Everyone Is Forcing His Way Into It

So this morning, we're going to be talking about change. Change going on in our lives. Now, there's a couple of things that you all know to be true about change. One is that it's inevitable. It happens, right? The other thing that you know if you've gone through enough of it is that change generally is a good thing. And yet, the fact that change is inevitable and that it usually produces something good doesn't make it any more... desirable to us. How many of you like the idea of change? Just say, you know, I'd like to just pick up and Isaiah likes change, right? Not surprising. But for the most of us, I think that we like the way things are. And when the way things are get upset, even if we'll go along with it, it takes time for our hearts to come along, if they come along at all. And there's a great temptation to sin of all kinds when things change.

We can drag our feet, we can dig in our heels and refuse it altogether. And yet what we have to see when things change around us, what we ought to understand as Christians is that God is at work revealing himself and accomplishing his will through all of the little things that go on in our lives that tends to be irritating to us or the big things that go on in our lives that tend to be difficult for us. If God had not changed, if he had not revealed himself, I shouldn't say he changed. God doesn't change. But if he did not change our circumstance through revealing himself more fully over time, we would be the worst for it, historically and even in our own lives. And so when change comes to us, we have to see it first as coming from the hand of God, not from circumstances. Yes, maybe from the circumstances, but is God the God of those circumstances or is he not?

If he's not, then what hope do we have? We're left to fend for ourselves in this world, and we aren't going to fare very well. But if God is who he says he is, then he's the God that orchestrates these things for the good of those who love him and for the manifestation of his glory. And so when things in life start to move around, before we get... grumble and complain and get frustrated and want to just try to hold everything together, we ought to first say, what is God doing here? What is his intention in all of this? How is he at work? Because he is at work. This morning, our text is addressed to the crowds about how the religious culture and structure that they lived in and had grown up in was changing. This change was afoot, which is why the Pharisees were plotting to kill Jesus. He was the agent of change.

His life and his ministry brought about an incredible amount of change, and the Pharisees were desperately trying to keep things the way they were. As Jesus taught and he healed and he performed miracles, the Pharisees dug themselves in, and they prepared to fight to keep things as they were. And from our vantage point, we can look back on them and we can go, what fools and what wickedness for them to do what they did, to reject and to refuse the Son of Man, the Son of God. And yet their temptations and the things that motivated them to behave as they did, they're not foreign to us. And so my hope this morning is that we'll see the ways that we're currently doing this same thing and that we'll repent of it. Additionally, I hope that we'll learn to be content with our portion from God as he continues to change us and our lives and our society and everything that goes on. That we would find contentment in the process, not just the finished product.

Would you please stand now for the reading of God's word from Luke chapter 16, verses 16 and 17. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. The law and the prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time, the gospel of the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it. But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the law to fail. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So I want us to look at this passage in terms of what's the familiar, what's the status quo, then what is the change, and then what is the response or the result of the change, and finally, what are the terms of the change? So four things. What's the status quo, what's the change, what's the result of the change, and then what are the terms of the change?

So first, what is the status quo? What is familiar to all of these people? Well, it's that the law and the prophets were proclaimed until John. And to give some context to that, you have to understand that before John came, there had been 400 years of silence from God. God had not raised up a prophet. He had not sent anyone to communicate to his people. Life had become very stagnant for them, or stable, or familiar. And then when John comes, he's the forerunner. of Jesus Christ. Before God was silent for 400 years, there was a prophecy, and he said that one would come before the Christ, a forerunner, that Elijah would come. And then there was 400 years of silence, and then John shows up. And so everything was very settled. Life was settled for the Jews. Their religious worship Their culture, their way of doing things was fixed. For generations it had been just like it was. And one of the main features of their culture and of their society was that they were the exclusive people of God. That they alone possessed the law and the prophets and the promises of God. When the Lord led Israel out of Egypt and out into the wilderness and they came to the mountain to worship God,

There's this dialogue. There's this interaction. There's this covenant made with them. And it was that if they would obey God's voice and keep all of his commandments, that he would be their God and they would be his people. Here's what it says in Exodus 19. Now then, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession among the peoples. For all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words. The Lord says to Moses, these are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel. And he puts the question to them, is this what you want? And they say, yes, all that the Lord says we will do. And so in that moment, they ratify a covenant between themselves and God. And what that covenant does is exclude everyone else. You will be my people. And what does that mean? Except that everyone else will not be my people. I will be your God. There's an exclusivity to the culture.

