Do What is Important

I want to read a passage from Matthew chapter 23, if you'd like to find that in your Bibles, verses 24 and 25. Maybe you saw the story, man's house caught on fire, fully engulfed in flames, the firemen were there to put it out, but he rushed into the house and came out just a few minutes later. He had his guns in one hand and his beer in the other. Says something about a guy, doesn't it? The choices he makes reveal something about his character, doesn't it? Well the fact is that all of our choices reveal something about our nature and our character and our priorities. Every one of us, with all the choices we make, declare what's important to us, what isn't important to us, what we do and what we leave undone. Jesus was dealing with church leaders in this passage of scripture, the series of seven condemnations he gives about Christian church people, leaders in churches. He was determined to present to them the concerns that he had about what it meant to live a life of devotion to God. In this passage, he's talking to people who have important things to do, they do very important things, commanded in the scripture. But he had to say to them, while there are some things that are important to you, there are other things that are essential to God, and don't mix them up. The reality was that they had mixed them up. They placed great emphasis on things that God didn't think was nearly as important as they did, and the result was that they found themselves facing God, condemned by the words of Jesus himself. Matthew chapter 23, verse 24, excuse me, verse 23, woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You give a tenth of your spices, mint, dill, cumin, but you've neglected the more important matters of the law, justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former. You blind guides, you strain out a gnat, but you swallow a camel. Jesus addresses them, he's talking about the concerns he has for them, they're blind guides. Now when Jesus uses this language, he doesn't mean they can't see, he means that they have priorities misplaced. They're focused on things that are insignificant, and missing things that are very important. I drove by on 24th Street, and the Jefferson School has some people major on the minors, and some people minor on the majors. You've heard that kind of thing. This is the point Jesus makes. He's making the point that these people missed exactly what was really critical for them. Now tithing was taught in the Bible, in the book of Leviticus it does say that you're supposed to tithe all the things that you get. And it says that you should tithe even from your garden. That's what they were doing. But you see, the tithe that they were giving was intended to draw attention to themselves, and point out how important they were, and how faithful they were to God. Jesus said everything you do, you do to draw attention to yourself. You draw attention to yourself by your appearance to being faithful to me. Now we use the word hypocrite in a very bad way, and you call somebody a hypocrite, they say, well, that's evil or wicked. But the word really just means an actor. An actor who's playing the part of someone acting in some way that's different from themselves or who they are. That's what the word really means. He meant by these people, you are hypocrites because you come in and you bring your tithe from your garden. You take the dill seeds, and you take 50 of them that come up in your garden, and you take 5 of them, and then on the Sabbath day you come in and present 5 seeds and say, here is a tithe for my garden. And everyone looks around and says, wow, that guy is really a tither. I mean, he tithes everything in the world. He's really special. Somebody who really loves God. But what you did was you wanted people to say those very words. You see, the tithe is given for one reason. It's given to us to acknowledge the ownership of God over every single thing in the world. And so God said to his people, I own the world and everything in it. I will give you everything you need to be able to live, but here's my deal with you. I want you to take 90% of it, and you give me back 10% of it. And 10% of all the cattle, all the crops, everything that you have, and when you do that, I want you to remember, and I want you to say, this is all God's. And he's asked me to give him a tenth of it as an acknowledgment that it's all his. He's letting me keep all the rest of it to use for myself. It's an acknowledgment of the ownership of God over every single thing in the world. But they didn't do that. They were focused not on acknowledging the ownership of God and the fact that everything was his. They were focused on, when I present these five seeds, everyone is really going to be impressed with how much of a Christian I am. The point was all wrong, you see. You do it to draw attention to yourself instead of acknowledging the authority of God over everything. And that makes you just an actor. You're acting like you're showing appreciation for the ownership of God. But in reality, what you're saying is, look at me, how good I am and how great I am. And the reality is, you should do those things. But the fact is that you've left aside the most important and critical things that you should do. Now, if I hadn't read the Bible past this point, and I would try to guess what Jesus would say, I would have said, well, he's going to say, you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. After all, that is the greatest commandment. But he doesn't say that. I think he doesn't say it because, you know, it's