Chris McCurley: Pray with me, please. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for another day, especially a day that we have to gather together as a church family to be one, to be united in purpose and in what we do and say, and may we leave here and be the church to those around us. God, thank you for loving us and sending your Son. It's in his name we pray. Amen. So glad you're here this morning. We're in a series looking at the ones found in Ephesians four, and we've made our way to one Lord. But before we jump into the lesson, I want to introduce you to two fine young men that will be with us next summer. That's right, we've already got interns for next summer. we have two of the three anyway. We're still searching for that third one, but we're excited about these two guys. Luke Phillips, Lane Garrett. If you would stand so everybody can see your pretty faces. Turn around. So this is Luke and Lane. Luke is from Columbia. Lane is from Cookville. And I'm excited to work with you guys. you can sit down. Unless you want to stand the whole time I'm speaking. I have to, you might as well have to. Actually, Luke will hear this, he probably hears this too much, but his dad is a good friend of mine, if you know Andrew Phillips, a preacher at Graymere in Columbia. That is Luke's dad. So glad to have you guys. Excited for you to be here. It was nineteen eighty seven. George Michael had risen to fame as one half of the duo wham. And he struck out on his own and rose to fame as a solo artist and songwriter as well. His first album hit number one in the US and the UK. It was entitled Faith. And one of the songs from that album was also entitled Faith. And so George Michael. in his skinny jeans, his leather jacket, sunglasses and beard stubble, pranced around singing, I gotta have faith, faith, faith, I gotta have faith. And to that I would agree. Everyone has to have faith. And in fact every one of you has faith. Every person in the world has faith in something. And so when someone says you gotta have faith, I would say yes, that's true. Or if someone says, I have faith, I would say that's great, but there's a follow-up question, right? In what? What is your faith in? Because everyone has faith in something. Some people have faith in themselves. Some people have faith in a relationship with another person. Some people have faith in their finances. Some people have faith in a God. And some people have faith in faith itself. Right? And there are those folks who claim to have faith in God and Jesus. They agree with George Michael. You gotta have faith in what? And they say, well, in God, in Jesus Christ. But There's another question to be asked then. Could you elaborate? Because sometimes even a faith in God and Jesus can be misplaced. What are we talking about? When we talk about faith, even in God and Jesus. How many of you like buffets? Yeah, it's okay to admit it. In fact, it's biblical. Paul said, I buffet my body, didn't he? Is that what it says? Buffets. are something that I enjoy because of the variety. Right? I don't come out ahead on buffets because I don't eat a whole lot. So I pay a lot of money for less food. But still I enjoy it. There's a variety. my wife and I have different tastes. And she might prefer more of, vegetables, greens, things like that, or where I prefer something that had parents. But we we like a variety of things. And so we we go to a buffet, we can get what we want, we can leave what we don't, and we walk out of the door full in the stomach and lighter in the wallet, right? Buffets allow us to pick and choose what we like, what we don't like, and we see something very similar in the realm of Christendom. Folks who believe in Jesus. But it's more of a buffet style of faith. They pick and choose what tastes best. They prefer the cross. They like the Beatitudes. They zero in on the resurrection. They love the gospel. You see this all over social media nowadays. I was watching College Game Day yesterday, if you were watching it. There's these signs in the background, and one of them said, Jesus. Just Jesus. No religion, no church. Just Jesus. That's picking and choosing, though. Because if Jesus died for the church, then you can't, in good faith, push it aside. All of these are tasty portions. But you can't pick some at the expense of others, right? Some want the love of Christ without the wrath. Some want the cross without a they want a crown without a cross, I should say. Somewhat salvation without surrender. When you say, I believe or I have faith, the question becomes, in what? And and if the answer is Jesus, then are you willing to accept everything that goes along with such a faith? Are you willing to accept it all? This isn't shonies, this isn't golden corral. Do you even have golden corrals around here? This it this isn't a buffet. You don't get to pick and choose what parts of Jesus you want to follow and what parts you want to leave aside. This is an all or nothing proposition, and it all starts with this. Jesus is king. That is how the gospel starts. When we talk about the gospel, we think about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, which is not wrong, but the gospel doesn't start there. The gospel starts with this: Jesus is king. And if you don't acknowledge that, well, then it doesn't matter what else you acknowledge. If you don't accept that, It doesn't matter what else you accept. And if you accept this, if you say, I believe Jesus is King, well then you take all of it. You've got to accept every bit of it. Because what you're saying is He