Christ in Glory

The revelation of the glory of Jesus Christ compels us to listen to him.

Note: This transcript was auto generated and may have errors.

[00:00:02] Well, a few weeks back, we spent some time in the gospel account of Luke looking at the conversation that Jesus had with his disciples. You might remember that Jesus asked them what the crowds were saying about his identity. Who do the crowds say that I am? And then they listed off a list of impressive, respectable prophets from the Old Testament. And then Jesus asked, okay, but who do you say that I am? The implication there is that the what the crowd thinks is is fine, but it’s not quite right. And so Peter then spoke up. You’ll remember, as he often does, and said, Jesus, you are the Christ of God. We’re going to see Peter speak up again today with less accuracy than that. But he got that one right. That one he got right. Uh, Jesus is the anointed one sent by God to be the king over God’s people. He’s not just a prophet. He’s the one to whom all the previous prophets pointed. But as I mentioned at that time, even Peter’s identification of Jesus, as accurate as it was, is not quite the full identity of Jesus. And today we’re going to have the answer to the question, who does God the Father say that Jesus is? The answer to that question is even more profound than what Peter said. What happens in our passage today is a has a dramatic effect on those who experienced it.

[00:01:38] You heard just a moment ago a reading from Second Peter, where Peter was remembering this profound moment that he had with his friends when they heard the voice of God tell them exactly who Jesus is. In our passage today is often referred to as Jesus Transfiguration. If you have your Bible and you look, that’s probably the heading that your Bible gives to this section. That’s not a word that we’re very familiar with. Transfiguration. To transfigure means to change in appearance. So in front of his three disciples, Jesus is going to change in his appearance. The veil of his humanity is going to be pulled back for just a moment, and Jesus is going to be revealed for exactly who he is. So they get a sneak peek. We get a sneak peek this morning of Jesus in all of his glory. It’s a moment so awe inspiring that Peter won’t quite know what to say. That won’t stop him from speaking, but it will stop him from making sense. Now, the account that we’re about to hear is pretty amazing. It’s a pretty amazing account, even compared to some of the other things that we’ve seen in Luke so far. Okay. It’s pretty pretty spectacular. And so it’s so much so that you might be inclined to question whether it actually happened. And so as we read this, I just want to point out two things to you before we read it.

[00:03:13] I want you to carry these two things with us, through with you, through the through the reading of this passage. The first thing I want you to carry with you is that when Peter later wrote about this in his letter to the churches, his whole point in mentioning it is to say that he is not given his life to cleverly devised myths. That’s his phrase. Okay. His whole point in bringing up what he saw was to say to his listeners, I didn’t follow cleverly devised myths. He’s saying that he hasn’t been fooled into believing lies. How does he know he hasn’t been fooled into believing lies? It’s because he saw what happened with his own eyes, he says. We were eyewitnesses of his majesty, of Jesus majesty. He’s saying that he and his friends saw with their own eyes the honor and glory of a transformed Jesus. They heard with their ears the voice of God testify to who Jesus is. That’s the first thing I want you to carry. And the second thing is, if you are tempted to say, well, sure, he said that and wrote that because it benefited those guys to say that they saw and heard from God. Okay. If you’re if you’re tempted to say that, let me just remind you that Peter and James were both martyred for their belief in Jesus. They both died because of what they said they saw in Jesus.

[00:04:46] The third guy on the mountain that day, John was sent to prison in exile because of his absolute commitment to Jesus. He wouldn’t go back on what he knew to be true. You don’t give your life for a lie. You know to be a lie. You don’t do that. You would give your life for supernaturally revealed truth that you saw with your own eyes. So I want you to remember that today, as we go through what is admittedly an amazing account, the revelation of the glory of Jesus Christ compels us to listen to him. Okay. Revelation of the glory. When that glory is pulled back and revealed to us, it compels us to listen to Jesus. Go ahead and open your Bibles, if you would, to Luke chapter nine. We’ll be in verse 27. It will be on the screen too, but you can follow along in your Bibles. We’re going to start with the final sentence in Jesus short speech from last week, because that sentence sets up the account that we’re going to look at today. So we need to start this morning by describing the Kingdom of God. And then we’ll look at the Transfiguration and then what we need to take away from the Transfiguration for our Christian lives today. Let’s begin in verse 27. This is Jesus speaking. He says, but I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.

