Becoming God's Enemy

I'm going to use a passage of scripture this morning from Matthew chapter 23, if you'd like to find that in your Bibles. I'm going to begin reading at verse 1 and read through verse 7. The primary attention I want to pay to the passage is verses 5 through 7, if you'd like to find that and hold it just a moment. I don't think any of us would be surprised if we found out that God was angry at murderers, or if we found out that God was upset with people who were adulterers. I don't think we would be surprised to discover that God was mad at people who lied or who stole things. We would all think that that was appropriate, that Almighty God would be angry at people like that. But in the Bible, God was expressing more anger toward not those people, but people who went to church every week, people who were Bible teachers, people who gave regularly to their church, people who tithed very carefully every single thing that they got, people who were constantly praying three times a day. These were the people that Jesus was most upset with when he was here on earth. You might wonder, what is it that God would make Jesus so upset with people who were so religious as these people were? And I don't mean that they weren't that way. They were really religious. Jesus is explaining here the source of the anger that he has with these people. Matthew chapter 23, beginning with verse 1, then Jesus said to the crowds and his disciples, the teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. You must obey them and do everything they tell you, but do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. Everything they do is done for men to see. They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels of their prayer shawls long. They love the place of honor at banquets and most important seats in the synagogue. They love to be greeted in the marketplace and to have men call them rabbi. Jesus is explaining the source of the anger that he has and the Father has toward the Pharisees and Sadducees. In this passage he says it's for one single thing. He talks about the fact that they practice, they do not practice what they preach in those first few verses and now he spends some time explaining what it is that makes him so upset with these people. It's worth noting, it's not the normal thing that you think of when people talk about hypocrites in the church. They go to church, they sing, they pray, they give their money and then they go home and act like the devil. These people didn't do that at home. They kept their prayers, their Bible study, all these things at home too. But there was something in their lives that made God furious with these religious people. So this is about us. What is it God gets mad at us about? Everything they do is done for men to see. They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels of their prayer shawls long. Whenever the Jewish people had the temple, they were able to go to the temple and worship in Jerusalem and it was the center of all that they did, but when their nation was destroyed by the Babylonians and carried into captivity, the temple was gone. They didn't any longer have a single focus on which they could put their attention. It became the law, not only the written law, the Torah of the Old Testament, the first five books of the Old Testament, but the oral Torah, the Mishnah. This tradition passed down explaining how to be able to live correctly the way God wanted us to be able to live. The principles of life that if you kept those you would find life. These became the heart of everything that they did. The oral tradition now was being written down to become the Mishnah and the Jewish lawyers or the scribes they're called in the New Testament were focused on making sure that all the details of these were given so everybody could be obedient to God in every single way in their lives. Before this, the passage that Moses gave to the people, he said, remember to tie the word of God to your palms, your hands, your arms, and put the word of God on your mind or on your forehead. Everybody believed that this was symbolic. He was saying to them, now, whenever your hand is doing something in your life, you're to look at the law, the instructions of God about the proper way to do all the things you do, like raise crops, save a family, all the things you do with your hands. The message of God is to guide your behavior, so the things that you do. The message of God is to control your mind. You may get really angry with your parents, but then you're to remember, no, I'm supposed to be obedient to my parents because that's what the commandments say. So you're to let the message of God so saturate your life that it controls your activities and it controls your mind. That's what Moses was talking about. But during this period in captivity, they were so anxious to do every single thing that they can that they thought, you know, this would be a great idea for us to literally do this. So they came to the practice of putting on their arms a little package, a little box. The box would have been tasked to a strip around their wrist that had verses of scripture in them, some from Exodus, mostly. And these verses of scripture were mostly the law, the Ten Commandments, or the places that it's found in the Old Testament. And they would be tied on with sort of a special knot, a knot that symbolized the significance of God holding on to them. And then they put around their forehead a small box in the front tied on their head with this special knot again so that everybody