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Hey, I want to welcome all of our Atlanta area campuses, those of you who are watching from all over the country and more and more all over the world. So excited that you're joining us today, especially as we launch this series. This series is kind of the culmination of some things we've been talking about for years. And I decided, hey, let's just talk about it directly. Today we're beginning this brand new series entitled the Last Kingdom. And for some of you, if you, when you saw this, is going to be the title of the series. For those of you who follow us on social media, when you saw this, if you were hoping, some of you were hoping I would begin like this. I am Uhtred, son of Uhtred. Few of you get this, right? No idea what I'm talking about. Anyway, I'm a huge Bernard Cornwell fan. He's one of the best historical fiction writers in the world. I think I've read. I think everything he's read, I've written. And years ago, we started this series that Netflix then turned into this Netflix series called the Last Kingdom. I think there are 13 books in the series. I read them as they came out. Then once they all came out, I read all 13 again. And then I watched the Netflix series. And some of you remember that. But here's the thing. Even Bernard would admit that England, or England was not, in fact, the last kingdom, because the authors of the New Testament. Here's what we're going to talk about for the next few weeks. The authors of the New Testament make a compelling case that the last kingdom will actually last forever. And the reason they were so convinced, the reason the authors of the New Testament were absolutely convinced, is because they had met, camped with, laughed with, learned from, wept with, celebrated with the king, God's final king, who came to establish the last kingdom. So I have an agenda in this series, and I don't usually say I have an agenda in a series, but I have a goal in this series, and this is a big goal. And I don't know if this is gonna happen. My goal in this series for everybody who considers one of our churches their home or anybody who listens or attends a church or. And that's in sync with what we're doing here. My goal in this series is that all of us would accept Jesus not just as our savior. Hopefully you've done that. And if you haven't done that, we talk about that all the time. But that by the end of this series, maybe by the end of today, that you would be willing to accept Jesus for who his closest friends acknowledged him to be and accept Jesus for who his fiercest enemies feared that he might be. That every time that you pick up a Bible and every time you read anything from the New Testament, my goal by the end of this series is that every time you read anything from the New Testament, that you would see what has been there all along and that you would never, ever, ever be able to unsee it. And if you grew up in church like I did, any kind of Christian church, then this will represent a bit of a paradigm shift and you might find yourself going, okay, I think he's because if this is true, I should have heard about this before. Why didn't I hear about this before? So I want to go ahead and not give you permission, but actually encourage you to fact check me. This is not something that's over in some corner. This is what should have been front and central all along, front and center all along. And for years I've been slowly doing my best as a communicator to bring it front and center for us. And I wish it would be front and center for all of Christendom, all over the United States especially, but literally all over the world. Because once upon a time it was. And it's what changed the world. It's what ultimately caused Rome to capitulate and to honor and recognize Jesus for who he claimed to be, in spite of the fact that it was the very empire that was that very empire that crucified him. So my redundancy and my repetition today and throughout this series is on purpose as I attempt to drag all of us and it's not your fault. It's not your fault at all. It's the fault of people who do what I do. But to drag all of us back to the place that we would recognize and accept Jesus as the one whom Jesus claimed to be from the very beginning. And the New Testament authors present him as throughout. So here we go. If you grew up in any kind of faith system, not just Christianity, but any kind of faith system, whether it's church or synagogue or temple or whatever it might be when you were a child, if you grew up in a faith system at all as a child, you were given a simple faith template, a belief system of some sort. The technical term would be that you were given some sort of theology or belief about God, and that that simple framework that you were given as a child, just like I was given as a child. It served as the framework for everything related to faith, something to hang all of our beliefs on our convictions, on our traditions, on the way we did things, the way what we expected of one another, what we expected of God. It was sort of a framework. And you just hung all those things on it. Whenever you ask your parents or your priest or a pastor a question, they would answer the