"We're Going to Have to Operate"--Sermon on the Mount Series

[NOTE: There is a long illustration in this sermon that I read from The Great Divorce, by C. S. Lewis. Due to the length of the section, I did not type it out in this post. Thus, it would be best to listen to this sermon rather than read it. To hear the audio of this sermon, go to http://morningsidecommunitychurch.weebly.com/sermons.html, and scroll to the bottom of the page.]

            They’re the words that everyone dreads when they go to the doctor: “We’re going to have to operate.” We hear those words when all other options have been exhausted, and extreme measures have to be taken. The Lord has graciously allowed us to understand His world enough to make many operations safe and routine, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are still extreme measures.

            In our study of the Sermon on the Mount, we come today to Jesus’ discussion of lust, and His treatment plan for battling this temptation is quite simple: we’re going to have to operate. We must take extreme measures against this temptation, especially when we realize that Jesus simply will not allow us to downplay the severity of the sin of lust.

            Let’s work our way through Jesus’ diagnosis of this sin, then we’ll focus on His prescription for it.

The Diagnosis: Lust is Serious Enough to Make Us Deserving of Hell

            As we read these words, please remember that Jesus is not critiquing the Old Testament in His teaching. He is critiquing the interpretations of the Old Testament that the people had heard from their religious leaders. That’s why Jesus uses the introductory phrase that He does rather than a statement like, “It is written.” So, in v. 27, Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’” That command, of course, is fine as far as it goes; it’s an accurate statement of command number seven of The Ten Commandments.

            But as they had done with murder, the Pharisees—who were the religious leaders of the people—had begun to measure obedience to that command by their actions. As a result, the attitudes of the heart were downplayed, but as Jesus shows us, we cannot minimize the importance of our heart attitudes.

            In v. 28, the Lord states, “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Since God knows what is going on inside our hearts, He condemns the whole process that leads up to an act of sin. He knows when a thought is conceived in my mind, and He knows what I do to either put that thought out of my mind or nurse it along and feed it. Its kind of like the way that we look at weeds. We don’t just hate the leaves and the seeds that they produce—we don’t even want the roots around. In a similar way, God condemns the very roots of sin, which are found in our hearts.

            Now, its important to specify what Jesus means when he speaks of “looking at a woman with lustful intent.” To put it simply, its not the first noticing of another person that Jesus condemns—it’s the second glance, the look that is made with the intention of fanning the flames of lust in your heart.

            King David was not guilty when he noticed Bathsheba from the roof of his palace. As far as we are told, that was just an accident, and as the saying goes, “accidents happen.” No, King David’s sin came when he used that accidental noticing to feed a lustful desire in his heart. He had sinned long before he followed up on that desire because he had already committed adultery in his heart.

            So Jesus has backed us into a corner as far as our lust is concerned. He has cut off our retreat into the easy justifications that we want to use to tell ourselves that a “little look” is no big deal. To God, the very attitude is every bit as serious as any act that it may produce, so he gives it the same condemnation.

Now, in vv. 29-30, Jesus gives us his prescription for dealing with lust, and as I said before, it is simply this:

The Prescription: We’re Going to Have to Operate

            Less invasive procedures will not do; extreme measures must be taken. Let’s read the Lord’s words in these verses [READ vv. 29-30]. We have good reason to think that Jesus was speaking figuratively in these verses because He just told us that lust is a problem of the heart, and simply doing things to the outside of my body will not cure a problem of the heart. So He is not telling us the means through which to deal with lust, but the manner in which we must deal with lust. In other words, He’s not telling us the precise actions to take (“Just start cutting off body parts”), He’s telling us the attitude with which to fight against lust.

            The final outcome of lust is so bad that we should be willing and eager to get rid of anything that becomes like bait in a trap to us. That’s what Jesus means when he says, “If your right eye causes you to sin.” If something has become alluring to you, if it is enticing you to walk down the road of lust, you must put it away. None of this talk of “maybe just a little” or “just a quick glance—no! We’re going to have to operate; it has to go, or otherwise WE have to go out of the situation.

            I’d like to read for you several pages from a story by C. S. Lewis entitled, The Great Divorce. This is a passage that wonderfully describes the way that we must deal with lust and the way that we often try to minimize the need to take such drastic measures. This is a lengthy section, but I want to read it to you to feed your imagination some healthy food.

            You see, the war against lust is fought inside the imagination. This temptation often pits our desires or feelings against our intellect; our intellect knows better, but our desires are so enflamed that it is difficult to resist. In this stalemate between our intellect and our desires, the deciding vote, if you will, is cast by our imagination. Whichever force can captivate your imagination in that moment will almost always come out on top.

            That’s why we must feed our imagination healthy food. That’s why, when God wanted to teach us about the beauty of marital love and romance, He gave us a book of word pictures—a book of poetry in The Song of Solomon. So even though this passage I’m about to read is lengthy, I think it is well worth our time.

            In this book, Lewis writes of a group of people from Hell who are allowed to take a bus ride to the outskirts of Heaven. Keep in mind that he’s not writing to make definite claims about theology; he is simply writing a story. In the story, the people from Hell are referred to as ghosts, and on one occasion, Lewis gives us a very vivid description of the way in which lust must be handled.

[READ from The Great Divorce, p. 106-114. The final line, “Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering, whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed.”]

            That is what we must remember if we are to gain victory over lust. It is a poor, unsatisfying substitute for true, godly romance—which possesses true beauty and power and satisfaction. It will be tremendous reminder for us if we fill our imagination with captivating pictures of godly romance. It will also be a helpful reminder if we remember the end game of lust as Jesus tells us here.

            The final end of lust for those who never repent and accept Christ as their Savior is Hell. That attitude in our hearts, which we so easily and so often tell ourselves is no big deal, in God’s eyes is deserving of Hell. My friends, if you have never humbly acknowledged that God’s verdict about you is true—that you are a sinner, worthy of punishment from God—I urge you to do so today, because there is hope for you! God loves you and does not want you to receive His punishment, so He carried out against His own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, on the cross so that the penalty for your sins could be paid. And after Jesus died, God raised Him from the dead, brought Him back to life to show that all that He has promised is true, and we can receive forgiveness by placing our faith in Jesus as our Savior.

            But even after we make that choice, lust still produces devastating effects. How many people have we known or heard of who have walked down the path of lust and destroyed their lives through an addiction to ungodly material or a sinful encounter with another person? We can not only ruin our lives on that path today, but we may also forfeit rewards from God in the next life. If that doesn’t sound like a serious thing, we need to think again. God’s desire for you as His child is to join Jesus in ruling over the New Heaven and New Earth, just as Adam and Eve were created to rule over this Earth. You may lose the honor of a special role of service to God if you persist in a sinful lifestyle, so it is of the utmost importance that you take a serious stand against lust as Jesus commands us today. Lesser measures will not do; living with the pain, so to speak, will not suffice. You’re going to have to operate, so what is it in your life that has become like bait in a trap to you? It will have to go, but in the long run, you will never regret for a moment that it did.

Don't Get Mad...Get Leavin'--Sermon on the Mount Series

            There are certain activities in life that can really get my competitive juices flowing—like mini-golf, for example, or bowling, ping-pong, and tennis. I can also get very competitive when I play board games, which has often made me wonder how I’m going to react when Adrianna reaches that age when she will want to change the rules of every game so that she can win.