hard to convince somebody they don't love God. I don't meet many people in the world, I talk to them about their spiritual state or condition, if they don't say, well, I'm a Christian, I love God, I read the Bible, I believe in God. They may not go to church or really read the Bible very much or pray very much except to ask God for things they want, but it's hard to convince people that they don't really love God with all their heart, soul, strength, and mind because we cannot see the mind and heart of anyone. So Jesus bypasses that. Instead he says to them, what you should do, what was found in the book of Micah, he repeats it here, instead of being concerned about those things, you should place as the most important thing in your life what I tell you to do. The important parts of the law, justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Now in the book of Micah, chapter 6, verse 8, he says that this is the important thing for God to the people of Israel, to have mercy and to have justice and to have faithfulness or faith. So he identifies these three characteristics. Now there's a unique thing about them. All of these characteristics have to do with the relationships people have with each other. What his point is, is if you say that God is more important to you than anything in the world and you love him more than anything in all the world, he will now come and take control of your life and you're going to live in obedience to him and he's going to change your character and nature in the way you treat people. Jesus marks that the most critical way by which you can know whether or not a person is under God's control is how they deal with the people that are around them. People will know you're my disciples by how you treat, love one another. It's easy to hide a lot of things in your life but the everyday relationships with people, we annoy each other, all of us annoy each other. We get mad at each other, we're disappointed in each other, we're hurt by each other. Those things are not unusual in life. The only thing that's really unusual is how you respond to those. For if your human flesh is controlling your life, you're going to respond one way. If the Spirit of God is controlling your life, you're going to respond another way. Now I don't mean to say that the day you say to Christ, come into my life and take control of me, all of a sudden you're changed to a new person. But I mean by living with God in your life day after day, year after year, month after month, you slowly begin to find that God changes the way you think about people and the way you react to people and the way you deal with conflict and circumstances that come in life. So Jesus goes right past love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind to say, if you really love God with all your heart, strength, soul and mind, you will really change the way you deal with people. He'd already talked to the Pharisees earlier in this chapter about what he saw wrong with them. He said, you know, you people are claiming to be followers of Yahweh God. You claim to love Him and obey Him. But when people come to you to enter the kingdom of heaven, you slam the door in their face. You give the laws to them that are so burdensome that they can't possibly do it and they give up. And what he says here is, if God is in control of your life, here are the three qualities that you're going to see common in you, justice. Now if you have a King James version of the Bible that says judgment, and it looks to us like judgment and justice may be different things, but really in the scriptures when it talks about these terms, it's talking about them differently than we see them like a court of law where you go and sit down and the judge hears one side and then hears another and makes the decision. He's really talking about being just with people around you, being fair with people around you. He's talking about how you relate to people so that your concern is to treat them in the way that they ought to be treated. Jesus said to treat other people the way you want to be treated yourself so that this allows you to think of their need as if you were in their place. I see that if you were interested in coming into the kingdom of God and you went to someone you wouldn't want them to slam the door in your face. You would want them to tell you how to enter the kingdom of heaven. You'd want them to help you find a way to be able to satisfy the spiritual need in your own heart. But you see, what you're interested in is looking like you're a scholar of the law. You're interested in them having to say, man, this guy really does know the Bible. You're interested in them looking at you and saying, this guy is so holy I could never live up to that. You want to be the star. You're more interested in yourself than you are in others. You know, what keeps you from being just with people is when you're more interested in winning than in them winning. When you're more interested in getting the biggest piece of the pie and them getting the smallest. When you're more interested in your success than theirs, then justice goes out the door. And when God is in control of your life and you love someone, the first thing that you do, you're more interested in their life and their success and in being a servant or helper to them. And the next word he uses is the word mercy. The word mercy is sometimes translated in the Bibles as compassion. It means to see people who are in trouble and need help and respond to them by giving of yourself or whatever you have or whatever they need regardless of the cost to