To our gospel lesson text found in 2 Chronicles chapter 21 will begin in verse 12 and go through the end of the chapter. That's found on page 321 in the Bible, set her in your seats, and I'll give you a moment to find that as well. We've been reading about Jehorm and Jehorm was one of the kings of Judah, the southern kingdom of God's people. Jehorm was a son of David, but he did not walk in the ways of David. He was not a righteous king. He was an evil king and pronounced that by God's word and by God's prophet. We'll see Elijah in this passage. And so God's people and God's king, Jehorm, suffer because of the unrighteousness, because of the sin of God's king, Jehorm, here. 2 Chronicles 21 beginning in verse 12. This is God's word, eternal way true. Jehorm received the letter from Elijah the prophet, which said, This is what the Lord the God of your father, David, says. You have not walked in the ways of your father, Jehoshaphat, or of Asa, King of Judah, but you have walked in the ways of the kings of Israel. You have led Judah and the people of Jerusalem to prostitute themselves just as the house of Ahab did. You have also murdered your own brothers, members of your father's house, men who were better than you. So now, the Lord is about to strike your people, your sons, your wives, and everything that is yours with a heavy blow. You yourself will be very ill with the lingering disease of the bowels until the disease causes your bowels to come out. The Lord aroused against Jehorm the hostility of the Philistines and of the Arabs who lived near the cushites. They attacked Judah, invaded it, and carried off all the goods found in the king's palace together with his sons and wives. Not a son was left to him, except as a raya, the youngest. After all this, the Lord afflicted Jehorm with an incurable disease of the bowels. In the course of time, at the end of the second year, his bowels came out because of the disease, and he died in great pain. His people made no fire in his honor as they had for his fathers. Jehorm was 32 years old when he became king and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years. He passed away to no one's regret and was buried in the city of David, but not in the tombs of the kings. Hearings are gospel, lesson, text reading. Let us give thanks to the Lord for giving us this word to guide and instruct us and to glorify himself. The word of the Lord. Let us pray.
Our God and our Father, we are grateful to you that you have loved us, and we thank you that in your loving us, you have given us this passage to tell us how much you have loved us. Glorify yourself, Father. Buy your spirit as we look at this text. Jesus, preach here your gospel, your good news about yourself, that we might see you in all your grace and mercy and love and wisdom and sacrifice for us. Guide and direct our lives as we see this your gospel. We ask Jesus in your name. Amen. There has been a divide in church over the last 300 years in the church's history, starting in Europe and Germany and places around there between what is now known in general terms as biblical conservative or Bible believing Christianity and biblical religious theological liberalism and the divide has caused a question to come up in the church as a whole as to what is the gospel about? What does Jesus work on earth about? And a parting from the faith held by Jesus to his disciples and carried out through his disciples and to the church throughout the century since Jesus a time here on earth. Departing from that, there was this view that came about in what was termed theological liberalism coming around in the 1700s that Jesus' life was not about bearing sin for his people and satisfying the wrath of God against sin. But Jesus' life was fundamentally and only about Jesus being an example to all people and that really and if you go into a church that's infected with theological liberalism today you will hear sometimes a somewhat believing message preached even from the scriptures. Sometimes the scriptures won't be used but even from the scriptures it's preached but what's left out in theological liberalism is this view that man has sinned and fundamentally offended God and stands before God under God's wrath apart from faith in Jesus and the mercy that's granted to anyone who calls upon Jesus' name. And so Jesus is only example in theological liberalism and I remember having a professor in an early theology class I had when I was a staff member with campus crusade for Christ. His name was Rod Rosenblatt and Rod was a Missouri Senate Lutheran pastor and that's a believing Lutheran denomination. The folks down the road here are of that denomination that pastors a believer and believes that people need to have faith in Jesus to be forgiven of their sins and that's all great but Rod was a funny guy. He still is a short man, red face, traditional German Lutheran guy and I remember him standing up before class and saying theological liberals think all Jesus was was a guy who who danced around in a robe skipping about with a basket of rose petals and grabbing into this basket of rose petals and throwing these rose petals about and he danced around the room like this. They think the message of Jesus is share your toys, be nice to each other, period. Now in response to this message coming out in the 1700s, some of the believing church in response to this took a completely different path which still represented as far as it went a faithfulness to the scriptures but they said in response to this that Jesus is only atonement for sin. He is only satisfaction of God's wrath against the sinner and so whereas the liberal said Jesus is example theological liberals, we're not talking to any politics here, theological liberals said Jesus is only example. The God was never mad at any person on earth that