Restoration 2016:  Unto Me

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Restoration Ministry

Plenary

Kameron DeVasher

The Unnecessary Parable

I didn't come here to necessarily be the best preacher you've ever heard, but I do believe that the Lord has a message that you need to hear, and that I need to hear, and that we as a people need to reflect on and contemplate, because I believe the Lord is looking to prepare a people to inhabit heaven, and soon we're going to see Jesus come.

So what we want to do is understand God's Word and go beyond a mere understanding but an application of God's Word so that we can have a genuine restoration into the very image of God and we can prepare to be citizens of His kingdom.

So our first message is entitled, The Unnecessary Parable.

But before we dive into this study or any other study from God's Word, of course the very first thing we need to do is start with a word of prayer.

So if you'll be so kind as to bow your heads with me, and then we'll be off to the races.

Dear Heavenly Father, I want to thank you so much for the opportunity to be in Loma Linda, California tonight.

I want to thank you for these set of meetings, for this particular venue, and for the time that we've been able to carve out of our busy schedules just for a few moments to step away from the rest of the world and the pace of modern life.

Come together in fellowship and in study of your word.

And Lord, tonight we would ask that the same Holy Spirit who inspired those authors to put those thoughts down on paper, would use that power to write it on our hearts.

For Lord, we don't want just an interesting study.

Lord, we want to learn, we want to grow, we want to become like Jesus.

So to that end, Lord, bless our time together tonight.

I'm going to assume that most of you have Bibles with you, and if you'd like to, I would encourage you to follow along in the scriptures.

But if you happen not to bring a Bible, I know that we're not in a church per se, and I don't believe we have pew Bibles, but I want to make sure that everyone can see the Word of God for themselves.

And so we have these slides and screens we're going to show you, slides on the screen for this evening, and we're gonna begin in the Gospel of Luke.

The Gospel of Luke, the story, the title from our message comes from this encounter that Jesus had as recorded in Luke chapter 10.

It says here, and behold a certain, and what's this word?

The handy thing about this structure that I've noticed is we've got 2 different crowds.

There's the noonday crowd and the evening crowd.

Now, I'm not trying to pit you against each other, but it is a competition.

I'm looking for the a-men-ing-est crowd that there is in California tonight, okay?

And what we're looking for is participation, and sometimes I'll ask you to read a word and just to make sure that you're still, you know, awake.

Now this is lawyer in the biblical sense, not in the contemporary society sense.

This is not attorney at law if you've been in a car accident, call this number lawyer.

This is a lawyer who specializes in the law of God.

You understand that this is a scholar in the Scriptures.

And it says that he stood up and what's that word?

Jesus inspired the writing of Scripture that this individual had been studying for most all of his life and now stands up to question and test the author.

Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

What shall I do, was his question, to inherit eternal life.

And watch how Jesus answers the question.

He said to him, what is written in the law?

If there's anyone who should be familiar with the law of God, it is this individual.

And so Jesus turns it around and simply says, well what is written in the law?

You've read it, you understand it, you tell me.

So the questioner is challenged to answer his own question, and he does, And here's his answer.

So he answered and said, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

Now for us in the 21st century, having grown up probably in a biblical environment, a Christian background, this is not a secret or really obscure story in scripture.

And so when we hear, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your strong will, all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself, all of us are probably like, yeah, that's good.

But the reason I'm gonna guess that most of us know that answer is because it's written in the New Testament.

But this man didn't have access to the New Testament.

He was gonna be an example, an exhibit in the New Testament.

He was gonna be in there, but it hadn't been written yet.

So he didn't have the New Testament, he didn't have Luke 10, he hadn't read the story the morning before.

He got his information from what part of Scripture?

That's what his expertise was in, was the Old Testament law of God.

And so when Jesus asked him, how do you read the Old Testament?

What do you understand the law to say on this issue?

His answer wasn't nicely packaged together because you realize, I'm sure you do, that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and then your neighbor as yourself.

That isn't a single passage from the Old Testament.