in Israel that goes on for hundreds and hundreds of years. If you look in Egypt, even in Egypt, they were not mixed in with the Egyptians. And it wasn't because God said, you may not mix in with them. It was because the Egyptians absolutely hated them and despised them because they were shepherds. And they said, well, you can go live in this land, but you stay in that land and don't you come out and don't you mix with us. You're going to be set apart. You're going to be different. You're going to be exclusive. And so even before they came to the mountain, God was revealing to them, teaching them, you're going to be separate. You're going to be an exclusive people set apart for me. So they leave Egypt, and they go into the wilderness, and they meet at the mountain with the Lord, and they covenant together with him. And they spend years wandering. And then eventually they come into the promised land, and there's all these people there, and what are they supposed to do? Put them all out. Kill them all. Get rid of them. That's your land.

I've set it apart for you. I've promised it to your fathers. You're to put them out of it. You're not to mix with them. You're to be exclusive. And so I want you to see this. The reason I'm at this point is because I want you to see how deeply ingrained into the Jews, into Israelites, that they were the people of God and no one else was. It was a big deal to them. And the way that's described in our text is that the law and the prophets were proclaimed until John. These things that God has given to you alone have been until John. Now, when John came, things changed. Now, I want to say something about the law and the prophets. And it's with reference to theologically what we understand is called progressive revelation. Now, revelation just means to reveal something, to teach something.

If you went to a math class, you could describe your math class over the course of a year as progressive revelation. It builds on top of each other. You start with these concepts, and once you master these concepts, you learn these other concepts. And once you learn those, then you put them together. Music's the same way. There's all kinds of things that we don't think of in terms of, well, this is progressive revelation. But we understand that it goes from simplicity and from less detail, you know, big picture sort of stuff, into... greater detail, greater clarity, greater specificity. And God has done the same thing throughout history. He started, things were very simple, were very rudimentary. And the details and the particulars that were to be revealed in the future were hidden. They were veiled. They weren't right at the forefront. They were there, but they weren't there in their fullness yet. And so The law and the prophets, that time, the Old Testament time of history, was a season of less clarity, of less maturity, of less understanding than afterward. And this is what the people have come used to. In Ephesians 3, Paul writes, by referring to this, when you read, you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ.

which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men. So there was something hidden from them in the past, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and the prophets in the spirit. And so what is this mystery? That's the question you should be thinking. Okay, Paul understands this mystery. What's this mystery that's been hidden in the past, but now is being revealed? To be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise of Christ Jesus through the gospel. hidden, was veiled, was obscured in some way during the law and the prophets. It wasn't as known then as it was now. And to do something this way, to progressively reveal something, it's not a failure. It's certainly not a failure when God does it, but it's not a failure even when we do these sorts of things. It's not a failure if John's teaching a music lesson to teach you the most basic, simple,

ways of holding the instrument, addressing the instrument, because you're not able to do more sophisticated stuff yet. Progressive revelation is intended to accommodate our weakness and our frame. What are we capable of? I remember one of my sons asking me one time, how does electricity work? And I thought, well, that's a good question. I could explain it. And I said, you should ask Abram. Because he's a scientist. Was it electricity that my son came and asked you? Yeah. And what did you say to him? What did you start talking about? Yeah, yeah. Electrons and how they move from a positive to negative pole and something else. And how old was my son? So Abram would have done well to have understood the progressive revelation and not explain that the way he did, right? Because my son was incapable of understanding that.

And so progressive revelation is meant to accommodate us and our weakness and also to reveal what God has intended to reveal when he intends to reveal it. Knowledge was given as it was appropriate and as it was necessary. Now I want to note to you that even though in the Law and the Prophets all that was to be revealed was there in a veiled form, there was always enough revealed to believe. even if it was veiled and less clear than it is now. So this is the familiarity. This is the environment that the Israelites lived in during the law and the prophets. This is what it had been until John came. And there's a very severe danger of preferring the familiarity of life over faithfulness, even if the older system is inferior to the new one.