everybody is one of God's people and there's justification by death as opposed to justification by faith. The conservative part of the church is tended toward saying Bible believing part of the church is tended toward saying no it's not Jesus's example, it's Jesus as sin bearer as forgiveness of sins. So you see the danger of both of these signs. Over here salvation is offered to nobody because there's no salvation that needs to be obtained and so these folks over here stand in the shoes of the Pharisees who not only go and perish themselves but they lead those under their influence with them into the ditch, blind guides. Over here people are getting saved, they're getting forgiven of their sins because Jesus is taught to them rightly as sin bearer, the source of forgiveness but people are living off lives over here because they have no example of how to live their lives. They're not looking to Jesus and saying I should do this thing because I saw Jesus do it in the gospel, in the gospels, both. But what we see here is that and what we see as we take the Bible as a whole is we say we don't have to be either or we shouldn't leave either off. That is Jesus on the one hand is sin bearer indeed. Is that the most important thing? Yeah, that's the most important thing but we don't cut off the fact that Jesus is example for us. That he did things in his life and he said then go therefore do this likewise, like we saw in our first Peter passage this morning. Jesus suffered for us, that's this message of Jesus being sin bearer, Jesus dying for our sins but it says leaving for us an example to follow in his steps. So Jesus is also example for us. We are to follow Jesus in what we do and what we say and how we think. So Chahorum fails in this one example of being an example and he serves also as a negative example of how he bears the sins of himself and his people. This morning you see that your sermon here, the gospel lesson is titled our king, that is Jesus, Savior and example. That's true. Jesus is both our Savior and our example. We look to him for the forgiveness of sins. We look to him for eternal life. That's Jesus our king as Savior but we also look to him as example. How then should I live my life that I might be godly that my life might reflect who he is. Now that's the whole sermon right there. So now let's work out the details of that. If you got that you got the message of this text. First of all, introduction. All people, this message, this passage is about this. All people will give an account for loving, that's your blank, for loving or not loving. Sounds like how he manned out doesn't it. Deal or no deal. Loving or not loving God and neighbor. Everyone will give an account of whether they've loved God and worshiped him. Everyone will give an account as to how well they've loved their neighbor who bears God's image. Both things and these are the two commandments. The Old Testament emphasizes and when Jesus is asked about you know and when he asks others about what's the greatest commandment in the law it's this. Love God with all your heartful soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. In every person upon the earth you, me and everybody else will be judged based on these things. Every person will give an account on how well they have loved God or not loved him. And loved neighbor. Jehorm and his people are punished as a result of their disregard of these two things. Aren't they? They had disregarded loving God and God was their judge. And so they build high places, they prostitute themselves, that's a reference to God being their husband and they were his wife and they had gone after other gods. So they had prostitute themselves. They were religiously, they were worshiping other gods. High places were sites of pagan worship, worship of pagan gods and gods people had done this. They had been unfaithful to God. They had been unfaithful to the covenant that they got it made with them as had Jehorm and Jehorm, their king had led them in this and so in this passage we see that the Jehorm and his people are punished for their disregard of loving God through worshipping him and following his commands and loving neighbor. But the good news is this, Jesus, king of gods people, our king in contrast is faithful to loving God, worshipping his father and to loving his neighbor. He is completely faithful. Jesus lives a life where he obeys his father in every way, shape and form. And he worships his father. He does all the right things at the temple. He prays to his father whatever his father asks whether it be through the law or through things the father had just asked him to do like going to the cross which actually derives from the law. Jesus did this and so his life was an act of worship unto God. But also he worshiped God properly during his life. But Jesus's king also loves his neighbor well, doesn't he? He loves his neighbor so well that he dies for his neighbor. He dies for us. This is Jesus obeying the law, loving people who have been created in God's image, who bear God's image, as he loves himself, going to the cross, spilling his blood for neighbor. But Jehorm doesn't do this. Jehorm doesn't love God. He doesn't love neighbor. And with this in mind, we say, and as your outline says here, Jehorm deserves to die in great pain as do we. In Jehorm, we have an example of what we deserve. We have not loved God as Jesus has loved God. We have not loved neighbor. It's Jesus has loved neighbor. None of us have died for anybody. We're sitting here aren't we? But we deserve the death that Jehorm gets. So this is a message for us, for all, as to how offensive our sin is to God. Jehorm is offensive to God. And he dies in great pain, verse 19. And that's what we deserve. The God who created us, who gave us life, who sustained us every second of our life, who