question and put that answer hang it kind of on that general framework. Your general framework determined whether or not you read the Bible. It determined how you read the Bible, it determined which Bible you read. It determined what was emphasized or deemphasized in the Bible. If you grew up in some sort of Christian tradition. And it determined your view of God. And it determined your view of the afterlife, or if there's an afterlife. It determined what you considered a sin, what was not a sin, what you did was sin once you sinned and why you kept on sinning. And then when you left home, once you grew up and left home, you took that simple framework with you. And in most cases, most of us, to some extent, we revised it a little better, we modified it, or maybe you modernized it. So to get us started, I'm going to give you the framework I grew up with. And the framework I grew up with is similar to how many of you grew up. If you grew up in the south in particular, went to church in the south, or you attended any kind of evangelical church or conservative church, or if you grew up in a very fundamentalist Christian church. This was kind of the framework that they gave us as a child. And then we hung everything that had to do with the Bible or religion on this framework. And it's very simple. And honestly, it's kind of oversimplified. But when you're teaching a child, you know what it means to be a Christian. It's going to be simple. So here's kind of the general framework. They didn't use these terms, but this is what it looked like. God created everything and it was good. And then mankind came along. Cause God created human beings and mankind sinned and introduced sin into the world and messed everything up. And then God later on sent Jesus into the world to pay for our sins. And if you put your faith in Jesus, then you'll go to heaven. And if you don't put your faith in Jesus, you go to hell, God bless you, go out into the world and conquer. I mean, this was just. This was kind of it right now, to be fair, we hung a lot of other stuff on this framework, but this was kind of the central framework we hung on this, that the Bible is God's word, the scripture is God breathed the Ten Commandments, the Golden rule, David and Goliath, you know, Jonah and the fish, Noah and the Ark, Solomon and Gomorrah. I just made that up. It wasn't Solomon and Gomorrah anyway. Sodom and Gomorrah, everything that Solomon taught, all the Bible stories, we hung all of that on there. And then there were practical things, this framework we hung on there. Who you could marry, who you should date, how far is too far. There's all these moral things. When you could take communion, how we took communion, who got baptized, when you got baptized. So there were all of these things. But when it came right back down to it, when you said, what does it mean to be a Christian? Or what is Christianity? This was kind of the tree that we hung all the. Sort of hung all the ornaments on, so to speak, because. And from top to bottom, you know, from first to last, salvation was. That was most important. But here's what's interesting. This is kind of a sidebar for me for the sermon. In spite of the fact that this was central. And don't tell anybody this, okay? I'd rather stay in the room as a pastor. This is embarrassing. In spite of the fact that this was so central, I prayed what's often called the sinner's prayer. You know, the sinner's prayer is what we ask people to pray to become a Christian, or what you ask your children to pray to become a Christian. And we do the sinner's prayer here. So I'm not dissing it, but as much as I believed this growing up, I prayed the sinner's prayer more times than I can remember. So I prayed, lord, come into my heart. I want Jesus to be my savior. I believe he died on the cross, forgave me of my sins. Amen. Okay, Andy, you're a Christian. Then an evangelist would come along and cause me to doubt my salvation. I'd pray it again. Then another preacher would come along and say, even the devil believes. Even the devil believes. It's not enough to believe. Are you sure you're a Christian? I'm like, I thought I was Lord Jesus, I want to pray that you come into my heart again. Then somebody comes along and says, do you have sin in your life? I'm like, yes, I have. Well, you don't know if you're a Christian. I'd pray it again. You know, So I just want us to kind of level the playing field. And if you're from a different part of the world or different part of the country, and you think, what are you even talking about? Just deal with, you know, bear with us. So wherever you are, if you're driving with some people, watching them from the couch, or you're sitting with a group of people or you're sitting in one of our churches, if you prayed the sinner's prayer or a salvation prayer more than once in your life, would you raise your hand with me? Yes. We have no assurance of our salvation is the bottom line. Okay, that's okay. Now I know we're going somewhere with this. Okay, so bear with me. The point is, as central as all this was, which I believed, all this, I still believe, you know, this is, I mean, this is kind of core Christianity. I don't know. Well, I say core. This is, you