In this enlightening episode of Born to Win, Ronald L. Dart unravels the complexities of living a Christian life after coming to faith. He delves into the teachings from the Sermon on the Mount, highlighting the narrow path that believers are called to traverse, emphasizing that true Christian living is exhibited through obedience and not just empty declarations of faith. Dart challenges listeners to recognize false prophets, urging reliance on the Biblical word as the ultimate standard. The discussion takes an intriguing turn as it examines the broader reach of Christ’s message beyond Israel, showcasing the faith of a
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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I don’t want to be misunderstood. I agree entirely with Paul when he says, For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. So salvation is by grace through faith. We can’t achieve it for ourselves. We can’t do it by law keeping. We cannot in any way get rid of our past guilt. We can’t bring ourselves to God’s kingdom. We can’t create a circumstance in which God owes us salvation. None of that. But having come to Christ through faith, how should we then live our lives? Is there a way of life for a Christian after one has come to the faith? Is there a way we should go and a way we should not go? Is there a way of obedience to Christ and a way of disobedience to Christ? And does it make any difference which one of those ways we walk? Well, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7, verse 13, said this, Now there’s not much room for misunderstanding here. There is a right way and a wrong way for Christians to live their lives. And the right way is not to follow the crowd. The right way is narrow and hard, and sometimes it’s a little bit lonely. So Jesus said, here I am. I’m a Christian. There are two ways I could walk. Is it possible then for me as a Christian to walk in a way that would actually lead to destruction? Yeah, it would seem that it is. Then he goes on to say, beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Now, that’s a distracting thought. Where are such people to be found? Are they out there somewhere? Well, they’re bound to be out there somewhere or Jesus would not have warned us about them. Well, how would you find them? How would you know what they look like? Well, one thing you can tell, you cannot tell them by the way they look. Because he said they’re in sheep’s clothing. In other words, they look harmless. And you look at them and you say, this person looks like a sheep. I really think one of the greatest disservices that the modern entertainment media have done for us and for our children in particular is in the way they portray evil because they always portray evil as though it looks evil with slavering jaws and ugly and mean and dangerous looking. Whereas in truth, the greatest evil in our society looks clean and harmless. That’s why Jesus said, beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing. They don’t look like wolves. Now, how could you know out there listening to this program that I’m not one of those people? How do you know I’m not a wolf in sheep’s clothing? You can’t see me to see what kind of clothes I’ve got on, but you’re listening to my voice, and I probably sound somewhat reasonable to you. How are you going to know? Well, you can’t tell wolves by their credentials, and you can’t tell by organizational affiliation. In the Old Testament prophets, there are warnings that wolves in sheep’s clothing would be found right in the sanctuary of God. Oh, yeah. God in Jeremiah 23 makes great inveighing against the false prophets and priests who misled his people. In Ezekiel, there’s a writer’s inkhorn, an angel with a writer’s inkhorn who’s supposed to go through the city and put a mark on all the people that sigh and cry for the abominations that are done in Israel. And when that’s done, an angel with a great sword in his hand is told to go down and kill everybody that doesn’t have that mark on them. And he’s told to begin right at the sanctuary of God. right at the center of religion, so that right at the center, right at the very top, right at the very core of the whole thing, can be found men who have turned their back on God, who look good, who talk a good fight, at the same time are wolves in sheep’s clothing. He goes on to say, “…you shall know them by their fruits.” Do men gather grapes of thorns? Or do you get figs off of thistles? Even so, every good tree brings forth good fruit. But a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit. A good tree can’t bring forth evil fruit. Neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. So, by and large, you look at people, you judge them by what they do. What are they actually producing out there in life? Every tree that brings forth not good fruit is going to be cut down and cast into the fire, ultimately. So by their fruits you shall know them. Now fruit is a metaphor, of course. You’ll have to judge a minister or a prophet or a priest by what he produces. But what standard can you use? Well, you have no standard beyond the Bible. Every standard you create must in the end depend on the written word of God. For example, if I as a preacher come along and I tell you certain things on the authority of God, well, how would you know whether I have God’s authority or not? Well, if I speak according to what you read in the Bible, you might conclude that that’s so. The prophet Isaiah, in his eighth chapter, verse 19, said, When they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and mutter. In other words, let’s go out and see if we can find out the truth or something about the future from wizards or psychics and what have you. He then says, Shouldn’t a people seek their God? Should the living seek to the dead? Look to the law and to the testimony. If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. So the fundamental core of a test of a preacher or somebody in sheep’s clothing, whether he