Jesus Christ is the King of Righteousness and Peace (Hebrews 7:2)
Today’s title is, Jesus Christ is the king of Righteousness and Peace. Remnants, we received the pulpit message that Jesus Christ is the King of Righteousness and the King of Peace that everybody needs. Everybody needs. Some of you guys, upon hearing this, may be thinking, “What? Why?” That’s what I want to talk to you guys about today, righteousness and peace. Righteousness is written on the right side of the board, but we’re going to talk about peace first.
I looked up “peace.” Chris, describe peace, you know what it is, right? If I asked if you knew what peace was, you’d say “yeah,” right? But if I asked you, “What does it mean? Put into words what ‘peace’ is,” what would the remnants say? I looked it up in the dictionary, and it says, “Freedom from disturbance,” so that means you’re not bothered by anything.
It’s different from happiness, though, like if you’re in a scary situation and you’re nervous, it’s hard for you to be happy in a situation like that, but it’s possible for you to be at peace, right? We’re going to talk about peace. We’re not going to talk about happiness, but this peace we have in God.
Why is peace so important? Why peace? Who here cares about peace, and why should we care about peace? Everyone is looking for peace because they are living in a state that is without God, and because of this, they live in a state of fear. Now, you can kind of see some examples of fear without the life of God. Here are some examples.
Let’s give an example the remnants may understand, I know all of you are grown up, and Fanny thinks she’s an independent woman, and you’re all trying to be adults and grownups, but remember when you were a kid, like, when you were really little and you used to go on the playground and go to the park and your parents would watch as you play in the sand and play with other kids?
When you’re on the playground, your mom and dad didn’t have to be right there for you to feel safe, right? When you’re going down the slide, your parents didn’t have to slide down with you for you to feel safe, right? Because you knew that your parents were standing over there. So, even though you couldn’t always see your parents, you felt safe because you knew they had your back.
But how many of you guys have ever been lost before? Raise your hands. I’ve been lost, when I was a kid, I used to walk away from my parents all the time, so one time, my parents wanted to teach me a lesson so they hid from me, so they wanted to see what I would do, so they would hide behind trash cans and behind corners, and they thought that when I realized my parents were gone, I would start crying and people would ask what’s wrong, but then, what they saw was that I didn’t seem to care. They saw I was walking around, looking at Christmas decorations, looking at the lights, chilling by myself in the stores.
My parents said, “We can’t keep doing this,” so they came up and said, “What’s up?” But when I saw them, that’s when I started breaking down and cried, why is that? Isn’t that us? It’s because we were supposed to be under the care and protection of our parents, but when we lost sight of them and became separated from them, all of a sudden, the world is such a scary place and it’s so frightening, right? I looked great, my mom and dad looked at me and thought I seemed okay, but on the inside, when I realized I’d been separated from my parents, I was so afraid.
I began to think, “What if I die? What will I eat? What if someone kidnaps me?” But then the whole time I was like “Oh look at those lights” right? And this is the fear everyone lives with while being separated from God.
What about an example in the Bible? When Adam and Eve first ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they realized they were naked and made clothes out of fig leaves, and they heard God coming into the garden and then they hid. When God came into the garden, He asked, “Yo Adam, yo Eve, where you at?” Adam responded to God, “Actually, we realized we were naked so we were afraid and we hid.”
At that point, we know they made fig leaves for themselves, so they weren’t actually naked, were they? But they thought that being naked was a problem because that was a physical problem they saw at that moment, and they couldn’t explain in any other way why they were so afraid. So, they thought that’s what the problem was.
But the real problem is that, because they were separated from God because of their sins, they were afraid. That’s how we live our lives. We are afraid so we think we need to fix the things around us because of what we see, what we know, and what we experience. So, for example, remnants, let’s say you are sailors. Let’s say you took a boat and it’s made of some cheap material, like cotton candy that melts in the water, but you take this boat in the water. While you’re in the ocean, all of a sudden, a hole pops up and the boat is leaking.