            That’s actually an attitude that we all struggle with in our lives—we want to define the standards of life so that we come out looking good. That’s exactly what the Pharisees in Jesus’ day had done with God’s commandments in the Old Testament. The Pharisees, you will remember, were basically the pastors of the Jewish people at that time, and in a time when people did not have their own copies of the Old Testament to read, the Pharisees functioned for many people as the official interpreters of God’s commands.

            Ironically, their efforts to interpret God’s commands came from a sincere desire to follow them closely, but what their efforts produced was a set of arbitrary guidelines that did not capture the heart of God’s commands, yet they allowed the Pharisees to tell themselves that they were being perfectly obedient.

            In Matthew 5:17-20, we saw Jesus launch the opening volley of a thorough attack on the Pharisees’ mindset and traditions. Beginning now in v. 21, we will see him discuss some specific examples from the Pharisees’ traditions and reveal how those examples fail to capture the true spirit of God’s commands. He begins with their interpretations of God’s commandments against murder. Let’s read all that He has to say here about this subject, then we’ll break it down a bit more [READ Matthew 5:21-26]. Let’s look at a few points in this text, then we’ll discuss some implications of Jesus’ teaching.

            Notice how Jesus says in v. 21, “You have heard that it was said to those of old.” That’s an important phrase because it reminds us that Jesus is not critiquing the Old Testament itself—He is critiquing what the Pharisees had said about the Old Testament; their interpretation of it. When Jesus referred to the Old Testament itself, He would say something like “it is written” or “haven’t you read…,” so this little phrase reminds us that Jesus was exposing the Pharisees’ teaching, not any deficiency in the Old Testament itself.

            Notice also that Jesus countered that phrase with the phrase in v. 22, “But I say to you.” That little phrase made two very important points. First, Jesus was clearly setting himself up for the people as an alternative to the Pharisees. It becomes crystal clear in the rest of the sermon that Jesus wants the people to accept his teaching as authoritative rather than the teaching of the Pharisees, and this little phrase effectively puts the people at a fork in the road. What are you going to follow—that which was said to those of old, or that which I say to you?

            Second, with this little phrase, Jesus was claiming to have the authority to accurately express the mind of God. That’s an incredible claim that lays the groundwork for Jesus’ later claims that He is God. This point was not lost on Jesus’ audience, because Matthew reports at the end of this sermon that “the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes (Matt 7:28-29).”

Now let’s take a look at some implications from Jesus’ teaching.

1. Don’t use superficial standards to assess your relationships with other people.

            What the Pharisees taught about murder was okay as far as it went, but as Jesus reveals, it didn’t go far enough. Their teaching was, “You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.” God certainly did condemn murder through His commands, but He went beyond that to the very root of murder, which is anger. In Leviticus 19:17, the Lord said, “You shall not hate your brother in your heart,” but that point was apparently lost on the Pharisees, which is why Jesus criticizes their teaching here. Their traditions focused only on an external action like murder, and apparently, to them, any attitudes or even actions that stopped short of murder were okay.

            But Jesus declares that the mere attitude of anger is just as serious in God’s eyes as the act of murder itself, and actions like insults that we might think are less serious than murder are actually serious enough to make us deserving of Hell. That is a very penetrating assessment that calls us to consider not just our external actions toward others, but the attitudes that we hold about them in our hearts.

            This lesson holds an important implication for the way that we assess our relationships with each other. Let’s face it—its so easy for us to excuse anger in our hearts by looking only at superficial standards. Perhaps I’ve been angry at someone for a year but I’ve told myself, “What’s the big deal? I’ve never punched him! I’ve never slashed his tires!” Well, what a wonderful person I am! Let me pat myself on the back because I haven’t punched someone!

            But Jesus says we had better stop patting ourselves on the back and we better start examining our hearts, because the attitudes we harbor there are just as serious as if we had murdered someone. And if we have expressed our anger to another person through even something as “small” as an insult, Jesus instructs us to make it our top priority to ask forgiveness from that person.

2. If you have expressed your anger against someone else, make it your top priority to ask for their forgiveness.

            The Lord uses a very vivid example to get this point across. He was speaking at a time when the Jewish people were still offering animal sacrifices in accordance with the Old Testament laws, and He tells His audience that if they were standing at the altar of sacrifice, preparing to hand their sacrifice over to the priest, and they remembered that they had expressed their anger to someone else, they should immediately stop this ritual of worship and leave to go and be reconciled with that person.

            In other words, anger is such a serious matter that if I’ve expressed it against another person, I must make it my top priority to make things right with that person. It should even be a higher priority than performing a ritual of worship to God, and the reason for that is simple—God won’t be pleased by my ritual of worship if I am not at peace with other people. As Samuel explained to King Saul in 1 Samuel 15:22, “to obey is better than sacrifice.”

            So imagine that you are driving to church one Sunday morning when you remember that you had insulted someone the previous week and had not yet asked for their forgiveness. It would actually be a greater act of worship to go and make things right with that person than to come to church. That is the kind of priority that we should give to confessing our anger to the people whom we’ve hurt and asking their forgiveness.

Jesus gives us a further illustration of the urgency of making things right at the end of this section.

3. It is much easier to be reconciled to someone sooner rather than later.

            This lesson is the point of Jesus’ words about the judge and the guard and the prison. Some people have wanted to conclude that Jesus was telling a parable here with the judge standing for God and the prison standing for Hell, but there doesn’t seem to be any need to make that connection. Jesus is simply pointing to real-life circumstances to encourage us to make peace with other people quickly after an offense has taken place.

            Its never easy to swallow your pride, confess your sin, and ask someone else to forgive you, but it is almost always easier to do so soon after an offense rather than later. Its just like a physical illness in many ways—if you deal with it in its earliest stages, your odds of beating it are much greater.

            Proverbs 18:19 describes how difficult it can be to reconcile with someone you’ve sin against: “A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city, and quarreling is like the bars of a castle.” That observation only becomes more and more applicable with each passing day after an offense has taken place.

With each day that passes, you better believe that Satan is hard at work to multiply the offenses and misunderstandings between you and that other person. He’s going to tempt that person every day to become more bitter, to build more bars around their heart so that you can no longer get in.

            So my friends, we must realize what a serious matter anger truly is. In the eyes of God, it is every bit as serious as murder, and when we have succumbed to it and expressed it against others, we must make it our top priority to heal that breach in our relationship quickly before Satan has time to exploit it. Obeying God in this matter is actually a greater act of worship than any ritual that we might perform, such as attending church, praying, or singing hymns. And if we know we’ve expressed anger toward someone else and we’ve not yet made our peace with them, God won’t be pleased with our rituals of worship, anyway!

            Now, let me answer a question that may have popped into your mind at this point—do I need to confess my anger to another person if its only been in my heart and I haven’t expressed it to them? That’s a good question, and I think the answer is a cautious “no,” and I say “cautious” because we need to remember that there are many ways in which we can express our anger beyond just the obvious ones like assaulting someone.

            Let me describe a scenario to help us think about this question. Suppose that I get a text message from Carmen one afternoon that says, “I made plans for us to go over to Billy Bob’s house tonight. Hope you don’t mind!” Now suppose that I start to think, “Oh man! There’s a big KU basketball game on tonight, and Billy Bob is a K-State fan so I know he won’t want to watch the game. How could Carmen be so inconsiderate? She’s just always thinking about herself and what she wants to do! You know, I remember a time six years ago when she did the same thing! This is twice now in six years! This is becoming a bad pattern in her life! She’s ALWAYS doing this kind of thing!”