is the ruler of my life. And I surrender everything to Him. The gospel starts with this truth. Many years ago, I witnessed a gentleman leading a communion focus. Much like Mark did a while ago, and he was adamant that you cannot talk about anything in a communion focus but the death of Jesus. He took a piece of scripture very literally that focused on the death of Jesus, and he believed that therefore you could not talk about the resurrection, only the death. And if you talked about anything other than the death, you would be you would be sinning. Through the years I've encountered Christians who studied the Bible only for the purpose of weaponizing, only for the purpose of debating others. They knew Scripture, they knew it like the back of their hand, but they only used it for the purpose of telling others where they were wrong and where they were right. When I was a younger preacher, I had a gentleman take me to task after a lesson saying, every sermon you preach must be evangelistic. Every sermon you preach has to be on evangelism. Because if you haven't preached on evangelism, every sermon, then you haven't really preached. And I could give you more stories. It's amazing the hills that Christians will die on. The things that they that they believe and that they toss aside other things because of their belief in these things or this one thing. How about you? Do you have a tendency to eat up a portion of God's word and discard the rest? Do you believe everything that goes along with this? Jesus is King. Do you accept everything that goes along with that? Do you love the verses that talk about love and hope, but ignore the ones that talk about wrath and hell? Do you prefer the verses that affirm what you already know? Do you hunt and peck? Do you pluck verses out of out of context so that you can make your point and feel better about your point? Do you just want to bang the drum? Do you just want to be affirmed of all what you already know? Just preach what I already know, Chris. Just bang the drum. I just want to be affirmed in what I already know. Or do you want to be challenged? Do you want to think differently, maybe, about a passage? That you never really thought about? Are you willing to question some things? What's the context? What's the story? What's the bigger picture? Are you willing to consider all of those things? Or is it hear, believe, repent, confess, and be baptized? That's the response to the gospel. But have you considered the bigger picture? Have you considered why that's the response? Do we even know what the gospel truly is? Do we understand the narrative of Scripture? Do we understand how our response to the gospel places us in the story itself? I had a gentleman on the podcast a few months ago, a guy by the name of Matthew Bates. He teaches in a Christian college on the West Coast in Oregon. He wrote a great book. I would highly recommend it. Salvation by allegiance alone. Where he talks about faith is more than just a mental assent. Faith is not just saying, I believe. Faith is saying, I am allegiant. I am loyal. I have dedicated my life to Christ. And here's what he says: a portion from his book. When the gospel is presented today by a preacher or teacher, most of the time, this Jesus reigns portion of the gospel is. is either entirely absent or mentioned as an aside. The cross and resurrection get central billing, but Jesus' kingship is tucked away offstage. We need to recover Jesus's kingship as a central, non-negotiable constituent of the gospel. If you're gonna say Jesus is King, are you willing to accept everything that He taught, everything that He believed, everything that He expects you to follow? I saw this a little bit on display when we had Guy Hammond. Some want to accept Jesus to the point of sexuality. Then when it comes to sexuality, they just want to ignore what the Bible teaches on that subject. You got to take it all. Even if it's tough, even if you have to wrestle with it, you have to accept it all. Are you going to take it all or are you going to treat it like a buffet? The narrative truth that all other truths revolve around is this. Jesus is King. Jesus is Lord. And if you want to unlock the full meaning and magnitude of this truth, you don't start with Matthew. The gospel doesn't start in Matthew. You don't turn to Paul's writings. You go to Psalms. Psalm one ten. Look at it with me. Psalm one hundred and ten, starting in verse one. The Lord says to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies. Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power in holy garments from the womb of the morning. The dew of your youth will be yours. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind until You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. The Lord is at your right hand. He will shatter kings on the day of his wrath. He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses. He will shatter chiefs over the wide earth. He will drink from the brook by the way. Therefore, he will lift up his head. This is the psalm that Jesus and the apostles kept going back to. Because it is a psalm about the coming Messiah. If you understand Jesus, if you want to understand Jesus, you go back to this psalm. Psalm 110 is about the identity of the Messiah and why he came to this earth, what he came to fulfill. In fact, this is the passage that Jesus went to when he was speaking to the Pharisees and the religious leaders and In Mark chapter twelve, starting in verse thirty five, it reads like this And Jesus began to say, as he taught in the temple, How