The Village Church
Mutually Broken PT. 3 - Audio
He sees the depth of your heart and he loves you the same. Amen? Well, this morning we're going to return to our series on the Sermon on the Mount and yes, the last sermon you heard on this was about six weeks ago. So I know you have forgotten everything I said. So don't worry, I'm going to jog your memories. We began this series by first looking at the blessings of the Kingdom. It's Matthew 1 verses 1-3-11. Second, we talked about being distinguished from the world in order to influence the world for good. That's Matthew 5 verses 11-16. Third, we talked about Jesus' relationship to the law and the believer's relationship to the law. That's Matthew 5 verses 17-20. And in those sermons, we saw Jesus lay out for us what a Kingdom lifestyle looks like for us in this lifetime, principles and guidelines. But when we got to the fourth sermon, we saw Jesus do something quite different. He was not only showing us what a Kingdom lifestyle looks like through this sermon on the Mount, but he also uses this sermon to undo us. What do you mean by that, Alex? I mean, he uses the sermon on the Mount to present every person as mutually broken, who's only a step to the response to the sermon on the Mount is one of faith and repentance, faith and repentance, which is opposite to the response to the Pharisees and tribe who were so self-righteous and blinded by the true meaning of Christ. Today, we're going to continue to see Jesus presents us as mutually broken as he continues to do three things. He's going to continue to correct the misunderstanding, the misinterpretation and the misapplication of God's law in his religious environment. So if you have your Bibles, please open them to Matthew 5. We're going to look at verses 33 through 37. Again, you have heard it said to those of old, "You shall not swear falsely, but you shall perform to the Lord for you have sworn. But I say to you, do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by earth, or it is his footsteps, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not take an oath by your head, but you cannot make one hair, black or white. Let what you say, simply be yes or no. Anything more than this comes from evil." This God's Word, let us pray. Father God, as we come before your true, come before your Word, we pray that your Spirit will take what is preached and apply it to our hearts. And as I always say, Lord, I pray that you will move me to the side, that you will move my pride to the side, and that your Spirit will just simply take over. He has to be the one to apply the truth of Scripture to our hearts, and preach it cannot. He is just a man. So, Spirit, we call upon you to do what you do best, share with God's people, Christ in my play, amen. Keep in mind here, as we continue to work through this section of the Psalm on the Mount, this is not Jesus correcting the Old Testament. You can read these verses and think that's what he's doing, but he's not. He's correcting the misunderstanding, the misinterpretation, the misapplication of the Old Testament. And these verses, Jesus brings corrections to taking oaths. He begins with this real current phrase, "You have heard that it was said," and he uses this phrase to introduce something that's going to need to be corrected. Again, you have heard that it was said to those of all, "You shall not swear falsely, but you shall perform to the Lord where you have sworn." In other words, do not swear. Do not swear and fail to keep your oath, but fulfill your oaths before the Lord. And what is the oath? It's a promise to do something. And in that promise, you are invoking the divine witness that you're going to do something in the future. And in the Old Testament, there are examples of individuals who take oaths that makes oaths to God, and as they take those oaths, Moses also gives warnings to them. In Leviticus, 1912, it says, "You shall not swear by my name falsely." And so perfain the name of the Lord, your God, I am the Lord. Even the third commandment says, "You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain." Numbers 32 says, "If a man vows a vow to the Lord, or swears an oath to bind himself by a pledge, he shall not break his word. He shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth." All these passages in the Old Testament that deals with oath had a particular intent in mind. And that intent was to show all oaths had a binding character to them, binding. If you said you're going to do it, then you are bound to do it. And if you fail to do it, you will guilty of sin. Don't swear falsely. But something has happened here when it comes to oath in Jesus' environment. Something has happened, a misunderstanding has happened, a misinterpretation has happened, a misapplication has happened, and Jesus corrects it. This week I came across a video on YouTube that's gotten a lot of hits in the religious environment called "Why I Hate Jesus" -- I don't know if you've seen that video -- if you are into YouTube and Facebook and should you have. What do you think about that title? Why I hate religion, but love Jesus, do you agree with it? Is it true? I watched the video, I kind of see what the guy is trying to say, speaking out against self-righteousness in the church. But to me, this title represents a modern day misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and misapplication of God's Word. And if Jesus was preaching a sermon on the Mount and our culture, this is what he would say. You have heard it said in these modern times, "You should hate religion but love me." And I say to you, hate your sin and love, hate your sin and love. The guy says in the video that Jesus came to abolish religion, no, he came to abolish sin. Self-righteousness, it just won't aspect of our sin, not to sin itself. And so what's the