Explore the early beginnings of Christianity and how simplicity was key to spreading the message of Jesus Christ. The early evangelists carried nothing but memorized doctrines, allowing the faith to thrive uninterrupted by complicated theology. Dive into the essence of faith and how it has evolved over time, sometimes causing more questions than answers, much like the Apostle Paul’s experience with the Corinthian theologians.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, I think Christianity was a lot simpler before the first theologians came along. The early Christians, the early evangelists, for example, when they went around to different cities preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, they did not carry with them a lot of various translations of the Bible. They didn’t have in hand the Living Bible, the New International Version, and so there was none of that to deal with. They did not have even the four gospel accounts to try to reconcile for people. They didn’t have the epistles of Paul with the questions that they raised because of Paul being rather hard to understand. What do they have? Well, they had a memorized version of the gospel of Jesus Christ, of his message. That’s all. No wonder Christianity swept the world like wildfire. It was simple. It was clean. It made sense. It was not some gigantic struggle with theology. God is. He has sent his son. His son died in our place to forgive us of our sins. Glory be to God. But then came the theologians, and they came early enough. By the time Paul wrote his letter to the Corinthians, he had encountered a couple of dandies. He had one man there, for example, who had studied his scripture, and he had come to the conclusion, brethren, that the resurrection is already past. I can see Paul, when he heard this for the first time, rolling his eyes to heaven, saying, Why me, Lord? What’s going to come next? And he learned in the same message that there was another fellow in Corinth who said, Well, after my study, I’ve got some serious questions about this. Now, when we come up in the resurrection, what kind of body are we going to have? I’m rather suspicious about this idea. The Apostle Paul was not long on patience with this sort of thing. And in his letter back to the Corinthians, he said, now there’s this fellow who’s asking the question about in the resurrection, what kind of body are we going to have? And he says, you fool, don’t you know? And he just carries on to try to explain the question of the resurrection. And the theologians are always getting into this kind of thing. One of the areas we have trouble with as theologians is the law of God. Now, there’s nothing in the Bible more designed to make us uncomfortable than the law of God. Man is made to be free. Man wants to be free. One of the most fundamental things in human nature is the desire to be free from any kind of external restraint. You don’t think so? Watch a man walking down the street sometime with his dog on a leash. Generally speaking, the man is on one end, the dog is on the other, and they’re leaning in opposite directions. It takes a lot of training to get a dog to come to heel. Man is like that dog. He does not want to be held back. He wants to be free to run, free to roam. And whenever he reads a law that says, I’m sorry, you can’t maintain a mistress across town when you’re married to your wife. Well, maybe the law has been done away with. Maybe that law has been abolished. Maybe I don’t have to take account of that law. Right. Well, Paul agrees with the theologians who say that we are saved by grace. There’s hardly any room for argument about that. After all, Jesus died on the cross. He took our sins upon him, and he died there, and we are forgiven of our sins, made clean and justified and made right with God. Okay. But then there’s Jesus. who says, Blessed are the humble, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. But righteousness, you see, is defined by the law. David said all your commandments are righteousness. Now, here’s Jesus coming along telling us that a man is favored of God. That’s what the word blessed means, by the way. If God says blessed is the man, he means highly favored and privileged is the man who hungers and thirsts after righteousness. Jesus tells us that, yes, I am going to save you by grace. but you are going to be favored by God depending upon your character, depending upon your attitude, depending upon your obedience. So a man can be saved by grace and have favor with God or not have favor with God depending upon how he’s living his life day in and day out. Now, you don’t have to be a theologian to think that makes sense, do you? I mean, to know that you’ve been forgiven of your past sins You come up out of the waters of baptism, and tomorrow, as you go out in the world tomorrow to live your life, you know that you are free to do good or to do evil when you hit the road tomorrow, don’t you? And you also know that it’s going to make a difference in your relationship with God if you do good from what it will if you do evil tomorrow, don’t you? That there is a difference involved in the two. You can’t be baptized, be forgiven of your sins, and then go right on living the same old corrupt life you have always lived. I don’t know of any Christian who really believes that. But it makes a nice theological argument to work your way around it and somehow conclude that the law was abolished, mainly because there are certain aspects of the law that make us very uncomfortable because we’re just not prepared to live up to those standards. So we are saved by grace, and God favors those who have a certain spirit and who live their lives a certain way. How hard is that? We’re allowed to use common sense in studying the Bible, you know, never mind what the theologians say, especially the amateur theologians. Next in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus adds another characteristic to the list of those whom God favors. Blessed, favored of God, are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. What a simple concept this is. You can easily take a look at yourself in the mirror and think about the way in which you have dealt with other people in your life and know whether you’re merciful or know whether you’re not. And it says that if you are, you’ll obtain mercy, and if you’re not, you