[00:06:18] I know it’s a little strange to start with the last sentence of a speech, but this is the explanation for the passage that we’re about to look at. Jesus tells this crowd of folks who have come out to hear him, that some of them will see the kingdom of God before they die. Now, to make sense of that and to make sense of what comes next, we need to spend some time here talking about the kingdom of God. We’ve we’ve heard about the kingdom of God a few times in Luke up to this point, but I haven’t gone into depth on it yet because I was, mainly because I was waiting until today, until now to do it. The kingdom of God. It’s also called the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew’s Gospel is the reign of God over his people for eternity. That’s probably the best way to summarize it. The Kingdom of God is the reign of God over his people for eternity. As you read in the Old Testament, you find promises made to the nation of Israel that that that a messiah, that anointed king would come and he would and he would reign over all of God’s people forever. I’m going to read a passage to you here. Okay. This is from the Old Testament. I’ll read this passage to you, and you’re going to suddenly have a craving for eggnog when I read this passage to you.

[00:07:37] But I assure you, it is not Christmas. Okay? This is Isaiah nine, verses six and seven. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace. There will be no end on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. So that’s a that that is a prophetic promise of a coming king who’s who’s going to have a government, a kingdom that’s never going to end. All of Israel’s other kings, including David, even the good one. Right? Even the even the good ones, they all had an end. They all they all failed. They all died, and eventually they were all replaced. Israel as a nation was carried off into exile. The northern kingdoms went off into Assyria. The southern kingdom went off to Babylon. They were left with neither a sovereign king nor a sovereign nation. When the Babylonian captivity ended, God’s people returned to the land. But they didn’t rule it. They didn’t have a king over them at that point. What they had instead was a promise that a promise from God for an eternal kingdom, and they were waiting on God to come and to establish that kingdom.

[00:09:14] Now, the Old Testament and other Jewish writings prior to Jesus didn’t use the phrase Kingdom of God, or at least it was used very rarely. Instead, they used two other concepts. Okay. They used the day of the Lord and the age to come. The day of the Lord and the age to come. The day of the Lord was a time when God would settle all of his accounts and write all of the wrongs on the earth, and so, so his enemies would be destroyed, and at the same time his people would be vindicated and set free. And following the day of the Lord, there would be an age to come. Which which you can tell from that phrase, just means whatever follows the day of the Lord, the time that follows God’s judgment. And they believe that it would include God’s people living under God’s rule, free of tyranny, purged of evil perfectly within the law of God. And now comes Jesus. Jesus comes along and his ministry is centered on the proclamation of the Kingdom of God, the gospel of the Kingdom of God. Mark chapter one verse 15 tells us that’s exactly how Jesus kicked off his ministry. He said, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.

[00:10:37] So the kingdom of God is at hand. Meaning? Meaning it’s it’s here. It’s near. It’s coming to you. Jesus says all the promises that they’ve been waiting on, the the age to come that they wanted to see. He says it’s now present. God is now reigning. Jesus said the judgment of God’s enemies has begun. God’s promised king has arrived. Now, you’re probably beginning to understand why it is that so many first century Jewish people who heard Jesus had difficulty understanding Jesus when he would say things like this if the age to come is already started, if God is reigning with our forever Davidic king on the throne, why are the Romans still here? Why are they still here? Why? Why does evil prevail? People ask the same sorts of questions today. Actually, if God’s kingdom is to span his entire creation and to put it all back into order, why is it the world is still so much out of order? Well, what we learn from Jesus is that the kingdom of God is not coming in the way that everybody expected it to come. So Jesus makes this really clear in Luke chapter 17. So a little further down in the book we’ll get to more of this. We’re going to hear a lot more about the Kingdom of God in Luke 17. Some Pharisees come up to Jesus and and they come and they ask him directly, when the kingdom of God would come, when when is the kingdom of God going to be here? Jesus.