            Now imagine that I allow myself to go on like this for a few minutes, just stewing in my anger. Then the Holy Spirit convicts me, and I repent of my anger and put it away. Would I need to confess that anger to Carmen? I think the answer is no, because I haven’t expressed it to her in any way. I still need to confess it to God and ask for His forgiveness, but I don’t think I would need to ask for Carmen’s forgiveness in that situation.

            Now suppose, however, that I held on to my anger until I got home. Perhaps I don’t say anything about it, but instead I just don’t say much of anything at all. I don’t give Carmen my normal greeting, and instead I just get ready to go over to Billy Bob’s house. Then I joke around with Billy Bob for a couple of hours, and we leave to go home and I’m silent again. We arrive at home and I just get ready for bed and go to sleep.

            Now would I need to confess my anger to Carmen in that situation? You bet I would, but why? How did I express it to her? First of all, Carmen knows that its out of character for me to be quiet like that and say nothing at all. She’s would know that something is wrong, and I’ve probably caused her some worry by leaving her in the dark about what it could be. Second, even though I didn’t say any harsh words to her, I didn’t speak any kind words to her either. I know I should speak kind words to her, and James 4:17 says “whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”

            Third, I am commanded to love my wife, but just think about the definition of love from 1 Corinthians 13. Love is patient—have I been patient? No! Love is kind—have I been kind? No! Love is not rude—have I been rude? Yes! Love is not irritable—have I been irritable? Yes!

            You see, we have to remember all of the subtle ways in which we can express anger. Remember the first implication from today’s sermon—don’t use superficial standards to assess your relationships with other people! In that light, we probably need to confess our anger to others more often that we might initially realize. Are there times when it may not be necessary? I think there are, but they probably occur less often than we want to admit.

            Its never very hard for us to find ways to excuse our behavior, is it? We’re just like children playing a board game—we can always find a way to adjust the rules so that we come out on top. But my friends, we must not play that game. That is precisely the mindset that Jesus is going to dismantle here in The Sermon on the Mount, and He has begun with the ways in which we might justify our sinful anger against other people. We must take a sober look at ourselves in the penetrating light of God’s Word and allow it to reveal our hearts as they really are.

            If know that you need to make peace with someone because you’ve expressed anger against them, don’t delay. Don’t wait another day; don’t leave yourself or your neighbor vulnerable to Satan’s temptations. Do what you can to repair that breach, and pray for God to help your neighbor to be willing to do the same.

Probable "Cause?" Why the Difference in Translations of Matthew 5:22?--Sermon on the Mount Series

            Today, before we tackle the next section of the Sermon on the Mount as a whole, we’re going to take an in-depth look at a question that arises from Matthew 5:21-22. Please follow along with me as I read those verses [READ Matthew 5:21-22]. Now, I just read those verses from the English Standard Version of the Bible, a fairly new English translation that came out in 2001. If you were following along in the King James Version or the New King James Version, you might be scratching your head, because both of those translations say, “whoever is angry with his brother without cause shall be in danger of the judgment.” Or, if you’re following along in the ESV or the NIV or the New American Standard, there may have been a little note in your Bible in the margin or at the bottom of the page that says something like, “some manuscripts insert without cause.”

            That is an interesting and important difference. Why do some translations read, “whoever is angry with his brother without cause” and other translations simply read, “whoever is angry with his brother?” That little difference has an impact on how we understand this passage, because one reading seems to allow for no exceptions whereas the other reading acknowledges that there could be situations in which anger is okay.

            So why do we find these differences between translations of the Bible? To answer that question, we need to talk about the history of how the Bible has come from the pens of Moses and Paul and others all the way down through the years to us in 2013. This discussion should boost your confidence in the Bible, especially in light of misinformation about this subject that is common in our world today.

            In our next two sermons, we’re going to work our way through the following outline, which will take us through the basics of the history of how the Bible came from God all the way down through the years to us:

1. The original documents of Scripture were written without any errors.

2. As people began to copy the original documents, they sometimes made innocent mistakes or inserted words to help clarify a statement.

3. By comparing the numerous ancient copies of Scripture that we possess, we can spot those mistakes and insertions and correct them.

4. In some verses, the exact wording of the original documents remains uncertain. This uncertainty is one factor that lies behind the differences we find between translations.

            I suspect that this information is very new for some of you, and for that reason, it could be easy for you to walk away from the next two sermons thinking, “Pastor Tim said there are errors in the Bible!” That is not at all what I’m saying, and its so important for you to realize that, that I’m going to spend the rest of our time today showing you that that’s not what I’m saying.

            We’re going to spend our time today looking at just the first point of the outline that I just gave you—the original documents of Scripture were written without any errors. In other words, the documents that were written by the hands of Moses and David and Peter and Paul and others contained nothing but the truth—no errors, no mistakes, no lies. The big, fancy term for this belief about the Bible is “inerrancy,” and I’m going to make a case for you this morning to show you why we have good reason to believe that the Bible tells us nothing but the truth.

So, we’re going to look at a few observations about the Bible and then draw the most reasonable conclusion from those observations.

1. The Bible is a communication from God given to us through men (2 Timothy 3:16)

            Its certainly true that human beings actually put pen to paper to write out the words of the Bible, but these men claimed that they were writing out a message from God, and we have good reasons to believe that claim. 2 Timothy 3:16 is a good place to find that claim. In the first phrase of that verse, Paul writes, “All Scripture is breathed out by God.” He is simply saying that God is the ultimate source of Scripture (which is just another term for the Bible).

            We have very good reasons to believe that claim—let me give you just one of them this morning. The Bible has shown the ability to accurately predict the specific actions of specific people hundreds of years before they happened. Now, we all know that humans don’t have that ability. We don’t always get it right when we predict how people are going to act next week, let alone hundreds of years down the road. But the Bible has shown that ability, which is a very good reason to conclude that God must have been the ultimate source of Scripture.

2. God directed those men as they wrote, and His direction extended to the tiniest details of their writings (Matthew 5:17-18)

            That last phrase is important, because if God’s guidance of those authors didn’t extend all the way down to the details, then we’re open to the possibility of human mistakes. But Jesus demonstrated an immense confidence in the tiniest details of Scripture, which tells us that God’s guidance must have extended down to the details.

            Consider a verse we read just last week—Matthew 5:18. In that verse, Jesus said, “For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” We learned last week that the “iota” and the “dot” referred to the tiniest details of Scripture, and we can see what kind of confidence Jesus had in those details.

3. God knows all things; thus, He cannot make innocent mistakes in what He says.

            We’ve all had the experience of saying something that we thought was true, only to learn a little bit more and find out that we were wrong. I remember when I was in second or third grade and I was learning how to do division with remainders. You might remember that—you would figure out how many times a smaller number would go into a larger number, and anything left over was just called a remainder. Well, I had already seen some older kids doing math with decimal points, and I thought, “Ah! I see where we’re going here. I bet those decimal points are the same thing as a remainder.” Now, I wanted to show my teacher that I was way ahead of the game, so I did a whole assignment where I wrote out those remainders as decimal points instead of using that little “r” symbol. When I got that assignment back, my teacher had let me know with lots of red ink that a remainder is not the same thing as a decimal point.

            I had made a mistake because I thought something was true when in fact it was false. But think about this—since God knows all things, He’s not vulnerable to mistakes like that. He can’t be mistaken about something because He knows all things. So, when He says something, it must be free from any mistakes.

4. God cannot lie; thus, He cannot say something is true though He knows it to be false.

            Hebrews 6:18 makes this observation about God very clearly when it simply states, “…it is impossible for God to lie.” We can also approach this observation in a more philosophical way. Since God is the one who gave human beings our sense of morality, and since we understand intuitively that lying is wrong, then God must view lying as wrong, and thus He would not do it.