Our first instinct is going to be, “I’ve gotta plug up the hole,” but what’s going to happen since it’s a poorly made boat? There will be another hole, and another. That’s like our lives. If you’re in this boat, and all of a sudden a problem appears, your first instinct is that you want to fix that problem because we’re afraid of that. Nobody wants problems, no one sits around thinking, “I want some problems today,” right? But just because we plug that problem, it doesn’t change the fact that you have a boat made from very bad materials.
That’s the same thing, we have this boat of spiritual problems and if we don’t fix the spiritual problems and we are only trying to fix the holes, we’re going to live our lives trying to fix physical things because we’re afraid.
So, I’m going to give you a few examples of people I’ve been meeting. I work in Downtown LA and there are so many awesome attorneys there, because as I told you before, Downtown is where everyone wants to be, and everyone is competing, there are a lot of good attorneys downtown. But listen to this, among the people I meet, there’s a genius, he’s so smart, he actually helped catch multiple religious peodphile leaders within the Jewish national and international ring, and he even created a network to catch them. Another attorney is a district attorney as well, and he is so on top of things, he always knows how to make arguments, and there’s another beautiful district attorney lady, she’s smart and knows how to capture the courtroom.
But what do these people struggle with? The first person, the genius, has so many family problems, he is always tired, stressed out and you can’t tell he’s always on the brink of some kind of mental breakdown. The second person seems so smart and knows the laws and is so on top of things and controls everything, he has insomnia because he’s so afraid of all the ways he could mess up, so he’s sitting up in the late hours of the night, “Did I call my witnesses? Are they okay? Will they come to court tomorrow?”
The third person I talked about, she’s so stressed out about getting married, having kids, and meeting people, and not being able to marry. So you see all these elites, these people who live their lives the best way they knew how, the smartest way they knew, and how did things end up? They ended up in the same place of being anxious, worried, stressed, and afraid. Remember those people I talked about, because we’ll come back to them later.
Living without God is believing that I’m okay without God, and that thought in itself is sin. Why, then, does sin lead to fear? To answer that question, let’s look at Ephesians 2:1-3, it says, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins,” and in Eph. 2:2 it describes sin, “in which you used to live, following the ways of the world,” so what are the ways of the world?
What are some of the most popular messages you receive from the world today? “I can do it, I am enough, I can do anything I put my mind to, you only live once, so do whatever you want to do.” That’s the way of the world, and that’s sin. If you live just doing whatever you want, then that means you are dead in this sin because when you live according to the ways of the world, then in Eph. 2:3, you gratify your sinful nature.
Your sinful nature is, “I will do whatever I want,” then you gratify that thought, you do whatever you want to do. But when you do that, do you know what happens? In Eph. 2:3, it says you are objects of wrath. Remnants, I have another question to ask you. Have you ever been the object of your mom’s wrath? So, let’s say your mom is mad at someone else, are you going to do whatever you want, or will you be more careful? Because while your mom is super angry, you don’t want to be the object of her wrath.
You’re scared, “Is she going to yell and throw a slipper at me?” Maybe. Imagine, if your mom’s wrath is that scary and not-peaceful, how much more the wrath of God! You can’t have peace, right? Because of your sin, you’re an object of wrath, then how can you enjoy the blessings and peace God has promised you?
So that brings us to the question, “Then Teacher Esther, why are we even talking about this, how do we enjoy this?” You have to have peace to get rid of fear, but to get rid of fear, you have to be with God. You want to be a child of God and not an object of wrath, then how do you become a child of God, right?
In Isaiah 59:2, it says that your iniquities have separated you from your God, your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear. This sin, this “me-centeredness” makes me an object of wrath so that I cannot enjoy God’s peace which means, that to undo all of this and to actually enjoy God’s peace, I have to be without sin.
But remnants, can we be without sin by ourselves? Just because you pray 23 hours and 59 minutes a day, will that mean you have no sin? Just because you come and listen to the messages every day, five times a day, does that make you sinless? No, it does not. Becoming righteous is not something we can do. Why is that? It says in Romans 3:10-11, as it is written, there is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. This means that nobody can be righteous on their own.