You meet people who just do things the old-fashioned way. And it's an inferior way, whether that's a computer program or that's a way of construction. There are inferior ways of doing things. And when you meet people who are stuck in doing it that way, do you think they're being wise? No. If there's a better way, a safer way, a faster way, a more productive way, that doesn't sacrifice something else that's more important, then by all means, we ought to come into the new way of doing things. And yet the reason those people stay behind is because they prefer familiarity. They don't like change. They want things to stay as they are. This is a situation that the Pharisees find themselves in. They have a system. They have a way of doing things. They like the way that system treats them. And they hold to those ways, even when God is moving.

and changing things. And this didn't just happen when Jesus came on the scene. This continued to happen after Jesus had ascended into heaven. This is what the whole book of Galatians is about, is Paul dealing with the old way, trying to force the new way to conform. This sort of thing happens all over the place because we don't tend to like or want to go along with change. We don't tend to welcome the will of God as it sends ripples across our life. So this is the status quo. The law and the prophets were proclaimed until John. Everything was set. Everything was familiar. Everything was expected. And then John shows up. And what changes? Well, since that time when John showed up, the gospel of the kingdom of God has been preached. And you remember way back at the beginning of Luke, the book of Luke begins with Elizabeth, John's mother, and Zacharias, his father, being told that they're going to have a son.

and he's going to be the Elijah who was to come. And Zechariah goes, how do I know if these things are true? And he's in the temple, and the angel says, I'll tell you how it's true. You're going to be mute. You're not going to be able to talk. I'll show you that these things are true. They were old, they were barren, and God changed. He decided it's now its time. And so he came to them and gave them a son. He's going to be the one that goes before the Lord. And not long after that, the angel goes to Mary and says, Mary, you're going to have a son. And she says, how can these things be? She's not married. How can these things be? Both Elizabeth and Mary have children, John the Baptist and Jesus. And not long after Jesus is born, his parents take him to the temple to be blessed. And as soon as they show up, this old man, Simeon, is there. And as soon as Simeon sees Jesus Christ,

overflows with a blessing. And here's what he says about Jesus Christ. He says, Now, Lord, you are releasing your bondservant to depart in peace. And in our words, what he's saying is, I can die now. I've seen it. Now, Lord, you are releasing your bondservant to depart in peace according to your word. You've said something previously. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples. A light of revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people, Israel. And so you realize this old man who knew what God had promised to do, even in its veiled and infantile form, he understood what was to come. And he says, I can die now. I've seen your salvation. And what did that salvation include? Well, it included a change. You've prepared this salvation in the presence of all peoples, as opposed to the one people.

That there would be a light of revelation to the Gentiles. And what that means, when he's referring to this, he's quoting Isaiah. Way back when he's quoting Isaiah. And what did Isaiah say? Way back when. The prophet. In Isaiah 9-2 he says, The people who walk in darkness, meaning the Gentiles, the people who walk in darkness will see a great light. Those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them. And this was Old Testament imagery that Simeon understood to be speaking of the Gentiles and the coming of Jesus Christ. He understood that when you send your Messiah, your Savior, into this world, you're going to change things. And the way things have been is going to fade away, and you're going to bring in a new way of doing things. And Simeon says, I can die now because I have seen it. I've waited my whole life, and now I can depart in peace.

Isaiah 49 verse 6 says, I will also make you a light of the nations so that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. And what other conclusion can we understand except that the gospel and that the Jews had enjoyed exclusively was going to be opened up to everybody. It was there in the Old Testament for them to read and for them to understand and for them to hope in and for them to look forward to. And so they had the law and the prophets until John. But since that time, the gospel of the kingdom of God has been preached. The change is starting to be said more clearly. What was hidden in types and in veils before was now being said more clearly. This message is not just for you, but for all people. The gospel of the kingdom, as it's described here in Luke, is a clearer articulation than had been previously given. It was not something different. God wasn't changing what he was doing.

saying, well, I was doing this, but stop that. Now I'm going to come over here and do something completely different. That's not what God is saying. That's not what he's doing. This is the failure of dispensational theology, is that it doesn't understand God is being consistent in his revelation, but that there's two different paths for two different people that don't have anything to do with each other, and they've misunderstood the promise and the prophecy of the Old Testament concerning Jesus Christ. That those in the Old Testament hoped, looking forward, in the one who was to come. And those who live after his life look back, hoping in the one who came, looking forward to his return. But they're all one people. Simeon knew what was happening. And the reason that this is significant is because it means then that the Pharisees, the teachers of the law, are left without excuse. They should have known. They should have recognized who Jesus was. This old man in the temple knew who Jesus was.