            Now think again about these observations: (1) The Bible is a communication from God given to us through men; (2) God directed those men as they wrote, all the way down to the tiniest details; (3) God knows all things, so He can’t be mistaken; and (4) God cannot lie. What we have to conclude about the Bible, then, is that it must be free from any errors or lies. In other words, everything in the Bible must be true.

            We can verify this conclusion by the fact that no one has ever proven a statement in the Bible to be wrong. Now this is the point, of course, when many people in our culture would throw up their hands and say, “Wait a minute! What about such and such a passage?” Certainly, people have suggested passages that they think are wrong, but no one has ever proven their case.

            Do keep one point in mind here—when we say that the Bible has no errors, we’re only talking about the original documents. People did commit errors as they copied those original documents, and that’s what we’ll talk about next week, but that’s not what we’re focusing on today—we’re focusing on those original documents. Particularly when someone makes a statement like, “the Bible has thousands of errors in it,” whether they realize it or not they’re referring to those copies of the Bible, not the original documents of Scripture.

            Let me give you a suggestion to keep in the back of your mind—the next time someone says to you, “the Bible has errors in it,” just ask them, “Are you thinking of any passage in particular?” The average Joe who says the Bible has errors in it is just repeating something he heard on The History Channel or on Facebook. He almost certainly hasn’t checked it out for himself, so just gently press him with that question, and don’t let him intimidate you with some statement like, “Everyone knows the Bible has errors in it!” Just keep bringing up that question—“are you thinking of any passage in particular?” If he does mention a particular passage, either help him understand that passage, or if you don’t understand it yourself, just say, “You know, that’s an interesting question about that passage. If you’re interested, I could do some homework on it and we could talk about it later.”

            Most of the time, however, that person will probably look like a deer in the headlights when you ask them if they’re thinking about any passage in particular. If they can’t name one, then you could say, “Why don’t you start reading through the Bible, and I’ll check in with you every so often, and if you find something you think is wrong, we can take a look at it together.” What a great opportunity if the person agrees to do that!

            Now, in the last hundred years or so, it has become sadly common for Christian people to modify the idea that the Bible has no errors or lies. We’ve been so intimated by ideas like the theory of evolution that some people have become willing to say, “Well, the Bible always gets it right when it talks about God and salvation, but it makes some errors when it talks about history or scientific stuff.”

            Sadly, quite a few denominations have been willing to make that compromise, but we run into a big problem when we take that step. There really is no way to separate what the Bible says about God and what it says about history (or “scientific stuff”) because the Bible is making claims about what God has done through history, as Lord of history. If the Bible states something about God by pointing to an event in history, but it turns out that that event never actually happened, then the statement about God just falls flat. We’re left with nothing more than fairy tales that have no basis in truth.

            The best example of this is the resurrection of Christ. I want to show you what Paul had to say about this matter in 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 [READ 1 Cor. 15:12-19]. Notice that Paul did not say, “Well, if the resurrection didn’t actually happen, that’s no big deal because its still a good story about God that teaches us such and such.” No, he said that if the resurrection was not a real historical event, then he was telling lies about God and we’re all doomed! Those are the stakes, my friends—if the events recorded in the Bible did not actually take place, we’re not left with good, informative stories about God, we are left with lies about God.

            The importance of the doctrine of inerrancy was stated well by Augustine of Hippo, a bishop in northern Africa in the late 4^th and early 5^th centuries: “most disastrous consequences must follow upon our believing that anything false is found in the sacred books. That is to say that the men by whom the Scripture has been given to us and committed to writing put down in these books anything false. If you once admit into such a high sanctuary of authority one false statement, there will not be left a single sentence of those books, which, if appearing to anyone difficult in practice or hard to believe, may not by the same fatal rule be explained away as a statement, in which intentionally, the author declared what was not true.”¹

            In other words, if you say that there is even one error in the Bible, you’ve declared open season on the whole thing. If there’s one error, why couldn’t there be two? And if two, then why not three, and so on? And when we run into a statement that is hard to believe or hard to live out, we can just write it off as an error and move on.

            Perhaps the real question that surrounds the issue of inerrancy is simply, “Who’s the boss?” Who’s the boss—me or the Bible? Do I stand as judge over the Bible, declaring where it is right and wrong, or does the Bible stand as judge over me, declaring where I am right and wrong? May we never establish ourselves as the judge over Scripture, but as this book can be shown to be a message from the true and living God, may we humble ourselves beneath it and declare that it tells us the truth, and nothing but the truth.

Notes:

1. As quoted in Charles C. Ryrie, Basic Theology (Chicago: Moody Press, 1999), 91.

           

The Beginning of Blessings--Sermon on the Mount Series

            We’re getting very close to the start of graduation season, and if you attend many graduations this year, you’ll probably hear some of the regurgitated slogans that capture the wisdom of our age—favorites like:

• ·         “Follow your heart; it will never lead you astray”
• ·         “If its meant to be, its up to me”
• ·         “Realize your own potential for greatness”
• ·         “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”

I started to wonder the other day how Jesus might be received as a graduation speaker today. I’m sure a school would have a packed house if they could announce that Jesus was their graduation speaker, but how would people react if Jesus walked to the podium and said, “The first thing you need to understand is your complete lack of anything that might allow you to lay claim to God’s favor.” I wonder if Jesus would get invited back the next year.

      Today, we’re going to hear basically that message from Jesus as we start to look at the Sermon on the Mount. This will be merely the beginning of a complete overhaul of much of the so-called “wisdom” that we hear in our culture today. You can expect to receive a new outlook on life as we learn to see it from Jesus’ point of view.

      Our study will take us first of all into a collection of verses known as The Beatitudes. Let me make a couple of comments about these verses in general before we study the first one today. First, as we read The Beatitudes, we should not read these statements as a list of things to do in order to be born again, or in order to receive forgiveness of our sins. Nor should we read these verses as a checklist to use in order to measure whether you have been born again; or in other words, to find assurance of salvation.

The best commentary on The Beatitudes comes in Matthew 5:19, where Jesus states that we will not all have the same status in His kingdom on Earth. He says that some will be called least in the kingdom of Heaven, and some will be called great in the kingdom of Heaven. The Beatitudes, then, are a description of the kind of person who will be called great in the kingdom of Heaven. I think this is confirmed by v. 12, which says that the person described in The Beatitudes will have great reward in Heaven. These verses tell us how to live in order to hear that statement of approval from Jesus, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

      Second, in all of these verses, we will read that the person being described is called “blessed.” Let’s talk about what that word means. When you hear this word, don’t equate it with the word “happy.” As you’ve probably heard at some point, happiness is simply an emotional response to what’s going on around you. In fact, the word “happiness” is related to the word “happening,” as in what’s happening around you. So happiness is simply a good feeling that you get when you like what’s happening around you.

            But this word “blessed” is not talking about a feeling that just comes and goes in your life. Blessedness is the status of being approved by God. It is a status that we can enjoy now as we live out these attitudes and actions, and it is a status that will one day be made obvious to everyone in Christ’s kingdom because of the rewards that the “blessed” person will receive. So blessedness goes beyond a mere feeling of happiness, and it remains even if your circumstances make you feel unhappy—it is a wonderful thing, indeed!