would see it was symbolically tied to indicate they are doing everything that God wanted. So what was symbolic in the beginning, pointing to the behavior, the inner attitude that would control behavior and thinking, now became something on the outside where people could walk by and see if you had those on. Now, they used them at the prayer times in the morning and the evening at the time of prayer in the synagogues. But you know, as time went on, Pharisees said, we want to do everything God wants us to do in the most wonderful way. And so they decided to wear them all the time. So every time you saw a Pharisee, he would have a little wristband on with a little box on it on his forehead, he'd have that. Now they didn't put it on their wrist on the left hand, they slid it up under their arm so it would be close to their heart. Isn't that sweet? Close to their heart. And everybody knew that they had them. But now everybody has those. If you really want to be spiritual, how does anybody know? You're just like all the other Pharisees. And so they would take the little strings that tied it on and make them wider and wider until they had big bands that would hold them on their arm and big bands that would hold them on their head. And when you walked down the street and you saw a guy with a big body, well that guy is one praying dude. Everything they did, they did so that people would see it and approve of them and think well of them. And it made God mad. You know why it made Him mad? Whenever the people of Israel made a covenant with God, they said to God, nothing in this world is more important to us than you, nothing. No one in the world will control our behavior but you. That's what these things were to symbolize. Your word controls my behavior. But now they begin to think, what do other people think of me? And what other people thought of them begin to control their behavior. We want to wear these all the time so everyone will see this and know that we're praying people. We want people to know how special we are so we want wide bands on our arms so everyone will know that we are really special praying people. And when they went places, they thought about people who were around them and what they would think of them instead of what does God think of me. You see in this subtle move, they begin to let the thoughts of people around them control their behavior instead of God. They were thinking more about what others around them wanted to see or what they wanted them to see about them than what God was seeing on the inside of themselves. It was never God's intention that this would be done on the outside by boxes but would be done on the outside by behavior and lifestyle. And so when they went out of their houses in the morning, they thought more about what people thought than what God thought about them. So their religious behavior has one eye on everyone around them and what they're going to think. It's easy, you know, when somebody calls on you to pray, to think, I wonder what people will think about my prayer. It's easy when you're asked to teach a Sunday school class to think, I wonder what people will think of my class. Did I get a good job? Will they be happy with me? It's easy to think when you get up to preach, I wonder if they're all going to like what I have to say. And the hardest thing in the world to do in religious work is to do something that you know people will not approve of because God has told you to say it. There are times, you know, whenever you have to teach a lesson or preach a sermon or you have to say something to someone that you know they're not going to like but you know that that's what God wants you to say. And if you're trapped by the approval of other people, you cannot be faithful and obedient to God. If you want their approval more than the approval of God, you cannot be completely faithful to Him. What God saw was that they went out and said, you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. But what they did was to say, I must win the approval of the people who are around me. It's a tough job, you know, working in a church, being a part of a church family because when you're given responsibility, you have to make decisions. Every decision you make has 50, 60, 70, 80, or 100 people who also make a decision as to whether or not they like your decision. One time I had a sermon I was going to preach and it was about a year back in the years when civil rights were going on and I was going to preach a message that I knew was going to be offensive to some of the leaders in the church I was in. I was in seminary at the time, so I had to go around to two or three of the guys that I knew were really committed about not being interested in civil rights for blacks and say to them, this is what I'm going to say on Sunday and I know you don't agree with this and I know you don't like it, but I don't want you to be shocked when you come because I feel like this is what God wants me to say. The most heartwarming experience I ever had was one of the guys who was most prejudiced I guess of the group and he looked at me after I finished and he said, you're not worth a dime to us unless you tell us what God tells you to tell us, even if we don't like it. He didn't show up, but he got it at his house, he didn't have to, he knew what I was going to say. But if you're, say, concerned about what people think and if you're going to lose your job or if you're going to lose friends when you're doing the work of God, you're of no use to him. And to stand and say everything in my life is