And yet they were ignorant. In John 3.10, when Nicodemus comes to him by night, having heard him, Nicodemus is a Pharisee. He's a leader. He's a ruling religious man. And yet he hears what Jesus says and he's intrigued. So he comes by night and he says, you said that people have to be born again. And how does that work? Because that doesn't work. And Jesus' answer to him was, are you a teacher of Israel and you do not understand these things? Should you not have understood these things? from what has already been revealed to you? Should you not know this and understand it? And so there was a lack on the Pharisees' behalf. And we could argue about what caused that lack and what their responsibility was in that lack. But I simply want you to see that we, like them, lack in our understanding of what God's doing. And our lack of understanding and our lack of maturity or our lack of wisdom cannot put us in a place where we accuse God of doing something wrong. We don't want to be found opposing the will of God because we don't understand the will of God. This is what was going on with the Pharisees. Salvation had been exclusive to them. They were the people of God. And God activates, if you will, these promises when Jesus comes online and they don't have any place in their understanding to process what's going on. And so they oppose him.

So the gospel of the kingdom is preached. The Gentiles are to be brought in. And what's the result of it? Well, everyone's forcing their way in. That's what the text tells us. Now it's not just the Jews who are coming in, but that everyone's coming in. The people that the Jews had despised, the people who they had looked down on and said, we're better than you because we're the people of God and you're not. They're coming in and they're not following the Jews in, they're pushing past them and forcing their way into the kingdom of heaven. Now, isn't it strange? That scripture teaches us that we're to force our way into the kingdom. It cuts across the grain that we would force something with God. You think of Jacob wrestling with God. He was forcing God to give him a blessing. And it cost him something, did not. He forced his way in. This sort of language equates with striving to enter through the narrow door.

or traveling on the narrow path, it takes quite a bit of effort, whereas the broad path that leads to destruction is easy and comfortable. Now, you have to note about the wide path and the narrow path, if we can understand forcing our way in as traveling the narrow path, that the wide path is decorated with the things of Christ, but it doesn't have the substance. The people on the wide path don't have the substance of Christ. The wide path is not simply for those who hate God and never come to church and who are avowed atheists or agnostics or just out and out opposed to the gospel. No, there's plenty of people who believe themselves to be Christians who are wandering right down the wide path. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a danger to us, would it? If when you become a Christian, the wide path is no longer a danger, then why are we warned against it? And warned to keep away from it and to travel the narrow path? Well, because of the effort that it requires of us. We're to force our way into it, into the kingdom of heaven.

How do you know if you're on the wide path or the narrow path? Well, ask, is there anything in your life that looks like forcing your way into the kingdom of heaven? Or are you passive? And do you expect God to just dump it all in your lap while you sit there and do what you want? Here's an interesting question. Should we have to force our way in? Isn't salvation a gift? Isn't grace a gift? How do you force someone to give you a gift? It just seems backwards that you would force someone to give you a gift. How is it grace if you demand it? The way we should process that is this. God's grace is what produces this force in us, this desire. Or to say it another way, if God hadn't been gracious to you, would you have any interest in forcing your way into heaven? No, you wouldn't. You wouldn't care. And so if you care, you've been given.

And if you've been given grace, then what you're supposed to do with that grace is see to it. Force your way in. In the Gospel of Matthew, he calls it violence. This sort of forcing your way in, he addresses it as violence. In Matthew 11, 12-15, he says, From the days of John the Baptist, here's the change again. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence and violent men take it by force. And if you're not careful, you think, well, that's a bad thing. But it's not a bad thing. He goes on, for all the prophets in the law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to accept it, John himself is Elijah who was to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. And so what happened was that when John came on the scene and brought an end to the law and the prophets in their current manifestation, he introduced a new way of coming to God. And it looked like forcing your way in.

We can only understand from our text that if the response to the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom was people forcing their way in, that that was what they were supposed to do. That's what they were being told to do. When Jesus questions the crowds when they go out to see John, what did you go out into the wilderness to see? What did you go out there to see? A man in soft clothing? No. A prophet and more than that. And what did John tell them to do? What was his message? Very simply and very plainly. Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. Force your way into it. And when the Pharisees came out to hear him, he says to them, you brood of vipers, who warned you to come out and flee the wrath to come? What are you doing here trying to force your way into the kingdom? Violence or force is necessary to enter into the kingdom of God. You will not enter into it without striving in pursuit of it. The kingdom of God is not for anyone who will not do that. There will be no people in heaven.

