiritually and physically.  When Jesus says in Luke 13:28, “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and yourselves thrust out,” he clearly envisions a day when this will happen.  The plain sense of the passage is that Abraham and the others will be just as physical as those listening to Jesus (that is, a resurrection will have occurred).  Also in Acts 1:6, the disciples ask Jesus if he will restore the kingdom to Israel at this time.  Jesus does not tell them that the kingdom is only spiritual and will never be physical again.  Rather, he tells them it is not for them “to know times and seasons which the Father has put in His own authority.”  Thus, there is going to be a day when Israel and Jerusalem will be the hub of the world and all the nations will flow to this place on earth where Jesus will be physically reigning.

Verse 4 makes it clear that it will involve a judgment of the nations.  Of course, we saw this in Revelation 19 and chapter 20.  However, Jesus does not just judge the nations.  He also judges between them.  Think of all the disputes that have built up through the years between many different ethnic groups.  Those who miraculously survive the Great Tribulation and the Second Coming of Christ will come before Christ.  There he will separate the sheep from the goats.  Those who are allowed to come into the millennial kingdom will also have long standing disputes with other settled by Jesus.  In fact, it is said that he will rebuke many nations.  Often our bloody feuds with others are nothing but pride masquerading as piety.  Jesus will put an end to these disputes.

He will be so effective that we are told that there will be no more war.  The nations of the world will “beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”  It is clear that the United Nations will not stop war in its present condition.  It also beggars belief that it could be reformed in any way that would get rid of war.  However, God promises that Messiah will be able to cause war to cease, and not just for a few years.  The only hope for a world that rejects the One Anointed by God is to put a “superman” in power who will represent the greatest wisdom of man.    Whether this is some kind of artificial intelligence or a combined link with “ascended masters,” we cannot know.  Yet, that really is the only path forward for a world in rebellion that refuses to repent.  This man who will supposedly have all the answers will pretend to want peace, but in the end the God of heaven describes him as a beast.  Mankind cannot force peace upon the world.  Only the Spirit of God can bring it.  I find it interesting that the United Nations has a sculpture given to it by Russia in which a naked man is hammering a sword into a plowshare.  It seems to give tribute to the Bible, but in truth it represents a humanistic rebellion.  Yes, mankind has no problem with the goal of no war.  However, they will attempt to accomplish it through humanist means, not divine.  Thus the naked man represents the Greek ideal of mankind doing in the flesh the wisdom of its mind.

It is also easy to get stuck on the terminology used.  Yes, we do not typically use swords anymore (or not nearly as much).  However, the point is clear.  During the millennium mankind will recycle all the weapons of war (tanks, missiles, guns, etc.) and use them to make farming equipment.

The wisdom of Jesus the Messiah

Next let’s go to Isaiah 11:1-2, 6-9.  Here we see the wisdom of the Messiah on display.  In verses 1-2 the image of a menorah (the seven-branched candlestick in the temple) is brought to mind.  The seven lights were a picture of God’s complete wisdom giving complete light to the world.  Each of these seven lights is given a name which makes even clearer that the source of the light (knowledge/truth) is the Spirit of God Himself.  No matter how wise mankind becomes or how great an artificial intelligence we create, when we cast off God’s word and forge a path of our own, we have become fools and our path is folly.  Jesus was and will be successful because He operates from a wisdom that has its source in God.  Notice that verses 3-4 highlight his judgment.  He will not judge by the sight of his eyes or the hearing of his ears.  No one will be able to manipulate him, and he does not have an ulterior motive.  Rather, He judges with righteousness and equity, which is bad news for the wicked and great news for the righteous.

In verses 6-9 we are told that the animal kingdom will no longer be deadly either.  Just as humans were not created to kill one another, so animals were not originally made to destroy one another.  When sin entered the world, it brought a curse and drastic changes to the world itself.  Scripture tells us that the whole of creation groans in expectation for the manifestation of the Sons of God.  The wisdom of Christ will turn back the effects of sin and the curse.  Isaiah gives a list of things that we would not leave alone together in this world because one of them would kill the other: a wolf with a lamb, a leopard with a young goat, a calf with a young lion, a child near a cobra’s hole, or sticking its hand in a viper’s den.  All of these things would strike fear into the owner or parent’s heart.  Yet, they will lie down in peace together.  Their nature will have been changed.  How Jesus will accomplish this is not described, but it seems that, if these things were a judgment of God upon wicked mankind, such judgments are simply being lifted by God Himself.  We are also told that the lion will eat hay like an ox.  Whether such is possible in today’s conditions is irrelevant.  The whole point is that the nature of things is going to change.  The statement may be just as much about the hay itself as it is about the lion.

Now let’s go to Isaiah 35:1-7.  Here we see descriptions of the desert places blooming with life.  Again, we could spiritualize this whole passage to be a blooming of a spiritual desert.  When Jesus came to Israel, it was spiritually a desert, but he caused it to bloom with spiritual life.  The gospel has the ability to bring life into the most spiritually dead of lives.  Again, this would be true, but there is also a natural aspect to this as well.  Through his knowledge and divine power we will see the curse upon Adam turned back.  There will be an increase in the fertility of the earth and an increase in places where water will “burst forth in the wilderness.”  Amos 9:13 says it this way, “’Behold the days are coming,’ says the Lord, ‘when the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows seed; the mountains shall drip with sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it.”  Many skeptics have scoffed over the years at the idea of Israel being a “land flowing with milk and honey.”  However, it looks like it does because the land is under a curse, much like the whole earth is under a curse.  In that day, the curse on the land and on the earth will be lifted and we will know fruitfulness as we have never known.

Verses 3 through 6 speak to the condition of mankind that has struggled under the heavy load of disease and poverty.  These things will become a memory as Messiah heals.  Some think that this only points to the miracles that Jesus did when he walked on the earth in the past.  However, the miracles he did then were so that we could recognize that he really is the Messiah.  When he comes again, he will have just as much healing power as he did before. 

Just think that the saints of every age will be resurrected so that they can participate in this exciting period of humanity’s existence.  I will close our time today by giving a reminder.  This is just a small part of the plan and hope that God has put before us.  We will take some more time next week to keep looking at this amazing period called the millennial reign of Christ.  However, even then what can we say about the New Heavens and the New Earth that lay beyond it?  Christians are to be those who live today in the light of this coming kingdom because its king is already living in our hearts.  Is Christ living within you by the Holy Spirit of God?  Turn from any wickedness, turn towards Christ, and put your trust in Him.  Then you will be blessed by God with all these things.

Millennium part 1 audio