won’t. At least that’s suggested on the other side, isn’t it? Mercy is defined as a compassionate or kindly forbearance shown toward an offender. In other words, you’re compassionate or you’re kind and you forbear. Forbear means basically to forbear punishment. Shown toward an offender, shown toward an enemy, or shown to some other person who is in your power. It’s defined as compassion, as pity, as benevolence. I read once somewhere that mercy is the quality of withholding punishment, even when punishment is due. Now, most of your opportunities to take mercy on someone or to have mercy will take place in your heart. In other words, you are tempted to condemn a man for his actions, and you decide you’re just not going to do that. You have shown mercy. Most of the punishment we actually inflict in life is relatively small. We don’t have opportunities to go out and act as a hangman, executioner, and pull the lever on somebody who’s being hanged for murder. We don’t do that. Our punishments are, well, a wife decides, for example, not to speak to her husband to punish him for ignoring her. Makes sense. He hadn’t been paying any attention to her for a while. She’s just going to give him the silent treatment and not going to speak to him. Now, she doesn’t consider the fact that if he is really ignoring her, he won’t notice that she isn’t speaking to him. Nor does she consider that only a really caring husband would be punished by the silent treatment. The other kind of husband would welcome the silence. Punishment, you know, probably does more damage to the person inflicting it than it does to the person who receives it. I think this is why Jesus says we should be doing good to our enemies, because in the process, we actually do good to ourselves. You know, it’s tempting to look at Jesus’ statement here like a warning. God is going to get you if you aren’t merciful. Well, if you’re not merciful to this other person, you’re going to come up before God, and God’s not going to have any mercy on you. But, you know, I have a feeling that this is more in the line of a natural law. If you are merciful to someone else, you are in reality being merciful to yourself. And in your world and the world in which you live, blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy probably means that if you’re the kind of a person who is not vengeful, people will be less likely to want to take vengeance on you. Think that over for a moment, and I’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 02 :
The book of Revelation. What are the seven trumpets of Revelation? Who can open the seven seals? Will all life be destroyed from planet Earth? For a free introductory CD and information on the entire Revelation series, write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-4444.
SPEAKER 03 :
Next, Jesus said, favored by God are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. You know, all of us know that as a principle, it’s almost an axiom in our culture that, well, to the pure, all things are pure, that if you think well, if your mind is clean, you tend not to see the corruption and the dirt that might otherwise be seen around you. The Scripture says to the pure, all things are pure, but to the unbelieving and defiled, everything is contemptible or corruptible. We tend to see things according to what’s going on in our own heart. You know, that really ought to give us pause, that when we get through a day and at the end of the day we feel that everything we saw all day long was rotten and contemptible and we feel miserable about the experiences of the day, we really ought to take a look at the heart inside and see, are we seeing things the way God sees things? How are we approaching life? Is our heart clean? And if not, why not? He then goes on to say, It is a wonderful thing, you know, to be a peacemaker. I do have a caution about this one, though. The common assumption here is that being a peacemaker involves acting as an intermediary between two other people who are fighting. You know, that’s an awfully good way to get a punch in the eye, to get your nose broken. There was a basketball player not that long ago, several years ago, who was running toward a fight. I mean, he did not intend to get into the fight. He was running to the fight to stop it. And because he was running forward, another player turned around and threw a punch at him, and the power of his own speed and the power of the punch nearly destroyed his face. And I think it may have nearly wrecked his career. It’s truly sad because he was going down there to try to stop the fight and nearly got himself killed in the process. I want you to think about this for a moment. Do you suppose it’s possible that we ever use this idea of being a peacemaker as an excuse for meddling in things that aren’t none of our business? What if Jesus is saying, blessed are those who make peace between themselves and another? Because, you know, it takes two to argue, doesn’t it? Generally speaking, when you’ve got an argument going with somebody else, if you just stop, the argument is over. It doesn’t go on any further than that. You can be a peacemaker sometime by just stopping the fight, at least stopping your side of the fight. There’s a proverb that I’ve always been fascinated by. It’s in Proverbs 26, verse 17. You get yourself involved in an argument that’s none of your business. You’re like somebody who walks up and grabs a dog by the ears. You’re very likely going to lose a finger in the process. You can get hurt real bad. Now, I would say that if there’s a fight going on and some poor guy is getting his brains kicked out, it’s a one-sided deal that for you and some other people maybe to try to stop that fight is a very good thing to do. But be careful. Be careful in all aspects of life to be sure that you’re not meddling in something that’s really none of your business lest you get hurt. But the other side of the coin, and this is the one that I think that is truly important for you if you want to call yourself a Christian. And that is that you diligently make peace between yourself and those who are your enemies or adversaries or between yourself and other troublesome people or between yourself and people who annoy you. Between people and yourself with whom you continually are getting into arguments. Stop it. Make peace. As Jesus