is it that the scribes say that the Christ is the Son of David? David himself said in the Holy Spirit, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies beneath your feet. Look familiar? That's Psalm one ten in verse one. David himself calls him Lord, so in what sense is he his son? And the large crowd enjoyed listening to him in his teaching he was saying, Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and respectful greetings in the marketplaces and chief seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets, who devour widows' houses, and for appearance's sake offer long prayers, these will receive greater condemnation. So Jesus is teaching the teachers. And he did this quite often. He asked, How is it that the scribes say that Christ is the son of David? Now he's not directly referring to himself here. What he's really asking is, How can the scribes say that God's anointed king who is to come is the son of David? Then he quotes Psalm 110. Why is this significant? Well, because at this time the Jews believe that David wrote all the Psalms, and so What David wrote here in this particular Psalm referred to the coming Messiah. And in verse 1, Psalm 110, David calls the coming Messiah his Lord. And so Jesus, the master teacher, asked, If I am David's son, how can he address me as Lord? Jesus is not denying that the Messiah is the son of David. He's not denying that he himself is the son of David. He is saying that he is just he's more than just the son of David. Not only is he David's son, he is David's Lord. Even though the Messiah would come hundreds of years later, David says, I surrender. I submit. I bow to the coming Messiah. And God invites this king to come and sit at his right hand. We see that phraseology several times in Scripture. Seated at the right hand of the throne of God. What does that mean? It means. That you are in the position to co-reign with God. To rule and reign with Him. Come rule and reign with me, God says to His Son, co-reign with me until I make your enemies a footstool, until I make all your enemies bow the knee to you. And so the psalmist begins by establishing the fact that Jesus rules and reigns with his heavenly Father. And then everything that comes after that in this psalm. Is a response. Look at it. Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power in holy garments. From the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours. I I mean, this is only natural, isn't it? This is the natural response to the king. To one who rules and reigns, you respond. By bowing, you respond by recognizing the Lordship of Jesus Christ by offering yourself freely to his power. You see, there's only two responses when it comes to Jesus as King. There's only two responses. It doesn't matter if you believe it, it's true. Jesus is king, so will you bow to or will you rebel against? Because that's the only two responses. Will you rebel against or will you bow to? That's it. No other options. You are either loyal or rebellious. You are either on the side of the hero or the enemy. Look at verses five and six again. The Lord is at your right hand. He will shatter kings on the day of his wrath. He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses. He will shatter chiefs over the wide earth. Since we know Jesus wins. And that victory is guaranteed? Well we want to be on his side, don't we? We don't want to be an enemy, rebel, or bow. Those are the only two options. The problem is we like to hang out in the middle, don't we? We like to have one foot in the kingdom and one foot over here in this kingdom. But there's no straddling the fence here. There's no gray area. This is black and white. It's a choice that we all have to make: rebel against or bow to. And knowing that the hero wins in the end, there's only one choice that makes any sense, right? But not only does our king rule and reign, he also serves as priest. Look at verse 4 again. The Lord has sworn And will not change his mind. You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Who was Melchizedek? We talked about him last year in a sermon. We talked about Jesus is. Melchizedek was a priest and king. And you didn't find both priest and king during this time. You were either one or the other. Melchizedek was king of righteousness. And peace he stands in contrast to the king of Sodom, who was anything but a king of righteousness and peace. Melchizedek was king over the city of Salem, which would later become Jerusalem. He was also a priest, but he was not in the line of Aaron. Yet he was still a priest. Why is this important? Genealogies were highly esteemed in this day and time. Priest came from the tribe of Levi. If you could not produce a pure genealogy, if there was any sort of foreign blood in your body, you were disavowed for being a priest. So you had to produce a clean line all the way back to Aaron. But Melchizedek couldn't do that. So what does this tell us? It tells us that he did not receive his priesthood. Through physical means, rather he received it directly from God. You see the connection? Do you see why Jesus, both here and in Hebrews, is connected with Melchizedek? Because Jesus also was a priest and king, the great high priest and the king of kings. However, he was not qualified to be a priest through earthly descent. He was not from the tribe of Levi, which further reiterates. That this was bestowed upon him from above, that his kingdom is not of this world. Everything from the old system points to a new and better system, one that is not carnal and material, but spiritual