Standing in People's Way

I want to read a passage of scripture from Matthew chapter 23, if you'd find that in your Bibles. I want to read verses 13 and 14 from that passage. This is a time in Jesus' ministry when there was a lot of tension in His life. The religious leaders had been following Jesus around, and they had been asking Him questions to try to trick Him. They wanted to expose Him to His own followers as a phony, a fake, so His followers would abandon Him, but it didn't work. They wanted to ask Him questions that would cause the Roman authorities to look at Jesus as a traitor, and as a result, He would be killed, but it didn't work. They were planning now, as a last resort, to kill Him themselves. If you've ever been in a setting where there's people who are angry with each other, you know the tension that builds, and that was here. All of this that Jesus faced, He didn't get angry. He didn't lash out at them. He didn't say anything bad about them, but now in this chapter, Jesus turns His attention to these religious leaders and addresses the issue that's been in front of everyone. This chapter is so different than other chapters that some people who read the Bible say, this couldn't be Jesus talking this way. It's so different than all the other places where He talks, but in this chapter, Jesus reveals a part of God's nature that sometimes we want to overlook conveniently. He's not only loving and kind, but He's a God of great holiness and justice, and He brings judgment on those who violate His will and who move away from Him. He not only loves and cares for those who are His followers, but He stands in judgment over those who resist Him and rebel against what He asks them to do, and that's what He's talking about in this chapter. Jesus started by talking about the religious leaders, the scribes, the teachers of Jesus and of God's instructions. He said to them, these people know the law, so I want you to listen to what they tell you, and I want you to do every single thing that they tell you to do. No greater compliment could come to any teacher or preacher than to hear Jesus say that about them. But then He said, but I don't want you to do what they do, because they tell you one thing and they do another. Then He explained what He meant. When they do good deeds out of the scriptures, what they see there, they're not doing them in obedience to the Father. They're doing them that everyone around them would see what good things they've done. They want to wear that on their shoulder. They want everyone to see them and to acknowledge how important they are. They wear the prayer band so everyone will know their great prayers. They do it that people might see them. And when they go out in public to a meeting, they want the spotlight on them. They want to stand in the middle of everyone around them, looking at them and valuing them. And when they walk around, they want people to call them rabbi, which means our master. Everywhere they go, they want people to say, our master, and everyone will know that they're important and valuable. They want to push themselves so that everyone will see them and think they're very important people. That's not the way God does this, He said. If you want to be great in the kingdom of heaven, don't exalt yourself. Instead become the servant of God and the servant of all the people around you. For God will humble those who are proud and arrogant, and those who are humble servants of His, He will lift to the place of importance and significance that they ought to have. Now these people, they talk about the kingdom of heaven, but they slam the door in the face of those who want to come in. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees. You hypocrites. You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourself do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. In the footnote, if you have an NIV, verse 14, woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees. You hypocrites. You devour the widow's houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Therefore, you will be punished more severely. Jesus begins this with one word, woe. It's not a word that we use every day in our language. And when you do hear it, it means some kind of judgment or bad thing is going to happen to you. Woe is me. Something really bad is going to happen. That's the way we might use it. But the word that's used in the Bible has that meaning for sure. It means for sure judgment is coming to you. You can't escape it. You're already guilty. It's going to come. Look for it. That powerful affirmation of judgment is found in this word. But it also carries another dimension. It's a dimension of sadness and sorrow. Not of glee. Jesus wasn't gloating over their coming punishment. He was sorry about it. The word carries not only the announcement of bad things to happen, but God's heartfelt concern for people who face it. Very much like you'd have a friend who's done something wrong. You know they've done something wrong. You know they're going to get caught and they're going to be punished for it. They may be in court or being tried and you know what's going to happen. They know what's going to happen. And you say to them, well, you're going to get it. You've done what they said. It's coming. But you say it to your friend with pain because you don't want it to happen even though it has to happen because of what they've done. Here Jesus looks at these people's lives and he sees the possibility that they had. They know the law and they know what to do and they know what to say. But they don't do what they know. And he sees that what they've done is destroy themselves and people around them. What was he talking about? Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees. You don't go into the kingdom of heaven and you slam the door in the faces of those who do. We have to look at what's taking place in the lives of these people. The scribes were people who knew the law backward and forward. This group of people became very prominent after the temple was destroyed in Jerusalem and they were carried into Babylonian captivity. And there they had no temple so all they had was the law. And the law became the key ingredient, the instructions from God about how to be able to live. They didn't have the temple anymore to remind them of God's presence but the law was what reminded them that God was there and he had plans for them. These were not laws like we see laws but they were the instructions of God about how to live. And now they wanted to absorb those. They wanted to let their life be saturated with the teachings of God so that they might every day do exactly what was right. But sometimes in the law, you know, there were things that needed to be explained. For example, it says there that you should obey your parents. But what if your parents ask you to go over to your neighbor's house and steal one of their lambs? There's another instruction that said you shouldn't steal so you have attention. So what you do is you go to the rabbi and say here's my problem. There's two laws here that seem to be in conflict or I don't understand this instruction from God and so he would tell you how to be able to interpret that and this oral law the scribes wrote down with great diligence and it filled multitudes of books. It was so complicated that they found it almost impossible to do. Now there's nothing wrong with what they had in mind really. I don't know about you but I don't like to get up on a rooftop and look over the edge of the building. I don't even like to be in a room with ceiling to floor glass on the 10th floor and try to look out of it. I don't want to fall over the edge. So I try to give myself a little bit of a measure. When I stand a couple of three feet away and do this, look over the edge, I know the window's not going to grab me and throw me out but I just feel a little more comfortable knowing that there's less of a chance for me to fall out than if I were right up next to the window. I want that margin of error so that there's a little bit of error that if I stepped one step closer I still wouldn't be in trouble. That's what they thought. I'm not supposed to disobey, I'm supposed to keep the Sabbath. Now what does that mean? Well it says not to work. I don't know exactly how much work I should do. I mean getting out of bed some days in the morning is a lot of work so I go to the rabbi and ask him what I should do and he tells me the things that are work and those that are not considered work. He doesn't help me go right up to the edge so that with one little mistake I might step over the line and disobey the instructions of God. He wants me to step back two steps so that there's not any danger whatsoever of violating the instructions God's given me. I'm thankful for that. But over the years there was one instruction and another instruction and another instruction until there were so many it was almost impossible for anyone to obey them. The Pharisees were people devoted to obeying every single one of those instructions and they couldn't do it unless they abandoned jobs and family and spent 24 hours a day, seven days a week reading these instructions of interpreting God's instructions for them and that's how they obeyed them. Ordinary people that had families and jobs couldn't do that. And some of them just gave up. They said it's too much for us. We can't do all those things. We can't leave our families and our jobs and do what the Pharisees do. There were only a small number of Pharisees, maybe no more than ever 6,000 in the whole nation of Israel and so they gave up. Now you've written the law and built a fence around the law, that's what they call these instructions they gave them, a fence around the law, but what you've done by doing this is you've made it so burdensome for people that they give up. They come to you and say we want to live by the instructions of God and then you read to them the instructions Moses gave them and now you begin to tell them all the other ones that you've done to build a fence around his law until they finally say we can't do this, we give up, there's no use to even try. The people of Jerusalem call these people the lost sheep of the house of Israel, they'd given up, they didn't go to the temple, they didn't offer the sacrifices, it's too much. What you've done is you've placed such a heavy burden on them. Now remember the edge of the cliff was the instructions of God, observe the Sabbath, the fence that was built by the rabbis were the words of people. There's a great difference between that, the words of God and the words of people. You have burdened them with the words of people. You can tell them what the instruction says, honor your parents, you can tell them what the instruction is, do not steal, but when you get through with all the things that you've laid on top of that, it suddenly becomes an overwhelming burden for people. And so people come to you and say we want to follow God and you lay on them the burdens that are there and slam the door in their face and in frustration they say there's no use, I'm not going to do it. And because of that, you don't do all these things. See many of the scribes were not Pharisees so they weren't devoted to doing all the things that the law said to do, they were just people who knew the law, like a lawyer knows the law, he may not keep the law but he knows it. These people knew all the laws but it was too much for them too, the scribes, they