With these points in mind, we are ready to look at the first Beatitude which is found in v. 3: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

“THE POOR IN SPIRIT…”

            Right away, we learn that Jesus would not do very well as a modern-day self-help speaker. Instead of telling us to realize our inner potential and power, He tells us to realize our inner poverty! When Jesus says, “poor in spirit,” he’s talking about the way that we view ourselves with respect to God. Do I see myself as having credit in my spiritual bank account (so to speak) that I could use to bargain with God, or do I see myself as having nothing with which I could purchase or gain His approval and favor?

            Its very important for us to understand the word “poor” that Jesus uses here. When we hear the word “poor,” we probably think of those who are financially poor in our country. Now, in our country in particular, it is possible for people to be financially poor, yet have a fair number of things. They may not have much, its true, but they often do have something. But Jesus is not saying, “Blessed is the man who can say, ‘I may not have much credit built up with God, but at least I have some!”

            The word that Jesus uses is the Greek word ptoxos. It’s the word that’s used to describe Lazarus in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, where we’re told that Lazarus would lay at the gate of the rich man’s property and long to eat anything that fell from his table. Lazarus was a beggar, and he was totally at the mercy of the rich man.

            So Jesus is saying, “Blessed are those who realize that they are totally at the mercy of God, who understand that they have nothing with which to gain His approval or favor.” We would normally use the word “humility” to describe this attitude, and it is perfectly portrayed in Jesus’ story about the Pharisee and the tax collector. Let’s take a look at that story in Luke 18. (If you’re not familiar with this, tax collectors were seen as traitors by the Jewish people of Jesus’ day because they worked for a foreign government. Jesus is not putting down anyone who works at the IRS!) [READ Luke 18:9-12]. Notice that this Pharisee felt like he had some credit in his spiritual bank account; he thought he had some airline miles on his spiritual credit card because he regularly performed religious activities, and he thought that God must have been impressed by that. Now, let’s read about the tax collector [READ vv. 13-14]. The tax collector is a perfect example of someone who is poor in spirit. He realized that he was totally at the mercy of God; he had nothing that would impress God and no way to bargain with Him. He could do nothing but ask for mercy, and Jesus said that’s exactly what God was looking for.

            Now its very important to remember that we’re supposed to have this attitude not only when we accept Christ and are converted, but throughout our lives as well. It is easy to allow a particular idea to quietly take root in our minds—the idea that we do start to accumulate spiritual “credit” with God after we are converted. We realize we have no credit before God when we’re converted, but we might think that from that point forward, we start to build up credit with God like fuel points at Dillons, and then we can cash in that credit when we want God to heal us from cancer or get our kids out of a bad relationship or something like that.

This attitude can produce bitterness and anger within us when hard times inevitably come in our lives. We may find ourselves saying, “God, how can you allow this to happen to ME? I go to church; I gave money to that missionary whenever he came through town; I took food to that sick person that one time; I invited over those neighbors of mine who are hard to get along with.” We get angry with God because we feel like we had somehow built up credit with Him that was supposed to bring only good things and not bad things.

In reality, we do not build up credit with God at any time. There is never a moment when we can say, “I deserve this or that from God.” Now, we can recall the things that God has promised to do in His grace, but that is different from saying, “I deserve this or that.” Jesus drives home this point with a short story in Luke 17:7-10 [READ Luke 17:7-10]. So what’s the most that I can say for myself when I’ve done all—ALL!—that God commands? “I am an unworthy servant; I have only done what was my duty.”

Now, as we’ll see, it is true that God promises to reward those who obey Him, but even those rewards are a sheer act of God’s grace. We will not receive them because we deserve them; we will receive them because God is incredibly, amazingly, unfathomably gracious!

“THEIRS IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN”

            Looking again at Matthew 5:3, Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for (or we could also translate this “because”) theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” This is why Jesus called them blessed—not because life will be all sunshine and rainbows for them in the here-and-now, but because of their relationship to the kingdom of heaven.

            Now when you hear this phrase “theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” don’t simply think “they will live in heaven with God after they die.” That is true, but Jesus is talking about more than that. It is so important for us to remember that part of our future destiny is to live again on this planet with Jesus when He returns to reign as king over the Earth. Even if we die today, we will return to this planet with Jesus in our resurrected bodies to live with Him in His kingdom.

            You may remember that last week, we read that the basic message of Jesus’ very first sermons was, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand (Matt 4:17).” Jesus was talking about the worldwide kingdom of peace that was promised in the Old Testament. When Jesus came into world the first time, He was prepared to establish that kingdom, but the people were not spiritually prepared for it—that’s why He first called them to repent. But when the people almost unanimously rejected His call to repent, God delayed the establishment of that kingdom, and it has been delayed now for almost 2,000 years as God has sent the message of the Gospel far and wide throughout the Earth.

            But when Jesus mentioned the kingdom of heaven in Matthew 5:3, that’s what He was referring to—the worldwide kingdom of peace that Jesus will one day establish in this world. And notice that Jesus says of the poor in spirit that the kingdom is theirs. I think this is a little different than simply saying that the poor in spirit will live in that kingdom—which is true—but I believe Jesus is saying that the poor in spirit will have a piece of ownership in that kingdom.

            Let me clarify what I mean by pointing you to a conversation between Jesus and the Apostles in Luke 22 [READ Luke 22:24-30]. Don’t miss what Jesus is doing—He is giving the Apostles a role in His administration, so to speak. This is similar to what our president does when he comes into office. There are certain jobs that the president can give to anyone he wants—Chief of Staff, Senior Advisor, Press Secretary. And who does he give those positions to? To the people who were working closely with him during his campaign. Their positions are a reward of sorts for the work they did for the president.

            This is Christ’s reward for those who serve Him—for those who grow and display the kind of character traits He desires, for those who faithfully stand with Him. He gives them an honored position of service to Him in His kingdom. I believe this is what Jesus means when He says of the poor in spirit, “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” They will share in Christ’s authority to reign.

            This idea fits perfectly with the mission that God gave to mankind way back in Genesis 1. God said of mankind, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them rule over the earth (Gen 1:26).” When Christ sets up His kingdom in this world, He will fulfill God’s original intention for mankind, and we will serve with Him in that task to a greater or lesser degree based on our faithfulness to Him today.

            As I noted earlier from Matthew 5:19, some will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, and some will be called great. How do we pursue that greatness in the kingdom of Christ? Not in the way that the wisdom of our age would tell us. The frame of mind that puts us on the right track is to remember our utter spiritual poverty before God. At no point do we possess anything on our own that would allow us to gain God’s approval or favor. As Lazarus was completely at the mercy of the rich man when he laid there at his gate, so we are completely at the mercy of God for all things. This is the attitude that is called “blessed” by Jesus, and it is the attitude that will help us willingly receive the rest of the words that He will speak in this sermon.

A Mountain-Top View of The Sermon on the Mount--Sermon on the Mount Series

            According to a 2012 report, Coca-Cola is the most recognized brand name on the planet. You can go to pretty much any corner of the world and find a Coke. Their brand is more widely recognized than Apple, McDonalds, Google, Microsoft, and Disney. That’s pretty impressive for a company that sells sugared water!

            Today, we’re going to begin a study of a message from Jesus known as The Sermon on the Mount. I mean no disrespect when I say this, but we could say that The Sermon on the Mount is the “Coca-Cola” of sermons. It is easily the most widely-recognized collection of words in the English-speaking world, and perhaps even beyond that. It contains several of the most recognizable statements in all of Scripture, such as:

• ·         “Turn the other cheek.”
• ·         “Go the extra mile.”
• ·         “Love your enemies.”
• ·         “Judge not, that you be not judged.”
• ·         “Do not throw your pearls before swine.”
• ·         “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”
• ·         Last but not least, The Lord’s Prayer, which is recited every Sunday in quite a few churches.