yourself. Mercy puts another person's interest and need ahead of your own and it always is costly. To be merciful to a person means that you have to give or to do something for them that will be costly or difficult for you. So Jesus was talking about loving others. Love is self-denying, sacrificial love to another person. And so when you see somebody who's in trouble and who's hurt and who has need, immediately the Spirit of God within you says you should give help to that person. Why? Because that's what God does. You see what he's talking about here are qualities that are representative of the very nature of God himself. For God will always treat you right. Always. It doesn't make any difference what you've done. If you've done the worst things in the world, he'll always treat you right. If you've done the best things in the world, he'll always treat you right. He'll be just with you. And when you're in trouble and you're in need and you turn to God, you will always find him merciful. There's a story about Jesus. He was working with people, teaching, preaching, with a lot of conflict around him. People were after him, arguing with him. Some wanted to kill him. He said to his disciples, let's take a boat across the lake and we'll take some rest. They got in the boat and started to cross the lake, but the people who had been gathered watching Jesus saw him leave, and so they started around the lake, and by the time he got to the other side, there were multitudes, thousands of people there wanting to talk to him, wanting to listen to him, wanting to see him. Now if you've ever been tired and worn out, and you just wanted to find a place to get away, and you go to your house and you say, wow, I'm having a bad day, I really, I just want to lay down and collapse, and you lay down on the sofa and the doorbell rings, and somebody came to visit you, somebody you really know who's going to talk forever, and you really are not interested in hearing it, and they're going to ask you for something that you don't want to do, what do you do? Jesus was a human being, and when he saw all those people, he thought, oh no, I'm tired, I don't want to do this, why couldn't they give me just a little time on my own? But the scripture tells us Jesus looked at them with compassion, that's just another word for mercy, he saw that they were sheep without a shepherd, they were trying to find life, but they had no one to tell them what to do, and he had the message from the father, and all of a sudden his interest for himself and his rest and his own comfort just disappeared, and Jesus gathered around him thousands of people and he taught them all day long without even anything to eat or any rest. This is what compassion means, it's what mercy means, it means that in every circumstance you look at people who are around you and you see them and the need they have and it takes a priority over your own. The Pharisees, when people came to them, Jesus said you simply give them more burdens instead of them leaving feeling relieved and as if they found help and direction and purpose, all of a sudden they leave even more burdened than when they came to you. Somebody sat down and talked to you and when it's over they feel worse than when they started talking to you. Somebody sat down and had a conversation and it ends up being a mess, fight, quarrel, name calling, that's what Jesus is talking about, and our relationship is being controlled and guided by that. And the last word in this passage is the word faith or faithful, depending on what Bible you read. I have a Bible that has kind of a compilation of 27 different versions of the Bible, and what they do is they read all of them and then with any verse they list the differences that appear in those, if there are different words that are used. In this one, for this last word, here are translations I found, faith, honor, faithfulness, integrity and fidelity. You might say, well those are all different words, they're not really even the same thing. They are, because when you talk about faith, you're talking about trust in God, and the kind of faith that allows you to be a friend of God is the kind of faith that says I trust you now, tomorrow, the next day, and the rest of my life. It's a permanent commitment of trust to God. I give you control of my life. I will live in obedience to you from now until the day I die. That's what faith is. Can you see the element of faithfulness in there? I've made a promise to live in obedience to you, and I'm going to be faithful to that all the way through. Can you see the issue of integrity in there? Inside of myself, I say to God, I'm going to let you control my life, and every day I live exactly as I said I was going to live. The integrity, what's inside, is the same as what's on the outside. Can you see how honoring God as the Lord of my life, you're in charge of my life. Whatever you tell me to do, I'm going to do. How that, and the relationships you have around you, honoring what he wants instead of what you want to do. Jesus' story again. You know why he looked at the crowd in their need and responded to it in the way he did? He told us a secret. I only do what the Father tells me to do. I honor what he says. When he got out of the boat, his human feelings, I know, just said, oh no, I can't put up with this anymore. The Father said, listen son, I sent these people all around the lake because they need to hear what you have. I want you to talk to them. And he honored the Father instead of his own human nature. That's what it means to have faithfulness in faith. He was faithful, that's