could tell them but they didn't keep them all like all the Pharisees did. So you don't keep these things yourself and you will be cursed for that because you don't even live up to what you know you're supposed to do. And you slam the door to the kingdom of heaven in the face of those who are trying. Well you know, these people are to be pitied, God had announced a curse on them. But you know what the principle is here? You are not to live as my people in such a way as to drive people away from the kingdom of heaven. Your lifestyle, your nature and your character as followers of mine, you're not to do anything that would cause people to think it was impossible to follow God or that it wasn't worthwhile to follow God. Now how could that possibly be us? You know, we all know that God wants us to be holy, live holy lives, but the differences between what people consider good and right and bad vary a lot from culture to culture. Now there's some things that every culture says is true, don't murder anybody, most cultures say that's a pretty good deal to follow, but there are those areas you know that are not quite as clear. For example, there are parts of Southern Baptist Convention where if you smoke people are really mad about it. Somebody comes outside the building smoking and they get upset and there are other places in Kentucky and Alabama and Georgia where they grow that tobacco, where they approve of it and even encourage it. So morality in the tobacco country is different than morality in Oklahoma where I grew up. There are places in the world you know where people who live in Germany for example, Baptists that live there that don't mind having a beer. Places I grew up in Oklahoma you couldn't sell it and certainly no one ever approved of anybody in the church ever drinking it. I used to walk by the bowling alley, head in the basement and I could smell that down there. I got in a car with a friend one time and he opened a beer and I said, boy that smells like sin to me. And I heard a story about people at the Baptist World Alliance one time, German Baptists walking by a room where Americans were sitting and some of them were smoking and they were shaking their heads saying, these people, you know they're smoking out in public in front of everybody. And the Baptists walked by the German meeting, they were sitting there with their beer and they said, those Germans, they don't have any moral scruples at all. You know the Bible doesn't say anything really about smoking and doesn't condemn drinking beer but in certain places there are strong feelings about those things and so we make our own fence back to the law of holiness. We need to distinguish between what the Bible says we must do and what people consider important to do. Some of the ladies here have on trousers and certain places in Africa if you were to go in and land in your plane and they tell you when you go, the ladies now, be sure you don't wear any trousers because when you land in the airport they'll make you go in the bathroom and put on a dress because it's considered immoral to be able to wear trousers for women in public. So we went and landed and we went out to one of the churches and we were sitting there in this congregation and there were several women there with children, small children, and one of the little boys or girls came up to their mother and wanted lunch or breakfast and she raised her blouse to open it, I don't know how she did it, bared her breast right in front of everybody. One lady in the choir was holding a baby and breasts clearly shown and people in the congregation in Africa didn't notice or pay attention or say a word but those of us who were Americans were having trouble keeping our mouths closed. You think wearing trousers or slacks is immoral and yet you stand here in church with your breasts hanging out? You see it wasn't considered sexual in that culture, it is in ours. We can build our own rules you see about what holiness is, it stands in the way of people coming to find God because we build rules that are not found in the scriptures and we can build those rules so that it makes people feel like it's impossible for them ever to be able to be acceptable in the family of God. The secret is to remember that the words of God are always necessary to obey and we must always measure our own moral choices in our local settings against the words of God and not build fences that are not necessary around God's instructions. But you know I've heard other things that people complain about too. I heard a lady who was a waitress one time talking about her business and she said I really hate to do work on Sunday because after the church services are out we're flooded with church people and of all the days of the week that I work they're the most rude demanding people that we ever have. They complain and they're never satisfied, they send things back and they keep demanding that you pay attention to them when I've got a bunch of other people to work with. They complain about the food and when they leave they leave the smallest tips of anybody who ever comes. I hate waiting on church people. You see our behavior around folks identifies something about us and when you go from church and you sit down in a restaurant you let people know you're a church person, you go to church. And when your behavior of being not gracious and not kind and not patient and not forgiving all of those are Christian characteristics. You know forgiving, kind, patience, mercy, grace, all of those are Christian qualities. When you don't display them, when you come from church you slam the door in the faces of people who say no use to go there, I don't want to be around people like that. You don't mean to but you do. When