given to God and then inside of yourself be thinking more of what other people think about you than what God does is the worst insult that you can give to God. That's why he was so angry with these people. You are saying I am the Lord of your life when your life is really controlled by the people around you, what they like and what they want and what they say is the right thing to do instead of me and I indeed am the Lord. I cannot stand it when you think more about what other people think about you than what I think about you. I know many people who are paralyzed to pray out loud because they're afraid of what people will say or think when they talk to God out loud. What's more important to you? That your father who wants you to voice publicly and openly your love for him and your appreciation for him and his approval of your doing that or what your friends might think? Like a child who says to their parents, would you please take me to school this morning? It's raining but I want you to let me off somewhere else because I don't want anybody to see you. What is it that you think about God? Everything they do is for men to see. They make their phylacteries, that's that part I'm talking about on their arm, and the tassels on their prayer shawls long. Moses in the Old Testament said that they should have tassels on all four corners of their robe as a reminder of the promises of God. Then they just made it on a prayer shawl and put them on the corners of each of those and they cover themselves with it when they go to pray but they made extra long ones so everyone would know. Who is it that shapes your life? What other people think about you or what God tells you to do? Have you ever been in a service when you knew that you should make a recommitment of your life or even come forward to confess Christ as your Savior and Lord and you knew that's what you were supposed to do but you said, hmm, what will people think? That's what he's talking about. Who's in charge of your life? You're going to walk to the front of the church and say, Jesus Christ is in charge of my life but you're afraid to do it because other people might say, that's silly. Who's in charge of your life? What made Jesus and God so angry was here are people who professed that God alone ruled their life but he didn't. They loved the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogue. We don't do today what they did in Bible times. If you went to a banquet anywhere in a community, they had people seated according to their community or social value. In places where they have royalty, the royalty would sit at the head of the table in descending order from the highest ranking royalty down. The Pharisees, because they were spiritually religious people, they wanted to have a seat that was prominent so everyone would say, that person is a very special person who has a great standing in our community. They wanted that affirmation. When they went to the synagogue, there was a special seat called the seat of Moses which they could sit in to teach. It was at the front facing to the congregation. They wanted to sit in that seat. When you come up and sit down in a seat up here, everybody can look at you and they see you and they know you're the pastor, the song leader, one of the staff, or an important person in the church. They give you a special place that you sit. They loved it because it gave them a sense of importance and significance. Jesus knew that what they were looking for was their own sense of self-worth, of value. They wanted people around them to give them that sense of significance or importance and value. Now, let me say something that's important for you to understand about God. He loves us very much and He always wants us to have the things that are necessary for our life. It's really important for you to feel valuable. It's really important for you to feel like you're important and significant. It's really important for you to have a sense of self-worth for yourself. But the problem is that sometimes we get that from the people that are around us and they're not very reliable. One day they like you because of something you did and the next day they don't like you because of something you did or didn't do. They're not very reliable. Sometimes they get mad at you because in their mind they've misinterpreted something you've said or done and you can't control that. So when you depend on people around you for your sense of value and worth, you're depending on unreliable people. What God says to His children, let you and I make a covenant. You promise to be my people and I will be your God. I will always guide you in the decisions and choices that you make. Listen at this one. I will provide every need that you have. That's not a promise for wealth only, material things. It's a promise for everything that you need. You need to feel that you're a valuable, important person in this world and God intends to give that to you. John says in the beginning of his book, to as many as received Him, to them gave He the power to become children of God. He wants you to know that you're a child of God. That you have a special connection to God who made the universe. That there's a relationship between you and God that not everybody in the world has. He wants you to feel that you're loved and cared about. So many people, so many people who commit suicide do it for two reasons. One is they're in such a mess they have no way out. When God has promised every one of His children, I don't care what happens, I will always help you make the right decisions