sustains us now as we breathe. He keeps our lungs breathing. He keeps our heart beating. He's given us every good thing that we have. Even when we were unbelievers, he gave us every good thing that we had. He sustained us even then. And so our sin against him deserves a death in great pain. And indeed, that's what Jesus spoke about when he was here on this earth. That somebody who doesn't love God, sermon on the mount, somebody who doesn't love God and love his neighbor well is liable to the fires of Gehenna, the fires of death. And Jesus speaks over and over again of the flames of hell where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, where people will be excluded from his kingdom, because that's exactly what they deserve in their death. Dying apart from Jesus, going to hell is like Jehorm here dying in great pain. But again, Jesus, the good news, Jesus is also a king but he's not unfaithful to loving God. He's not unfaithful to loving his neighbor. Thus he doesn't use your blank. Jesus as king doesn't deserve, deserve is your blank. Jesus doesn't deserve such a death. He doesn't deserve to die a painful death because he alone, among men, has lived righteously in perfect love of God, in perfect worship of him, in perfect love of neighbor. Jesus doesn't deserve to die a death of great pain, but he gets it. He dies a death of great pain. Why? It's because of this. He hears your blank. He bears. He bears. Be-e-a-r-s. He bears his people's sins. And we read about this in Isaiah 53, originally speaking about God's king, how he would go into exile in the Babylon, but then return from that exile and be re-enigrated as king over God's people. That this king would be taken into exile and he would bear his people's sins. He would bear his transgressions upon himself, and he would be particularly punished for the sins of God's people and cast off and given the worst of all covenant curses from Deuteronomy 28, that is exile being spit out from the land of promise, the promised land. So Jesus comes as an ultimate fulfillment of that and Peter lets us know that in 1 Peter 2.24 that we read this morning, that Jesus bears his king, Jesus bears the sins of his people, and he is punished for the sins of his people. And that's good news. You see there's a difference between what happens here to Jehorim and the people. You see here, Jehorim sins and his people are sitting along with him, but the message here is that not only would Jehorim be punished, but also the people, verse 14. So now the Lord is about to strike your people, your sons, your wives as well. So in Jehorim's day, the people were punished for their own sins as well as Jehorim bearing punishment, but today the message of the gospel is that Jesus has born the punishment for our sins. There is no punishment left for the believer in Jesus, and that's what Romans 8 1 was about. The good news is that therefore now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Why is there no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus? For those of us who believe, there's no condemnation for us because Jesus has taken it all upon himself. Jesus took all our sins, and he had those sins in his body, and he was punished for all those sins solely alone. So when we die, there is no longer any punishment that God the Father has to dole out upon us. Our slate is clean because all of our sins were placed upon Jesus and Jesus died for all of our sins passed present and future. And when Jesus died, all of your sins were in the future. So he took all those sins which were all in the future upon himself on that cross, so we don't surprise God by any sins. It's not like the sin that we do this afternoon is something else that Jesus didn't die for. He knew all the sins we would do and had those sins placed upon him upon the cross, and that's the good news that we have a king not like your horror, but we have a righteous king like Jesus who still is punished and dies death of great pain. But the good news is that he dies for us, and that we don't suffer all these consequences that we see God's people having to suffer during the horror of the day. Okay, so a few points about this. One, first point, expect peace. The message of this text is expect peace if you have received Jesus's king. Two blanks there. Number one, God says to us, expect peace if you have received Jesus as king. If Jesus is your king, here's the next blank, he takes your punishment thus he is your savior. If Jesus is your king, he takes your punishment and thus he has become your savior. God's people during Jehorms, they didn't have peace. They had invading armies. God's people during Jehorms, they didn't have honor. They didn't have blessing. They had chaos. Just like Jehorm has no honor in his death. He's not buried among the kings. He doesn't have a, where's Matt worked with, a Jedi fire built for him in his honor. At his death, like all the other kings it had, this comes as a result of his own sin. But the good news for you and for I, from this passage, is we're not a part of that group because Jesus has borne all that for us. So we have peace with God through our faith in Jesus Christ. Romans five, one, we have peace and we should expect peace because our king is faithful. We should expect being honored, being an invited guest at the wedding feast of the lamb because of what Jesus has done because his blood has covered our sins because he has taken our punishment for our sins upon himself. So unlike Jehorm who dies in dishonor, in great pain, being punished, we die with no punishment, with no pain in death, not talking about physical pain, but the pain of judgment here, the pain of hell that follows death, and we die and we're honored guests at the wedding feast of the lamb, our king. So what is this next line for you? By his, by Jesus faithfulness, by