who didn't strive to get there, who thought they were entitled. And that really is what the Pharisees thought. They thought they had the corner on the market of how things were and how they were supposed to be and that they knew. And it was a deadly error. They were wrong. They didn't understand. Passivity will not save your soul. Thinking more highly of yourself than you ought to will not save your soul. Forcing your way into the kingdom will be the means by which your soul is saved. So how are you supposed to force your way into the kingdom? It's an interesting thing because when you think of forcing anything, it seems like all the rules are off. If you're going to force something, then you're supposed to do it by any means possible, right? If I'm going to force you to do something, I'm going to use whatever I have to to get you to do it. And then we come to verse 17. Why is that there? What's the connection between these two verses?

that we're to force our way into the heaven in a particular way, not ignoring the word of God, not saying, oh, well, I'm just going to, I'm going to force my way in. But no, we force our way in according to what God says. In 2 Timothy 2 verses 5 through 7, Paul writes, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless what? Unless he competes according to the rules. A hardworking farmer ought to be the first to receive his share of the crops. Consider what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. Now, if this is fuzzy in your mind, I want you to think for a moment. Just think through the people you know in your life. Do you know people who will have their will done? They will see what they want accomplished. I think we all know people like that. They're going to keep plugging away at it. They're going to keep doing it. They're going to make sure that what they...

Believe should happen, does happen. And they'll do it in one of two ways. Some people will do that by any means necessary, which means that they'll do it by wicked means. They'll lie and they'll cheat and they'll steal to see their will accomplished. But there are other people who have that same sort of desire or intensity, but they're bounded. Their desire operates within boundaries and says, I will see this done by these means. And they will not give it up. When Paul writes to the Galatians, he talks to them about their falling back into their old ways and into their sin. And Galatians is a very intense book if you were to read it, to understand the hard things that he says to them for their good. But one of the things he says is, he speaks as though he's a mother who's given birth. And if you've given birth, you understand that it's the most difficult thing.

that a woman can do. Most painful, most difficult is not even the right word for it. And when it's over, they have the blessing of the child, the baby, that makes it worth it. And Paul says of them, I guess I'm still in labor over you. I guess I've gone back to the labor of delivering you into the kingdom. I'm back to the labor pains. I thought it was over. It's not over. So why would he describe it that way? Well, he describes it that way because his will and his desire is to see them, to see Christ formed in them, is how he talks about it. He says, and I'm still in my labor pains to see that that happens. There's lots of other things Paul could have done, could have said, to put pressure on them, to manipulate them, to coerce them. But what he does is redouble his efforts in the way that God has gifted him and called him to see them come into the kingdom of God.

He runs according to the rules. And so if we're to force our way into the kingdom of heaven, we have to do it in light of the law of God. You can't take the law and set it aside and discredit it and go, I'm going to be a Christian because I'm a good person. You will not go to heaven if you believe that about yourself. There's no good people in heaven. Jesus didn't come for the healthy, but for the sick. And so anyone who thinks themselves healthy is not fit for the kingdom of God. Blessed are the poor and those who mourn and the persecuted, the weak, not the rich and the strong and the healthy. It's sort of a crazy thing that's said, that earth and heaven would pass away. I mean, can you just for a minute think, what would that look like? What would that mean for earth and heaven to pass away? It would be as incredible as the creation of them in the first place. That everything that we know,

and have ever seen would die and go away. And here what Jesus says is that it would be easier for that to happen than for any of the law of God to fail. And so we understand that the law of God is intact. It's still intact. It's still intact today. Every bit of it, every single bit, every jot or tittle, every stroke of the letter of the law is still intact today. Well, not one bit of it has failed. Nothing God has said has failed and passed away, which may seem strange to you, maybe thinking, well, but what about the ceremonial law? We live very differently than, say, the Jews did, and there was a lot of the law that they had to obey that we don't have to anymore, so how does that work? Well, I'd like to explain to you very quickly about the law of God. There are basically three categories of law. You have the moral law, Ten Commandments, okay?

You have the judicial law, which is how they were to govern themselves, what they were supposed to do when someone sinned, and how they were to judge it or adjudicate the situations. Moral law, judicial law, and then you have ceremonial law, all of the sacrifices with the priests and their garb and the temple and all of that. These are the three categories of government in the Old Testament. And none of them have been just wiped away. And so how is it that the ceremonial law hasn't been wiped away, but we don't practice it anymore? Well, that law, remember that the law and the prophets were until John. Those things were the law, the ceremonial law, pointed forward to the fulfillment of all of these requirements. All of these sacrifices, all of these offerings, all of this stuff that they did, all pointed forward to a fulfillment at some point.