That's actually a very careful synthesis of at least 2 different places in the Old Testament.

The first portion about loving the Lord comes from the book of, this is bonus question time, Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse, so close, We're weeding out the, you know, the mice from the men with that 1.

It's part of the Shema, the saying, the speaking of God, where He says, the Lord your God is 1.

And it continues saying, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

That was a very well-known portion of Old Testament Scripture.

But where did that love your neighbor as yourself comment come from?

It is a direct quotation from the Old Testament.

But it's not in Deuteronomy, and it's not anywhere close to the context of that passage.

It's actually found in the book of Leviticus, chapter 19 and verse 18.

Here's the full text from which he pulled that phrase.

It says, You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Do you notice he didn't quote that entire passage, he truncated it, he took a portion of it and put it together with Deuteronomy 6 5 and came up with the answer that he gave Jesus.

Now another thing you have to realize, people didn't have pocket versions of the Bible.

They didn't even have chapter and verses.

You just had to read the entirety of the Torah, the law, to understand its precepts and its teachings.

And this man was able, on the spot, testing Jesus to answer in return, Deuteronomy 6-5 and Leviticus 19-18, woven together.

This man, my whole purpose of this is to say that this man knew the law, and he knew it well.

In fact, I'm going to say the lawyer's answer was not just a good answer, it was indeed the best possible answer.

Know Your Enemy

And it goes very well with what we're looking at this evening in our message entitled, Know Your Enemy.

Now last night as the quiz reminded you, we talked about the entire purpose of the Word of God to convict the mind, to convince the mind, I'm sorry, convince the mind of truth, then to see the application of that truth in the life, it will convict the heart, and if yielded to, will convert the soul.

And what we want to do these 2 weeks is study the Word of God to see what the truth is so our minds can understand it.

We want to have sharp minds and then soften our hearts to receive it, so it will be converted people, fit for the kingdom of God, that I believe we're going to see soon and very soon.

I am absolutely convinced that we're going to see Jesus in my lifetime, and I want to be ready for that day and my job for the rest of my life is to prepare others to be ready for that day as well.

So what we want to do is study the Word of God and allow it to do its cutting work in our lives as we come to understand and appreciate the truths therein.

And perhaps no greater truth in Scripture is found than the great story behind Scripture.

And for the next several evenings we're going to be, except for tomorrow, tomorrow at noon we'll continue this.

But as we continue through our series, regardless of vocation and time, each message will be building on the other, so that we're laying out a nice, broad foundation for our study.

But we're going to be looking at the great controversy theme, the whole battle between good and evil that underlies all of Scripture, and we're gonna look at it from Scripture's evidence itself.

And my guess is that many of us will see things in the Word of God we had no idea were sitting right there, and it will broaden and deepen our understanding and appreciation of the great controversy in Christ's role in it and find for ourselves what we are to do and what role we are to play in ending sin and hastening Jesus' soon coming.

I believe the Bible is up to it, but we need to prepare ourselves for that.

So before we begin our study tonight, let's dedicate ourselves to the Lord in prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, what a beautiful day you've given us.

And now, Lord, we come into this place, this quiet place, to see your word, to understand its principles, and by the power of your Holy Spirit to make application in our lives.

So Lord, I would ask that the same Holy Spirit that wrote those words through men of old would tonight write them on our hearts.

Sharpen our minds to understand and soften the soil of the heart to receive, that we may become what you want us to be, restored into the very image of Jesus.

We're going to begin tonight in Matthew chapter 13, so If you have your Bibles, I should say since you have your Bibles, I want to assume the best of you, right?

Matthew chapter 13, to give you a little context for our message tonight, know your enemy.

Jesus is there in the midst of his earthly ministry, only 3 and a half years long, of course, and he had to pack a lot into each day, I would assume.

And here in Matthew chapter 13 seems to be a day full of parables.

Parable after parable, story after story.

He goes and he talks about parables and why he tells parables and he tells parable after parable and 1 in the middle of this day full of parables is the 1 called the parable of the wheat and the tares.