know, part of the Christian faith. As central as all that was, there was still this, you know, am I in? Am I in? Am I in? Because it was so emphasized that the most important question you could ask is, are you in? Are you a Christian? Do you know what's going to happen to you when you die? So Christianity was focused on not this life. Christianity got focused on the after life. Okay, but that's my template. So what about yours? All right, just think for a minute. If you had to come up here and say, you know, kind of my, my religious, my faith template was 1, 2, 3, 4. And I know it's hard to, you know, narrow it down, but maybe it was similar. Maybe it was more charismatic, had the gifts of the spirit. Maybe you grew up Catholic and you kind of had a routine and you sinned, but you did a thing, got your sins forgiven and you sin, sin and get your sins, you know, you kind of had a routine, maybe more orthodox, maybe more reform. But the point is, once you were given that template and you didn't question it because adults gave it to you, once you had that template, that theology, if you read the Bible, if you were in a Christian family or went to a church, you had verses of scripture that backed up your theology or you found support for your template in the Bible because your church or your denomination emphasized those verses that supported that simple template. Now, in many modern faith traditions, or I should say, in many, many modern Christian faith traditions, certainly mine, Jesus primary role, if you were to say, who is Jesus? You know, what is Jesus all about Jesus primary role, and his primary title, that's what we're going to talk about, was this Savior. Jesus is the Savior. Jesus is my personal savior. I asked Jesus to be my Personal Savior. He's the Savior of the world. He's a forgiver, he's a rescuer, He's a redeemer. And all of those attributes you can find in the New Testament and all of those attributes are functions, are things that Jesus acknowledged about himself. They're all true, they're all in the New Testament. But practically speaking, bear with me. Practically speaking, when it came to your day to day lives, and our day to day lives, Jesus got relegated to, okay, not trying to be irreverent. Call a friend if you're in trouble. You call on Jesus a conscience reliever. I did it again, Lord, please, in Jesus name, forgive me of my sin. Then I go out and did it again. I keep God, this is so embarrassing. God, I keep doing the same sin over and over and over. But you know, but I was told that you'll forgive me of my sin if you're faithful and just. Forgive me of my sin and cleanse me from all unrighteousness. So erase that sin. And then some of you were told, God, remember your sin after you've asked for forgiveness. That's not true. But that, that's a nice thing to think that he can't remember it. But I tell you what, if I could forget all of your sins, you would be a much easier person to love. Okay, so the good news is God loves you even though he doesn't forget all your sin. But that's another sermon for another day. Also, it's kind of like sin eraser, that Jesus is the sin eraser. Bottom line, even though you probably never use this terminology central to Christianity, Jesus is a savior. He's your ticket to heaven. But Savior is not the primary title or even the primary role Jesus claimed for himself. In fact, check this out for yourself. Maybe you'll find something I can't find. I can't find a single place in the entire New Testament where Jesus referred to himself the Savior or gave himself this title. Other people did and he in fact came to save us from our sins. That's one of his roles. But it wasn't his primary title. It's not the title he gave himself. This is important. And it's not the primary title his friends gave him or his enemies or the early church. In the opening lines, in the opening lines, and I hope you'll fact check me, I hope you'll be like, that can't possibly be true. If it'll get you to open your Bibles, maybe for the first time in a long time, in the opening lines of Every New Testament document, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter's letters, Paul's letters, the Book of Revelation. Jesus is associated with a title. Jesus is associated with a title. He's given a title that points to an epic, and I mean capital E, epic narrative that incorporates all of human history, and it incorporates you as an individual and me and your parents and your children and future generations. But the framework is so different, the New Testament framework. The framework that the authors of the New Testament give us, the framework that is so different than the one that we were raised on or confronted with as an adult. If you became a Christian as an adult, it's so different than what we were presented with that it's hard to see. In fact, this is why when you read especially the parables of Jesus and some of the things the Apostle Paul would teach later, it's so different that we treat those things, again, kind of like that ornament, right? You got your Christmas tree up and you got this ornament. You're like, honey, I don't really think this goes with our tree this year. I mean, this. And I'm not even sure where to hang