And they had to continually do these things because the sacrificing of sheep and rams and bulls didn't actually atone for sin, didn't actually do anything. And yet they were commanded to do it. Now, why were they told to do something that didn't benefit them at all? Well, it was meant to teach them something. It was meant to teach them and to instill in them a desire and a hope for the fulfillment of all of these things. They were told that the blood of bulls and goats will never atone for sin. And yet they were commanded to do it. And the purpose was so that they would long for blood that would atone. And so when Jesus came, who is our Passover lamb, who is the sacrificial lamb, the one whose blood would atone for sins, he fulfilled all of that portion of the law. And so it hasn't been erased. It's been fulfilled.

And if you had a contract with someone and said, here's what you're going to do and here are all the safety precautions that you're going to make while you're in construction of this building. Once the building is constructed, what can you do? You take down all the safety stuff. Does that mean the safety stuff was unnecessary? That it was a waste of time? When you take all the templates down, you go, oh, well, templates were dumb and we didn't ever need those really. You say, no, we needed the temporary lights and we needed the temporary power until we got the permanent. And that's the way we ought to view the ceremonial law. It hasn't been wiped away and done away with. It's been fulfilled. And there are still good lessons for us to learn from it about Jesus Christ. If we were to go back and to read through it, we're going to come into it in our scripture lessons in Exodus. We're going to read about the temple and the tabernacle and how they constructed it and why. And you can either glaze over and just go, wow, this is...

a boring part of scripture, or you can understand what it was pointing forward to. The law of God was never taken away. Even when the gospel came in and the gospel was preached, it didn't come in and displace the law and say, the law has no place here anymore. What it did was come in and fulfill the law. Jesus came and fulfilled the law, the thing that you and I could never do. In the beginning and multiple times throughout the law, the Israelites are told, If you do this, you will live. But if you don't, you'll die. And they were not able to do it. They were not able to keep it, even from Adam onward. They were not able to keep the law of God, but the law of God didn't go away because they couldn't keep it. It stood as a judgment against them. That was called the law, and salvation through keeping of the law was called the covenant of works. And the covenant of works is still here today. It's not gone.

You still have to keep all of the requirements of the law perfectly to be saved. That's still the requirement for salvation. And here we all sit incapable of doing it. And so the covenant of grace came in to fulfill the covenant of works. Jesus, who came, did everything that was required of the law. Absolutely everything. He fulfilled everything that it said. He never failed in any way. And so what was his by right, since he kept the law perfectly, what was his by right was life. He was not to die. He had not broken the law. And yet what happens to him? He did die, or rather was killed. And so what happens to his righteousness and his perfection when he died? Well, in God's economy and in his wisdom and in his progressive revelation, In the gospel of the kingdom that's now being preached, his righteousness, his fulfillment of the law that cannot pass away, was provided for or given to or applied to those who hadn't kept the law. You and me. He died the death we deserved. And we live the life that was his. And so the law of God, every bit of it that hasn't passed away, teaches us.

about the character of God, exactly what Jesus did and how he lived his life and how he satisfied every requirement of it that we might be saved. So if you were alive at this time and a man arose and told you to repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, that there's one greater than him who he's not fit to untie his sandals, who's going to save his people from their sins, what would your response be? Would it not be to force your way into his kingdom? That was the people's response. That's to be our response. So what's the application to us? What's it mean for us to force our way into the kingdom of heaven? Well, it means that when God is at work in your life, in your family, however it is he's at work, that you would not be unwilling to receive the change by faith and do whatever it is that's incumbent upon you or required of you to do.

Our place as Christians who've been saved by the blood of Jesus Christ is to roll with it, God's will, to put it casually. We're to roll with the changes of God in our life. And when we hit a bump, we're not shaken and we're not thrown off of our understanding of God's work in this world and in our lives. We understand that the God of heaven and earth who's made everything and who holds everything together and who sent his son to live and to die, is still active in this world, in our lives, changing us and making us more holy, giving us his Holy Spirit to do his will, to be his ambassadors in this world so that his kingdom will grow, so that other people will force their way into it. We don't want to be found to be like the Pharisees who fought against God to maintain their status quo, to keep everything just as it was.

This is not our place. This is not what will end well for us. I do want to see it end well for us. I do want to see us in the middle of God's will, doing what he's given each of us to do, by faith, without reservation, without worry. He's always been faithful to his people. He will deliver you and save you. And so don't be afraid to change where that's what's required of you. Don't be afraid to give up the things that were near to you, dear to you, precious to you for his sake. God is no man's debtor. You'll come out ahead. This is what he tells us. Let's pray.