And you'll find it in Matthew chapter 13, we're beginning with verse 24.

And again, in case you did not bring your Bibles, the text will be on the screen, but for safety's sake, and you always want to get the context, please know that these are in your Bibles, okay?

The kingdom of heaven, Jesus said, is like a man who sowed good seed in his field.

But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.

Now I don't have to break the parable down to you so much it's so very very elementary and it's telling.

Basically there's a man who owns a field and he sows what kind of seed in that field?

So notice the man sows his own seed in his own field and he knows that it was good.

But while other men, while men slept, so you're completely unawares, an enemy came in and planted tares or weeds, bad seed among all the good seed.

Now I don't know how many of you have ever tried to garden before.

I don't, do we have gardeners in the room?

I have tried and I have been shown that I don't have the gift of whatever it takes to grow things, okay?

But I remember when I was young, you'd try to put like a seed in a cup or a little pot thing or something, a little planter, and you water it, you put your little fertilize, you put, and you just watch.

And then the second day you come back, and nothing has happened.

And the third day you come back, and nothing has happened.

And by the fourth day, you just throw the whole stupid thing away, Because all you see is dirt, right?

The bad seed, the tares, were sown at night.

It only shows up later, but when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.

So over time, as things start to grow up, you would expect to see nice rows of plants, exactly the good seed with the good crop and all the things he said it was but what appeared was tares mixed in.

The owner does the sowing of the seed, but he expects other people to tend and cultivate and harvest his crop.

They work in his field and they notice that there are tears among the wheat.

So the servants of the owner came and said to him, sir did you not sow good seed in your field?

A couple of things we want to point out here, before we even dive into the interpretation.

The servants of the owner ask questions to whom?

Why don't they just go talk to the enemy?

What were they doing when the enemy was doing his work?

So as far as they know, there is the owner and the crop.

And there's a discrepancy between what they've heard the owner say and what they themselves have seen.

There's a discrepancy, there's a disparity, there's a dissonance between the saying of the owner and the seeing of the servants.

The implication is, did you make a mistake?

Or did you just say it was good in reality it had some bad in it?

Because their question is very basic how then does it have tears if you did what you say you did how do we see what we absolutely see?

How much responsibility does the owner of the field take for the presence of the tares?

I said it was good, but I really didn't check it out.

It could have, who knows what was in that seed.

What you see is correct, and what I say is correct.

There's a third party you're unaware of called an enemy and he did this.

The servant said to them, do you want us then to go and gather them up?

Now that's a logical question for after all what is their occupation?

Lucifer’s Lemonade Stand

We've been looking at, starting yesterday in fact, a bit of a history of where evil came from and what's its resolution, and more importantly, we're headed towards what's our part in that process.

And I want to underline a couple of ideas.

Number 1, God's resolution to the sin problem is not an event, but it is a process.

And yesterday we noted that he was not blotted out of existence the moment iniquity was found in him, but he was merely cast out of heaven to the earth.

And we looked at the reason why that was, and the Bible tells us the reason he was cast out instead of being blotted out was so that others who knew him could have the opportunity to see who He really was.

So that others could gaze at him and consider him, saying, is this the man who shook kingdoms?

Now, 1 of the passages we looked at yesterday discussed very briefly The idea that Satan was cast out of heaven for trading.

If you had a King James Version it would say for traffic.

But before we study anything from God's Word, let's begin with a word of prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, again, I want to thank you for this absolutely beautiful day.

I want to thank you for these few precious moments you've given us in the middle of an otherwise hectic time to come apart, to reflect on your Word, to be challenged by the Holy Spirit, to grow more like Jesus.

Help us to understand who He is, what He's doing, and what part you would have us to play.

For we pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.

That passage was found in the book of Ezekiel, and if you have your Bibles, Ezekiel chapter 28 gives you the full context, but I'll put the passage on the text on the screen here that we're going to be looking at particularly.