his faithfulness you get peace. And we've just talked about verses 16 and 17 there and Romans 8.1, there's a lack of peace when your king is unfaithful. There is peace when your king is faithful and our king has been 100% faithful. Therefore on that basis, not based on us being good, but on that basis on the basis of Jesus being a faithful king, we have peace. Jesus is not like Jehorm and ruin does not come our way because Jesus in contrast to Jehorm has been faithful. But going on to our next point, what we talked about in our introduction, not only is the king of God's people, their savior, but also he has to be there. Here's your blank example. Jehorm was a bad example. So Jehorm worshipped foreign gods. Jehorm didn't care about that. He knew through the covenant with David that if he was righteous, the people would be blessed, but he didn't care about the people. And so he wasn't righteous. He wasn't careful to follow God's law. He didn't walk in the way of his father, father and grandfather, Aces and Jehoshaphat. He didn't love his people well. He didn't love God well. And so he was a bad example. And you see that God's people themselves then start not loving God well, start not loving each other well. But if the king, the son of David was to be a good example and that brings us to our second point. Number two, God says to you and to me this morning, follow Jesus, your king and his example of loving others. Follow Jesus, your king and his example of loving others. And we see this in verses 12 and 13, the negative example of Jehorm. Jehorm, see the term here, does not walk in the ways. That means he doesn't follow God's law. God's law is full of all kinds of things about how we love our neighbor. Commandments five through ten and the ten commandments. They're all about loving our neighbor. And Jehorm does not walk in that way. He does not love his neighbor well. He was not a good example of loving his neighbor well. And he has all kinds of chaos happen to him and he loses peace in the land because of this. Doesn't pay attention to God's law. Not walking in the ways of his father and grandfather. But Jesus loves others and contrasts so much that he hears your blank dies for them. And indeed that's presented for us in the New Testament. That Jesus's death was a showing of his love of God's love for us. Jesus loves others. He loves his neighbor so much that he dies for them. And it's a gospel message. It's a message of Jesus loves his people so much that he gives his life for them. As Jesus said in John 15, greater love is no man than this and he give his life for his friends. Even Earl gets this, my name is Earl fans out there. Earl looks out at the end of the last season and he sees that his ex-wife has two kids and one on the way and she's about to go to prison for two years for felony that she's committed. And Earl on the stand says, it was me who did this crime. And so now Earl this season is in prison for two years. He took joy, his ex-wife. He took her sins upon himself and suffered the consequences of these sins because even though she has mistreated him, as he says, I'm just trying to be a better person. He loves her and he loves her kids. He used to be his kids. Neither of them were actually his. But he had been stepfather to them for a number of years and out of his love for them, he takes their sins upon himself. That joy might be there to mother her kids so that her kids don't have to live without a mother or with a mother in jail. And that's what Jesus does and that's the gospel message. Jesus takes our penalty upon himself. He loves his neighbor well. And so Jesus example in the gospel shows us to be, here's your blank, committed, committed as a life outlook to loving others. The example of Jesus, loving others to the point of death, is an example for how we live our lives. I mentioned at the front of things here, the example or the belief of theological liberalism, I took a class in seminary about the cross and what Jesus did on the cross. And there are all theories about what Jesus did on the cross. One of the theories has been named the example theory. And this is the belief of theological liberalism. Jesus dying on the cross was not to take upon himself the punishment that was due people for sending against God. It was not that the example theory says. The example theory says it's just Jesus going to cross is giving us an example of how you should love your neighbor. Do whatever it is for them. And that's all the cross is. Now we say yes and no. The New Testament says, the Old Testament says, the king dies for his people because he's their shepherd and a good shepherd dies for his sheep. And so Jesus is an example for us. The Philippians too. Jesus' love for us is so great. John 15 is love for us is so great that he gives his life to love the sheep, to love us. So the cross is that, but the cross is more than that. The cross is also Jesus being our savior. Him taking our sins upon himself, dying for our sins that we might be forgiven. But we don't shy away from where the theological liberals had said, but Jesus is an example. His going to the cross shows how we should love other people. And we say to that, yes, it's not only that, but it does include that. The New Testament declares that. The Old Testament declares that. Jesus is an example. Jesus says to his disciples, I have loved you now love one another as I have loved you. So in our life, as we look at other people, in our lives, we think about Jesus' commitment to love us and what that took, what that involved him in, for him it involved dying. For most of us, it won't involve our loving other people, won't involve us dying. But I know my dad would say to me on several occasions, he said to me, John, you know I love you. If there were a train and you were deaf, you know I would