and the choices to get through anything that comes up. If they had that one thing, it would save many lives. Also many people commit suicide because they get the feeling like they're worthless. They don't have any friends. Their life doesn't matter. God never wants you to feel that way. One of the things He's going to give you is you are my child. I love you. I don't care what you did yesterday, it was terrible, but I still love you. You are my child. He wants to give us that sense of significance. He doesn't want it because we got seated in the chair at the front of the church. He wants it even if we're at the back of the church and no one looks at us to feel like we're significant and valuable and important. And He does that by affirming it in our lives. And here's how you get it. You have to read the Bible to all the great promises He makes to His children. And when you find all these wonderful promises He's made to you, you know that you're special to Him. You see all the promises He's made to you and you know that no matter what trouble you're into, He can part the water to make way for you. He can stop the earth from spinning to help you out. Nothing is impossible and everything is given to you from the Father, everything that you need. But you see, when you start depending on other people, you may be the star for a little while, but someone else comes along that's a little bit more snazzy or jazzy or whatever they are and all of a sudden you're pushed aside. Have you noticed this? Somebody will be a great singer for a while and they're on every radio station you turn on and then all of a sudden they disappear and you never hear them again. They're still out there going around somewhere doing these things, but they're not popular anymore. When you depend on people for your self-worth, the value of your own human nature, you put your hands in the life of someone who's very, very unreliable. But when you've placed your worth in the hands of God, you never have to wake up any morning and feel, I am worthless, never. Now the reason God was so upset with them is they said to him, you are a Lord and we give our lives to you. And he said to them, I will be your God. I'll guide you and I'll provide for you and I'll protect you and I'll take care of you. You're this focus of my life. I make this commitment to you, this contract with you. And then they began to depend on other people to provide the very things that God himself said he would give them, significance, value, and importance. And they craved it. All of us do. But they just looked for it in the wrong place. It made God mad that he wanted to love them and care for them and they went searching for it somewhere else. It's like you have a child or even a husband or wife and you love them very, very much. And you try to show it in every way you can. But it doesn't mean anything to that person. Instead, their whole world is tied up with someone else who never cared for them at all that they're interested in. Doesn't make any sense, does it? That's how God gets angry whenever he gives us everything and we look around at a human being who becomes more important to us than he does. When you don't get the special place at the banquet, you get all torn apart. When you don't get to sit in front of the synagogue in the key place, you get distressed. You don't depend on me for what I promised to give you. They love to be greeted in the marketplace and to have men call them rabbi. When you go out in the marketplace and people come up and speak to them, they feel really important and special. Have you ever heard people that go to church and are mad because people didn't talk to them? When you walk in the door, God says, well done, child. Isn't that enough? We want somebody else to take God's place and make me feel welcome and loved and cared for. So they went out on the street and they're walking down the street. They wanted somebody to greet them and say, hello, how are you? Gather around them, shake their hand, make a big deal over them. It made God mad because they wanted that. It's kind of touchy, isn't it? Made God mad because they wanted people to give them recognition and to make them feel as if they were important. And they wanted someone to give them a title, rabbi, the master, the majestic one. They wanted a special name or place or title for them that they might feel important. You know, whenever the churches were started in the early days and they got pastors and church leaders, the church thought that this was so important that people not stand out that the clergymen wore robes, you know, so that they would just be a black figure standing up there because they didn't want the personality of the person to be the center of attention. They wanted the message to be the center of attention. In many of the churches then, the balcony was where the choir sang, up behind the people because they didn't want anybody looking at the choir and seeing them and focusing on them, but to focus instead on the music that came from them. And you know, as time went on, people wore their robes, but there got to be different levels of clergy in the denominations, you know, so how are you going to tell them apart? Well, one of them, you know, he'd have a black robe on, but you'd have some kind of decoration to let you know that he was one of them, but he was a notch up, and then somebody else was another notch up, and no one was a notch up. When you look in TV and you see churches where they're celebrating church activities or events, it's easy to tell who's the chief