what fidelity is. He was faithful to the instruction and direction of his Father. You see what Jesus is talking about here is I can't tell by looking at you what's inside of you, but I can tell by the way you act what's inside of you. I can tell by the choices you make what's inside of you. I can tell what controls your lifestyle and your nature and your character. Paul was writing in the book of Galatians about this. He was telling us that there are two ways to be able to tell what's inside of a person. You can tell if human flesh is controlling them or instead if human nature is controlling them. The acts of the sinful nature are obvious. Sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, that means getting ahead at the cost of another person, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and the like. Listen to this. I warn you as I did before, those who continue to live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. Why does he say that? Because he knows that God the Father is not in charge of the choices they're making. He knows that Jesus Christ is not in charge of the choices he's making. What Jesus was explaining to us is that once you say to God, I give you my life and he takes control of your mind, he causes you to think differently about people. He takes control of your will. He causes you to make different choices than you would have made before. He takes control of your emotions. He causes you to love people that you used to not care about. He causes your emotions to be different too. Now it doesn't happen instantaneously, but the longer you read about Jesus, the longer you listen to him in your prayer time, and the longer you are around people controlled by him, the more he begins to transform you inside. But if your human flesh is in charge or in control of the decisions you make, this is what you're going to find in your life. Now I want you to think about this. Most of these, the list that Paul gives, have to do with human relationships. Human relationships. The acts of the sinful nature, hatred, discord, where people are fighting, jealousy of each other, losing your temper, fits of rage, selfish ambition, wanting to get ahead even at the expense of your spouse or your family, dissensions, that is where people are mad at each other, factions, where they don't speak to each other, one group doesn't speak to the other, one person doesn't speak to the other, envy, I want what that person has, all of these have to do with how you treat other people around you. Here's what he says, if those characterize your life, there is no question but that God is not in control of your life. You can come to church every Sunday if you want, three times a week if you want. You can talk to God all you want. You can read the Bible from cover to cover and still not allow God to control your life. All of this begins with one single act before him, that is to say to God, I recognize you're the ruler of heaven and earth and today I yield myself to your hand from now till the day I die. Once that happens to you, the Holy Spirit of God comes to reside within you and the next time you have a situation where you would normally lose your temper, you'll go ahead and lose it, but what will happen differently after it's over, you'll start thinking about that and suddenly you'll be ashamed, maybe an experience you hadn't had like that before and you'll know that God is saying to you, that is not the way I want you to do this. It may happen several times and what will happen is you'll get ashamed sooner and sooner until finally in the middle of this fight when you blow your temper and you lose your temper, you'll remember right then, I shouldn't be doing this. And then the day will come when you're getting in a place where you're getting ready to lose your temper and God will say to you, now this is going to happen again, but here's how I want you to handle it. I want you to step back and I want you to say, I'm going to be kind instead of mad. And then you know God has changed you on the inside. God's transformation of character is certain. You cannot have him in your life without changing and that's what Jesus was saying. You focused all your attention to be religious on the things that anyone could do. Anyone could bring ten seeds in here. Anyone could give a tenth of their money. Anyone could do that and their heart could still be filled with wickedness, evil and murder. But inside when God changes the way you treat people, you know that you have been touched and changed. I'll tell you what your problem is, Jesus said. You're focused on the wrong thing. You're focused on the little bitty things. He used two words that were not common for us and wouldn't mean very much to us, but the word gnat, you know what a gnat is, but in those days when they made the wine, oftentimes they, it was out in the open so gnats were all around it. They might get in it and they certainly would lay their eggs in there and maybe some small larvae in it. So the Pharisees, because this was listed in the Bible as an unclean thing, you shouldn't eat it. Before they would ever drink wine, they would put across their cup, cloth, and they would strain the wine in it to make sure not a single solitary gnat egg got in that wine. And when they finished then they'd drink it saying, we're following the law. Nothing evil gets inside of us, nothing clean inside. And then you turn around and swallow a camel. Now he uses those language, the word in the Aramaic which Jesus would have spoken for gnat was galma. The word for camel was gamla. You can see it's kind