Ezekiel 28, verse 16, speaking of Lucifer's fall from heaven, says, Now again, recall, all of this was going on in his heart.

Again, if he were to come up to God and say, I challenge you for the throne, it would have been a very quick fight.

But inside was a jealousy that was leading to rage that if given the opportunity would express itself in violence.

But instead of an outright fight, what he does is peddles or trades or shops around something in heaven.

Became filled with violence within you, saying, Therefore I cast you as a profane thing out of the mountain of God and I destroyed you O covering cherub from the midst of the fiery stones.

He goes on to 2 verses later to repeat the same idea.

You defiled your sanctuaries by the multitude of your iniquities.

So all this sin that he was doing, and then it defines it as the iniquity of your trading.

Which begs this simple question, and I wrestled with this when I was younger and maybe you've thought of it too, but what did Satan, Lucifer, actually do wrong in heaven?

And according to this passage, repeatedly it says, trading, trading, traffic, merchandise.

Was Lucifer cast out of heaven for selling something.

And it sounds a little bit silly, but in reality, yeah, he was.

He was cast out of heaven for peddling something.

Now to understand this a little bit more, we need to go back to the Old Testament even further, to that fantastic book of Job.

How many in this room have ever read the book of Job?

So at least you're familiar enough we can speak conversantly about it.

If you recall in the book of Job, the first 5 verses are devoted to describing the blameless character and upright nature and stature of this man named Job.

He was pretty much the only good guy on the earth at that time.

He gave him a family full of children and a happy life, and he had wealth, and he had all kinds of status in the world.

And it takes 5 verses to tell us how great Job is, and then in verse 6, it jars to a different picture.

It says, We're going gonna come back to that momentarily, the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came among them.

Now we'll just pause right here and let's ask the question, who's being referred to here, these sons of God?

Notice it's not Jesus Christ because it's plural and it's lowercase s.

Right, this is sons of God plural, not the Son of God proper.

Okay, So who in the world are these people?

Well, Luke chapter 3 gives us a fascinating insight.

We can find that other individuals have been referred to as the Son of God besides Jesus Christ, namely Adam.

Watch this, in the genealogy of Jesus found in Luke chapter 3, and we could read through the whole thing if we really wanted to see how bad I can do with names, but Some of these names are familiar to you, but notice we're going backwards in time, back to the origin, right?

The son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mehallel, alright?

The son of Canaan, the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, and Adam was the son of God.

Adam was a creation of God, but he's referred to as the son of God.

He was literally God's Son, who He created.

Blameless, upright, good, good, very good.

Crowned with honor and glory, the psalmist would say.

And Adam was referred to as the son of God.

And we recall from our yesterday's meeting, he was not only a good, righteous man, Adam, a perfect, blameless individual, but he was given a specific responsibility in the Garden of Eden.

He was to be the ruler of this world, right?

Of course he forfeited it and handed the keys over to someone else, namely Satan, but in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth he set Adam as the son of God, his representative to curate the place that he had just created.

By the way, you see this language, the sons of God, or the sons of God, being that faithful heritage of Adam.

For instance, in Genesis chapter 6, when it introduces the story of the flood, and it talks about how the earth became so wicked, it describes it this way.

Now it came to pass when men began to multiply in the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God, that's that faithful lineage of Adam, saw the daughters of men, a reference to the wicked individuals of the world, that they were beautiful, and they took wise for themselves of all who they chose.

So instead of staying faithful to God, they saw worldly relationships join together and abandon that faith with the Lord and what you had is resulting a great wickedness so great in fact that the Lord destroyed the world with the flood.

So when we go back to Job chapter 1 verses 6 and 7 we start to get an understanding of who these sons of God may be.

There was a day when The sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them.

I wanted to point out a second thing now.

In order to make it to this meeting, they had to come there.

They came to present themselves before the Lord.

So they're for some different location than where God is located, but yet they're called the sons of God.

And the Lord said to Satan, from where do you come?

Because notice, all the sons of God were there.

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Plenary

Lucifer’s Lemonade Stand

Transcript

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