point? The point is that we too misunderstand scripture, misinterpretation, and misapplication. So don't think it better than the Pharisees, don't think it better than they are. For you, we are just as gifts, are we not? Do you think the Presbyterian Church has it all right that we haven't fallen, that everything we say is right all the time, that we're not give to your misunderstanding, misinterpretation, misapplication, or just the other denominations? Oh, they all got it wrong, not us. What is that? Right. Aragon. Even that statement proves my point. The good news is that Jesus is still in the business of correcting us, and doesn't leave us there. Just like he does in this passage, again, you have heard it said for those of all, "You should not swell falsely, but you shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn." But I say to you, this is Jesus. But I say to you, with all the authority that has been given to him, I say to you, do not take an oath at all. It's just Jesus prohibiting us from taking all kinds of oaths, like if you're in the courtroom, you have to take an oath to the truth and the whole truth. Is he saying not to do that? Is that what he's saying? Basic on the context, no. He says you should not take an oath either by heaven or by earth or by Jerusalem or by your own head. Why do you think people were swearing on these things? You see, on the surface, it has the appearance of making one's words more trustworthy, incredible that, hey, you can trust me, I swear on this, I'm going to do it. But beneath the surface, something quite different was going on. For the people that Jesus was addressing, their oaths serve a different purpose. They function as loopholes. You know what a loophole is? Do you know what a loophole is? Is you trying to outsmart the system, trying to beat the man, trying to get around the rules, especially around tax season. That's what I mean by loopholes. And the religious leaders of Jesus' day thought they had found a loophole when it came to taking oath. They thought they had found a way to be able to take an oath and break it, and yet not be in sin. What do you mean by that, Alex? They assumed that if I didn't swear by God's name, if I didn't use His name in the oath, then it was not by me. If I just swore on heaven and broke the oath, I'm still good, I'm still safe. I haven't taken the lowest name in vain. That is what they were doing. As one Christian says, people were swearing about all these things, heaven, earth, Jerusalem, and one's own head, without using God's name. And on that basis, releasing them down for fulfilling the promise they had given. They were releasing themselves from personal responsibility, because the oath was not binding, because it did not use the lowest name. This loophole was there misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and misapplication. In Matthew chapter 23, Jesus issued seven woes to the Pharisees and the scribes. Listen to what He says here in verse 16, "Woe to you, blind gods, gods, who says, 'If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the goal of the temple, he is bound by his oath. You blind fools, for which is greater, the goal or the temple that has made the gold sacred. And you say, 'If anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath. You blind men, for which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred. So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and everything on it, whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who did dwells in it, and whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits on that throne." So with these words, Jesus corrects them, shows them, that they are not safe, that they are still guilty of using the Lord's name in vain. You see, this was their attempt to lure God standing. If you know anything about the Pharisees and the Shrive, they set a whole bunch of rules so they wouldn't break these rules, and this was just another attempt by them to create a standing in which they thought they could fulfill, but where they didn't realize that they still fell short, they still missed the mark, in that their loophole was not enough. They could not divorce God from their swearing, even though they were swearing on lesser things. For you are always in God's presence in word and deed, no matter what you did. There's no other way around it. Don't swear about heaven where it is the throne of God. Don't swear about earth where it is his full throne. Don't swear about Jerusalem for this to sit at the Great King. Don't take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hell white or black. And when you take an oath on those things, you are still taking an oath on God's name, they will give these loopholes by these religious leaders, pretty much to me highlights their own brokenness, and it shows once again that they were not as righteous as they thought. Jesus says in Matthew 5, 20, "For I tell you, unless your righteousness that sees that of the shrubs and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." This is what Jesus told the people before he went on this tangent that he's on now. "Unless your righteousness that sees the shrubs and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." And what Jesus has been doing is showing you what is wrong with the Pharisees' system of righteousness, why it doesn't work. In a sense, he's reverse engineering in that system of righteousness, and his smile's analysis is broken, it does not work because you're broken. All those verses when he talks about anger and he talks about divorce, he talks about lust. He's showing you why their righteousness doesn't work, because in their attempt to fulfill every law, they fail, they only Lord the standard of it, and they look like they were fulfilling it. But here in their heart, as Richard said, they were far from