Those statements a very widely known, but several of them are just as widely misunderstood. When we hear a statement frequently, its easy to think that you know what it means even if you’ve never looked it up in its original context. Its like the children’s game “Telephone”—the further away you get from the source of the message, the easier it is for the message to get mixed up.

So over the next several months, we’re going to go back to the source—we’re going to go verse-by-verse through The Sermon on the Mount. But today, we’re going to take a “big picture” look at the sermon as a whole to look at its overall message. Every photographer knows that if you zoom in too closely on one object, it will be hard to see things clearly, but if you zoom out or step back, you can gain the clarity that you’re looking for.

Let’s begin with some basic facts about this sermon…

When did Jesus preach this sermon?

            We can see in Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus preached this sermon at the beginning of his public ministry. In fact, we might call it Jesus’ “inaugural address.” In the same way that our presidents make a speech at their inauguration to set the tone for their years in office, this sermon serves to set the tone for Jesus’ ministry.

            Now Jesus had been preaching publicly already, and a summary of His preaching is given in Matthew 4:17—“From that time, Jesus began to preach, saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” That is undoubtedly a summary of the basic message that Jesus taught, but we’re not told anything more about it. That is the same message that was attributed to John the Baptist, so we can assume that Jesus’ sermons had been very similar to those of John—they were basically a declaration that God had sent His chosen servant into the world and was ready to set up the kingdom on earth that He had promised in the Old Testament, but the people would first have to repent of their sins if they wanted to be allowed to live in that kingdom. The Sermon on the Mount, then, is going to be an elaboration on that idea.

Where did Jesus preach this sermon?

            Chapter 4 says that Jesus was in Galilee at the time, which is the region where He grew up. Then Matthew 5:1 says, “Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.” That’s why this sermon is called The Sermon on the Mount, because Jesus was on a mountain when He preached it. Now when you hear “mountain,” don’t picture Jesus in rock climbing gear on a snow-capped peak in the Rocky Mountains! Picture an area a little more like the Ozark Mountains, and that will give you a better picture.

            Now why did Jesus go up on a mountain to speak? Its quite possible that he was looking for a place that could serve as a natural amphitheater so that all the people could hear him. Think about it—how would you speak to a large group of people outdoors without the help of a PA system? You would need “stadium seating,” so to speak, so that people could be seated above you rather than being pushed back away from you by the size of the crowd.

To whom did Jesus preach this sermon?

            Chapter 4 states that large crowds had come to find Jesus because they had heard about His power to heal people. To re-visit Matthew 5:1, that verse says, “Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.” Now the word “disciple” would simply refer to anyone who desired to learn from Jesus. It is not precisely equivalent to the 12 Apostles, whom we read about through most of the Gospel. This group would surely include people who had already made a commitment of faith to Christ. But among the crowds, some people may have been hearing Christ for the very first time, because at the end of the sermon, Matthew states that the crowds were amazed at the authority with which Jesus taught.

            So what we have here is an audience made up of some people who had already accepted Christ by faith and some people who had not. That will be important to remember as we study the sermon, because we’ll see a few statements that are more applicable to one group rather than the other.

So what’s the basic message of this sermon? I’ve summarized it in a couple of sentences, and I want to walk through that summary now.

“There are blessings and a rewarding task to be found by accepting my message (5:1-16)…”

            Jesus opens His sermon on a very encouraging note, probably to tell the people, “You’ve made the right choice by seeking me out.” He states that they will find blessings by becoming like Him, although as we’ll see, some of those blessings would not come immediately. He also declares that He is giving them a rewarding task, which is something that all people truly desire in their hearts. We all want to know that our lives are counting for something—that we are pursuing a worthwhile goal that gives us a sense of purpose and fulfillment, and that is what Jesus offers.

So He opens on an encouraging note, but then He sets out to correct their current mindset.

“…but don’t think these things can be found by following the path of the Pharisees. They have relaxed God’s standards (5:19-20) and promoted a misunderstanding of them (5:21-7:12).”

            The Pharisees were basically the pastors of the Jewish people at that time, and the people could not imagine anyone who could be godlier than the Pharisees appeared to be. You may know that the Pharisees had attempted to carefully interpret the commands for living that God had given to Moses in the Old Testament. In so doing, they tried to clarify what it looked like to keep those commands.

            For example, God had commanded the people to rest from their work on the Sabbath day, which was the last day of the week. So the Pharisees established guidelines by which to measure whether they had worked or not. For one thing, they declared how far you could walk on the Sabbath day before your walking turned into work. Obviously, their standard was totally arbitrary, but it gave them something they could measure.

            I think the Pharisees had good intentions for their interpretation project, but what they actually did was relax God’s standards by making them something that only addressed external behavior. That’s why Jesus repeatedly told the Pharisees that they looked great on the outside, but they were rotten on the inside. Thus, they promoted a misunderstanding of what God really wanted to see from His people.

            So Jesus spends the bulk of His sermon correcting this misunderstanding. If you’ve ever experienced a radical change in the way that you think about some issue, you know that such a change can be very difficult, and it can take a lot of convincing. I think that’s why Jesus spent so much of this sermon correcting the people’s misunderstanding.

The Lord then goes on to issue a challenge to the people.

“So now, don’t simply follow the crowd (7:13-14), and beware of those who teach lies in God’s name (7:15-23).”

            Here we find Jesus’ famous statement about the narrow gate and the wide gate, or the narrow path and the wide path. In 7:13-14, Jesus says, “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”

            Jesus is warning His audience that in order to find life, they will have to make a choice that will set them apart from many of the people around them. A choice like that always has been and always will be a hard choice, and as we’ll see, back in chapter 5 Jesus told the people that such a choice might result in persecution for them.

            So Jesus is very honest with His audience—finding life will require a difficult choice, and it will require them to beware of those who teach lies in God’s name. Jesus is talking about false prophets, the kind of people who were such a stumbling block for the Jewish people in the Old Testament. A false prophet is someone who claims to speak a message from God, when in reality their message is nothing of the sort. Jesus said that such people would come in sheep’s clothing—meaning that they look good on the outside—but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.

            This warning emphasizes the importance of being careful about whom you choose to listen to to teach you about the things of God. Today, we can easily access unbiblical teaching on the TV or the Internet—or even in a Christian bookstore! One sad but true reality for Christian bookstores is that they have to sell a wide variety of books in order to stay in business. They literally cannot afford to be too selective with their merchandise because they have to pay the bills. So we cannot assume that everything that wears the label “Christian” gives us accurate teaching about the message of Jesus.

So Jesus concludes His message with this challenge…

“Rather, listen to me and obey my words, and you will find a solid foundation for your life (7:24-27).”

            This challenge comes through the familiar parable about the wise and foolish builders. Let’s read it as we wrap up our time this morning [READ 7:24-27].

            As we prepare to look closely at this sermon in the coming months, let’s accept Jesus’ challenge up front—let’s make it our intention to hear His words and obey them as we learn more about them.

God Has Remembered!--Christmas 2012 First-Person Sermon

(Note: this sermon is a first-person sermon in which I speak as if I am the character from the Biblical story. In this sermon, I spoke as Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist).

            Baruch Adonai Elohe Yisrael! Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for allowing me to be with you today. My name is Zechariah, which means “God has remembered.” What an appropriate message for the story of my life! Many of you probably don’t know me very well, but you probably know my son John, who became known as John the Baptist because of his ministry. I am so proud of my boy, and I am honored that God chose to preserve the story of his birth in Luke 1. More than anything, that story is a testimony to the faithfulness of God, which teaches us that He will always keep His promises. That is the lesson that I hope you will take with you today.