person because they're decorated better, more elaborately than the others. It's also true that, you know, when Jesus was on his ministry, they never called him Reverend Jesus or Dr. Jesus, just Jesus, and nobody knew more about the Bible than Jesus. Even Paul, they never called him Reverend Paul or Dr. Paul. You see, there's a way in which all of us, because of our desire to be important or significant, find things that causes us to feel like we're important by titles that we might use, Reverend, Doctor. I don't mind people calling me Brother Doyle. They call every man in the church Brother whatever because, you see, it's not intended that because of the spiritual gift God has given me that I should have a place above you. I don't have that, and the title sometimes gets a way in which it's seductive to people and they start thinking of themselves as if they're more important than others because of the title, but you know what really makes us important? We have been given a spiritual gift to function in the body of Christ, and each of us have a gift. One gift's not more important than others. One gift may be more prominent than others, but not more important. There is a universal nature of all of us that we're the same in God's eyes, and what they were looking for was some way by which they could feel that they were significant. A fellow asked me the other day, how do you stay at a church a long time? You not move. I tell you one thing that God taught me a long, long time ago, that there's only one thing that a church worker could do, and that's he does the job that God gives him to do it. God calls you to a church of 15 or 20 people. That's important to him, and it's no greater in God's eyes than someone with a church of 5,000. If you have a Sunday school class with one person coming, it doesn't make that less important than if you had 10. What's important is you do exactly what God has assigned you to do, and you're successful in the kingdom of God if you've done that. Titles don't matter, but what God judges us on is faithfulness to the task that he's given us. I've given you the ability, he said to these Pharisees, to teach my message, and you do a good job of it, and I've told everybody, do everything those people tell you, but don't do what they do, because they're not satisfied to teach the words that I give them and say, God is satisfied with me, and he's happy with me. They want you to call them rabbi, the majestic one. Well, that makes you feel good, it's majestic. Does it feel better than when God says, well done, my faithful Sunday school teacher? Well done, my preacher? We have to admit that sometimes it does. We're all tempted to that. Every one of you who prayed, when you pray, sometimes you think, what do people think about this? When you teach, sometimes you say, I wonder if they got this or if they approve of it. The temptation is always there to find our value from people around us instead of God. But the covenant we make with him is to say, I will be your person, and I will do everything you tell me to do, regardless of what people think. And the promise God makes to us is, I'll help you make all the choices you need to make so you'll never get in a situation you won't know what to do. I will provide everything you need, even your sense of value and importance and significance inside of yourself, I'll give that to you. Depend on me for everything in your life, because I am the Lord. And when we start depending on other people in place of him, we have violated the first commandment. You should have no other gods ahead of me. Nothing in the world should give you what you need for your life except me. And when you miss the first one, you've missed all of them. That's why Jesus was so angry with these religious people. They knew the words of religion, but they did not have inside the dependence on God that their religion proclaimed. Today we're going to take the Lord's Supper. It's the covenant renewal for us. We say, God, I've promised you my life, and today I'm going to renew that promise. So I'm going to ask you, do you find yourself doing things or not doing things because of what people say or think? Or have you learned to find out what God wants you to do and do it regardless of the cost and regardless of what people say? Have you found yourself sometimes feeling worthless and like your life doesn't matter and you don't matter? Then you've learned to depend on human things and human beings and human circumstances instead of God. Do you find yourself thinking of yourself as worthless? Then you're evaluating yourself as people see rather than not as your father sees you. You may not be able to do things that other people can do, but you are God's child. He values you as you are. You find yourself longing to be important to the people around you? Ask God to teach you how to be important to him. To find out just how special he sees you. And maybe you've never made the covenant with God to say you're in charge of everything in my life. I want to open that opportunity to you. It's the most wonderful life you can ever find. It frees you from being controlled by circumstances of life and people around you. Or wherever you are, you always have the same assurance that Almighty God, the creator of heaven and earth is there with you to help you in every situation. Today you can make this covenant with God. All you have to do is to say, I believe that you are the ruler of the universe and today I want to make a vow to you. I want to live my life in obedience to you, doing everything I know