of a play on words Jesus is using. We don't have that in our language because gnat and camel are so different in language, but it was sort of a joke really to say to them, you get rid of this gnat and you turn around and you do something far, far worse in God's sight. The problem is for us, it's easy to hide our heart from a lot of people, but there are some people around us all who know what we're really like when we're mad, when we're hurt, when we're disappointed, when we've been cheated, when people are not nice to us. And it's then that the choices we make reveal whether or not God is really in control of our life. Jesus said, if you follow me, your life will be marked by justice, doing, treating people right by mercy, being kind to people who need help, and being faithful to obey what God tells you to do. And from that you will know that you love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. Would you bow your heads please for a moment? But I'm not going to ask you if you love God. Probably not anybody here would say they don't love God, but I am going to ask you how you treat people. What do you have in your own character and your own nature? When you heard that list from Paul, did you say, whoa, he must have been listening to me last week. He must have observed some of the things that have gone on in my life. I know all of us have some of these things happen to us because none of us are perfect. But you find you hate people, that you don't get along with people, that you're jealous, that you lose your temper a lot, that you want to win no matter how much it hurts other people around you, that you sometimes like to see people mad at each other, that you're inclined to be choosing sides and talking about people, telling stories, gossiping. Those are characteristics of your life you need to say to yourself, have I really ever said to God, take control of my mind, will, and emotions? This morning I want to ask you to be sure that that's done. You can right here at this moment say to God, I want you to be my Lord and to rule my life now and forever. Would you do that right now if you've never done it before? And once you begin this new life, you need to start coming to church regularly, every time you can. You need to start reading the Bible and listening for God to tell you what's right and what's wrong. And all the decisions you make, you stop and talk to God and say, what should I do about this? And whenever you do the wrong thing again, always stop and say, I did it again, God, forgive me. Give me the strength to start anew and make me stronger. And then at the end of your life, you'll hear him say, well done, my good and faithful servant. Father, search our hearts. You know who we are. You even know us better than we know ourselves. I ask for me that you do that. I ask for each person that you do that for us. And if there's any person here who wants life more than they have, let them know that today you're ready to give them that. In the name of Jesus, I ask it, amen. This morning, I want to give you an opportunity to respond to what God wants you to do. If he's talked to you and you know there's something in your life that needs to change and you want that to happen today, I want to ask that you would, we got to sing an invitation hymn? Are we going to do that? We'll have the words on the screen if you need that. Would you stand, please? I'm going to be at the front. There'll be someone else here. If you want to come and say, I want to recommit my life to Christ, I want to give my life to Christ, I want to become a part of this church family, this is an opportunity for you. I'll be here. I'll be here. Talk with you. Pray with you. Debbie will be here. This is your opportunity. Oh, to Jesus I surrender. Oh, to him I really give. Oh, to Jesus I surrender. Oh, to him I really give. Oh, to him I really give. Oh, to him I really give, oh, to him I really give, oh, to him I really give, oh, to him I surrender. Oh, to him I really give, oh, to him I really give, oh, to him I really give, oh, to him I really give. Oh, to him I really give, oh, to him I really give, oh, to him I really give. Darlene Morandi came this morning saying that this very experience had happened to her this week. She had a conversation with someone and had to call them back and say, sorry for my behavior, the way I acted. Happens to all of us. She asked us to pray that God would give her strength to be able to avoid the same kind of circumstances again. Do you have anything else you want to say, Hazi? Don Cates came this morning. Don Cates came this morning saying that the message was very powerful to him and that God had really spoken to him this morning and we just ask that you'd continue to pray for Don and that, you know, for all of us I think, you know, it speaks volumes that when we hear God's voice and we want to be obedient to follow God. Certainly in the political world the factions are powerful and strong and the lines are drawn sharply and we need to pray for people in that position that they don't get caught up in the human factions deal, one side or the other. Let me pray with you. And so, Father, we ask that the power of your spirit would give us the ability to live in the places and the circumstances we are and you control us. Convict us of the need to treat people the way you've treated us that we might be able to show to this world what you are like. This is our witness being light to the world and salt to the world. So in the name of Christ, we give you, we ask you to make us powerful and strong witnesses. In his name we pray, amen.