it. So when you read the parables of Jesus and you're like, okay, we love Prodigal Son, we got that one. I love, you know, the Good Samaritan. We got that one. But kind of the rest of them are like. And he starts them all this way. The kingdom of heaven is like. The kingdom of God is like. The kingdom of heaven is like. The kingdom of God is like. I don't know what to do with that. I don't know where. I don't know where to hang that on the tree. And the authors of the New Testament are shouting at us, those things aren't ornaments. They are the tree. That you have it backwards, that you have taken one of Jesus primary roles and you've made it a title. And now you look at everything Jesus said and everything Jesus said through a framework that is not the correct framework. And you're missing the plot and you're missing the plot line. That's what I want to try to convince you of. And I will just acknowledge up front, I've been sowing seeds and dropping breadcrumbs for years in this regard. And I haven't been dishonest with you. I wouldn't do that. But I so want us to get this. I so want all of Christendom to get this. But I have. Nobody died left me in charge of Christianity. And I'm not the first person to say any of this. None of this is original with me. But unfortunately, the people that talk in these terms and have written about this, they're pretty much ignored because the paradigm is so solid and in place that the rest of the language that we're going to talk about kind of bounces off. So I want to begin with the Gospel of Luke, and I want to begin at the beginning. And I want to begin with this particular text because it is so familiar. And we consider it seasonal. We consider this Christmas. But Luke would tell you, wait, this doesn't have anything to do with Christmas. This isn't seasonal. This is foundational. And yes, we read this recently. I'm aware of that. That's why I chose it. An angel appears to Mary, a peasant girl, Galilee. A nobody scares her to death, of course. And he says, remember this. Many of us can quote it. Don't be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God, and you're going to have a baby, a son. And you don't get to choose his name. His name is going to be Jesus. And he's going to be special. He will be great. He will be called, unlike anyone who's ever been born, the Son of the Most High. He will be, in a unique way, the son of the Creator of the universe. He will be the Son of God. And thanks to him, you'll get to go to heaven when you die. That's not in there. That's our template talking. Oh, good. God sent a savior so I can go to heaven when I die. And Luke's like, what are you talking about? Just shut up and listen. I'm trying to introduce you to something extraordinary. And all you Christians can think about is yourself and what's going to happen when I die. It's like, this isn't about what happens when you die, what happens right now in your life. And you are invited to participate in it. This isn't about us. Luke is introducing us to. Well, he tells us. But somehow it's just so easy to miss the Lord. He goes on, he says this. The Lord God. The Lord God will give your son a throne. The throne of his father David. We're going to come back to that is in King David. And your son will reign. Well, now, I thought he'll save. No, that's a function. That's not his primary role. That's not his primary title. That's ancillary. We'll talk about that next week. Luke says, pay attention. He will reign over Jacob's descendants. How long? Forever. Wait. Forever is a long time. Luke's like, let me finish. His kingdom will never end. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they are not the stories of heaven and hell and who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, who's in and who's out. It's much bigger than that. Luke is documenting the story of, of your king, God's final king, the last kingdom that will last forever. This is about God coming into the world and wading through the complexities and the tragedies and the awfulness of the kingdoms of men to establish his final kingdom. And if you kept reading the book of Luke, you would discover this is why it's called good news. That you, no matter what you've done, no matter what you do, no matter what you will do, no matter how many promises to God you break that you are invited to not just believe in it, you are invited to participate in it right now, today, here at work, at home, school, in the community that you are members and have been invited to function and live as members of God's final kingdom. It's never going away. It has already been launched. And when that becomes the paradigm through which you read the New Testament, everything Jesus taught makes a lot more sense. The New Testament authors were unanimous and unambiguous. Jesus is a king. This is why I've been using this language. He is God's final king. And now that you know that, I dare you to pick up the New Testament and try to prove me wrong. Because now that you've seen it and now that you've heard it, you will begin. Especially by the end of today's message, you will see it. Not here and there, you will see it everywhere. Because nobody buries the lead. In fact, the opening sentences of