[00:12:12] And Jesus says, this is a quote. He says, the kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, look, here it is, or there. For behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you. He says that to the Pharisees. When Pilate asked Jesus if he was a king right before he went to the cross, right? Pilate is questioning, trying to figure out what to do with Jesus. Right before that he says, are you a king? They’re saying, you’re a king. Are you a king? And Jesus says that he is a king, but that his kingdom is not of this world. He said, meaning it’s a spiritual kingdom. It’s not a it’s not a kingdom with land and boundaries and borders. When we put all put together, all that the New Testament has to say about the Kingdom of God, we see that it’s a spiritual kingdom. It’s inaugurated by the coming of Jesus that will then culminate in the return of Jesus. So the kingdom of God, when it came to the world, it began with Jesus. It began with him personally. The exact starting point of the kingdom is Jesus the man. He embodied the kingdom. The resurrection is the definitive battle marking the eventual defeat of Satan.

[00:13:30] He is now binding Satan at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit indwelled the church. And what did they became become? They became the body of Christ in the world. That makes the church today the visible part of the Kingdom of God. So the Kingdom of God is now growing as all of God’s people across the entire planet are putting their faith in Jesus and are living under his reign. They’re they’re joining in to the kingdom that’s growing spiritually. And it will culminate in the return of Jesus, the final judgment of all of God’s enemies, and the final glorification of all of God’s people who will live forever in a new earth under the reign of Jesus. That’s the kingdom of God. Theologians use a big phrase here. You can write this down. You can impress all your friends with it. Okay. This is what I just described is called inaugurated eschatology. You see how smart you’re going to sound when you use this phrase? Inaugurated eschatology. Right? It’s eschatological. It’s the end. It’s it’s talking about how things will end. But the kingdom has begun. It’s inaugurated. It’s the beginning of the end. It’s it’s the kingdom is already. But not yet. It’s already started in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. But it is not yet fully culminated on earth until the second coming of Christ. And in the meantime, the Kingdom of God is going to spread throughout the world.

[00:15:12] That’s what we’ve been seeing for 2000 years the kingdom of God spreading throughout the world. It’ll be comprised of people from every nation. There’s not going to be a distinction between Jew and Greek. That’s the phrase that Paul uses in in Galatians, but Greek, just referring to anybody that’s not a Jewish Jewish person. So Jew and non-Jew, there won’t be any distinction there. There won’t be slave and free. There won’t be male and female. See, God’s kingdom is comprised of every nationality, of every people group, of every socio economic group in the strata, both men and women. Everyone will be included in the Kingdom of God, the only distinguishing characteristic of those in the kingdom, as opposed to not in the kingdom, is that they, these people, have repented of their sin. They trusted in the saving grace of Jesus Christ, and they now live under his reign. That’s the kingdom of God. Or to use Jesus phrasing from last week, those who are in the kingdom of God are those who deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him. So coming back to our verse now, Jesus says that there will be some in the crowd who will have the privilege to see the kingdom of God with their eyes before they die. So right now the the kingdom is spiritual. You can’t see all that God is doing. Some day it will be completely physical and everybody will be able to to see it.

[00:16:44] Who lives in it? But a few of his disciples, he says, that are present that day, will get to see a bit of the physical kingdom of God. And he’s talking here about Peter, John and James. Now, about eight days after these sayings, he took with him Peter, John, and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered and his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. So Jesus is with his three disciples and they are up on the mountain. Jesus is praying. We’ll see what the other three are doing here in just a minute. But Jesus is praying. And while he’s praying, two things happen. And both of the things that happen have roots in the Old Testament. And they have to be interpreted because Luke doesn’t spell out for us exactly what these two things mean. But the first is that Jesus changes in his appearance. He becomes radiant with light. The it says that his face changes. It’s probably simply referring to the radiance of that light, and that light extends out even to his clothing, which also becomes dazzling white. You might remember in the Old Testament when Moses came down off Mount Sinai, having been in the presence of God, he came down with the law.