They don’t understand God’s Word, they don’t look for God, so even if you go to church, it doesn’t make you righteous, why? In Romans 3:23, it’s that sin, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Because of our sin, we’re separated from God, right? Remember this? Because we’re separated from God, what happens? We’re no longer God’s children, then what happens?
John 8:44, you all know what that says? You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. What is Satan’s desire? It’s that you go deeper into your sin and self-centeredness. Why? Because he doesn’t want you to enjoy peace, Satan doesn’t want you to enjoy righteousness, why? Because he’s a murderer from the beginning and a liar, but because of all the lies Satan gives us, we become confused.
Even though, as a child of God, God promises us so many blessings, He promised that He would be with us always, He promised us that He would give us everything we need, He says everything we look for is found in the gospel, and Jesus says, “I will be with you with all power and authority in heaven and on earth.” Then He promised you that you will have the power to drive out demons. He promised you all these things but instead, we can’t enjoy any of it because we become confused by Satan’s lies.
But in the midst of this, that’s why God gave us Jesus Christ. You can’t overcome your own sin, right? You can’t overcome your own thoughts. That’s why Jesus Christ came as the true priest to wash away our sins and free us from our sinful nature. Only by faith in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection are we liberated from that sinful nature, then only by being freed from that sinful nature are we no longer objects of earth and can enjoy peace, right? That’s why peace is in Christ.
The second thing, Jesus Christ came as the True King. Because Jesus Christ died and resurrected and overcame the devil’s authority, we have that same authority. Anytime Satan uses your thoughts and emotions against you, you have the power to defeat him because of Jesus Christ within you. For example, I had a conversation with a friend one time, and I got really upset by something he said, I was so mad and started crying and I was a mess. Then at some point during the conversation, the Holy Spirit moved my heart and made me realize, “I was wrong,” and in that moment, all my anger was gone and I was so embarrassed that I was wrong, but I didn’t want to admit I was wrong, so I just pretended to stay mad. He started making fun of me, “It seems like the Holy Spirit is working.” “Shut up.” That’s what we do.
We don’t want to let go of our thoughts and pride, we don’t want to let go of anything, even though we know we’re wrong. That’s what Satan does, Satan uses our thoughts and experiences and emotions. He traps us, so that even though we know we’re doing the wrong thing, we’re like, “I don’t care. Come at me, I don’t care.” That’s why we need the authority of Jesus Christ Who is the True King, because we can overcome Satan with that authority.
What did Jesus Christ do as the True Prophet? He made a Way for us to be with God. Before, our sins used to separate us from our God, but now we can be with Him, so we can be like, me at the mall when I saw my parents, crying, “I’m so glad you’re here,” and you’re just so relieved and you have snot leaking out of your nose, “Oh God, where were you?” What a blessing.
So, why does it have to be Jesus Christ? Because He is the True Prophet, Priest, and King Who has liberated us from these things, from fear and sin. Because you have Jesus Christ, you no longer have to live your life, trying to plug the holes in your small, crappy little boat, right? In Acts 4:12, it says that salvation is found in no one else, because there is no other name given to mankind by which we must be saved.
In John 1:12, it says, Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God. So we’re with God and God has promised us all the power, authority, strength, blessings, and everything we need, all the people we are going to meet, He has prepared everything just because we’re children of God.
Do you know what that means? How many of you have played Super Mario? When you hit that question mark block, you can get a flashing star, and if you catch it, music intensifies, and you’re superpowered, you can do anything. Enemies can’t hurt you. So you just have to run through the entire level quickly, you run through the shells and fireballs and piranha plants. Music intensifies, sound effects.
That’s what God gave us in our lives, God gave us this power to be unaffected by any problem. The enemy is throwing fireballs? Who cares. The enemy is trying to come out of a secret sewer pipe to swallow you? Who cares, but instead, we insist on holding onto our own limitations. “No, I got this, I got this.” Then what ends up happening, instead of running through that level, weak sound effects, we move so slowly. We see an enemy and run away from what the enemies throw at us, but we don’t have to live like that.
