Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He that hath ears, let him hear.
5 sermons cite this verse
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. I'd like you to have a seat. So the other night I was talking with a group of high schoolers and the topic of a man named St. Padre Pio came up. I don't know if you guys, have you guys heard of St. Padre Pio? Yes. Okay. So remarkable guy. And we just were talking about like some of the most incredible gifts. So Padre Pio was a Capuchin priest or friar. So it's a Franciscan friar. Back, he was born in the end of the 1800s. I think he died in the 1960s. So long life. But he was ordained. he was from Italy and he was ordained in a place called St. Giovanni Giovanni Rotondo and that's where he lived his entire life. But shortly after he was ordained he just started experiencing, I think even before his ordination, experienced these massive gifts. So I was asking these high schoolers like do you know about the gifts of St. Padre Pio and what are they? So they started throwing out all these gifts like among many others where St. Padre Pio had the gift of bilocation which is you could be, he was in two places at once. Like he never physically I think left St. Giovanni Rotondo. …
… where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father. Whoever has ears ought to hear the gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. I invite you to have a seat. So one of the things that keeps coming back, whenever someone's, I think when someone takes the Lord seriously, when someone takes their faith seriously, I think one of the big desires is I want to have more. Like I just want to, it's the same prayer that when the apostles went to Jesus and they said, Lord, increase our faith. It's that same thing. I think a lot of us, we would say, okay, when I come to the Lord, here we are in the middle of summer. Just like that sense of like, I just want, I want to be better, right? I want to have more faith. I want to, I want to love God better. I don't know how many times I could go back and think like, that is what I want. …
… that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father. Whoever has ears, let them hear. We read this, and we are so quick to say, that's right. Those evil people, those sinners, those terrible Democrats, Republicans, Independents… Whatever category you wanted to put right there, it exposed something about your heart. Whatever you wanted to see the weeds as tells me something about what you see in the mirror. Now, let me explain that for a moment. Go back to verse 42. It says that the evil ones will be thrown into the furnace, but watch this. Verse 43 that comes right after it says, the kingdom of their father. So the furnace of judgment belongs to the father, not the children. The furnace of judgment is not yours to put people in. The furnace of judgment is not your place to have a Facebook conversation about what everybody else thinks and why they're so stupid to think it. I shouldn't be preaching like this my first Sunday back in the year. I might run y'all all off from the church. But notice in the parable, it says that it was his field. And I'm learning more and more in my life that if it's his field, that means it's his furnace. That means God has to be the one to decide who's right and who's wrong. God has to be the one to decide who …
… There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. And God, I pray we would have ears to hear. You speaking through your word to change our lives. We need you. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. I was thinking about the time when I was in high school that I impersonated a police officer and could have gotten in big trouble for it. Let me explain. It was a time of stupidity and toilet paper, all right? That was the big news on Friday nights was often toilet paper, right? So you had these girls, you had the guys. They would TP each other's homes, which is against the law. Let's just point that out. That's an act of vandalism and trespassing. All right? So we found out there was this group of girls that were going to have a slumber party. And while they were at their slumber party, they were going to toilet paper a bunch of the houses of guys who were on the soccer team. …
… army and to spread his kingdom until someday, and this is what I love about that verse in Matthew 13, we will all shine like the sun in the kingdom of our Father. You know, that's Matthew 13, verse 43. We will shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father. There, it brings it all together. The King is my Father. The Father is my King. One last thing. When people ask, what does it mean then to treat God as a King and not just as a Father? I always say at least four things. You might have heard me say this again. I haven't said it in probably a couple of years, but it's a good little way to look it over. What does it mean to treat God as a King? First of all, it means to obey him. First of all, it means to obey him. It means that it's not good enough simply to come and ask God to help you. You have to, and we've been talking about that, you have to come to him and say, Lord, I will obey you in every area of my life. …