the opening sentences of every single Gospel, almost every book in the New Testament, states it plainly. In fact. In fact. In fact, I'll back up. You don't even have to pick up a Bible this week to be reminded that Jesus is king. That you don't have to pick up a Bible this week to be reminded that Jesus, primary title, you will not get through this week. Some of you won't get through this day, but you will not get through this week without being reminded at work, at school, or on a Netflix series. You won't get through any of that without being reminded that God sent us a king. And I say that because before this week is out, before this week is out, someone in your vicinity, perhaps you, I hope not, will unintentionally proclaim Jesus as king when in a moment of frustration or anger, they Declare Jesus Christ, literally Jesus as we're going to see Messiah as the authors of the New Testament want us to understand. Jesus King. If that is a habit in your life, you should break it. You have become your own judge and your own jury. You are declaring that Jesus is a king you've never surrendered to. You should stop doing that for your sake. Because the term Christ is not a name. And we've talked about this before, it is a title. Listen. It's a title that is associated with Jesus name hundreds, hundreds of times in the New Testament. It is the Testament. It is the primary title that Jesus is given. It is so closely associated with his name, people think it's a name. Unfortunately, the term Christ is an unfortunate. And I'm going to explain this to you in detail, in fact, detail you're not even interested in. But we got to get a little geeky in order to get through this because this is such a paradigm shift. The term Christ is an unfortunate lack of translation that has enabled the church to bury the lead and reduce Jesus to someone who just came to save us from our sins. And consequently we lose the plot line. And consequently so much of what Jesus taught doesn't make any sense and we can't find a place to hang it on the tree. It causes us to diminish his, not just his role, but who he is, rather than recognize him for who he claimed to be and who the people closest to him believed him to be. So real quick, here's the kind of nerd out a little bit moment. Here's the backstory. Okay, pay attention because I don't know, this would just make you smarter in general conversation. Most of us, I would gather, I would, would assume almost all of us are familiar with or at least heard the term Messiah before, right term Messiah. The term Messiah is a Jewish term. It came from a Hebrew word, means it's. We associate it with Jesus, you know, God's Messiah. But it actually is just a term that means anointed one, specifically one anointed to be a king. That's how it was mostly used, anointed to be a king. So messiah means anointed, which means king. One of the easiest ways to understand this is to think about our English word inaugurate or an inauguration. When I say the word inauguration, you think president of the United States or president. But the word inaugurate simply means to induct someone into an office. That's what the word means. But in our culture, it has become so closely associated with presidency that when you hear about an inauguration, you just think, oh, President of the United States. Even though the word doesn't actually mean that. Well, the same happened in ancient Israel with some rabbinic traditions, not all that. The term that meant anointed one or anoint became closely associated with a future messiah. But they understood the future Messiah to be a king, God's final king that would one day come and rescue all of Israel. Interestingly enough, the term Messiah only appears seven times in the New Testament. Now that's important. It's important because the New Testament was written primarily to Greek speaking people, non Jewish people who had no idea what a messiah was. That was like a Jewish thing, Messiah. So the authors of the New Testament don't use that term. It only shows up seven times and it shows up within narratives. And only four, I think even refer to Jesus because the term Messiah meant some special anointed one that's going to come in the future. The authors of the New Testament. Here's the thing, the authors of the New Testament knew that term meant nothing to a non Jewish audience. And so they go out of their way. This is why it's so tragic. We've missed this. They go out of their way to clarify Jesus identity for their first century non Jewish audience, people like us. So instead of using the term Messiah, which meant nothing to Greek speakers, it was just a term that meant anointed one. They used the Greek term that means anointed one as one in terms of one who's been anointed as a king. And that particular word again is like the word inaugurate. It was just an average term that got associated with a specific event. That term instead of messiah was this term Christos. It simply meant an anointed one. Anyone who was anointed as a king was considered an anointed one. Like any president of the United States, we would say he's an inaugurated one. Same thing. So throughout the New Testament, what you find is you find this Greek term Christos, associated