and heavenly, and one in which Jesus reigns as king and serves as great high priest. again, you don't find people who are both priest and king in scripture. They were one or the other. Melchizedek was both priest and king, and Hebrews chapter 7 tells us that Jesus was after the order of Melchizedek. He was in line with Melchizedek, the only one who was a priest and king. But guess what Melchizedek was? He was a human being. He was an earthly king. He was an earthly priest. It was a carnal system. He made sacrifices of atonement in that carnal system. Melchizedek was a shadow of what was to come. He was a precursor. He was an archetype who pointed forward to a new and better king, bringing a new and better system. And this means that when we pledge our allegiance to King Jesus, We're not doing so out of fear, but out of love and gratitude. We don't submit and serve because we're afraid of getting on the king's bad side. We give our lives to him because he gave his life for us. There was a a little boy in Africa who was being attacked by a lion. And a missionary was there and he was actually out hunting and he he saw. what was taking place. So he shot the lion and saved the boy's life. Now the boy was badly injured and so he took him to his local village where they nursed him back to health and he ended up being fine. But sometime later the missionary heard a commotion outside of his hut and he walked out and he saw a line of people led by that little boy. It was his village coming to support him As he gave his life to the missionary. He said, You saved my life, and in my culture, when you save somebody's life, they own you. And the missionary said, Well, that that that's not necessary, and he goes, No, it's the law of the jungle. You save my life, therefore I come to live with you, and you now own me. Can't help but see the spiritual paralyzed. The King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the great high priest saved you. You'd be dead if it weren't for him. So what do you do? You go to live with him. You live in a right relationship with him because he owns you. He bought you with his blood. He purchased you. He plucked you from the fires of hell. And now you go and you live with him because he now owns you. That means your hopes. Your desires, your relationships, your dreams, everything. You lay at the foot of the cross and you say, Lord, I'm here to serve you. You saved me, you delivered me, and you gave me heaven. You did it all and you own me. I am yours. And what does that look like? It looks like accepting everything that goes along with the proclamation that Jesus is King. Not a buffet. It's all or nothing. here's what's interesting. When you talk about one Lord, there are about sixty specific predictions concerning the coming Messiah in the Old Testament. And Jesus fulfilled every single one of them right down to the minutest detail. The odds of anyone doing this are astronomical. In his book Science Speaks, mathematician Peter W. Stoner conservatively calculated that the likelihood of any person throughout history fulfilling even 48 of the prophecies from the Old Testament would be one chance in ten to the 157th power. The probability of someone fulfilling just eight of those prophecies from the Old Testament Is one chance in 100 million billion. That number is millions of times greater than the total number of people who have ever walked the planet. And if you were to take that number in terms of silver dollars, you had that number in silver dollars, they would cover the state of Texas to a depth of two feet. If you were to mark one of the silver dollars and then have a blindfolded person wander around the state of Texas and just randomly bend over and pick one of those coins up, the odds that he'd pick up the one that has been marked are the same odds of someone fulfilling just eight of the prophecies from the Old Testament. In the Quran, the Muslim prophet Muhammad states this Surely I am no more than a human apostle. Muhammad is acknowledged as sinful, asks forgiveness from God, and is even rebuked by God several times. Muhammad confessed he was sinful. Yet Jesus was sinless, 1 Peter chapter 2 and verse 22. Muhammad only claimed to be a prophet of God. Jesus claimed to be God. John 10 and 30. Muhammad was rebuked by God, yet Jesus said, For I always do the things that are pleasing to him. John chapter 8 and verse 29. The Buddha claimed to be an enlightened man, one who could show others how to escape the duality of this world and find eternal release from suffering in a state of nirvana. I want you to notice what he wrote. Monks. I am an enlightened being, one to ask a favor of, ever clean-handed, wearing my last body. I am inexorable, bear no love nor hatred toward anyone. I have the same feelings for respectable people as for the low, or moral persons as for the immoral, for the depraved as for those who observe the rules of good conduct. You disciples, do not affirm that the Lord Buddha reflects thus within himself the fact that I bring salvation to every living being. He says, Now entertain no such elusive thought. Because in reality, there are no living beings to whom the Lord Buddha can bring salvation. His own words. Notwithstanding the fact that he refers to himself as Lord, the Buddha was under constant pressure to call himself a God, and yet over and over he flatly refused, insisting that he was just a human in every respect. Buddha referred to himself as Lord, yet admitted that he could not bring salvation. He promised personal enlightenment. The one true Lord promised eternal life. Confucius said this, as to being a divine sage or even a good man, far be it from me to make any such claim. And do you know what all of these Prominent figures of world religions, you know what they all have in common? They're all still in the ground. They're all w riding away in a tomb somewhere. Yet the tomb of Jesus is empty. Jesus claimed this that to know him was to know the Father, that to honor him was to honor God, that to believe in him was to believe in God, that to deny him was to deny God, that to hate him was to hate God. And in Mark chapter 2, Jesus claimed that he could forgive sins, something that all religions concede is reserved for For God alone. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. That word begotten, only begotten son, is the word monoganes in the Greek, and it means unique, one of a kind. Jesus was the only one. The monoganace. It emphasizes the unique nature of the one spoken of. It also emphasizes the exclusivity of God. There's only one who can bring about your salvation. Christ is unique because he is the only acceptable sacrifice. And do you see how this ties us together? Do you see how this relates to what Paul is saying in Ephesians chapter 4, one Lord? Do you. You see the ramifications for us as the church universally but also right here at Walnut Street? We have to be united on this. That there is one Lord. That Jesus is King. And because He is, we surrender our lives to Him. It's all about him. It's not about us. It's about him. And therefore we lay down our lives because he is the monoganace, the unique, the one-of-a-kind Messiah, and we give our undying allegiance to him. There's only one Lord. You'd better bow. I don't know if you can see it very well. But I have a I have a Lego piece here, a building block. You know what Legos are. Too many times. This is the Christian. They want to be off on their own. They want to practice faith on an island that they're a Lone Ranger Christian. These are the ones that may believe that Jesus is Lord but they they don't think that they need the church. Maybe they're a buffet style Christian. And and part of that I understand because we have long stressed personal salvation, a personal relationship with God. But like we've talked about, the Bible emphasizes a collective faith. Something we'll talk about next week. The Bible, the culture of the Bible was a collective society, not an individualist culture. So maybe that's where we get off track. Ideally, this person right here recognizes that they cannot practice Christianity in isolation. That they need to be a part of something bigger. That they are a building block of something bigger. This is a an exact replica of Walnut Street Church of Christ. I'm sure you can tell that. And it's made up of building blocks. Picture yourself as one of these blocks. Unfortunately, some want to be like this. They want to be on top and they want to stand out. They want to they they want to tie themselves to church, but they want all the attention. They want to be the main feature. Instead of simply, I'm so afraid this is gonna break. Instead of just being a building block, just being just being a piece. Because that's what it means to be united. The the cornerstone's already set in place. Jesus is already building the building. He's already governing the lines and the walls and the angles and and and he's building us up as we speak. We are a construction site. He is building something great. And as the church we recognize I I may be a door, I may be a window. I may be this little piece back here in the back that no one really even recognizes, but it's important because if we take it out the whole structure falls. It's all about what we can be together, not what I can do on my own. And so my plea to you is to get on board. To get on board. There may be things about Walnut Street that you don't necessarily like or maybe even agree with, but we're doing this together. This is an us thing. This is a we thing. And if we want to be a strong structure, unlike this one that I built Friday, if we want to be a strong structure, then we've all got to be attached to one another and first and foremost, attached to Christ. You with me? Let's pray. Dear God, thank you for another day, another opportunity to be here to worship you. May we build on what you are striving to do in our lives, and may we seek to be a collective society of Christians who are who are striving to be together in this building project. May we grow, may we mature, and may we seek to please you in all that we do, and may we recognize that there is but one Lord. You are King, and we surrender it all to you. Thank you for loving us and sending your Son. It's in his name we pray. Amen. So we've already talked about the gospel this morning. It starts with Jesus is King. And if you recognize that and you say Jesus is King, then I would say, Well then do something about it. Because you can't just say it. What do I do about it, Chris? Well, we believe that faith is where you start. You say, Okay, Chris, I have faith. Faith that Jesus is king. Okay, great. We also believe that pist faith in the Greek is a motion word. It's an action word. And if you have faith and and you want to follow Jesus, then you follow his plan, which is to repent, to confess him as Lord, and to be baptized for the remission of your sin. That's the beginning. Then you live a surrendered life going forward. We'd love to help you do that this morning. If you have a need, whatever it may be, why don't you come as we stand and as we sing.