you want me to do as best I can, starting right now. What God will do is his Holy Spirit will come in your life and you will feel the peace that you've never felt before. He will begin to teach you how to learn to live depending on him for direction in your life, for the value of your life, for the significance of yourself. And you will finally discover just who you are, the valuable person you are made to be. All that's open to you. God gives you a choice. Take that or go your own way. But if you take it, remember it's a lifelong promise. Now maybe you've made that promise to God sometime and whenever they told you this, you thought all you had to do is trust God and you never saw all this other stuff. Are you troubled by your sense of self-worth? Are you troubled by the feelings that life's impossible for you? You haven't learned to trust God with these things. So I'd like in this time of renewal for you to say to God, maybe I haven't learned how to live trusting you. Teach me faith. We're going to sing an invitation hymn, aren't we going to sing one? Do we have one set up for us to sing, okay? And if God has talked to you in some way, you feel the need to come and tell me the promise you need to make to God, it's your opportunity to do it. This is really a time in which you should do what you think God wants, not what I'm telling you. I don't plead with you to come forward because I don't want you to come because I ask you to. I want you to learn right now that you should only do in your life what God tells you. If you need to come and make a recommitment of your life to me or maybe Rusty's going to be here too, this is your time to do it. The Lord Almighty is here in majesty and power and he talks to you. Listen to him. He's always happy when his children listen to him and he's always mad when they don't. Would you stand please as we sing? Speak to my heart Lord Jesus, speak that my soul may hear, speak to my heart Lord Jesus, speak that my soul may hear, speak to my heart Lord Jesus, calm every doubt and fear, speak to my heart, oh speak to my heart, speak to my heart I pray, yielded and still, seeking thy will, oh speak to my heart today. Let me ask those who are going to serve our meal if you would come please for just a moment. I want to tell you what this symbolizes today for us and I want you to think about this. It's a covenant renewal for you. The bread is going to symbolize yourself and your own life and as you take it and hold it in your hand I want you to think this is my life and God I give it to you. This is my promise. You can consume my life as I consume this bread. There's anything in your life that's not under God's control and you give that to him as you're reflecting on it. Let me pray. Lord Jesus, bless this bread to remind us of the promise we've made to you that we would give you every single thing in our lives, our time, our money, our character, our nature, our careers, our homes, our children, everything. You are our Lord and this bread is our body dedicated to you as your body was dedicated for us, amen. Be seated please. As the bread has passed, I'd like you to reflect on your own life and the commitment you've made to Christ. Ask God a simple thing. Is there any part of my life that's not completely under your control? Is part of it under my control in resistance to you, that is if you ask me to do things I've refused? Is a part of my life under the control of others? Do I know what you want me to do, but I don't do those things because of what others might think? Would you make a promise today to God to say, as this bread is in my hand, so my life is in your hand. As I take this bread, so I give myself to you. I'm not going to ask you to say this out loud because I don't want you to be in a situation where you're having to say something you don't mean, but when I take this piece of bread, I'm going to say out loud, Lord, my life is yours. If you want to do that on your own, in your own mind, you say the same thing, Lord, my life is yours. Would you bless this drink to remind us of the covenant you have made with us, sealed with the blood of your Son, saying, I will be your God from the moment of your surrender to me for eternity. As we drink this cup, let us remember that you have made a solemn blood oath to be our God. In the name of Jesus we ask it, amen. As the drink is passed and you hold it in your hand, look at its color, the color of blood. I want you to think about Jesus coming to this earth. All the difficulty he went through for that to happen, and remember that he did all of that because he was determined to provide for each of us exactly what God promised. I will guide you. I will provide for you. I will protect you, and I'll make your life worth living, valuable, significant. Those things are not true in your life. God wants to make them true. As you hold that cup, remember his promises to you. This cup represents the promise of God to be our God forever. As I take it, I'm going to say thank you, God, for keeping your promise, and I want you to say that out loud, but if you feel it and believe it, say it to him. Thank you, God, for keeping your promise. Would you stand, please, for prayer? There is no contract in this world we ever make like this one. It takes our whole life to get it, and promises, life, now and forever, to receive it. So we pray that you would hear our promises to you today. We've heard yours. Help us to live as if we believed them. In the name of Jesus, we pray, amen. Amen. with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.