Cited in sermons
Kenneth Gentry
2 sermons · All people cited
The Coronation of the High Priest
Zechariah 6 closes the vision sequence of the book with an eighth chariot vision and a symbolic coronation of Joshua the high priest — both pointing beyond their immediate historical setting to the person and work of Jesus Christ. The chariot vision declares God's comprehensive sovereignty over the enemies of His people, while the crowning of Joshua as priest-king anticipates the one Branch who would unite the offices of priest and king in His own person, build the true temple, and bear all glory. Against dispensationalist hopes for a rebuilt physical temple, this exposition argues that Christ has fulfilled and therefore abolished the need for any such structure, since He is Himself the meeting place of God and sinners. The congregation is called to rest in Christ's present kingly-priestly intercession and to come in faith to the Branch who will never cast out those who come to Him.
The Persecuted Church
Revelation 2:8–11 contains Christ's letter to the persecuted church at Smyrna — a letter with no condemnation, only commendation and solemn warning. Christ describes himself as the one who was dead and came to life, a self-description that speaks directly to a congregation facing imprisonment and death: the cross precedes the crown, and this pattern is not accidental but definitive for all who follow Christ. The sermon works through Christ's commendation of the Smyrnaean church's works, tribulation, and poverty; his warning of intensified suffering; and his exhortation to fearless, faithful endurance with the crown of life as the promised reward. The governing application is that the contemporary Western church, soft and largely untested, must recover the militant, cross-bearing posture that characterized the saints at Smyrna.