Sovereign Grace Community Church Unknown

Jesus' mission was to announce, manifest and inaugurate Yahweh's long-promised kingdom, and that work involved proclamation, depiction, invitation, and challenge. But conflict was also central to Jesus' work, because the kingdom He was bringing contradicts and disallows every existing human expression of kingdom and rule. Thus He drew the fierce and unrelenting opposition of the world powers - human and supra-human - the moment He began proclaiming and manifesting His Father's kingdom. But that was the battle He'd come to fight, and He would achieve the victory.

The goal of incarnation is the kingdom of God - i.e., God becoming -all in all- through -summing up- everything in His creation in Jesus the Messiah. The Father had sent the Son to usher in His everlasting kingdom as He'd promised through His prophets, and all of the gospel writers constructed their accounts around this work and its completion. Thus they record that, following His baptism and testing, Jesus began proclaiming the good news of this kingdom and challenging Israel to embrace it by embracing Him and the way of being Israel -son, servant, disciple and witness- that He was disclosing to them.

The resurrection of Jesus is a core tenet of the Christian faith, but many Christians have little understanding of what it signifies, why it matters, or how it determines and orients Christian life and mission in the world. This message considers those issues and attempts to provide a framework for living authentically as resurrection people in the risen Messiah.

The Spirit who anointed Jesus as Messiah and led Him through His wilderness testing now brought Him into Galilee where He began proclaiming the good news of Yahweh's kingdom. That ministration led Jesus to His home town of Nazareth where He confronted the people's understanding and expectation of His work on Yahweh's behalf. All three synoptic writers mentioned Jesus' rejection in Nazareth, but Luke provided the best insight into it, showing that it was a microcosm and harbinger of what He would experience from the nation as a whole.

This message examines the third of Jesus' tests during His forty-day wilderness ordeal. Like the other two, this test was part of His Father's proving out of His own assertion concerning Jesus that He was His beloved and well-pleasing son. And because Jesus was being tested as Son of God in solidarity with Israel, His testing was as human son of God - God's True Israel in whom Israel was to be renewed and reconciled.

This message examines the second of three tests Jesus underwent during His forty-day wilderness ordeal. Like the other two, this test was ordained by Jesus' God and Father to prove out His human sonship as True Israel as affirmed at His baptism. Specifically, it involved a temptation to -put God to the test- by seeing if He would honor His promise to protect His faithful children.