with Jesus, which any Greek reader, again, they didn't bury the lead. Any Greek reader understood Jesus, not Christ Jesus, the anointed one, over and over and over and over. For Greek speakers, this was an unambiguous declaration of royalty. It was an unambiguous declaration of a right to rule. This is why there was so much pushback against the early Christians. They weren't going around saying, guess what, you can have your sins forgiven. It's like, what's a sin? Okay, you know, every pagan have had their own version of what the gods liked and disliked. I mean, who cares that you have somebody that forgives you of your sin? I'm not worried about my sin. I don't even think I'm sinning. There was no morality in pagan religion. This wasn't about the arrival of a savior who would forgive people of their sin. Only the Jewish people had that concept. This was something much bigger. This was about the arrival of a king. So years after, maybe 25 years or so after, maybe more after the resurrection of Jesus, there's this group in Antioch that these gentiles, we've talked about this before, that become followers of Jesus. And the Gentiles, the non Jesus followers in that large metropolitan city. See these crazy people, some of them were friends of theirs, some of their sons and daughters. And they're talking about a dead Jewish, you know, itinerant rabbi, preacher who claimed to be a king. And now they're worshiping this dead rabbi as a king because they say he rose from the dead. And what do you call these people? I mean, this is crazy. They keep talking about the Anointed One. The Anointed One, you know, God's king. You know, this king has come. So the people resisting this movement are the ones that coined the term that has become so common in our culture and for actually ever since they came up with this term. Christianos, Christianos, this is the followers of the Anointed One. Followers of the Anointed One. Followers of this dead, supposedly resurrected king. Because even the detractors and the enemies of the church understood what these people were claiming, right? This was not about, you know, you say your guy forgives sins. We say this was not about sin forgiveness. This was 100% about the right to rule. And they got labeled. This meant followers of the Anointed One, followers of a king. Then we're going to dig deep into this next time. Just going to touch on it quickly. Then at Jesus trial, you remember, he's arrested, brought before the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees, they gang up and they beat him and they're questioning him and they finally hear him blaspheme because he claims to be from the Holy One of God. You know, then they take him to Pilate. Pilate, question him, questions him. We're look at that next week. It's just so powerful. And Pilate listens. He's like, I mean, Pilate basically says, I think this is just a Jewish thing. Like, why are you bringing it to me? I mean, this. Apparently he's broken some of your ridiculous laws that Nobody cares about but you guys anyway. So you take him and you deal with him. And people break your laws all the time. And you can, you know, we've given you some leeway. You can beat him, you can have him flogged a little bit, but you know, you can't put him to death. So you deal with him the way you want to deal with him. And do you remember how they respond to Pilate? Again, here's why I'm pointing this out. Nobody is confused. Only modern Christians are confused. And not just modern Christians. Even pre modern Christians. We'll explain why in just a minute. Nobody in the first century is confused about who Jesus claims to be. This is what they say to Pilate. Hey, Pilate, it's not that simple. If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Why are you bringing up Caesar? Anyone who claims to be a sin forgiver, anyone who claims to be a ticket to the Jewish heaven, anyone who claims to be a miracle worker, anybody who claims to be a comforter, anybody who claims to come through for you when you need them, anybody who claims to be your best friend, pilot. Anybody who claims to be a king, opposed to Caesar. And everybody knows he claims to be a king. Nobody's confused. Jesus claimed to be God's final king. Listen, look up here. This was not a religious conflict. This was a political conflict. This was a clash between kings, kingdoms. This was not about who had the right to forgive sin, but who. And this is why. This has something to do with you personally and me personally and everyone who ever lived. This had everything to do with who ultimately has the right to rule. From the opening lines of the New Testament to the final lines, nobody's confused. A king had come, God's final king, to establish God's kingdom on earth. And everybody is invited to participate in it. But I gotta speed this up. Unfortunately. Unfortunately, this is the part you might want to check out if you don't believe me. Unfortunately, when the New Testament was translated into other languages from Greek, instead of translating the term Christos, which meant anointed one or king, there was another Greek word for king. Actually a couple. But instead of taking this Greek word Christos and translating it, they transliterated