            As Luke records in his Gospel, my story took place during the days that King Herod reigned over Judea. Our nation was part of the Roman Empire at that time, but with such a vast territory, the emperor needed people to govern for him, so he placed Herod over the land of Israel and gave him the honorary title of “king.” In your language today, you might say that we had a love/hate relationship with Herod. He made some extensive renovations to enhance the beauty of the Temple in Jerusalem. As a priest, I was very happy to see the Temple maintained, but Herod only did these things to take attention away from his atrocities. He was a blood-thirsty man, and if even his own wives or children appeared to be a threat to his power, he did not hesitate to have them executed. It was said at that time that it was better to be Herod’s pig than Herod’s son!

            With such a man in power, you can imagine that we were dying to hear something—anything—from the Lord just to know that He hadn’t forgotten about us. He had not spoken to us for 400 years, since the time of the prophet Malachi. Now, He had clearly been at work to preserve our nation because He did some miraculous things for us during those 400 years. In fact, those events are what Jewish people today celebrate during the holiday of Hanukkah. But we wanted to hear from Him as in the days of old to have that personal contact with Him again. Little did I know that God was planning to speak to us again, and He was planning to start the conversation with me!

            Now, I am rather embarrassed to repeat this, but Luke records that my wife Elizabeth and I “were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statues of the Lord (Luke 1:6).” Please don’t get the idea that we were perfect, because we were far from it. We were simply careful to follow God’s commands, and when we failed, we were careful to make amends as the Law of Moses called us to do. We just loved God for all that He had done for our people and for the promises He had made about things that were still to come.

            We did carry a tremendous sorrow in our hearts, however, because God had never blessed us with a child, and at the time that Luke picks up our story, we were well beyond our child-bearing years. If our barrenness wasn’t bad enough by itself, we also had to deal with the attitudes of our friends and family. Since the Scriptures said that children were a gift from God, our people reasoned that if you had no children, then God must have been punishing you for something. We should have known better from the stories of Abraham and Sarah and Samuel’s mother, Hannah. They were all godly people who were childless for a long time, so we should have known better, but you know how a mindset can become entrenched once it takes root in a culture. It was devastating to deal with other people’s assumptions that we were hiding some kind of terrible sin because we had no children.

            That was the greatest sorrow of my life, but the greatest honor of my life was serving as a priest in God’s Temple. At that time, there were far more priests than were needed in the Temple on a daily basis, so apart from the major festivals like Passover when we were all on duty, we were on a rotation to work in the Temple for two weeks each year. Even with that schedule, there were still more of us on hand than were absolutely necessary, so for some of the tasks that we all wanted to perform, we would decide who got to do them by casting lots, which would be like rolling a pair of dice, or what you do today when you flip a coin or draw straws.

            One of the tasks which every priest longed to perform was entering the Temple to burn incense at the time of the regular morning and evening sacrifices, and on one of the days of my rotation, I was chosen for this task! I could hardly believe it when my name was called. This was literally a once-in-a-lifetime honor for a priest, and now my day had come! I was so excited I could hardly remember the prayer I was supposed to recite in the Temple, so started to rehearse it in my mind. Some of the other priests helped me prepare the spices and put on the proper clothing, and before I knew it, I was opening the door to enter the House of God!

            Normally, this process did not take long. The priest would stoke the fire that was burning under the altar of incense, and then he would cast the spices onto the altar and come back out to speak a blessing over the people who were gathered outside to pray. But in God’s plan, this day would not be an ordinary day.

            I knew I shouldn’t delay once I entered the Temple, but I almost couldn’t help myself. I wanted to take in all the sights of this place where few people would ever set foot, but I did my best to stay focused on the task. As I walked toward the altar, I was looking down at my feet so I wouldn’t trip and drop the spices, so you can imagine my shock when I came to the altar and looked up, and there, just beside the altar, was a magnificent being clothed in white, looking at me. I was so startled I almost dropped the spices after all of my careful walking!

            A dozen thoughts ran through my mind before this man spoke. Who was this? I knew instantly that he was no mere man, but I had never heard other priests speak of angelic visitors in the Temple. More than anything I was just frightened. Perhaps God really was displeased with me for some reason, and He had sent an angel to do something about it.

            But then he spoke to me and said, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.” Now, if you had asked me to guess what an angel might say to me, that would not have been on my list! He said my prayer had been heard and my wife would have a son, but I must confess, I hadn’t prayed that prayer in a long time. Years had passed since we last prayed for a child, but God had heard that prayer, and now, in His perfect time, He was granting us what we had asked.

            But then, the angel went on to tell me that my child would have a very special role to play in God’s plan. He said John would be great before the Lord, and would be filled with the Holy Spirit even while he was still in the womb! And he would go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah to prepare people for the Messiah’s arrival. Those were words from the prophet Malachi! The last promise God made to us before 400 years of silence was that He would send Elijah to us to prepare us for the Lord’s coming, and now the angel was telling me that in some way, my son would fulfill that prophecy.

            I could hardly believe what I was hearing, and I hate to say it, but I didn’t believe what I was hearing. How could Elizabeth and I have a son? We were too old; it just seemed impossible. I hope you will not judge me too harshly for my lack of faith, and most of all I hope you will not follow my example and doubt what the Lord has said. I would be happy if my story inspires greater faith in you, even if that means my error will be told over and over.

            After I expressed my doubt, the angel identified himself as Gabriel, the messenger of God. I remembered him from the book of Daniel, and already I began to realize the error of my ways. I had asked for a sign to prove the angel’s word, and I got one alright! He told me I would unable to speak until the day that his message began to come true, and from that moment I lost my ability to speak.

            By that time, I had already been in the Temple longer than normal, which created a stir among the people outside, so imagine their surprise when I came out and couldn’t tell them what took me so long! After numerous attempts at making signs, they finally figured out that something miraculous had happened (I always could imitate wings pretty well, so I think that finally tipped them off that I saw an angel!). It wasn’t until I finally got my hands on a writing tablet that I could explain things in detail.

            Well, since you’ve probably heard of my son, John, you know that everything played out just like the angel said it would. Elizabeth became pregnant, and during her pregnancy we received a visit from her young cousin Mary, who told us about her own miraculous conception. How incredible it was that God had chosen our family to bear not only the Messiah’s forerunner, but the Messiah himself! We were not an important family. We had no wealth, no power. My wife and I had the stigma of being childless, and Mary’s family was from Nazareth in Galilee. I think your term for them today would be “hillbillies.” Yet God chose us for such a special honor. It just goes to show you that God doesn’t look at people through the same kind of prejudice that we are tempted to use.

            When our son was born, we named him John, as the angel had instructed me. With that step of obedience, I regained my ability to speak, and all of our neighbors were amazed by everything that was taking place. As Luke records, they all began to wonder, “What then will this child be?” And who should be empowered to speak up and answer their question but me—the one who had been unable to speak for so long! The Holy Spirit filled me, and allowed me to give God’s commentary on the situation.

            It was only proper to begin with a statement of praise to God, so I said, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David.” The Old Testament prophets just loved that image of a horn, because for animals who had them, horns were the means of victory over enemies. In the Messiah, this is exactly what God would provide for us. And the Lord was doing this work through a descendent of David, just as He had said.

            The Lord was being true to His word, so I continued: “as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us; to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant.” The Lord gave me just the right words, and how I smiled at that word “remember.” That was the meaning of my name, and every time my name was spoken, it was a proclamation that God remembers! He remembers His holy covenant, or His promises to His people.