God called you to be Super Mario with a star, but instead, you insist on being tiny Mario. Remnants, do you understand what that means? Do you understand how silly that seems? So how do we enjoy this super star? How do we enjoy the blessing of being a child of God? We see it in Philippians 3:8-9. What does it say? What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I’ve lost all things. I consider them rubbish, they I may gain Christ and be bound in him not having righteousness of my own that comes from the law but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes by God and comes through faith.
It is by our faith in Jesus Christ. It is by our faith in believing that all other things, everything I can do, everything the world can give me, is nothing, and Jesus Christ is everything because only Jesus Christ has the three roles of the prophet, priest, and king, and only Jesus Christ has given us that same that same power, authority and status.
So, if we hold onto that, if we hold onto Christ and enjoy this peace, what naturally happens? Then we’re able to look at other people around us and think, “That person needs Christ. That person needs Christ.” You start going around, holding onto those people in prayer, and you say, “God, I want to save those people and do what you want me to do.”
Do you know what God is going to do? God is going to bless Fanny because she’s not paying attention anymore haha. Even though by just believing in Christ, he has given you everything “God, I want to do what you want to do and save people”? God is going to give you everything else. He’s not just going to give you peace, power, strength , knowledge, and all those things, but He will give you all the things you didn’t know you needed. He’s going to attach those people to you.
You don’t have to go out looking for TikTok likes, but those TikTok likes will follow you. You don’t have to chase after grades, but your grades will follow you because God says, “That child wants to do so well, and that child is so precious,” and remnants, that’s what it means when we say everything is in the gospel. It doesn’t mean that the problems stop coming, it doesn’t mean that the enemy stops attacking, it means God is with you and has already given you everything you need to overcome that problem.
When you grab that star in Super Mario, it’s not that the enemies stop shooting fireballs and stop coming out of the pipes, but it just doesn’t matter anymore. The enemy’s attacks mean nothing to you, and you can run through, “Like, whatever man.” Right? That’s what you have as a child of God, and that’s the blessing the adults are all praying with, that you may be able to enjoy. Okay?
So, remember, guys, it’s not about what we do, it’s not about what we say. It’s not about what we have or it’s not about what we lack. It is only by the fact that we have Jesus Christ that we’re able to come out of this sin that makes us objects of wrath. The moment we come out of this, that’s when we enjoy all of the blessings. They are already there, you just have to enjoy it.
The star is in the box, all you have to do is grab the star and go. Remnants, I really hope this is the kind of life you’re able to enjoy because you have Jesus Christ. Let us pray.
Prayer
Father God, thank You so much for giving us this time. Thank You for explaining to us why we need Jesus Christ. It is only through Jesus Christ that we have righteousness, and it’s only through the righteousness of Christ that we receive peace. Father, at this time, we no longer want to live in our fears, but we want to live, enjoying the blessings of being a child of God. We want to enjoy the blessings of living in the flow of evangelism.
I pray You will raise the remnants to be the figures who will save their families, their schools, and their future jobs. May the remnants hold onto only the gospel of Jesus Christ, and may they be the main figures who will save the church. In the name of Jesus Christ we bind all the forces of darkness that put unbelief and fear into our hearts. Will You give all the remnants a double portion of Your Spirit. Bless each and everyone of them, and establish Your Kingdom everywhere they go. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray, amen.
Let us pray for Remnant Day tomorrow, it’s going to be at 2pm. Remnants, this worship is important because the entire region worships together. Remember, it’s not about the actual worship itself that gives salvation, but it is our faith in why we worship. We worship for Christ, so we can know Him more, make the gospel mine, and convey it. So let’s pray for Remnant Day tomorrow, to break all the forces of darkness trying to block worship.
As we are children of God, God wants us to save other people, so right now, remnants, let’s pray for the missions and evangelism fields. We do not pray for random people we do not know, but we pray for God’s Kingdom to be established. Through this church, more missions and evangelism may take place.
Before we sing our last praise, let us have one more time of prayer for the Sunday pulpit message. The pulpit message is the Word God gives to us and the Word that is fulfilled throughout the week. Of course, Satan would block that, so let’s break down the forces of darkness and pray for a double portion of spirit for Pastor Park. Let us pray.