it. You see, these loopholes were just dishonesty, fake and tearful, promising to do something when you're knowing your heart, you had no intentions on going it. This is at the heart of what Jesus is saying. And another Christian says, "Swam is a pathetic confession of our own dishonor." Why do you find it necessary to introduce our promises by this formula, "I swear about the archangel Gabriel, or the host of heaven, I swear about the Holy Bible." The only reason is that our simple word is not likely to be trusted, that's why we swear. And as you look back over your life this week, have you struggled with dishonesty? Have you displayed fake integrity? Have you promised to do something that you knew in your heart, you were not going to do it, but you promised anyone? What are your man-made loopholes? I mean, let's face it, at some point in your life you have been dishonesty. You have lied, and you have displayed fake integrity, or is it just me? Okay, all of us are undone. These words of Christ should undo us, because all of us are broken, and see, He undoes us for a reason. It's not to beat us up, not to make us feel bad, but it's to convict us, and lead us to repentance, and lead us to greater faith in Him. Remember, I said, "The response we should have, as we work through this tension, and the summing on the Mount is one of faith and repentance." Because here He shows you how short you fall of it to push you closer to Him. That's the righteousness that it sees, that it sees, the stripes and Pharisees. It's one that comes from faith in Christ, repentance. Paul says in Romans 3, "But not the righteousness of God has been manifested on Him." That's the part from the law. Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through what? Faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believe. That's the righteousness that it sees, that it strives in Pharisees. It's one of faith in Christ. Do you believe? That's the question. Do you believe, it's a lot harder to believe at times than it's easier to do to work than it's sometimes believed. Do you believe in Him? And if you believe in Him, and what I mean by believe, I mean having saving faith in Him, not an intellectual knowledge of Him, but saving faith in Him, or you rest and depend upon Him. And when you come to Jesus, He does not leave you in your brokenness, He does heal us. He doesn't leave us there. And in this passage, the healing looks like this. You will begin to say yes or no, you won't have to make oaths about the things you want to do. This is what He wants us to do. It holds us to practice truthfulness and honesty in our words, as opposed to dishonesty, fake integrity, and lies. Don't promise to do something when you have no intentions on doing it. Just say, "Brother, I can't do that." Nope, I can't do that. I'm not going to promise you something that I'm not going to break. Bonnahar says, "The disciple is called to be a light, even in His words." To be a light, even in the words that we use, to be a man and woman of our word, the cause of who we are in Christ, the cause of who we are in Christ. And this is another way that we can let our light shine before man, just being men and women of our words, let your yes be yes and your no be no. In Matthew 8, I told this illustration a couple of months ago, about six weeks ago, I'm sure you and I forgot it, so I'll use it again. What happened when Jesus finished the Sermon on the Mount? Who did He meet when He came down the mountain? Matthew 8 began in verse 1, "When He came down from the mountain," that's the mountain He was preaching the Sermon on the mountain pond, "great crowds follow Him, and behold a leper came to Him and knelt before Him, saying, "Lord, if you will, make me clean." You think it's by accident that this passage is there, right, that He finished that sermon? It's there to show you my point, that if you read a sermon on the Mount, and if your response isn't this, then you did not get it. If your response is, "Well, I've got to go do more," then you did not get it. The response is, "Jesus, will you heal me? Will you make me well? Will you heal me or my leprosy?" You know what He says to the leper? You would be clean. That's the gospel. You take Him your leprosy and He heals you of it. We said the Village Church is a church filled with mutually broken people, but we realized that there's one half of the equation. We are also being mutually healed from our brokenness as well, through this Jesus. We may come as lepers, but we leave as clean, through the power of the cross, through the power of the God. Father God, thank You that through Christ, through His finished work, we are justified before You. In the cause of that justification, Lord, because of who we are in Him, Lord, we can live a kingdom lifestyle in this life. And then this morning, that means being honest people, being men and women of our world, not being fake, not being dishonest, not being lives, but because of who we are, and because of what You've done for us, we can be a light even in the words that we use. And so I pray for each of us, as we go back to our lives and to our jobs and to the school, that Lord, we'll be men and women of our world, and when we commit to things, we will honor our commitments. If we know we can't commit, honor that commitment, we just simply say no, simply say no. So Spirit again, I pray for Your power to draw us closer to the heart of Christ, to be a witness for Christ. So I pray for those here who may not know You, who are struggling, who are beat up and tired and frustrated. I pray that You remind them that they are now alone in their struggles, that their God is there, walking with them and shepherded them through those struggles. And again, I thank You and I praise You in Christ's name, amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]