[00:18:10] And after that the after effect of that presence of the Lord was that his face shone with light. He had to put a veil over his face. So here Jesus doesn’t come into the presence of God. He simply becomes bright with light, suggesting that Jesus isn’t simply a man who came near God, but is something more than that. He doesn’t reflect the glory of God. He generates the glory of God. That’s the first thing that happens. The second thing that happens is that Moses and Elijah appear and start having a conversation with Jesus about his departure. That’s coming up in Jerusalem. Now, why Moses and Elijah? Why these two Old Testament figures? Well, there are a few different views that make sense. I don’t have time to talk through all of them this morning, but let me just point out a couple things to you, and then I’ll give you my take on this. Moses is the one that recorded the law of God. Elijah is one of the great prophets. And so the obvious first connection here is that that Jesus himself and his ministry and his departure is the fulfillment and continuation of that redemption plan that we have in the Old Testament, the departure of Jesus in Jerusalem. It’s an interesting way to put that right. The departure of Jesus is the event that culminates the plan that we have in the Old Testament the cross of Christ, the resurrection and the Ascension.

[00:19:41] If you take them as a package, that that together is the event on which all of God’s promises in the Old Testament hinge. So of course, that’s what they’re discussing. They’re discussing that culminating event. But that could have been a conversation between David and Isaiah. Or with he could have had it with Adam and Jeremiah. Why? Why specifically Moses and Elijah? Well, the truth is, church, I’m not exactly sure. Uh, but I think New Testament scholar Darrell Bock makes a really good case that it was Moses in Deuteronomy 18 verse 15 who wrote this? The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me, from among you, from your brothers. It is to him you shall listen. We’ll see here clearly in a moment that that’s a reference to Jesus, because that language of listening is is about to come back up. And so there’s a clear connection there that Moses is talking about Jesus coming. Elijah, we know, was the prophet said to return to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah. And we we saw that ministry fulfilled in John the Baptist ministry. And so Moses and Elijah makes sense here, because Moses said that a new and greater prophet would come, and Elijah would be the one that would pave the way for that prophet.

[00:21:06] So their presence with a glorified Jesus here would signify that their ministries predicted and prepared the way for him. Now, I think that’s I think that’s right. But regardless of the exact correct interpretation, Jesus shining with glory in the presence of these great Old Testament saints, discussing the cross and the resurrection and the ascension, uh, that altogether that’s a moment of clarity. That’s really what it is. It’s a moment of clarity. Do you remember how he was telling his disciples here just recently that he was going to have to go to, uh, go to Jerusalem and he was going to die in Jerusalem, right? They said, you’re the Christ of God. He said, exactly right. Let me tell you what’s going to happen. I’m going to Jerusalem. I’m going to be I’m going to be killed. And three days later I’m going to rise again. And then remember. He turned to the crowd and he said, remember that you all are going to now have to daily pick up your cross and follow me. It’s going to be hard. You’re going to deny yourself, pick up your cross and you’re going to follow me. You’re going to lose your life for my sake, Jesus said. Here in the Transfiguration, we see why. We see why somebody would do that. See, Jesus is glorious. The kingdom of God that we enter by faith in Jesus is the place where death has no more power.

[00:22:31] The transfiguration is a foretaste of the glory to which we are heading. It is a foretaste of the glorious end of the hard road of following Jesus. And so when you daily get up and you pick up your cross and you follow Jesus against the grain as the crowd goes the other way and you’re walking and it’s hard to follow Jesus, sometimes you remember that Jesus is glorious and there’s a glorious eternity under the reign of King Jesus, forever that we are living for right now. And that’s what needs to be clear here. That’s what we are being shown. Both those three on the mountain and all of us today. That’s what we’re being shown in the Transfiguration. And that should be clear. At least it should have been clear to everybody. But it wasn’t clear to everyone. Now, Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep. But when they became fully awake, they saw his glory. And the two men who stood with him. And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses, and one for Elijah, not knowing what he said. It’s rare in the Bible to get a note of humor. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but when you read the Bible, it’s not exactly chock full of laughs.