it, which means they took each Greek letter and in the English version of the New Testament, they took English letters and they came up with a different term. That's where the term Christ comes from. Christ is not a translation of the term Christos. Christ is simply taking these letters and coming up with English letters and they created a word Christ, which means whatever the church wants it to mean. In fact, my guess is this. Before you came in today, or before you watched today, many of you, not all of you, but many of you, if I had stopped you in the hall and said, what does the word Christ mean? You would have said, jesus. Something to do with Jesus, I'm pretty sure. I mean, you're a preacher, so I'm a little bit intimidated because I know I'm gonna get it wrong. But I mean, but again, think about this. Some of you have been Christians your whole life. You come from multiple generations of Christianity, and you never knew what this word meant. That's not your fault. It's people who do what I do's fault. It is the church's fault. This began to mean whatever the church wanted it to mean. And eventually it became a name rather than a title. And when it became a name rather than a tit, the plot line was lost. But not on everybody and not on you. Because now you know. And now that you've seen it, you can't unsee it. Because every time you read the New Testament and you see Jesus Christ, Christ, Jesus our Lord. Jesus Christ Christ Jesus our Lord, you're going to read it differently. I hope you do. God's anointed one Jesus. Jesus Anointed One Jesus Anointed one Jesus King Jesus, God's final king. The story, the narrative, the emphasis, the purpose of your faith is not about a ticket to heaven. It is so much bigger than that. It is about a king and isn't about. It is about a kingdom. And here's the thing, and I'll wrap up, okay, look up here. We see what we're looking for. This is just a general principle. You want to catch your kids doing something good, you'll see it. You want to catch them doing something bad, you'll see it. You don't even have to be looking. You can hear it. Right? Okay, we see what we're looking for, always. And when you were introduced to the Bible as a child, perhaps your whole thing was, God is love. God is love. God is love. So you start reading the Bible and you're looking for God is love and it's in there. Or you're raised like me, where it's all about ethics and morality and fidelity and being a good person. And there's. I mean, if you're looking for the rules, it's in there. And the whole time the authors of the New Testament are screaming off the pages, no, yes, that. But that's not the plot line. A king has come. When you open up the pages of the Bible, look for a king because you are invited to participate in a kingdom, the last kingdom. Now, hopefully beyond your skepticism, if there's some skepticism, you're asking this question. Okay, okay. So what now? What you know, so what now? What does this mean for me? What does this mean for you? What does this mean for us? What does this mean for the world? And those are big, important questions, and we're going to explore some of those. But I'll give you one disorienting clue as to what this means for you. If you will attempt to recenter your faith if you will attempt to recenter your faith around the arrival of a king and the establishment of a kingdom rather than a ticket to heaven, you will discover why everyone who knew Jesus and everyone who knew why he came considered his message 100% good news for all people. And perhaps for you, your resistance to your king will diminish and go away. And perhaps you will accept, for the first time, not a ticket to heaven, the invitation to participate in God's final kingdom with his amazing last king. And it will change you. And once upon a time, it turned the world upside down. And we will pick it up there next time in part two of the Last Kingdom. Let's pray together. Father, open our eyes. Open our eyes. Open our eyes and let our eyes adjust to the bright light of this extraordinary truth that is so good that it's hard to believe. And that's how we know we're onto something. Open our eyes to the reality of who Jesus is, what he represents in our lives, regardless of where we are in terms of our faith journey. Open our eyes to your kingdom. Work around us and the people who get this right and live out those kingdom values because they're participating in the kingdom, not because they're trying to earn their way or gain their way to heaven. So just please open our eyes. Would you please do something in our churches and in churches like our churches that would impact Christianity in our nation, maybe in the world. But start with me and start with us and help us to recognize this. We've sung that song so many times. There's no other king who would kneel to wash my feet, prepare a table for his enemies. There's no other king like that. And to follow that kind of king makes me want to be more like that. So just do something special. Maybe in these next few weeks. Surprise us with your presence. Surprise us with insight. I pray that we would open our Bibles this weekend and go it's everywhere. I pray that in the matchless name of our King Jesus, amen.