really is a sheep or whether he’s a wolf, has to do with whether they speak according to the law and the testimony, which is another way, I guess, of saying they speak according to the written word of God. Then he says, not everyone that says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that does the will of my Father which is in heaven. Oh, so it’s not enough to talk a good fight. It’s not enough to say, well, Jesus is Lord. Tell me, of what value is it to put a plaque on the wall of your business that says, Jesus is Lord, if you then cheat your customers? Oh, that would never happen. Well, I’m sorry to disillusion you. I think it does happen. I was driving along the road one day and I saw a bumper sticker that said, Honk if you love Jesus. And I thought, how easy it is to blow one’s horn and how strenuous it is to actually prove that love. Anybody can put his thumb on the ring inside his steering wheel and honk his horn. But how many people can actually do something to love their neighbor? Because in the process of loving your neighbor is one of the ways that you love Jesus. I think Jesus is saying here that there are a lot of people who go through life honking and never get around to doing anything. And he says, Many will say unto me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? In your name have we not cast out demons, and in your name have done many wonderful works? And then I will profess unto them, I never knew you. Depart from me. Get away from me, you that work iniquity. Now, I want you to take notice of something carefully here. Jesus in no way denies the works that they claim. So what is he saying? That there will be people who come along and prophesy in his name? That there will be people who in the name of Jesus actually succeed at casting out demons and who in the name of Jesus do many wonderful, good, fine works? And then be rejected by Christ? Well, it seems to be what he is saying. Now, I have to explain something to you here. The word iniquity in the original language comes from a combination of a negative prefix and the word law. Now, in the Greek, the negative prefix is the letter a. We use it in English, actually. You’re familiar with the word moral, right? You know, moral conduct and conduct that is not moral. And we speak of a man being a moral man, or we speak of people who are amoral. We put the letter A in front of moral, and we say this is a non-moral or less than moral person. Well, the word iniquity here is a combination of the word law, nomos, and a prefix, a. It is anomia, which basically means lawlessness. He then says, okay, there are going to be people in your society and around you who will do wonderful works in the name of Jesus Christ. They will actually cast out demons in my name, and when the time comes I’m going to profess to them, I never knew you. Get away from me, because you are people who work lawlessness. You pay no attention whatsoever to the difference between right and wrong as it’s spelled out by God’s law. So, can a person cast out demons and then lie, cheat, steal, or commit adultery? Apparently so. Otherwise, this passage Jesus gives us here that Matthew records of Jesus means nothing.
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I don’t know why a person would feel this way, but I suspect there are those who feel that they have God’s really permanent approval, because at some point in their life there has been a true miracle, and God was really with me. And then they are led to tolerate the presence of things in their lives that really ought not to be there, as though the miracle made it okay for them to ignore the law, as though because God was with them one time, it means He’s going to be with them forever. regardless of how they behave. Common sense ought to tell you that that’s not true. And if common sense doesn’t tell you, then listen to Jesus. Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man that built his house upon a rock. The rain descended, the floods came, the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it didn’t fall, because it was founded upon a rock. And everyone that hears these sayings of mine and doesn’t do them, well, he’s like a foolish man that built his house on sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it fell. And great was the fall of it. Now, there are some really important things in this. First and most obvious is the fact that Jesus said, it’s just not enough to listen to what I say. You’ve actually got to do it. Somehow or other, you’ve actually got to go out in your life, you’ve got to encounter the world, and you’ve got to carry what I tell you to do into the world. It’s a way of life. It’s a way of living your life. Now, there’s another little thing in here which you could miss if you’re not careful. that a lot of times you can’t really tell the difference between one who is obedient to Christ and one who is not until their life comes under stress. He said, the man that does what I tell you is like a man that built his house upon a rock. On the other hand, you’ve got a man that built his house upon the sand, and as long as there is no stress upon either house, they stand, and they can stand for however long it takes for the rain or the storm to come. So just because your life is working at this particular moment, doesn’t mean it will stand up to the stress that’s ahead. How do you get it to where it will stand up to that kind of stress? Well, you not only hear what Jesus said, you actually systematically and deliberately try to put it to work in your life. When you get up in the morning, you think about it. You carry it with you to the job. You respond to the people who you meet on your job as though Jesus Christ were standing at your right hand and observing what it is you do. And that you were going to then at the end of the day sit down with Jesus and run through and say, Lord, how did I do today? Did I get it your way or did I do it my way? Did I really get it right or did I screw it up? Well, let’s