said, do good to those that hate you. You know, make some kind thing for people who despitefully use you. Oddly enough, he says you can actually heap coals of fire on your enemy’s head by doing good to people who are doing evil things to you. People then who make peace with their adversaries are called the children of God and favored by him. Favored by God are they who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Now, it’s really helpful to me. I don’t know how you feel about it, but it’s helpful to me to read this saying favored are they because when you say blessed are they that are persecuted, I don’t feel very blessed when I’m being persecuted. I’ll tell you the truth. It doesn’t feel like a nice blessing. You know, the Bible even described blessing as like an oil that is put up on the head and runs down softly and so forth. It’s not like that. Persecution, though, when we receive it for righteousness’ sake, because we’re doing the right thing, he said, you’re favored, privileged of God, if that is what’s happening to you, for yours is the kingdom of heaven. Favored are you when men will revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. You know, when you live for God, You are going to make some people uncomfortable. Not all of them. Not all of them. Because frankly, I would far rather have a godly man living next door to me than some creep. Wouldn’t you? So a man is a Christian living a Christian life, living next door to me. I don’t feel very, very likely to persecute him. But people who have been faithful to God in the past, people who have really tried to depart from evil. One of the prophets says that you can live in a society where he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. Now, people who depart from evil and who try to live righteously will sometimes be persecuted, and it is oftentimes persecution because they belong to God, because they are his children. He said, Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. Great is your reward in heaven. Now, that’s odd because that suggests the possibility that your reward in heaven could be small, and that’s a little hard to get your mind around. especially in view of the fact that we are saved by grace. So you’re saved by grace. You’ve been forgiven of all your sins. You’ve gone into a right relationship with God. Does it make any difference then how you live your life after that? Does it make any difference what happens to you? Does it make any difference how you respond to the things that happen? Well, this suggests that those people who, because of the way they live their life, are persecuted and who stand up to that, are actually going to be favored so much by God that they can rejoice and be exceeding glad because of the reward they get in heaven because of what’s happening to them. They wouldn’t be rejoicing about it if it hadn’t. You know, I can’t think of very many things that are harder to do than that. Favored of God are those who are persecuted because they are doing good. Now, in the Hebrew Matthew at this point, there’s a little different phraseology. There’s a phrase that is not in the Greek Matthew, which most of you will have a translation of the Greek Matthew in front of you. The Hebrew Matthew at this point says, At that time, Jesus said to his disciples, You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its savor. Now, why is this little phrase important? Well, because in the Hebrew Matthew, you find it at every juncture, every place where the subject shifts. He will say, at that time, Jesus said to his disciples. Now, I don’t know if you’ve thought about this or not in reading through the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, but the odds are that Jesus’ sermon was a lot longer than that. You could read that out loud in a relatively short period of time. I have an idea he was up there with his disciples on that mountain for several hours. And so we do not necessarily have everything that Jesus said. The Greek Matthew has the Sermon on the Mount almost like a seamless whole as it goes through. The Hebrew Matthew pauses and says, “…at that time Jesus said to his disciples,” and then proceeds into a new theme each time. I think, in a way, this is probably Matthew’s version of an ellipsis, that it’s very likely that this was in the original version of it. Possibly it was added to a later Hebrew version. I don’t know that. But I think it was designed basically to make the delineation between the parts of the original message. So Jesus said to his disciples in verse 13 of Matthew 5, You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? If you can’t taste salt, what in the world is it good for? Well, you throw it out and it’s in the dirt and men walk across it. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Men don’t light a candle and put it under a basket. They put it on a candlestick so it gives light to everybody in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. Now I think this is a very important passage. Far be it from me now to criticize the very sincere men and women who have withdrawn from the world to seek God in conclusion and to spend their lives in prayer. Their sincerity is beyond question. But Jesus said, You are the salt of the earth, but if you can’t taste it, what’s it good for? Then he says, you are the light of the world. A city that’s set on a hill cannot be hid. You don’t light a candle and hide the thing somewhere. You put it on a candlestick. And then he tells the Christian person. Let your light so shine before men, or let your salt be tasted by men, that they can see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. In other words, as Christians, we are expected to live our lives among the people of the world. We are to touch their lives. We are to have an effect on their lives. We are to be a blessing in their lives. And they are to see the nature of God. They are to see the works of God in us and in the things that we do. How can one be a light to the world while one is hidden away? Jesus did not hide himself away. He put himself at risk in the world. He dined with sinners. He was exposed to temptation by the devil. He was finally arrested, tortured, killed for our sake. Christians are going to have to engage the world for God. And God scatters us sometimes throughout the world to work wherever we are found.