push you out of the way and get nailed by that train. And that was true. But I knew that was true. He lived his life like that. I love for me in that way. And Jesus did that. That's the gospel. And so we conduct our lives in a manner worthy of the gospel. We love the people around us as Jesus has loved us. He's an example to us. Our King is an example to us of loving and caring for others. Third thing, God says this this morning, that we're to follow Jesus in another way. We're to follow Jesus our King in his example of loving God or put specifically here in worshiping. What's our commitment to be like in loving God and in worshiping him? Well, we look to Jesus. Jesus is our standard from what it's Jesus standard. Jesus loves his father so much. Here's your blank. Jesus loves his father so much. He worships him, Bob, you're going to like this. He worships him to death. Okay. Jesus loves his father so much. He worships him to death. And we talked about this last week or the week before that Jesus death in the cross was in priestly Old Testament temple terms. This was Jesus serving as worshiper bringing the lamb as lamb. Lamb of God himself. He's bringing himself to the priest who is himself handing himself over to himself so to speak to be slaughtered. Jesus of his own free will offers himself to be slaughtered. And when Old Testament people did this when they brought a lamb, for instance, to the priest to be slaughtered, the best lamb they had, the lamb without blemish, it was an act of worship. This sack bringing a lamb to be sacrificed was an act of worship. And Jesus does this with himself. He lives a righteous life to be that blemish less lamb. And he goes to Jerusalem to deliver this blemish lamb himself over to the priest. And Jesus as priest then offers himself as an offering a sacrifice to bear the sins of his people. So Jesus death in the cross, Jesus taking our punishment for our sins upon himself with an act of worship. And so Jesus gives us an example of how committed we are to be loving God and to worshiping him. Jesus loves his father by offering himself by going by dying. Jesus gave his life to worship his father. He was that committed. He was committed unto death to worship his father. And this communicates to us as believers as to how committed we are to be to worshiping our God who has saved us. We are to be committed or to use your outline here. The gospel's example shows us to be committed. That's your blank. Committed is a life principle born out in each week to next blank worshiping our God. This is the example of Jesus. This is the gospel speaking to us. Jesus says in essence even father if death is required of me to worship you I will get there and I will do it. And Jesus does that on the cross. So in the gospel we see that Jesus is a great and faithful king who saves all of us his people. He gives us peace by his righteousness by his following the father and all who cling to Jesus by faith get this peace that Jesus has earned for us as our king. The gospel shows us that Jesus was totally committed to saving us from the punishment that we've earned for ourselves. And Jesus in his commitment to death to save us also gives us an example. Jesus serves as king and example to us an example of how we're to love others to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of other people. And Jesus shows us an example of how we're to be committed to worshiping our God who has saved us. Jesus standard is to worship him even if it costs you your life. And maybe if you're in China or some other place in the world it's going to require that. I show up for worship and I'm put to death. Fortunately in our country we don't have to be put to death but there are other things that we have to put to death in our lives in order to be faithful in worshiping our God. But Jesus gives us this example as our king. So theological liberalism on the one hand has said Jesus is our example only. Theological conservatism not giving a full picture at times. It said Jesus is only our savior but we see in this passage and throughout scripture throughout the New Testament that Jesus is both. As king he saves his people but as king he also gives his people an example of how we should be committed to worshiping our God and how we should be committed to the well-being of our neighbors. So in conclusion our king last line there for you our king is our savior. Jesus is our savior and he is also our example. That's your last blank. Jesus is our savior and he is our example. Our example of how we should be committed to worshiping him and how we should be committed to loving each other. Let's pray. Father we are grateful that you did not abandon us to the grave and that you did not leave us to suffer under a king like Johoram but you give us this example of Johoram to show us what we deserve to die a death in great pain and you give us Johoram to show us how wonderful and awesome you Jesus are. You are not unfaithful to love others to love your father but you did both perfectly and we benefit from this. There is therefore now no condemnation for us who are in you Jesus by faith and so we shut our mouths and say in our hearts thank you that's all we can do thank you for what you have accomplished for us thank you that we can live in peace with you God and in peace with each other here in the church because of your spilled blood for us and because of your righteousness for you living a perfect life as we now Lord see your commitment to loving us to loving your God and loving both unto death in the Lord's supper here calls our hearts to be lifted up and encouraged and strengthened as we see this great love that you have had for us and the great example that you serve for us to love God and love neighbor even unto death if you would so require it we ask Jesus in your name Amen.