go at it again tomorrow and see if we can do better. Because if you don’t, sooner or later the stress will come. And unless the Lord builds the house, it won’t stand. And so Jesus finished his sermon. And it said when he ended his sayings that people were astonished at his doctrine. For he taught them as one having authority and not like the scribes who kept looking over their shoulder of the past. This man speaks in the present tense and he is an authority. Well, when he came down from the mountain, and we are now to Matthew chapter 8 and verse 1. It says, great multitudes followed him. There were the people who had been following him around before were all back very quickly. And everywhere he went, he had a crowd. And behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. Now, leprosy is a chronic, slowly progressing, it’s a mild infectious disease. It is infectious, but not highly infectious. It’s caused by a bacteria, and it’s marked by the destruction of tissue and the loss of sensation. Well, now, in the ancient times, it was an incurable disease. And because it was infectious, people were quarantined and had it. And they had a very lonely life in some cases because they were away from other people. They couldn’t come close to other people. Well, this man who had been this way who knows how long, who was a leper, came and fell down or did obeisance to Jesus and said, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. I know that if it’s your will and if you want to do it, you can do it. And Jesus put forth his hand and touched him, which is something most people didn’t do, touch a leper. But he touched him and said, I will. You be clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. I mean immediately. It was over. It was gone. His flesh was made whole. The disease was finished. And Jesus then said to him, See that you tell no man, but go your way, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded for a testimony to them. Now why would he do that? What’s the importance of explaining these things or going back to Moses and offering some kind of a sacrifice in the temple when the man standing in front of him had actually healed him of the disease? It was over. It was gone. Why not just walk away and forget it? And maybe even more so, why not go tell the whole world what he had done? But Jesus said, no, don’t do that. You go and tell the priest and offer the offering commanded by Moses. Now, the law sets aside an entire chapter. It’s Leviticus 14. to describe a very elaborate ceremony for the cleansing of the leper. It even goes beyond to the cleansing of houses that had a plague in the wall. I suppose this was something like mildew or a fungus that got into a house, and people couldn’t live in it when it was like that. There was a ceremony for the cleansing and inspection of the house and how everything was supposed to be done. I don’t think people generally realize, looking back, that the priesthood served as a kind of department of public health. We have a center for disease control in Atlanta. They had the priesthood. And so when infectious diseases came along, they had to show themselves to the priest. The priest had to inspect them. He had to quarantine them if they ought to be quarantined. And when they were cleansed, there was a ceremony to go through to make him officially clean so that he could rejoin the community and so that the whole community know this guy is clean. It’s okay for him to be back here. The leper was then to be returned to the community with full legal status. He just had to go to the Department of Health and get certified. It’s as simple as that. And so what did Jesus say? He said, go to the Department of Health and get certified. You’re clean. You can rejoin the community. And then when Jesus entered into Capernaum, there came to him a centurion beseeching him. If you’re following your Bible, this is Matthew 8 and verse 5. A centurion is a Roman officer. Nominally, they’re in command of about 100 men. It’s the equivalent of an army captain or a company commander in the United States Army. They were career soldiers, as it were. Now, what is significant about this man? Well, what’s important is he was not a Jew. He’s a Gentile, and he was received by Jesus. This is not the way things normally worked. Now what he did, he came to Jesus and he besought him and said, Lord, my servant lies at home sick of the palsy. He is miserable. And Jesus said to him, I will come and heal him. And the centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that you should come and enter under my roof. Just speak the word and my servant shall be healed because I’m a man under authority. I’ve got soldiers under me. And I say to this man, go and he goes. I say to another, come and he comes. And to my servant, do this and he does it. So I understand you don’t actually have to come to my house. I know that if you say the word, it will be done. And Jesus heard that, and He marveled and said, This is amazing. I have to say unto you, I have not found this kind of faith. No, not in Israel. Now, Jesus marvels that among His own people, He is not much believed. But the Gentiles He encounters accept Him willingly and accept them easily. You know, it’s really remarkable in the way that Jesus saw as an example of faith a man who didn’t have to be touched. For the most part, there seems to be a need on people’s part to be touched, to actually have something done. In one case, Jesus made a little clay out of some spit and dirt and put it on a man’s eyes and told him to go wash. In other cases, he stuck his fingers in a man’s ears and he did certain things so that people, I guess the idea is that the touching would help people’s faith. This man doesn’t need that. He just says, you say the word and my servant will be healed. And Jesus marvels at this. He actually seems to be surprised at this, that he found a greater faith among the Gentiles than he did among Israel. And he proceeds to make a very surprising statement.