you leave the smallest tip humanly possible you say to them you don't matter to me. I can demand all I want but you don't matter. You slam the door in people's face that Christ is loving and caring and compassionate. Our human behavior you see identifies us as followers of Christ or builds a wall between them and Christ. When I was in seminary back in the 1970s, 60s and 70s the Vietnamese war was in full force. And I heard a lot of people complaining, people in the Episcopal church and the Methodist church and the Lutheran church, Presbyterian churches, they would say, boy I tell you what, I go to church every Sunday and I hear the preacher preaching about the war and what we ought to do and I get the feeling that if I don't vote for the Democrats that I'm not going to go to heaven. And I've heard the last two or three years people in conservative churches saying I go to my church and you'd think that the preacher was preaching in a political rally. I get the feeling in my church and Sunday school class that if I'm not a Republican I'm going to hell. You can look the Bible over from front to back and neither of those parties is mentioned. You ought to have powerful convictions about what you believe, theologically and politically, but when they stand in the way of people feeling welcome to your Sunday school class or to your church you've done exactly what the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes did. You say to them you're not welcome here unless your politics fits mine. Over the years they change one side to the other but it's all the same. It's important to have those convictions but it's more important to be sure that you're living the gospel, the gospel of love for people, of acceptance of people who are different than you and of concern for the people's feelings and their needs, not just your own. When Jesus was speaking we don't know exactly all the things that he said. They're not all recorded for us but verse 14 is not in some of the older manuscripts of the Bible that we have and I'm not sure whether Jesus said this or not and no one's really sure. He may have. Woe to you teachers of the law, Pharisees and hypocrites, you devour the widow's houses and for show make lengthy prayers therefore you'll be punished more severely. He's talking about religion and money here. He's talking about the scribes who would visit with ladies whose husbands had died. Now you know in the biblical culture then women weren't opened as education as much as women are today. Sometimes when a woman's husband died she was left to need direction and guidance and the rabbis would teach her for a fee. You teach these ladies until you've drained all their inheritance from them and left them with nothing and you haven't given them anything to help them. Instead you've just taken their money. I oftentimes hear people when they talk about the church in negative terms because the church is only interested in its money. All they want is my money. People in the community think that there ought to be a greater motivation for our spiritual work than money and any time we leave the impression that money is more important than anything else in our congregations we deceive people and we build a wall and we slam the door in their face. It's true for preachers. If a preacher preaches and he demands pay he lives a lifestyle of far above what the people in the congregation live. It's a dangerous thing. It makes the appearance of you're only in this for the money. So we have to be careful as church leaders to make sure that we deal with the money appropriately and fairly. Always making sure that we don't put ourselves in a position where people think we're after the money. But there's another side to that too, you know. I've met a lot of children of preachers and their fathers were called to pastor churches and while the people in the congregation had good houses and good cars and nice lifestyles the pastors were paid salaries that we're not able even to live on. I'm so grateful to this church. It's never been true for you. They've always been generous and kind and paid more than I needed and it was worth. But that's not true everywhere. Lay people sometimes think the preacher ought to work for nothing because he's holy and righteous. It isn't true. And if you want to be sure that the children of your staff look at the church as people who are caring and loving you can't starve them to death and think they're going to feel that way. I know many children of pastors who don't go to church anymore because of the treatment their father and mother received from a congregation. Financial was one of them. The other one's what we talked about before. Church people can be mean. They can gossip. They can tell stories. They can say things about their pastor and his family that hurt and cut to the core and to the heart. Some of the most ungodly things go on in churches because we know what the right thing is but we get mad just like everybody else. And there was a pastor of a church one time where before I came they had a difference of opinion and two of the men in the church got in a physical wrestling match in front of the pulpit one Sunday morning. You've been in churches where people are mad and they have bad things to say. And people hear that. They hear your stories. They hear what you have to say. And it slams the door in the face of people who are looking for the kingdom of heaven. Because what Jesus said, woe to you who do that. The judgment of God will come without fail. It's not that God wants it to come but in his justice it must come. What is our remedy? Well, you see, there are two things that are wrong. One is we let our culture determine what we say is right and wrong instead of God. The second