[00:23:51] You notice that. But Peter says something here that’s so absurd that Luke has to note for us that Peter said this thing because he didn’t know what he was saying. He didn’t know what he was saying. And so he came up with this. He was so overwhelmed by the moment. Peter was so in awe of what he was seeing, that he literally just started running his mouth. Proverbs 1728. Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise. When he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent. God himself has told us that usually it’s better off that we say nothing. Okay, that’s. You’re probably best off if you just say nothing. Peter wasn’t reflecting on that proverb. He woke up from a dead sleep. He saw a glorified Christ in the presence of Moses and Elijah, and he just jumped in and went, hey, pardon me, guys, by the way, this is great. This this is awesome. Moses and Elijah don’t leave yet. I’ve got an idea. Let’s camp. We’re going to camp, guys. You can almost hear James and John in the back. Be like, Peter, stop being weird. Right? The problem with that suggestion. Peter’s suggestion is he’s missed the point of the whole event. He’s clearly just missed the point of the whole event. He wants to make three tents. Some think that this shows that Peter thinks of Jesus as on the same level as Moses and Elijah, and there’s probably some truth to that.

[00:25:21] Others see it as Peter wanting to to just stay on the mountain and to celebrate the experience. The Feast of Booths or the Feast of Tabernacles, as it is sometimes called, was a time when when men would set up tents and celebrate God’s provision to Israel in the wilderness. And so there may be some parallel with it that some suggestion here. But ultimately what Peter says here just shows he simply missed the point. He’s not talking or he’s talking when he shouldn’t. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and he missed it because of that. Now, before we look at the point he’s missed, because it’s about to be made abundantly clear to all of us the point he missed. Let me just pause here to say that Peter’s tendency to speak before he’s taken the time to learn and reflect, so that he knows what to say, is not an admirable quality in a follower of Jesus. It’s just not that proverb that I read, and I sort of read it in a humorous way. Right? But that proverb that I read, that scripture that is in the Bible, that’s Scripture to us. God knows. God knows our tendency to speak far more than we listen. And when it comes to knowing God and rightly organizing our lives around the knowledge of God, we are far better off listening than speaking.

[00:26:39] The letter that James wrote, not the James that’s on the mountain, but the brother of Jesus in the Bible, James wrote a letter that tells us that our tongues set things on fire. We get in so much trouble because of the things we say in ignorance, he says. Instead, here’s what you got to be. You got to be. You got to be quick to listen and slow to speak. Good theology is not done quickly. You won’t get good theology fast. And if you’re not careful to listen to God’s Word, and you’re more apt to assert your views and your ideas quickly and confidently, you’re going to be wrong a lot. Let Peter be your cautionary tale. You’re going to be wrong a lot. Listen to how God the Father corrects where Peter went wrong. As he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid. As they entered the cloud and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, this is my son, my chosen one. Listen to him. And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone, and they kept silent and told, no one in those days anything of what they had seen. I love how it says that this took place, as Peter was saying these things. At the same time, God didn’t wait until Peter was done talking before God started talking.

[00:28:07] So God just talked over the top of him. God shushed Peter. He shushed him. Peter was like, I got these great ideas and God was like a cat owner with a spray bottle. I was like, no, no. And he said, I’m going to speak. You stop, stop speaking because I’m going to speak. Because you missed it. What did Peter miss? Well, he missed that. Jesus is not the next Moses or Elijah. He’s the one Moses and Elijah were waiting for. A cloud enveloped the mountain, just as it did when Moses received the law written by the finger of God. And this is also similar to what happened to Elijah. Do you remember when Elijah was on the mountain and the wind and the earthquake and the fire tore the mountain apart? And then God spoke, see this cloud enveloping the mountain? Is God preparing to reveal himself and to speak? There are very few places in Scripture where this happens, but Moses and Elijah were there for two of them, which is another reason, I think, that they were the ones chosen to be there. And here’s what God says. This is my son, my chosen one. Listen to him. Son of God is a reference to the kingly rule, Jesus kingly rule. Chosen one narrows that to the promised king God’s people have been waiting for. In other words, Jesus isn’t just the next king in the line.