            And where did His covenant begin? With “the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.” God’s promises to my people began with our ancestor Abraham. He promised Abraham a whole nation of descendants, and He told him that his descendants would be enslaved, but that He would save them. My people had to endure 400 years of slavery before they were delivered, but God remembered His promise.

            Later, He told David that one of his descendants would be the Messiah, but we had to wait 1,000 years before Jesus was born. And remember, when Gabriel spoke to me, his message ended a period of 400 years of silence from God. It is so easy to think that God forgets because He doesn’t work by our timetable, but my name—my very life—is a testimony that God remembers His promises, and He will not fail to fulfill them.

            Finally, the Lord moved me to speak about what my child would become: “and you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways.” I remember thinking about the verse from Isaiah 40 that my son would claim for his own: “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord!’” And here is why he would do it: “to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins.” Everyone who knew the Old Testament understood that our greatest need was to be forgiven of our sins. My people had no enemies but those who were allowed to trouble us because of our own sins against the Lord. That’s why God empowered the Amalekites and the Philistines and the Edomites and the Egyptians and the Assyrians and the Babylonians and the Persians and the Greeks and now the Romans. Above all else we needed a final sacrifice, one which could wipe our slate clean before the Lord forever, and we knew that somehow the Messiah would provide it.

            This salvation would come “because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” How lost we were—like travelers wandering in the dark! But the Messiah would bring light to show us the way, to lead us safely through the valley of the shadow of death.

            How I wish I could have seen more of His earthly life with my own eyes, but I passed away before His ministry began. But I know what He did because I’ve seen Him in heaven. He is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! He provided the final sacrifice for sin through His death on the cross, and He rose from the grave to display His victory over sin, to provide forgiveness for all who will acknowledge their sinfulness to God and accept the payment that Jesus has provided.

            I know that as I speak to you today, the world has been waiting almost 2,000 years for Jesus to fulfill His promise to return. But let my story remind you that God remembers! He is not forgetful; He does not drag His feet. He is patient with us to give us time to repent. Do not doubt the Lord’s Word; just think of my name and be reminded that God has remembered!

The Words We Must Not Ignore--Sermon for Montezuma Centennial Celebration Community Church Service

            With the advent of the Internet, we are living in a time that some people have called “The Information Age,” but if you ever find yourself feeling less informed than ever, you’re not alone. Who can possibly keep up with all of the e-mails, all of the news sites, all of the Facebook updates and the must-see videos? In the sea of information that surrounds us today, how do we decide whose words are truly important to focus on?

            Well, we can find the answer in a book that went viral a long time ago—the Bible! In this book, we have a record of the teachings of Jesus Christ, and within His teachings, Jesus made a claim that whoever hears His words should consider them to be of supreme importance. It is a bold claim, and to the people who heard Him it was a shocking claim. I believe it would serve us well to look at Jesus’ claim this morning and consider what He has to say.

            We find this claim in Matthew 7:24-27. Please feel free to turn there in your own Bible if you brought it this morning, or you can also find the text of these verses in your bulletin. These verses are the conclusion of a message from Jesus that we often call “The Sermon on the Mount” because Jesus spoke these words in the hill country around the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. This sermon is the longest segment of Jesus’ teaching that we have on record, and at the end of it we find this claim [READ 7:24-27].

Please notice with me first of all how…

1. Jesus makes an audacious claim of authority for His teaching

            In essence, Jesus told His audience that His words are the dividing line between wisdom and foolishness—hear them and obey, and you will be shown to be wise; hear them and disobey, and you will be shown to be a fool. That’s a much stronger claim than saying, “Well, here’s my two cents!” Jesus was claiming a right that the Old Testament reserved for God alone. Proverbs 2:6 says, “The Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding.” Jesus was claiming to have a divine authority for His teaching.

            This claim was shocking to the people who heard Jesus that day. Verses 28 and 29 of this chapter say, “And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.” The scribes of that time taught the same way that students write research papers today. Students are not considered to be experts, so to support their point they insert quotes from experts in their research papers. That’s how the scribes taught—they quoted experts from the past and basically “piggy-backed” on their authority.

            There was nothing wrong with that approach, but it’s a far cry from how Jesus taught. Throughout this sermon He had said, “Here is what you have been taught, but I say to you that this is the truth.” Jesus took His stand on nothing but His own claim to have divine authority. If this true, then we cannot afford to give Jesus’ words anything less than our full attention. We must take notice of what Jesus’ said; to do anything less is to set out on the path of foolishness.

Please notice next how…

2. Jesus stresses the need to obey His teaching

            Notice the main difference between the two men in this parable. The difference did not lie in hearing the words of Jesus. According to the Lord, both of these men heard His words. The difference between them is that one man acted upon them whereas the other man did not.

            Thus, we learn that the path of wisdom is paved with the stepping stones of obedience to Jesus’ teachings. To hear them and not act upon them is—once again—to set out on the path of foolishness. Now this distinction simply touches upon a basic law of learning—you have to act upon what you learn to get any practical benefit out of it. For example, you can listen to sound financial advice all day long, but at the end of the day if you don’t follow the advice, you’ll probably just be well-informed and broke!

            If we think we are on the road to wisdom by simply hearing Jesus’ words, we better check the map again! Its time for the GPS to recalculate! James 1:22-25 warns us about the danger of deceiving ourselves if we only hear the words of Jesus but do not live them out [READ James 1:22-25].

Those words “he will be blessed” in v. 25 are reminiscent of Jesus’ own words which attached a substantial promise to His teachings.

3. Jesus attaches a substantial promise to His teaching

            In His parable, Jesus stated that the man who obeys His words “will be like a wise man,” and likewise the man who does not obey His words “will be like a foolish man.” These statements are both in the future tense, and I think this little point of grammar is extremely important for us to recognize. Jesus is saying that when it comes time to harvest the fruit of our choices, there will be an obvious difference between those who chose to obey Him and those who did not. Time will tell whose choices were wise and whose were foolish, because you can’t always see the difference in the moment of decision.

            In many cases, obeying the teachings of Jesus does not appear to be the wise choice to make in that moment. Let’s just consider a few of the commands from the Sermon on the Mount. It does not appear to be a wise choice to love your enemies. After all, they are your enemies! It does not appear to be a wise choice to resist laying up treasures for yourself in this world. It does not appear to be wise to stay married to a difficult spouse. It does not appear to be wise to endure persecution for Jesus’ sake.

            But the promise that Jesus makes is that the wisdom of obeying these commands will become evident in due time. Thus, obeying Jesus requires foresight and faith. The man who built his house on the sand demonstrated a devastating lack of foresight. The location of his home may have seemed okay while he was building it, but he forgot about the storms that would inevitably come. He was not thinking ahead, and his foolishness became evident once the storms came.

            The wise man, however, exercised foresight, and he also acted in faith toward Jesus’ teaching. Faith is the settled conviction that a claim or an idea is true. The wise man was not deceived by the way things appeared at the moment. He had a settled conviction that the words of Jesus were true, and that conviction proved true when the storms came.

            So, we are challenged to believe three lessons from this passage: 1) that Jesus’ words are of the utmost importance and must not be ignored; 2) that we must obey Jesus’ words and not be content with merely hearing them; and 3), that when we choose to obey Jesus, our choice will be proven to be the wise one in due time. I urge all of us today to give Jesus’ words the attention and the obedience that they deserve. We will not be disappointed with that choice!