is we let our own feelings determine the way we behave instead of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will give us kindness, gentleness, patience, forgiveness. Our human nature demands that everybody do things that I like and that everybody do things the way I think they ought to be. And when you enter the kingdom of heaven, you leave your own will at the door and you say to God, I will do whatever you ask me to do, whenever you ask me to do it, however you ask me to do it. There is no retirement. From this moment on until the day I die, I am your servant, faithful to the last day. I know my mind, my will, my emotions and I submit to you and whenever we deviate from that, even if the food isn't cooked exactly like you like it, when you deviate from that, God has ceased to control your life and your human nature has taken over and you slam the door of the kingdom in the face of the person who is trying to help you. Jesus makes it clear that this is a difficult world to live in and the only hope we have is to lay ourselves before God and say, here I am, I'm broken, I'm sinful and I need your help. Show me the things that I do wrong. So you have to listen whenever you do something. Is your conscience saying to you, wait a minute, you shouldn't have said that, you shouldn't have done it? Listen to that. God will tell you. Don't justify it by saying, well they should have. Just stop and listen to God. He will tell you what to do. That means that you're a submissive servant to God and he is in control and that will open the doors of the kingdom of heaven to all of those around you. There are people out there in the world that God is trying to bring into his kingdom. He's brought thoughts to their minds. He's shown them their need. They're looking and they're hungry and then they come up against us on the day that we let these things slide and they say, well there's no answer there and they turn away. Jesus said, I don't want you to be the person that slams a door in the face of someone in whom the spirit of God is at work. Listen to me, not them. When they're teaching you the words that God spoke, you listen to those and you do every single one of them. Don't look at their life and copy that. Look at God and copy him. You see, the key to all this is really simple. You say to God, you are the Lord, I give you my life, my mind, my will, my emotions and I give myself to serve you and you alone and you have to do it every day of your life or you'll end up like these guys, not entering the kingdom and slamming the door in the faces of those who are trying. Would you pray with me please? What I want us to pray about is ourselves. You know your own heart better than anybody in the world except God. If you know in your own life the things that you do that displease God, please acknowledge it to him. Admit that what you do, what he's pointed out to you right now is wrong. Ask for his forgiveness and ask him to give you the willpower to stop and change and to replace that behavior with the behavior of God. If you've never made a promise in your life to live your life in obedience to God, I urge you to do that. Maybe you've looked at people around you and you see phonies and you see selfish people and you see people that you think are not even as good as you are. Take your eyes off of them, that's what Jesus said, don't look at those people, instead look at God. He loves you, he's kind and he's patient and he wants to redeem your life. And say to him, Lord, in spite of all the things I've seen, I trust you and today I'll make a promise to place my life in your hands. This will change everything in your life, it'll never be the same. You'll find out what it's like to walk with God. Father, we can never live up to all the things that we know are right, only Jesus did, but we can have a passion to want to, and that's what we ask for. We ask that we would never be satisfied with our lives until they measure up to what Jesus was like. You know if there are people and places in which we've slammed the door in the face of people who are trying to get in the kingdom, we may not even know it, but please, Father, show that to us. And if the next situation arises where we're getting ready to do it, with all the power of your spirit would you wake us up? We might do what you want us to do, we might live this kingdom. I'm asking for each of us, Father, if there are changes we need to make in our lives that you'd tell that to us today. Give us the boldness and courage to be ready to say openly to everyone, I'm ready for God to change me. If there's somebody here who's come to the door of the kingdom and wants to walk through, would you give them the courage today to say, Lord Jesus, I give you my life. In the name of Jesus we ask this, amen. I want to ask we sing an invitation hymn this morning. This is a time in which if God has been talking to you and you felt inside of yourself there's some response you need to make to him that you have a chance to do that. You have a chance to tell him you're ready to change your life, you're ready to turn away from the things that he's shown you is wrong and you're ready to start now doing what he tells you is right and depending on him to help you do that. You may want to come and just kneel and pray or you may want to come and talk to me or someone else who's standing here, that's up to you. God will place that in your heart, but it's very important that you do one thing, that you do today what you know God wants you to do. Would you stand please while we sing? All to Jesus I surrender, all to him I freely give. I will ever love and trust him in his presence daily live. I surrender all, I surrender all, all to thee my blessed savior, I surrender