SPEAKER 02 :
I’ll be back after these words. 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 number 10. 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.
SPEAKER 03 :
Now Jesus says something truly astonishing. He says, verse 17, Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy but to fulfill. Now why is that so remarkable? Well, because I think an awful lot of Christian people believe that Christ did do away with or destroy or abrogate the law. That’s what he came to do. It was nailed to his cross and didn’t continue beyond that. And he says, don’t think that. I’m not come to destroy the law. I’m come to fulfill. Then he goes on to say something perhaps even more astonishing. He says, Well, if you’re a part of his audience at that time, what do you think he’s talking about? Well, he’s talking about the Torah. He’s talking about the Old Testament law. And, of course, he mentions also the prophets. And they knew the Holy Scriptures, and there could be no question what he was talking about. A jot or a tittle, well, it’s like in our language the dotting of an I or the crossing of a T. He says not only are words not coming out of it, not only are there not paragraphs coming out of it, dottings of I and crossings of T’s aren’t coming out of it. Now, it’s a figure of speech in a way, I know, but what he is talking about is that the law is not going to be destroyed, abrogated, done away with. In fact, nothing, nothing is going to pass from the law. That’s confusing, isn’t it? Now, maybe though, maybe we’re missing something. The King James Version says, Verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. Oh, I see. Jesus fulfilled the law as he said he came to fulfill the law, and therefore because he fulfilled it, it’s passed away. I’ve heard people say that this law is no longer in effect because it has been fulfilled. Well, it kind of works at one level except for one problem. And that is the King James Version is wrong there. That the word fulfill in verse 17, I am not come to destroy but to fulfill, is a different Greek word from the word, not till heaven and earth pass one jot or one tittle shall no wise pass in the law till all be fulfilled. The one word means to fill up. The other word means come to be. So what Jesus says, verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, Not the dotting of an I or the crossing of a T shall pass from the law till everything has come to pass. So, in a sense, you’ve got two conditions, not one. The first condition is till heaven and earth pass. Now, there’s an interesting little exercise on this. All you’ve got to do is walk outside, stomp on the ground, look up and see if the heaven is still there, and if they are, then not one jot nor one tittle shall is in any way passed from the law. And he says, then, till everything has come to pass. Has everything come to pass? Well, no. Then he says, just to be sure you understand, whosoever shall therefore break one of these least commandments, what might those be, folks? Whosoever shall break one of these least commandments and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever will do and teach them the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Blessed, favored is the man who does and teaches the law. Unfavored is the man who breaks the law and doesn’t keep it. That’s not too hard to follow. For I say unto you, that unless your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no way enter the kingdom of heaven. I think the reason why we have so much difficulty with this is because we look at the law in the wrong way. We view it in the wrong light. We look upon the law as a set of handcuffs or shackles for our feet. Instead of looking at the law as a beam, a flashlight to light our way and to light the environment so we can see where we’re going and where we won’t fall. If we understand that the law is a teacher, that it’s to explain, it’s to reveal to us the working of the mind of God in history and how God has dealt with people in the past and how the underlying spiritual law of God was applied in a given society, in a given circumstance. If we can just come to understand that, we need the law. We need all of it. I would want to study every aspect of it from every angle because it reveals God to me. And why would I want to do away with, abrogate, or toss out the window something that reveals God to me, that helps me to understand His will, that shows me how to live my life, that helps me to be favored of God and to live in His favor and to live in the light of His favor as I go? Now, I know I am in His love, and I know that He cares for me. But one of the things that we try to do is to build a relationship with God. And while we can never get out of God’s love, He may be pleased with us more or pleased with us less. And I would like to live my life in a way that is pleasing to God, where I am in His favor as well as being in His love. So Jesus said, except your righteousness shall exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. Well, how do you do that? What did he mean by that? And how do we live that? Well, this is what he begins to explain in the balance of the Sermon on the Mount. But we’re out of time, and that’ll have to wait until the next program. Until then, this is Ronald Dart reminding you, you were born to win.
SPEAKER 02 :
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 Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at 1-888-BIBLE44 and visit us online at borntowin.net.
SPEAKER 01 :
Stay in touch with the new Born to Win with Ronald L. Dart app. This app has all of your favorite Ronald L. Dart radio messages, sermons, articles, and it even has a digital Bible. Simply search on the iOS or Android app store to download it for free today.