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We’ll talk about that when I come back. For a free copy of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write or call this week only and request the program titled Matthew 14. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE44. And tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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Having said that he found more faith among the Gentiles than he did among Israel, Jesus then said this, I say unto you, that many shall come from the east and the west and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Now, right here is where you can begin to find some of the reason why the religious establishment of Judah hated Jesus. I mean, they saw God as their God. One could only come to God through the Judaism that they knew. Jesus is saying that many of the children of the kingdom, which means the kingdom of Israel, would be cast out. while men would come from other nations east and west and sit down with Father Abraham in the kingdom. You can’t imagine what a slap in the face this was to Jews of this time. They had settled down to an easy habit of thinking, well, God is our God, and because we are in the right place, and because we were born of the right parents, and we live in the shadow of the temple, that we’re okay. And Jesus is somewhat at pains to tell them, I’m sorry, it isn’t going to be that way. And he turned to the centurion and said, Go your way. As you have believed, so be it done to you. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour. Now, if Jesus were not a Jew himself, you could almost think he was anti-Semitic in this encounter, but he was not, of course. He was challenging an old assumption that Jehovah was a national God as opposed to being a God for all people. Now I find it interesting that Paul worried a lot about this. I know, of course, he knew what Jesus had said about this. And yet at the same time, he seems surprised at what happens to him because everywhere he goes, he would go into the synagogue first. He would stand up and preach to the Jews in the synagogue. And sometimes some of the Jews would believe him, but most of the Jews rejected the message. Sometimes they rejected angrily. Sometimes Paul was led within an inch of his life by the anger of their rejection. And he would then go out of the synagogue and preach to the Gentiles and sometimes shake off the dust of his feet against a town, a city, or against a synagogue. But he still was troubled by it. And there’s an interesting passage in Romans chapters 9, 10, and 11 where he seems to just sit back and ruminate on the problem. He begins by saying, I say the truth in Christ. I lie not, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. Now, what’s troubling Paul? Because this threefold affirmation of the truth is very, very strong. I say the truth in Christ. I lie not, my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit. I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart, for I could wish, if it were help, that I could be accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises, whose are the fathers, and of whom concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. I want them to be saved, Paul said. In chapter 10, verse 1, he said, Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer for God, for Israel, is that they might be saved. I bear them record. They have a zeal of God, but it’s not according to knowledge. And he proceeds in both the 9th and the 10th chapters to elaborate on this theme and try to express how he feels about this thing. It’s troubling to Paul, and I think you would understand this, that as you went from place to place to place preaching to your own people, and your own people were rejecting it, and you were having to go to people who were not your people, It would be troubling. Finally, in chapter 11, verse 1 of Romans, he says this, I say then, has God cast away his people then? Has he just rejected Israel permanently? Oh, no. For I’m an Israelite, Paul says, of the seed of Abraham of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away his people. Don’t you understand what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he makes intercession to God against Israel, saying, Lord, they’ve killed your prophets. I’m left alone. I’m the only one left, and they’re trying to kill me. And God speaks back to him and says, no, I have reserved to myself 7,000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal. And Paul says, even so, at this present time, there is a remnant of Israel that is being faithful to God according to grace. Now, the question he has, though, is what about the rest of them? Those that have turned their back on God, rejected the gospel of Christ. He says in verse 11, have they stumbled that they should fall? No. but rather through their fall salvation has come to the Gentiles for to provoke them to jealousy. Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fullness. So what’s he saying? What he is saying is that in fact the Israelites had to be cut off for a while in order to open the gospel up fully to the Gentiles. So everyone would know, Israelite and Gentile, that they did not have to come to God through Judaism. It’s as simple as that, that God is the God of all nations, that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who were serving God before there ever was in Israel. Although Jacob’s name was changed to Israel, he’s the first one that could be called an Israelite. Now I don’t want you to be ignorant of this mystery, Paul said, lest you should be wise in your own conceits that blindness in part is happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles shall come in. And so all Israel shall be saved. What a remarkable thing Paul is saying. He is saying that for some reason that the children have got to come from the east and the west and the Gentile nations and sit down in the kingdom of heaven. And that many of those people who ought to have been there in the first place will actually be cast out and rejected by God because they came face to face with the gospel and turned it down. But in the end, all Israel shall be saved. And so the story of the gospel is in a way the story of a breakout. It’s the breakout of the worship of Jehovah, of the worship of God, from merely being a Jewish religion, into being a religion for the whole world, that God, that Christ can reach out to all men everywhere, anytime. The story of the book of Acts is really interesting because it is the account of how the breakout took place and how the gospel went forward from Jews to Gentiles and the story of how God even blinded the Jews for a while so the Gentiles in their fullness could come in. We’ll continue with the book of Matthew next time. Until then, this is Ronald Art reminding you…
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You were born to win. The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to You may call us at 1-888-BIBLE44 and visit us online at borntowin.net.
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