all. All to Jesus I surrender, make me savior holy thine. Let me feel the holy spirit, truly know that thou art mine. I surrender all, I surrender all, all to thee my blessed savior, I surrender all. All to Jesus I surrender, Lord I give myself to thee. Fill me with thy love and power, let thy blessing fall on me. I surrender all, I surrender all, all to thee my blessed savior, I surrender all. Would you be seated for just a moment please? Let me have this right now, you can fill that out later. Come and stand by me Sherry if you would. Okay. This is Sherry Patterson. Sherry has moved to our community from Sacramento, California, but she was a little confused. She went north to South Dakota, wasn't it, and then back down here, but she finally got here. And she's got her place to stay, and she came saying that she felt that God wanted her to become part of our church family. And we believe that the only person that should be a member of a church is someone that God has said this is the place for you. The Holy Spirit guides them. I ask you if you've committed yourself to live in obedience to Jesus Christ, and you said yes. I ask you if you've been baptized by immersion, which we believe is what the Bible teaches, you said yes. I ask you if you understood that to be a follower of Christ meant that you read the Bible, that you were faithful in attending church, that you lived in obedience to the instructions that God gave, and you understand that that's what God requires from you. We know that whenever a person leaves a place where God has for them in this community, wherever you go, you'll find a place there to join the people of God. Now, what we believe is that when a person comes to be a part of our church family, it's a call of God. So we don't vote her in. If God wants her here, is there anybody here that would prefer to tell God he can't do that? Then we won't try to do that. But what we'll say is that once God has said we are part of your church family, we have an obligation to you. You have an obligation to do the things God tells you. We have an obligation to make sure that the Bible is taught and preached each time we have a service. To make sure that you're accepted into our church family so that we don't isolate you. To make sure that when you see us anywhere we are, restaurants or anywhere else, that we're living and doing the things that God tells us as a witness to him. That when there are times of need in your life, that we step up to say God is placed here to help you through those times. You're a member of this congregation and you can promise that. I want to ask you just to hold your hand up for a moment and hold it there. I want you to look around. We make a promise to you as your church family to stand beside you. Thank you. You've made your promise coming and we make it by holding your hands up for you. I tell you have a seat there just a minute. You have something you want to share? Okay, I can't take this off very well, but I can give you this one. Tessa came this morning. She has accepted Jesus into her heart, but she wanted to come and make a public declaration that that indeed is what has happened. So we need to lift her up and pray for her and I bet either you or her Sunday school teacher could go by and visit with her about that. Come on Tessa, come up here just a minute. Oh, Tessa come up here. Come on down. Yeah, Tessa's already come and talked to me and she has made a commitment to Christ. And I know that she's been, she wanted to be baptized secretly so no one would see and she wouldn't have to stand up in front of people. And I said, well, no, you can't. You need to stand up and say to everybody, you've given your life to Jesus Christ. Could you say that in the microphone? Just say you've given your life to Jesus Christ. I've given my life to Jesus Christ. Amen. Applause The days are coming for you to learn all that that means. I think with all your heart you mean that right now. But one of these days you'll be attracted to money and one of these days you'll be attracted to boys and one of these days you'll be looking for a career. And as far and silly as that seems, in those days we want you to remember Jesus Christ will guide you in all those things. And what we want to promise you Tessa is we're going to teach you day by day how to learn how to live in obedience to God. So when you get to be a teenager, you'll be able to make the choices that God wants you to. When you get to be an adult, you'll make the choices God wants you to. We want you to be able to live all of your life knowing that God has guided you from these early days till you get to be as old as me. Laughter I would have to put some damper on all this, wouldn't I? Laughter Would you stand please for a moment of prayer? I want to ask Tessa and her mother if you would to stand with me and would you stand with us too and you can just say a word of greeting. We'll schedule a time of baptism for you and people will have a chance to get acquainted with you and say their appreciation for your coming this morning. Father, we're thankful for the courage that people have to do what you tell them. We now ask that your spirit would take control of these two lives. That they might be directed and guided by you to live as you want them to so that they might find life in all of its fullness. We trust you for this, Jesus. Amen. Amen. You can't frown and sing this song, so you have to smile and sing this song. Walking in sunlight, all of my journey, over the mountains, through the deep vale. Jesus has said I'll never forsake thee, promise divine that never can fail. Heavenly sunlight, heavenly sunlight, flooding my soul with glory divine. Hallelujah, I am rejoicing, singing his praises, Jesus is mine.