[00:29:38] He’s the king that is unending. He’s the promised King of David. The command to listen to him does two things. One, it means that Jesus is the prophet that Moses was talking about. Remember, from from Deuteronomy 1815 it said, it is to him you shall listen. Clearly there is a connection between what Moses said would happen and Jesus fulfillment of that. And so Jesus is the prophet and the king to whom all the other prophets and kings pointed. But the other thing that the command to listen to Jesus does is far more obvious, and you probably don’t even need me to share it with you, but I will share it with you, because it is the most important part of this command that we are commanded to listen to Jesus, because it means we should listen to Jesus. We should listen to him. That’s what the command is. If you want eternal life in the Kingdom of God forever, you need to listen to Jesus, just like God speaking over Peter, not wanting to hear what Peter had to say. God is not interested in our novel ideas. I know that sounds harsh. I said it out loud to myself in my office several times this week. Never got less harsh, but it is true God is not interested in our novel ideas. I don’t mean that God doesn’t want us to use our brains.

[00:31:08] He absolutely wants us to use our brains. He wants us to think deep and great thoughts. He wants us to have ideas. He he gave us these brains so that we can discover and think through his creation, and think his thoughts after him and discover who he is. But what we are not meant to do is to develop our own image, identity, spirituality and purpose for life. These are things that we are meant to discover, not to invent. And we discover them by listening to God’s revelation, listening to His word. Where do we find his word? How do we listen to Jesus? Principally, we find God’s Word in Jesus. The apostle John, who was on the mountain that day, would later write in his gospel, And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. He’s talking about what he saw on the mountain that day. Jesus is God’s Word made flesh and he saw that glory. He got a he got a picture of that glory. The end of our passage says, they did not talk about what they saw on the mountain. They didn’t talk about what they saw on the mountain in that time. But I’ll tell you later, when they saw an ascended Christ, they started telling everybody they wrote it down so that we would have it.

[00:32:38] This, guys, is what we saw. When we listen to Jesus, we are listening to God’s Word. We rid ourselves of worldly lies that lead us down false paths to destruction, and instead we follow the grace and the truth of Christ into a kingdom of God that’s without end. And so, church, the question we’re faced with today is how do we listen to Jesus? How do we listen to Jesus? We do it today by being in God’s written word. By being in the Bible, it’s the Holy Spirit breathed written testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We don’t just read the Bible because it’s good for us, because it contains some good ideas. We read it because from beginning to end, it is the good news of God’s redemptive work in Christ. To listen to the scriptures is to listen to Jesus. To ignore the scriptures is to turn your eyes away from Jesus and come up with your own ideas about how the world works. You say to me, Kyle, I follow Jesus, but I just don’t have time to read the Bible. I follow Jesus, I just don’t have the time to read the Bible. I would say that is impossible. It is impossible. How? How would you possibly know where he’s going if you’re following Jesus without listening to him? How would you know where he’s going? You say, Kyle, I know because I listen to you every week.

[00:34:13] Well that’s flattering. I’m glad you’re here, but let’s do the math. Of the 10,080 minutes that in the week you give 35 of them one third of 1% of your week to listen to someone else tell you the direction that Jesus is going. You think that’s going to cut it? You think you’re going to know exactly where Jesus is going then? The truth is, church, unless you read and wrestle and walk and live in the scriptures, you will not be listening to Jesus. And if you don’t listen to Jesus, you. If you’re not listening to him, you cannot know where he’s directing you. I understand life is busy, I get it, life is busy. Reading does take time, but it is. But let me ask you, is it is it too busy to live life well in the kingdom of God, listening to the Son of God? Is it too busy for that? Because if that’s how you’re feeling, then don’t you think something else has to go? Certainly not that. The great Charles Spurgeon once preached. Visit many great books, but live in the Bible. You can visit a lot of stuff. You can go to a lot of other places. Live. Live in the Bible. Why? Because it’s in the Bible. We have life. If we’re going to follow Jesus well and live for his glory in his kingdom, we need to listen and live in God’s Word. Let’s pray.